iancoxleigh

<p>Some Photo.net Members whose work might be of interest:</p>

<p><a href="../photodb/user?user_id=2008195">Kent B</a> — Not really urban decay (although, there is some), more like photographic observations of the everyday world.<br>

In a similar 'not-really-decay' vein: <a href="../photodb/member-photos?user_id=2121478">Mattias Steup</a> , <a href="../photodb/member-photos?user_id=1013388">Eric Stolk</a> (both no longer active on PN)</p>

<p>Some Flickr Profiles you might consider looking through:<br>

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/andres_medina/">*sagaz</a> — Urban decay photos. Based out of Madrid.<br>

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/soviet/">Soviet</a> — Urban decay photos. Based out of NYC, especially Brooklyn. Night and day images. One of my favourite photographers on flickr. Highly recommended.<br>

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/miesnert/">Sander Meisner</a> — Urban decay photos. Based out of Amsterdam. Mostly night work.<br>

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/16338723@N00/">dub_focus</a> — Smaller image set. Less 'decay' more urban exploration/night photography. Netherlands.<br>

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/23954414@N05/">El Miatou</a> — Urban decay photos. Based out of Paris.<br>

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/garmonique/">Garmonique </a> — Not really urban decay. More abandoned places, studies of quietude and shadow, and haunting imagery.<br>

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/ensel/">devb.net</a> — Some urban decay. Brooklyn?</p>

<p>Have fun.</p>

 

<p>Urban decay and urban industrial photography is a personal interest of mine so, here are my suggestions:</p>

<p><strong>Troy Paiva:</strong> <br /> Website: <a href="http://troypaiva.com/">http://troypaiva.com/</a> <br /> Flickr: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lostamerica/">Lost America</a> <br /> Books: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Night-Vision-Art-Urban-Exploration/dp/0811863387">Night Vision</a> (most recent), <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Lost-America-Abandoned-Roadside-West/dp/076031490X">Lost America</a></p>

<p>Troy Paiva's work features abandoned factories, military buildings, roadside features, gas stations, the famous airplane graveyard, ghost-towns, and anything else illuminated in surreal and intensely coloured light from gelled flashes.</p>

<p>His subject matter seems to be almost entirely in Southern California.</p>

<p><strong>Tom Paiva:</strong> <br /> Website: <a href="http://www.tompaiva.com/index.html">http://www.tompaiva.com/</a> <br /> Book: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0971692807?ie=UTF8&seller=A14C3TJ7QY5MDZ&sn=Image%20Room%20Books">Industrial Night</a></p>

<p>Tom Paiva is Troy's brother. In fact, Tom was a photographer first, and helped introduce Troy to night photography when troy was looking for a creative outlet from a career in animation.<br /> Anyways, I like Tom's work much more. I guess I just prefer the "natural" surreal artificial light of night photography rather than the gelled flashes that Troy employs. Tom works with large format cameras and film.</p>

<p>His work was recently (2007) featured in View Camera Magazine. Tom has posted the pdf on his website: <a href="http://www.tompaiva.com/pdf/ViewCamera.pdf">http://www.tompaiva.com/pdf/ViewCamera.pdf</a></p>

<p><strong>Jeff Brouws:</strong> <br /> Website: <a href="http://www.jeffbrouws.com/">http://www.jeffbrouws.com/</a> <br /> Books: <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/Approaching-Nowhere-Jeff-Brouws/dp/0393062740/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261193977&sr=1-1">Approaching Nowhere</a> (recent, in-print), <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Highway-Americas-Endless-Jeff-Brouws/dp/1556706049/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261194039&sr=1-6">Highway</a> , <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Readymades-American-Artifacts-Jeff-Brouws/dp/0811836770/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261194039&sr=1-4">Readymades</a></p>

<p>Jeff Brouws work covers a number of different subject areas within his exploration of the American Cultural landscape. His work often includes a quiet social commentary. He has looked at the life, death, decay, and inherent mythology of the highway culture. He has explored the transformations wrought by the franchising of the America. One of his earliest projects was a study of twenty-six abandoned gas stations. His most recent project is about the ongoing/remaining impact of nuclear arms in America.</p>

<p>Perhaps most pertinent to your original post is his look at discarded downtowns of smaller American cities.See: <a href="http://www.jeffbrouws.com/series/main_discarded.html">http://www.jeffbrouws.com/series/main_discarded.html</a> <br /> <strong><em></em> </strong></p>

<p><strong><em>Approaching Nowhere</em> is one of the best books of photography I have ever purchased or looked at. I recommend it wholeheartedly.</strong></p>

<p>***</p>

<p>Some other options that I do not personally own, but have looked through at some point:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Joel-Sternfeld-Prospects-Andy-Grundberg/dp/1891024779/ref=pd_sim_b_4">Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects</a> <br /> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Ruin-Photographs-Brian-Vanden-Brink/dp/0892727934/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_c">Brian Vanden Brink: Ruin: Photographs of a Vanishing America</a> <br /> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Vanishing-America-Drive-Ins-Everyday-Monuments/dp/0847830403/ref=pd_sim_b_1">Michael Eastman: Vanishing America</a></p>

<p>***</p>

<p>Finally, I will be crass enough to toot my own horn. I have, personally, been working on a series of images of the Portlands are of Toronto, Ontario for the past two years. I recently compiled these images into a book that I have self published through Blurb. I finally received a good proof copy of the book yesterday and officially made the book public then.</p>

