© Apple

What if, suddenly the world go around, and people start to think that our camera should be capable of playing music, albeit from the memory card, or stream your iTunes from your iPods?

What if, suddenly, camera engineers finally figure out how to integrate a multi-touch full body display at the back of your camera and design a highly usable camera interface, just like your iPhones/iPod Touch, and — for god’s sake — reasonable enough to open the cookbook and let people develop apps on it — just like your iPhones/iPod Touch?

The problem is, the other side is doing such a great job at those, and have already accomplish all that, at the same time, slowly implementing highly useful camera technology and features into their cam… (oops, I mean) iPhones & iPod Touches.

That other side if of course none other than Mr. Steve Jobs & The Apple Design & Engineering team, and our side is none other than the obscure anonymous folks with no names and no faces to credit too.

In just a few months time after they first revealed their next generation, 5-megapixel, backlit sensor iPhone 4 camera system, they announced today that their next version of the iOS software 4.1 will include an HDR feature, directly built into their camera app.

Now, let’s savor this moment and allow us to think, what, in recent time that our dear Canon, Nikon, Leica, Olympus & many other imaging giants have done even so much as a built-in HDR feature? Let alone the multi-touch display thing, I’d settle for just an easy-to-use button layout & software operation interface. If they really think they can’t do it, they might as well consider making an iOS app and an iPhone/iPod Touch dock interface at the back of the camera and let us just enjoy taking pictures again.

Right now, my iPhone is practically a better camera than my EOS. I’d like to see it change.

Photokina, the photographers and the imaging industry’s State of the Union is near and looks like there’s going to be some shift in how the game is going to be played next.

Canon’s S90 & the G11 have attested to the image-quality-is-everything theory, and once again have reaffirm Canon’s commitment with their new gears, the S95, G12 and the next king to their 1Ds Kinghood, the Mark IV and the 1D Mark V.

Interestingly, “something hybrid” is expected to make some big splash at the September opening of the show; with the increasing interest in HD-DSLR filmmaking and innovation, I wouldn’t be surprised if movie recording will be a standard feature on every SLR just like how cameras are on your mobile phones.

I wouldn’t be too surprised if nothing interesting will come, though, it is only a camera, after all.

Follow focus is to Hollywood, for HD-DSLR is to filmmaking, Intuitfocus HF-IF1 is the 5D of HD-DSLR follow focusing:

The IF system can be used on all DSLR cameras with lenses from 14mm to 600mm, including shooting with Zeiss still or compact prime lenses. The IF system is easy to mount and is compatible with most lenses, and enables one to focus or to zoom precisely and quickly without any camera shake.

This thing about focusing will go away if camera makers solve the root problem. SLR cameras are designed to capture still photograph; our current focusing technology was based on a two-decade auto-focus problem, now that most DSLRs can also be used to shoot videos, a new auto-focus system is needed to solve this new problem.

Abstract: Detecting an object from the viewfinder, instead of snapping to a focused position, the system would identify movements, and from the distance, direction, speed and sets of moving patterns; calculate and predict a focusing point that would be maintained, and/or gradually shifted according to the position of the object and the camera’s film plane. Add to it, the existing image stabilizing technology, super-sensitive image sensor capable of high-ISO & wide dynamic range light capture — filmmaking will never be the same again.

Okay, that sounds like crazy sci-fi sensation, but remember a few decades ago when auto-focus, auto-exposure, hypersonic-wave focusing motor, were nothing but a dream? As many optimists would say, everything is possible as long as we can imagine it.

Postscript: Now that we’re talking sci-fi, has someone devised a non-linear digital image sensor that has “memory”? A sensor that not capture a single linear moment of image, but record a non-linear memory of the light itself? This would result in a truly RAW state so that the photography can be done entirely post-capture — think of a darkroom enlarger but with multiple negative films with infinite combinations of ƒ stops.

It would completely ruin the beauty of photography, but it’s no crime to image, no?

update: link to video & behind-the-scenes gallery added.

Bali, the quintessence of a rich spiritual & cultural community is empirically known throughout her history as the land where people come as tourists, but often leaving as artists. Some of the world’s most well known painters, musicians, photographers — artists — have spent time and at some point of their lives, lived on the island. There’s that quality about Bali that attracts souls of any kind.

