MichaelChang

<p>Thanks a bunch, Tim; very thoughtful of you!</p> <p>I'll go through the links as time permits. </p>

<p>Good for you, Athena. I'd be interested anytime you're ready to share the wedding pictures. </p>

<p>Don, thanks for that YouTube link. Quite interesting. </p> <p>I do wonder, however, about her "artist's statement" when her resulting paintings all appear similar. <br> <a href="http://www.lindaclavearts.com/sound-in-paint-2014.htm">http://www.lindaclavearts.com/sound-in-paint-2014.htm</a></p> <p>The opposite of what she does will be music composition or improvisation while being visually stimulated, and if I take that approach, I see Enya in her paintings. </p>

<p>Peter, there are many added features over the years that are, I imagine, difficult to implement so that they appear intuitive to a user, unless the site is rebuilt from scratch which would be impractical.</p> <p>Just spend a bit of time poking around and it'll become familiar over time. :-) </p>

<blockquote> <p><em>"Selfies aren't new."</em></p> </blockquote> <p>Everyone knows selfies aren't new, but insightful people will quickly identify the recent mass creations of selfies as an important social phenomena worthy of study, and that's what this site is about. </p>

<p>Emily, what you've described seems to be a new fact of life, and to overcome it a photographer needs to offer a compelling reason for people to buy prints or risk becoming just another in the crowd with a camera. </p> <p>On people photographing behind you, of course it does depend on the event and circumstances, but I don't think it's any different from you standing behind others shooting the same pose in an open or casual event unless you were hired as an exclusive photographer and have a prior understanding with the subjects. </p>

<p>Peter, go to your Workspace and click on [Manage your Portfolio]. You can create new folders from there as you might have discovered. </p> <p>Once a new folder is created, click on it as it appears under your Workspace, then click on the [Admin Options] tab on the right upper corner which will drop down a list of functions. Click on [upload photos to this folder] - this is where you batch-upload photos. </p>

<p>Peter, I believe it's a basic feature available to all members. Try following yourself and see if you can access the list. </p>

<p>Peter, I don't believe you can "transfer" photos from another site, but you can batch-upload images if you have them available on your computer. The best way to do this is to first create (named) folders within your portfolio, then upload photos in batches to their respective folders. </p>

<p>Fred, my mistake for lack of clarity. I was referring to the general (and often personal) nature of art critique and the vocabulary used to describe it; not specifically referring to negative space.</p> <p>By "verifiable absolute", I meant something quantifiable which the language of art is not. This type of thing also exists in other domains such as describing the level of pain to a doctor, but those serve a different purpose and rarely result in intractable disagreements. </p>

<p >A fascinating look at selfies from 5 major cities across the world. </p> <p > </p> <p >Quoted from the site:</p> <p >Selfiecity investigates <em >selfies</em> using a mix of theoretic, artistic and quantitative methods:</p> <ul> <li>We present our findings about the demographics of people taking selfies, their poses and expressions.</li> <li>Rich media visualizations (imageplots) assemble thousands of photos to reveal interesting patterns.</li> <li>The interactive selfiexploratory allows you to navigate the whole set of 3200 photos.</li> <li>Finally, theoretical essays discuss selfies in the history of photography, the functions of images in social media, and methods and dataset.</li> </ul> <p><a href="http://selfiecity.net/">http://selfiecity.net/</a> </p>

<p>Much enjoyed reading everyone's thoughts and experiences. </p> <p>I'd like to add that if one consider every discipline to be an expert endeavor requiring a lifelong commitment to learn and practice it, then my incidental learning is also a lazy way of getting at the substance without putting in the hard work to acquire it. The purpose is to learn enough about something to know how high the sky is and hopefully able to apply those concepts elsewhere without needing to be an expert at it. </p> <p>Some call that armchair expertise, but I'd like to think of it as interdisciplinary learning.</p> <p>To that point, I like what Fred wrote about expert vocabulary, but it can also be detrimental in the art world when its vocabulary is philosophical in nature without verifiable absolutes. You'll know what I mean if you've ever heard claims made by neophyte audiophiles describe the intangibles of what they hear - they use the same vocabulary as expert audio designers but their depth of abstractions are worlds apart, and there's no arguing with them which reinforces the blur between fact and fiction. </p>

<p>Are you interested in art history or art appreciation?</p> <p>Have you studied it formally or on your own?</p> <p>If so, how has it influenced your photography? </p> <p>My answer: <br> Art history and appreciation have been incidental learning through my primary interest in the sciences of art. It's not a bad way to learn since a piece of art will have already captured my interest. For example, a Gigapixel inquiry into Jan van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece painstakingly documented in IR and X-ray, and while interesting to pan around the details, I got interested in the artistic aspect of the piece and found an academic discussion on Khan Academy's YouTube channel. <br> <a href="http://closertovaneyck.kikirpa.be/#home/sub=VIS">http://closertovaneyck.kikirpa.be/#home/sub=VIS</a> - Gigapixel<br> <a href=" - 7:22<a href="http://closertovaneyck.kikirpa.be/#home/sub=VIS"><br /></a></p><p>I'm sure these types of art history exposure have influenced my photography, but I'm not conscious of it, and since my style or technique haven't changed much, I'd have to say any influence will be contained in the realm of understanding and appreciation. </p>

<p>Do you compare yourself with other photographers? </p> <p>Do you find yourself doing it even if you had no such intentions? </p> <p>Would you compare yourself to other photographers if their style or choice of subjects were similar to yours? </p> <p>My answer: I don't consciously compare but I'm sure there were times when I did. I'm usually only interested in understanding how a photographer thinks and try to figure out his approach to his work. </p>

<p>This might seem like an odd question, but is there a static setup that can achieve the type of lighting seen in this Rembrandt self-portrait? <br> <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Rembrandt_van_Rijn_-_Self-Portrait_(1659).jpg">http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Rembrandt_van_Rijn_-_Self-Portrait_(1659).jpg</a></p> <p>It's an appealing look, and the only way I can think of replicating this is through carefully applied selective light painting, but maybe there's another way. </p>

<p>I always thought it'd be neat to photograph integrated circuits as art but have never attempted it. </p> <p>The complexity of modern ICs is staggering. According to the page below, the current record holder for density is Intel's 10-core Xeon Westmere-EX which is an FPGA containing 6.8 billion transistors.<br> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count</a></p> <p> <br> More down to earth, even simple ICs are a visual marvel, and here's a page describing how to dissolve a chip's casing with boiling acid along with some photographs:<br> <a href="http://zeptobars.ru/en/read/how-to-open-microchip-asic-what-inside">http://zeptobars.ru/en/read/how-to-open-microchip-asic-what-inside</a></p> <p> <br> This older Wired Magazine post contains a video describing how a software hacker uses these techniques to hack into a chip to steal satellite signals:<br> <a href="http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2008/05/tarnovsky">http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2008/05/tarnovsky</a><br> <br> I imagine using high resolution camera and optics, and a micro-positioning X-Y stage that it'd be possible to stitch together a very high resolution photograph, sort of like Gigapan in reverse. <br> <br> Don't think I'll ever try it, but it's nevertheless fun to think about. <br> </p>