Alternate Browsers?

I do not use Google Chrome, habitually, although I use the map feature often. I do not use google as a search engine either. The reasons are quite clear in the quote below from todays Age newspaper article. I use duckduckgo as my primary search engine with Safari which has historically given better colour support and management than any other browser. Using alternate browsers makes sense in an our current highly surveilled world.

Some other browsers to consider are, iCab, Opera, Firefox, Tor.  On the desktop and mobile platforms.

Google has talked about this approach before. While Apple and Mozilla don't derive much money from advertising, the vast majority of Google's revenue comes from digital ads.

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Flickr, Explore and Stats?

My current top 3 most viewed images, above the older 3.

One of SmugMug's promises was to improve the Explore algorithm. Up until this year 3 images had held the top spot fairly solidly. This seems to have changed this year. My current top three most viewed images have all entered that spot in the last few months. So it seems the new owners have made good on the promise. Still a closer examination of the stats show the vast majority of the views coming from Android devices. I wish flickr would allow a more granular approach to these numbers.

Jimbo Boy  at #4 and East Bentleigh  at #6 were for many years my most viewed images. But with North Melbourne hitting top spot briefly in 2018, then the latest three moving the rest down it seems changes are indeed afoot.

For many years this picture was my most viewed; albeit probably for the wrong reasons. It has fallen way down the the list to number 23.

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Ars Technica iOS13 review

My current home screen on my iPhone XS

A far more in-depth review than I could write and covering more than just Photos and the camera itself.

"...That said, the iPhone was originally envisioned as a more focused user experience than a desktop computer. That focus was on simplicity and the ability for users to naturally intuit how the device would behave when they interacted with it with their fingers. Easy discoverability and easy access to core features were central ideas."

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iOS 13

Screengrab, iphone XS, iOS 13

I upgraded to iOS 13 this morning. Lots of cool new features. The photos app has had a major overhaul. For the average user these can be useful. I personally don't use them much. I use professional desktop tools to manage my photographs. Unless the function is a 'snap' such as our new kittens or some other personal memory related event. Think weddings, birthdays and parties. Some features such as liking/hearting/favouriting adding to albums and sharing has moved and wasn't immediately intuitive. Once I found it it made perfect sense. People who don't like these kinds of change will of course complain. Here's the list of all the changes from the Apple site.

All-new Photos tab
The all-new Photos tab lets you browse your photo library with different levels of curation, so it’s easy to find, relive and share your photos and videos. You can view everything in All Photos, focus on your unique photos in Days, relive your significant moments in Months or rediscover your highlights in Years.

Auto-playing Live Photos and videos
Throughout the Photos tab, muted Live Photos and videos begin playing as you scroll, bringing your photo library to life.

Smart photo previews
In Days, Months and Years, photo previews are larger to help you distinguish between shots. Photos uses intelligence to find the best part of your photo in photo previews, which means you get to see the uncropped version of your photo when you tap to view it.

Contextual transitions
Animations and transitions keep your place in the Photos tab, so you can switch between views — like Days and All Photos — without losing your place.
Removes similar shots and clutter
Duplicate photos, screenshots, whiteboard photos, documents and receipts are identified and hidden, so you see only your best shots.

Significant events
Months presents your photos by events, so you can rediscover the moments that matter most.
Event titles
The Photos tab displays the name of the location, holiday or concert performer to provide helpful context for your significant events.
On this Day
Years is contextual, so it shows you photos taken on or around today’s date in past years.
Birthday mode
If you have birthdays assigned to people in your People album, the Photos tab will highlight your photos of them on their birthday.

Zoom in and zoom out
View your library in All Photos however you’d like. Zoom in for a closer look, or zoom out to quickly scan through your library and see all your shots at once.
Screen recordings smart album
All your new screen recordings are now in one place.

Search enhancements
You can combine multiple search terms — like “beach” and “selfies” — without tapping each word in Search.

Music for Memories
Soundtracks for Memory movies are selected based on what you listen to in the Apple Music app.
Extended Live Photos playback
When you press and hold to play a Live Photo, Photos will automatically extend the video when you have Live Photos taken within 1.5 seconds of each other.

Preview intensity
As you apply an edit, each adjustment displays its intensity, so you can see at a glance which effects have been increased or decreased.

Individually review each effect
Tap each effect icon to see what your photo looked like before and after the effect was applied.

Filter control
Control the intensity of any filter, like Vivid or Noir, to fine-tune your look.

Enhance control
Enhance now lets you control the intensity of your automatic adjustments. As you increase or decrease Enhance, you’ll see other adjustments — including Exposure, Brilliance, Highlights, Shadows, Contrast, Brightness, Black Point, Saturation and Vibrance — intelligently change with it.

Video editing support
Adjustments, filters and crop support video editing, so you can rotate, increase exposure or even apply filters to your videos. Video editing supports all video formats captured on iPhone, including 4K video at 60 fps and 1080p slow-motion video at 240 fps.1
Nondestructive video edits
Video edits are now nondestructive, so you can remove an effect like a filter or undo a trim to return to your original video.
Vibrance
Boost muted colours to make your photo richer without affecting skin tones and saturated colours.
White Balance
Balance the warmth of an image by adjusting temperature (blue to yellow) and tint (green to magenta).
Sharpen
Change photos by making edges crisper and better defined.
Definition
Increase image clarity by adjusting the definition slider.
Noise reduction
Reduce or eliminate noise such as graininess or speckles in photos.
Vignette
Add shading to the edges of your photo to highlight a powerful moment using Strength, Radius and Falloff.

Updates to auto adjustments
Straighten, crop and adjust the perspective of your photos automatically.

