12.31.03
Posted in Rants at 5:52 pm by Thomas
Here’s the one article to sum up what 2003 in the US was like…
From CNN: FBI urges police to watch for people carrying almanacs
I’d like to point out that this is sheer insanity.
So let’s hope that in this next year we will lose our fears and paranoia, that we will re-learn to love and to embrace life.
Let’s hope for a year without war, a year of enlightened politics, a year of international cooperation, a year of learning to live together.
Let’s hope that people who carry books are not seen as a threat in this new year.
I wish you all a healthy, happy and peaceful 2004!
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12.30.03
Posted in Media at 10:37 pm by Thomas
The Newseum website offers daily front pages of over a hundred newspapers worldwide as screenshots and fully readable PDFs.
It’s interesting to browse through a random cross-section of front pages from all over the world – some subjects easily make it on most of the front pages, but then there are interesting local stories that one would never even hear about.
It is certainly true that the Internet has lead to total information overload. Whatever you want to know – or need to know – it is out there. And then so much more…
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12.18.03
Posted in Photography at 2:20 am by thomas
Hill 88 is an abandoned Nike missile control center high up in the Marin Headlands near San Francisco.
I’m a regular visitor of this place on my hikes across from the ocean to the bay, and on a recent visit the place was shrouded in fog. It was a cold and drizzly Sunday and I had the place all to myself, only adding to the desolation.
There is always something special about visiting abandoned sites like this – filled with the ghosts of a past that is visibly slipping away, a steady reminder that nothing of our physical presence, not even concrete and steel, will survive for more than a few generations.
And I’m certainly not alone with this fascination for crumbly concrete – there are hundreds of well-photographed sites out there about abandonded and forbidden places. Check out Infiltration.org for many links to urban exploration…
Update:
You can also find my post about Hill 88 on MapSkip!
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Posted in Photography at 1:10 am by Thomas
I found this via larsholst.info…
28MM is a photo magazine featuring a handful of outstanding photographers every month.
In the November edition, take a look at the amazing pictures by Katie Cooke taken with a scanner (And why not? Nobody said your camera can’t have a square 9×11 inch aperture…).
And then there is of course the genius-like title photo by C Gary Moyer.
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12.17.03
Posted in PhotoBlog: Street Copy at 1:39 am by Thomas
Pine Street, San Francisco
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12.13.03
Posted in Photography at 9:25 pm by Thomas
As I’ve mentioned in my previous post, I became a camera collector of a sort… and the really exciting part is to actually drop some film into a camera from the 1940s, go out and take pictures!
Here are two examples of what is possible with these cameras. The first picture was taken with a Kodak Bull’s Eye Brownie from the mid-50s, the second picture with a foldable Kodak Monitor Six-20 from the mid-40s. Both cameras use 620 film which can not be bought nowadays, but it is possible to shoot 120 film without any alterations, as long as an old 620 spool is used in the camera to wind up the film.
Both cameras produce huge 6×9 cm negatives on 120 film – providing lots and lots of film material for enlargements. In this case, I’ve scanned the negatives directly at 1600 dpi to produce these images. The small details on this page are at full scan resolution and you can click through to a small version of the full picture.
Here is a detail of a nightshot with the Kodak Bull’s Eye Brownie (click for full picture):
And here is a full resolution detail of a picture taken with the foldable 1940s Kodak Monitor Six-20 (click for the full picture):
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12.03.03
Posted in Photography at 2:36 pm by Thomas
Thanks to the modern marvel that is eBay, I’ve found myself involved in a whole new hobby – collecting old cameras. I became particularily interested in old Kodak cameras from the 1940s and 50s and I’ve found many of these on eBay, all of them for very reasonable prices.
The pride of the collection right now is a Kodak Brownie from the mid-50s in its original box with manual, flash, vintage bulbs, vintage batteries and vintage unopened film.
It was fun putting all these pieces together with a few auctions on eBay, none of which was above 10 dollars…
And I also have now several foldable Kodaks from the 40s. I really enjoy handling these cameras because all the parts and materials have that satisfying feel of quality and good workmanship. No cheap plastic, no compromises. These are heavy, solid cameras that even after 60 years still take great pictures.
I’ll try and post a few pictures I’ve taken with these cameras soon.
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Posted in Media at 12:52 am by Thomas
Journalists are only human beings, and as such are fallible. They can be threatened, they can be forced, or they could just plain have a different opinion than what counts for the truth.
This is not much of a problem as long as a free society is cruising through a peaceful decade or two. But if there’s war and the acrid taste of facism is in the air, honest and correct news reporting becomes the lifeline of a free people.
There is a reason why dictators first kill all the upright journalists.
So here we are, and the signs are not good. American journalism, for a long time a world-wide beacon for the profession, has been deteriorating visibly over the last few years. Without internet access to worldwide news resources to compare, it is now pretty much impossible for a US citizen to make heads or tails of the situation in this world.
And then there are the outright lies and deception.
The Memory Hole is maybe one of the most valuable sources of retracted and hidden information on the web.
Sure it sounds paranoid, but all the information in these pages is backed up by sources, and often enough the Internet makes it just very hard to suppress hard data. Exactly what the US Defense Department built it for. Oh, the irony.
Newspapers retracting Bush-misspeak, photoshopping happy Iraqis or just plain ignoring for 40 years a most astonishing revelation by JFK…
It’s all there in the Memory Hole, for the world to see.
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