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Stored in: Tools
Posted On: May 31 2008
By: Bryan Partington
There's been a lot of discussion of late in the Utata group about "orphaned works" legislation and what constitutes "due diligence" in an image search, and how even the most diligent search won't be able to easily find an image's original source.
TinEye's image based Image search engine promises to render that argument moot.
It is still in private beta, but the Google Operating System Blog has posted a good preview of the service's strengths and limitations and some video of the service in action.
The service lets you upload or link to an image on the web, and then tracks down similar looking images even if they have been cropped, watermarked or reprocessed.
Though this is unlikely to quell the furor surrounding orphaned works, it does mean that when if the legislation eventually passes the effects will be minimal on flickr users. A simple TinEye search for the suspected "orphan" will immediately bring up the source image on flickr, allowing the photographer to be directly contacted regarding its use.
1 comments on this Ink
On June 04, 2008, Patrick Lentz said ...
Very interesting. I'm going to check it out.
And they say they don't kill here.
Stored in: In Situ
Posted On: May 15 2008
By: Bryan Partington
Archival Photo
projectb.com has a gallery of striking photos of executions in the mexican revolution of the early 1900s.
The imagery is relatively gruesome, capturing the horror of death by firing squad, so I'll invite you to view the images on the project b site instead of posting them here.
Though the images are remarkable as examples of early photojournalism, they aren't newspaper imagery, but postcards.
Project B explains:
In the early 1900s, Kodak introduced roll film cameras enabling everyone to easily make their own photos; the postcard craze was in full swing; and along the U.S. Mexican border the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution was imminent. In 1910, the bloody battles began and scores of amateur photographers crossed the border to photograph the war and turn their negatives into photo postcards for sale.
So the next time someone tells you "That's as pretty as a postcard", you might want to think back to some of the imagery that postcards used to contain.
1 comments on this Ink
On September 01, 2008, Shauna Bishop said ...
the link is gone..
The Story of the First Photobooth
Stored in: Tools
Posted On: May 14 2008
By: Bryan Partington
Archival Photo
Modern Mechanix has a 1928 article on the inventor and invention of the "Photomaton", or photobooth, with a keen description and cross-section of the internal components of the photo spewing robot.
The article also has an interesting, if not sensational, recounting of the inventor Anatol Josepho’s rags-to-riches biography. "Ten years ago a penniless prisoner of the Bolsheviks; today an American millionaire!"
The social uses of the new technology are also addressed, ranging from the utilitarian to the superficial.
From experience he knew the human being’s craving, among all races and all lands, for a permanent record of his face. Josepho’s photographic life had likewise taught him the constant demand for utilitarian portraits —for identification cards of all kinds, passports, employment records, expression-study, groups, and so on...
...A department for making enlargements is being installed by some of the large department stores in New York City, where the automatic portrait machine is enormously popular, it is said, with buyers of new hats, new furs, and new “bobs” as well as garments.
I've always been intrigued by the photobooth. Mostly because it takes an expressive medium and reduces it to something entirely mechanical and procedural. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, photobooth photos are often extremely expressive. Think of the antics that groups of teenagers get up to when they discover a photobooth. The article even has a series of photos of presidential candidate Al Smith which show remarkable expressiveness and candor.
On the other hand, photobooths can produce neutral or downright dour identification photos as well. You're specifically instructed not to smile for those.
But what's most intriguing is the way that the article identifies the photobooth with american capitalism and values. There's the shots of the cigar chomping presidential candidate, the very picture of a capitalist fat cat. There's a reference to bourgeois vanity photos following the purchase of a new hat, and the inventor is a former prisoner of russian communists.