Pinch-to-zoom support
You can pinch to zoom while editing to review your changes on a specific area of your photo.

Image Capture API
The Image Capture API lets you import photos directly into an app when a camera is connected to your iOS device.*


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Inbox?

Today in my inbox I received this email, for a service I showed interest in in 2014! I know have a page at this uri, https://tilde.club/~s2art/ . I still need to work out how to use it?

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Are Digital Cameras Computers?

I agree with Mike Johnston, from the Online Photographer. I only considered teaching students to use the auto focus settings on digital cameras once 1.8 lenses became cheap enough and I understood the implications of how shallow DOF is on digital cameras.


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Ten Years Ago Today? [TBT]

2009-05-02 15:06:42

Ten years ago today, I mdae this picture. At the time I was using a Sony Ericsson C902 phone camera. I had a 5 megapixel sensor and full internet connectivity. These were the reasons I bought it, even though my telco had offered me an iPhone 3 at the time.
In those early days I was fond of pushing the limits of a digital photograph being made using the humblest of devices with minimal control. I feel I had some interesting outcomes.
Now ten years later I have a much more sophisticated device. One that is capable of capturing in several file formats and allowing some exposure and focus controls. In some ways I miss that early experimental aesthetic. It feels like it's harder to achieve when I can shoot in RAW, and the process the file in Lightroom. I use a third party app for this on my iPhone XS. It is called ProCamera, I wrote a couple of articles about it back on my Wordpress blog.
Having the ability to make a "serious" picture that may end up on a gallery wall on in a book is too tempting to not make sure at least some of the pictures that I see, I can best reproduce using any device at hand. The opposite idea really applied in this early days. How far could I subvert the image using this simple tool? Yet hold onto that vestige of indexicallity that so many critics claim is Photography's Achilles heel?

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Exposure Triangle?

I am currently the teaching Certificate IV Students how to use their digital cameras more effectively. One task revolves around using a simple calculator to work out a series different exposures. All ‘correct’ but some giving different outcomes based on shutter or aperture choice. I don’t allow the students to change ISO in this task. This idea is often referred to as the exposure triangle. In the days of teaching film the ISO was always locked in a single place. Students then only needed to understand the relationship between image brightness and aperture and shutter.
I was unhappy with the way the students responded to this task.
In an effort  to find another way of explaining or teaching it I opened three books. Those books were:- 'Reframing Photography Theory and Practice’, 'Photography 4.0 A teaching guide for the 21st Century' and 'Digital Photo Assignments, Projects for all levels of Photography Classes'. None of these excellent books draws a string around the 3 principles involved in image brightness and exposure? Is this a deliberate choice? Do the editors and writers of these books not consider the relationship meaningful enough for a section or a paragraph?
A quick google returns an enormous amount of information. It seems I will have my work cut out for me formulating a new way to teach this idea.

[edit 2019-04-03] I found two more books in my library that could offer some interpretation or explanation. These are, Langford's Basic Photography and Horenstien's Black and White Photography, a  Basic Manual. Both are pre-digital books and as a consequence approach the idea from a film angle. That is; that it, exposure is fixed at the ISO level. In good news. I took my students out to practice. The idea may be sinking in now. we shall see?

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Early memories of the internet?

Embassy of the internet survey

The embassy of the Internet put out a survey recently, here are my responses.

• Username/Name:  s2art
• Age: 50+
• Gender: M
• Location: Antipodes
• Job Role/Description: Educator; since 1993

What do you first remember most fondly about using the internet?
My first exposure was really to the WWW. I was doing my teacher training. One subject got us looking at technology in the classroom. I sat at a computer and “surfed” not really knowing what to look for or find. I guess due to bandwidth concerns my University blocked ALL images. So I was completely underwhelmed by that experience. I was an Art/Photography major at that school. Within 12 months however I was working in  a photography department of a school whose HOD saw that this was important and connected the department to the internet with a dedicated line. I also acquired a desktop computer and had my own connection to the WWW. At the time had a friend who was a  from Rochester in the USA. He put me onto listservs and mail groups. My early days of internet communications came from these groups and I spent many an hour dutifully downloading my mail each working. Reading it offline. Then reconnecting the next morning and sending my replies. Over the years I found many tools for online communication. My favourite has always been email however. Not long after came learning html and blogging, then flickr.com, and instagram. What I really loved about my early years of the WWW was to ‘surf’. Drifting from homepage to homepage. Discovering some real gems.

What do you think has changed the most since your early years on the web?
The demise of homepages and to a certain extent blogging. The WWW is really now an ‘app’ and few people experience it outside of their phones and tablets. When it so much more than that.

How do you use the internet and what do you mostly use it for?
Research, entertainment, shopping, as well as my own publishing to flickr and blogging.

What is your biggest concern about the internet and/or the future of the web?
The balkanisation of the web by a few services, apple, facebook, google, instagram etc.

What would you change about the way we use the internet or how it is controlled now?
It’s difficult to know how to reclaim those early days. Maybe it isn’t even a wise premise to expect?

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New Ways of Seeing?

A fabulous radio series that examines John Berger’s famous essay, Ways of seeing in the 21st century.

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BBC Four's Podcast on the Internet

How is technology changing the way we see? The artist James Bridle reimagines John Berger’s Ways of Seeing for the digital age and reveals the internet’s hidden infrastructure.
Listen Here

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Helvetica Gets a Facelift!

A screengrab from the animation

Helvetica is so ubiquitous it borders on boring. I myself try to avoid it. It’s getting a facelift. Watch this screen animation to see where its heading, as an animation is great. The new font looks good too.







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