John Stanmeyer, a member of the VII photo agency spent five years living there, during which, through the lens of his holga, he captured the enchanting life & spirits of the island’s living, breathing & invisible souls, and produced this exciting new title:

Spirits are everywhere in Bali. Trees, temples, mountains, stones, water appear sacred to the Balinese, all serving as a hand reaching out and into the otherworld of ancestors and gods and the maelstrom of good and evil. [...] This body of work stresses the historicity of spiritual life of Bali, consisting of deeply layered imagery that is witnessed, understood and explained in full by few, yet practiced by millions.

The book will come in regular & special limited edition (pricing to be announced) and the first edition is currently wrapping up production in Jakarta where an exclusive behind-the-scene gallery has been published, also up is a short video feature on VII Multimedia.

© Richard Avedon

I never realized how much I enjoy Richard Avedon’s work after I revisit my old DVD, Richard Avedon: Darkness and Light. Further reading leads me to this exquisite feature & commentary by curators Carol Squiers and Vince Aletti for the New York Times.

The entire cut is about 6:00 min long, if you’re in a hurry, here are some bits that I found to be awakening.

On feelings:

Avedon was always looking for another way to show how women thought and how women felt, and that meant it they aren’t necessarily always just feeling beautiful, they might be insecure, but they might be also very very happy. Avedon really made the laughing woman a real subject in fashion.

On ‘color’:

There were not supposed to be any people of color in Harper’s Bazaar magazine, for Avedon, people of color were part of the spectrum that were normal natural to him, In his quest for beauties — that were not just your average American beauty — he looked at women who were of different ethnic background, one of the first ones he came up with was China Machado a woman of Portuguese and Chinese ancestry. He actually had to threaten to quit Harper’s Bazaar in order to get them to use China Machado in the pages of the magazine. This particular fight only escalated when he decided he wanted to use a black model whose name is Donyale Luna.

On being true to his vision:

Avedon always seem to be slightly ahead of his time in terms of whatever the social and cultural thinking was of the time. He always seemed to be pushing pushing the envelope and getting himself into trouble but because he was who he was, he could threaten and they would bend to his will.

More about his vision, Vince Aletti added:

I think what he did best was compress the movement that he had on the street, the kind of attitude of excitement and exuberance that he captured with models out in the world was able to put that into the studio and capture that for the page. [...] Avedon was always very much a person of his time, so he was really attuned to the energy and exuberance of the 60s, and the radicalism that was there as well and wanted to kind of translate that into the work as well, if only by encouraging his models to let go, to really spread across the page, or to really be excited and convey that sense of excitement out to the world.

What I noticed in the last couple of years is that fashion pages on the magazines today no longer has so much weight in its content — weak concepts, repetitive looks and most destructive — albeit the most unapparent — is the personification of the fashion, and the objectification of the person behind it. Feelings & expressions are kept at the bare minimum — making them almost irrelevant at times, and at the same time turning the fashion products into biblical objects.

Perhaps this is one of those period in history books where we are at the turning point where consumerism is the new world order (or religion, on this matter). One can only hope that this is just — well — fashion at its best.

Not only they managed to pull the stunt, they won an award for it.

Indonesian newspaper won a gold award for borrowing from ‘The Godfather’.

Run by one of the country’s most reputable editorial team, Koran Tempo, a local Indonesian Language newspaper run a half-page imagery borrowing the legendary illustration from The Godfather.

Depicting a key player on an ongoing corruption scandal-turn-criminal-investigation, the whole picture perfectly narrates the entire story of the allegedly corruption-ridden administration.

This is a big win for editorial & journalistic freedom in one of the world’s most liberal country on journalism. One can only hope that this brings new spirit to the entire editorial team and the rest of the media, to finally care about content & quality in what they print.

Read the translated article here, or more about the award here.

Indonesia, with her 18,000+ islands is a land of many tales and legends. Obscured in plain sight, the often-disregarded, dutch-built railway system was where most of such tales began. Spanning thousands of kilometers from the island of Java, to the island of Sumatera, was the seed and the backbone of the nation’s agri-industry, and the place where many bedtime stories originated.

The Indonesian Railway Company, PT. Kereta Api Indonesia is undertaking one of its most ambitious project, they aim to rebuild the public image of the Railway lifestyle, and to spearhead the movement is conserving the national railway heritage.

