Uninsipired, bored, disorganized and frustrated

<p>Over the past year or so I've become disenchanted with photography. Not so much by the process but by the way the product is received. People look at photographs on countless devices these days. They're all small and there's no universal calibration among them.<br>

The difference between the way photos look on my large screen Imac and on my wife's laptop is shocking. Photos are stretched, mashed, pixelated and re-colored. It's even worse when I look at a photograph on a cell phone of <em>any</em> size. And yet, that's what people look at photographs with. Maybe I should say "what people <em>glance</em> at photographs with." <br>

Few care. It's a question of values, like all other things in life. My values are not the values of others.<br>

In an effort to battle this uninspired techno-funk, I've been trying to update my web-design skills. Actually, I'm trying to <em>get</em> some web-design skills. My website, though full of product, is laughable when viewed on most of the devices whined about above. <br>

I'm interested in hearing what you use to assemble websites. I'm currently doing battle with <strong>Rapid Weaver</strong>. I find it clunky and counter intuitive. Below is a rudimentary webpage I assembled using RW. I'd like to hear how it looks on your device.<br>

I've got piles of exposed film but little desire to process and present it.</p>

<p><a href="http://westfordcomp.com/classics/contaxIIIa/contaxIIIarw/index.html">Contax IIIa.</a></p>

As to worrying about what other people do or think, why do you care? Care about the work <I> you</I> do. That's the way

you get other people to care.

<p>Here's a screenshot from Firefox 32.0.3 running on Xubuntu 14.04. I have plenty of adblockers and privacy add-ons activated, if that matters.</p><div></div>

<p>It's normal for one's enthusiasm to wax and wane. I wouldn't worry about it too much; instead focus on the things you still enjoy. For what it's worth, many people here (myself included) enjoy your posts and website A LOT.</p>

<p>Hopefully that's a <em>portion</em> of the webpage, Zane.<br>

Ellis. I think you've missed the point.</p>

<p>Yeah, that's just the top of the page. Scrolling down things look similar, with words and images truncated on the right side. I share your frustration with online viewing of images on most sites. Facebook, in particular, commits crimes with image quality -- I assume they highly compress everything to save server space.</p>

<p>Well edited photos <em>should</em> look good on almost any device. Usually when a photo looks good on the calibrated computer on which it was edited and wonky on another device, the problem is with the other device, browser or coding on the page on which it's viewed. The challenge to web design now is getting pages to present the crucial elements - text, photos, graphics - to look right without breaking, covering something up, or weird aspect ratios.</p>

<p>One of the challenges to presenting photos on dynamic pages is minimizing quality loss due to scaling artifacts. I'm not sure what the solution is to that problem. Even on photo.net I occasionally see scaling artifacts when photos uploaded at widths larger than 700 pixels to our photo.net portfolio spaces are embedded in discussion forums; or when photos larger than 680 pickles wide are uploaded and automagically resized. The resizing and rescaling do odd things to the pixies. Textured areas such as asphalt or concrete may show reptile scale-like patterns. Other repeating patterns may show moire that wasn't apparent in the original. Properly sharpened JPEGs that looked good on our systems may appear oversharpened with halos and jaggies, or too soft when viewed online.</p>

<p>Also, I've noticed many of my b&w film scans and flatbed scans of b&w prints done 10 or more years ago now look pretty awful to me. My skills have improved, and I've become more critical of my own work. And scans that looked good on my CRT at 800x600 resolution in 2001 look pretty dreadful today. I tended to oversharpen everything, especially in the smaller final output JPEG for web display.</p>

<p>Picking up on the web design part first: web design has become a pretty serious game; the low-end "let me make a website for you" programs used to give really nice results compared to large, carefully designed and developed sites that companies can afford. Not anymore, really. The last few years, largely because of mobile, the web made huge leaps forward, in design and in the underlying technologies. It has made development more complex, challenging and versatile. If you want to make your own site, and make it look good and have it working well on mobile with touchscreens - the learning curve has become very serious. Programs that offer to make your site for you won't really get you there (or it'll look very uninspired).<br>

Instead of this program, I'd look into WordPress (or Joomla); there are many tutorials on how to customise these packages and make them look and behave the way you want. Armed with a simple Text Editor, that might get you a lot closer to what you'd want, and I think you'll learn a lot more too that way.</p>

<p>As for the photography - there is no real solution to it, is there? Personally, I always hope my photos are composed well enough and show their tonality well enough to not have to rely too much on the rest of the world having a reasonable LCD screen (and not be colour blind). So that they'll at least can get a decent idea what I had in mind. But to be fair, it's not just LCD screens that cause this, nor is it new. Put up a perfect print in a room with all the wrong lighting, and it also looks completely wrong. <br>

<br />And as Ellis said, as much as I like to hear that people appreciate seeing my work, in the end, I make photos because I want to and like to. And if the photo is good enough, people will stop glancing and look better, at least those who are willing to. Again, no different from how it always was.</p>

<p>BTW, I'm seeing the same formatting problems as Zane, via Chrome. I'll take a look later via Firefox and Internut Exploder. Some photos and text appear to be partially hidden.</p>

<p>I can understand the frustration, but for my own part I still view things on a real computer. either a desktop with a very nice relatively new and bright monitor we got specifically so that photographs would look good, or a laptop, with drab color but something approaching correct proportions.</p>

<p>I certainly hope you keep the stuff coming. It looks good here. </p>

<p>Not sure if it is a helpful tip, but among the best tools for troubleshooting issues as the ones you see (where placement of elements go weird) are Firebug on Firefox or Chrome, or the Developer Tools in Internet Explorer (and despite its bad reputation, IE11 is a pretty good browser, its developer tools are among the very best in my view); these tools do require you to know your HTML and CSS well, but if you do, then they can help you drill down to whatever doesn't work and check how to change its behaviour to make it work.<br>