To kickstart the initiative, PT KAI is launching a campaign to raise awareness & funds for the project, a team of architects, historians, archeologist, urban planners & documentarian were embarked upon a series of trip trailing the railway routes dubbed as the Trans-Java, Trans-Sumatera railway lines.

Beginning in early March this year, I, along with a half-dozen passionate traveler started the tour from the route’s originating point: Central Java island’s capital city, Semarang, where the The Thousand Gate Mansion — The East India Company – Railway Corporation’s first & original headquarter designed by the legendary Thomas Karsten, father of the Indonesian art-deco building design.

I have a story to tell.

Outcome of this project is yet to be announced, but a selection of the photographs from this expedition is published under the Pictorial section: The Indonesian Railway and The Java Heritage. Update: The Java Heritage Movie is now up on Vimeo.

If you’d like to pledge your support, or learn more about the project, PT. KAI has a new website dedicated to this project.

© David Burnett

David Burnett is a man with a different point of view.

He frames his shots carefully, and chooses his equipments wisely. He still shoots film most of the time, and his signature shots — shallow depth-of-field, clever use of selective focus like that from a tilt-shift lens — have graced countless publications around the world. (It may be easier to name the lesser few), and on a rare occasion, he have spoken with the PhotoShelter guys on a 22-minute long video conversation, and a carefully chosen list of equipments.

An extensive test and report on iPhone 4′s usability as a camera published over at AnandTech. It looks reason enough for one not to carry a separate camera device, especially an HD video camera, but still the iPhone 4 — like all iPhones — lacks a physical tribute to distinguish itself as a capturing device that makes it camera-like, camera on/off and a hardware shutter button.

In my experience, non iPhone users always mistakenly press the home button thinking it as the capture trigger, and I have always have to launch the camera app beforehand. In pre iOS 4 software, we can program a double home-button press to launch the camera, iOS 4 multi-tasking capability takes it all away leaving us with nothing but the home screen’s app icon.

A separate physical button would be nice, but impractical, I wouldn’t want Apple to turn the iPhones into those Cybershots camera, the iPhone is always a phone first, everything else later, and let us not change that. But a smart set of programmable button, like perhaps the *cough*, volume up button as capture trigger (we won’t need turn up/down the volume in camera mode), or *cough* home button triple press, ringer switch quick toggle, all can be used to improve the iPhone as a point-and-shoot replacement camera.

I have used jailbroken iPhone in the past and someone made a hack just for that, and I can tell you firsthand that it works just fine, people, the only downside is not only we have to explain it to non-iPhone users, but also to iPhone owners due to its non-standard behavior.

Alas, the iPhone is still a phone, the nice camera is just a bonus that happens be quite handy.

So let the floodgate opens.

From their website:

ImageRights uses its industrial strength crawler technology to continuously scan business sites, blogs, news and media sites and … indexes millions of new images that the crawler finds every month. We then use powerful image recognition technology to compare the images from these sites to your images in order to detect where they are being used.

Plagiarism is a plaque that has become a major part the internet; I for one has been a victim of such practice by some big names in the local electronic media market, unlike ImageRights, I discovered the heavily modified photograph by accident, unlike ImageRights, I identified the used artwork by bare eyes, unlike ImageRights, it didn’t yield any financial settlement nor legal action. Unlike ImageRights, business continue as usual and it took a simple (cheap and friendly) precaution from my end: watermarking. (the purported image was a personal work and doesn’t belong to any of my clients).

ImageRights enlisted 5 personas as their executive team, but not a single word is mentioned about the technology being used to empower the “Industrial strength crawler technology”, and despite the upfront registration fee and monthly cost, the website also fails to mention the split-scheme or scenario or relevant facts like what sort of requirements from the customer’s end to proof the ownership of the “surrendered” photographs.

What’s even more interesting is the industry partners ImageRights is said to be proud of, none of it (at this time of this writing) is where the real shooters hang out, not a photo agency, neither a big name publishing operation, nor a single photo hosting/stock agency who everyone uses, like Flickr, Corbis, iStockPhoto, etc. to name a few.

Now the real question is, would you be willing to surrender your images provided the above facts? Would you be willing to pay some artificial Batmans to cop your images at night and catch any cheap shots for using your image unauthorized?

I’ll take my chances and stick with my watermarks. Even if someone comes to steal my image, so be it, you’re welcome!