<br /> <em>[edit]</em><br /> A quick look at the page you linked: all the containers for the content are placed in the CSS in a rather static fixed way; if you make the screenresolution low, some elements simply disappear because they are not "allowed" to reflow. The problem is in the CSS position:relative, where I think you'd probably be better of with position:fixed, but it's not a quick and easy fix (because everything trickles down and breaks all the rest).</p>

<p>Point 1. It's great to see you posting again.<br>

Point 2. I really like the Contax page. Nice and clean, with nothing to divert attention away from the subject matter. For what it's worth, I viewed it on a laptop with a 14" display, using Firefox running under linux.</p>

<p>Gene - sorry, I can't help with the website design, but just wanted to encourage you to not give up on the photography, even if you put it aside for a while (or a couple of years as I did)...your insight and experimentation have encouraged a number of people to delve deeper than they thought they could.</p>

<p>I wish I knew how to reassure you and 'perk' you up. We have missed you, Gene M.</p>

<p>It's normal for creative artists, in whose number you are, to have such moments, not that that is any comfort.<br>

:|</p>

 

<p>The logician/copyeditor in me has to comment: you said the Contax IIa "works perfectly", but earlier you said that the meter was "no longer working...". Sorry for my nitpicking! It looks an interesting site. At least you are worrying about how it looks on different devices. A lot of people really don't care.</p>

<p>Mr. M. said “I've got piles of exposed film but little desire to process and present it.” </p>

<p>Sir,</p>

<p>Your found film posts were some of the best ever presented on Photonet. Many of us would like to see you back. We have considerable desire to see you process it and present it. Of course that means you do all the work, as appreciated as it is. </p>

<p>A. T. Burke</p>

<p>I am on a Mac. I use Sandvox to build my website and A2hosting to host it. It works pretty well and both companies are very good in support. For picture albums, I use jalbum(http://jalbum.net/en/) that works pretty well and zenfolio for sales and some display of work. Stop by my website to see examples (http://www.e2photo.net). <br>

I maintain and update my own site.</p>

<p>I appreciate the advise, encouragement and editing. You're right Robin. It's not nitpicking. I try to right real good but sometimes I don't.<br>

I will persevere. </p>

<p>Great to hear from you again. No one does found film like you do. Looking forward to seeing more of your work.</p>

<p>Gene--looks good to me! The B+W shots are particularly nice. I'm using a Dell monitor, about four years old, and see no problems. Chrome is the browser. Looks like you're doing fine to me--keep it up!<br>

Thanks for posting...<br>

Paul</p>

<p>Gene,<br>

I have missed your posting of found film, and wondered why no one had heard from you for a very long time.<br>

You are one of the reasons I looked forward to clicking on the Classic manual camera forum each day.<br>

PLEASE! do not stop posting your "found film.'<br>

I looked at the Contax IIIa web page on my large LG monitor, and I can not see anything wrong with it.<br>

It was good to see your name once again in this forum.</p>

<p> </p>

I believe JDM posted a link to your website a

few weeks ago. I followed the link and have

since looked at nearly every photo on the

site. It's one of the best sites I've been to.

I love your found film posts .. I think these should make a book and include your witty and sometimes

sentimental observations. I really laugh at your a skewed view of these amateur attempts and then you pull back

to note that we all made, or were in these pictures too... A sort of "This is your Life"

 

You also often posted what you called "crappy" cameras and would poke fun at the cameras and your shooting pointing out the designs deficiencies and always with a tongue in cheek observation that would be just so clever and very

funny at the same time. As is often demonstrated here in our forum... it's the photographer...not the camera.. you are one of our demonstrative ..".there goes your proof". Develop some of that film.. you'll find your groove again I'm

sure!!

<p>Thanks Chuck et al.</p>

<p>Dear Gene, I won't presume to give you advice, but I can tell you what helps me out of Photo Phunk. I focus on image making. I try to make really compelling images. I love the cool toys and tools of photography, classic and modern, but I discovered I'm happiest when I making good pictures. My formula is change-of-pace and new challenges.<br>

<strong>Shoot different stuff for </strong><strong>challenge</strong>. If most of your subject matter is still life, try shooting sports, street life or kids with a mind to really catch a unique image. I like street myself. It puts me WAY out of my comfort zone, so fluid and unpredictable. If you generally shoot outdoor landscapes, try to make interesting table top compositions. Get close...real close. Start a photo project that is unique. Document the finest fishing lakes in your state. Shoot unique portraits of all the clergy folk in your town. Capture all your local birds of prey on wing. You get the idea. <strong>Change of pace</strong>. Sometimes a fresh location has a stimulating effect to freshen you vision. But it can also mean fresh approaches like shooting everything for a time from a worms-eye view, spinning around with the shutter open, shooting behind you without looking adding serendipity and chance into the mix. Take bold chances you normally wouldn't take with a camera. Take a Hoola hoop to a park with some foliage. Spin three times and let the hoop go. Shoot for an hour within the hoop wherever it lands (tip I got from Freeman Patterson). Read (or write) Haiku poems and translate them into pictures. Create a visual prayer. Sometime change of pace means resting and taking a break away from the camera, too.</p>

<p>I'm sure you'll find your own unique way forward. These periods of funkdom happen to all creative people. It's practically the hallmark of the highly artistic mind. You'll come out stronger, recharged and more creative than ever. And you might discover some new, and interesting photographic pathways in the process. All Best. Lou</p>