<p>The images explore this decaying landscape which contains a number of abandoned or deteriorating structures and facilities. You can see the images on PN portfolio or at my website <a href="http://www.iancoxleigh.com/">http://www.iancoxleigh.com/</a> . The work is divided into four sub-categories. You can see the Portlands project and its constituent folders here: <a href="http://www.iancoxleigh.com/galleries/Studies%20Portlands/">http://www.iancoxleigh.com/galleries/Studies%20Portlands/</a> .</p>

 

<ul>

<li>The book, called <em>Portlands</em> , is available through Blurb: <a href="http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1099567">http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1099567</a> </li>

</ul>

<p>A smaller, 8.5"x11", cheaper, softcover version is coming sometime in the next few months.</p>

<p><strong>I hope that helped. If you buy one thing I mentioned, make it the Jeff Brouws' book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Approaching-Nowhere-Photographs-Slipcased-Autographed/dp/0393065391/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261195465&sr=1-1"><em>Approaching Nowhere</em> </a> . I can not overstate its brilliance.</strong></p>

<p><strong><br /> </strong></p>

<p> </p>

<h1><br /></h1>

 

<p>"It isn't personal."</p>

<p>I hadn't really taken it as such. Which is why I extended my apologies for suggesting I had. I was willing to make my position and concerns clear at the risk of being disputatious or argumentative. However, I hoped not to sink into being vituperative.</p>

<p>-</p>

<p>"For example, I was surprised recently to find that some users can access a typical Nikon Wednesday Pic thread in 10 seconds or less."</p>

<p>I am on the lowest level of service my ISP offers for DSL and this week's thread (currently 151 replies) loaded roughly in 8 seconds. You can see why file size is not at the top of my mind when making a post!</p>

 

<p>Josh,</p>

<p>I am not complaining one bit about how you're doing your job in general, and I have no specific complaints about PN at the moment at all. I know you have a thankless job.</p>

<p>I also agree that in this thread you "have been nothing but straightforward about the issues and reasoning behind what is going on here". I simply wasn't aware of those issues previously (or, rather, that they were in effect here).</p>

<p>I just didn't like being treated like a wrongdoer for suggesting what I thought was a perfectly reasonable alternative, one I had been doing, without incident, for years; and, a method of posting that even the forum moderator uses (noting that his most recent post exceeds 200kb).</p>

<p>I just wanted to offer my suggestion to the OP as a way to solve his issue and didn't know it was a frowned upon practice.</p>

<p>I offer my apologies if you feel my use of the term Kafkaesque was over the top. Perhaps it was touch hyperbolic. It just seemed that there were a whole of host of expectations and issues made clear in this thread that I didn't know about before; and, yet, I was being treated as if I should have known of them and I should have behaved differently previously.</p>

<p>"I think a 100 - 150 KB limit is adequate for 700 px max images in Now Words."</p>

<p>I disagree on that. I regularly post to the NPN forums and they have a 720 px maximum size with a 200kb cap. I often find that a 720 px image can't be reduced to 200kb without unacceptable loss of quality and I choose to post an image with smaller dimensions instead.</p>

<p>I had no idea that the NW forum here resized (rather than simply reducing the dimensions of overly large images) images that are uploaded to it. I was not using hotlinking as a way to avoid to any such restrictions (or to flaunt any rules) – it was simply a much easier way to participate.</p>

<p>If this is an issue, then why not put something in the posting page text? I notice there is a request to limit linked images to 700px in dimension, but, no statement on file size at all.</p>

<p>It really feels quite Kafkaesque to be accused of "tr[ying] to skirt the system", and "abusing the No Words forum" for doing something that is not prohibited – in fact, absolutely nowhere on the NW forum or in the posting process for NW posts, does it even suggest it is problematic.</p>

<p>File sizes of small format jpgs are simply not something I am considering when creating files for posting. It isn't like I am purposely inflating file sizes. This is just what they come out as at then end of my process.</p>

<p>I also wonder how many PN visitors are on dialup? I know my personal website sees less than 1/10th of 1% of visitors using dialup. I suspect PN (with its more global reach) is significantly higher, but, still. I do occasionally access PN through TOR and my ISP throttles all proxy or encrypted traffic to 25-50 kb/s through DPI and I haven't thought that PN operated all that much slower than it does on my normal connection.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>I have been hotlinking my images into the NW form for several years now. No one has complained. Why allow hotlinking if you don't want people to do it? Its a no-words forum so its not like the html is needed for text formatting.</p>

<p>I don't keep my small size files that I upload to PN around, so, if I want to participate in a NW thread, it is much easier to link to the file in portfolio than to re-export, re-web sharpen and re-frame.</p>

<p>I guess I shan't be doing so again.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Just use html to link to your photo for the NW gallery.</p>

<p>Typing the URL in Firefox 3.5.1 works for me here.</p>

<p>I built my site almost entirely in Lightroom with the web templates from The Turning Gate (http://lightroom.theturninggate.net/). I have done some modest modification in Dreamweaver – but nothing I couldn't have lived without doing. I am very happy.</p>

<p>You can check out the results: http://www.iancoxleigh.com</p>

<p>I spent about $30 for the templates I used (TTG Pages, TTG Autoindex, TTG Slimbox Galleries, and TTG Stage (which I only use when I want to add a different style flash gallery for a special purpose). There are lots of other gallery design options. I am pretty sure there would be something that would do what you want.</p>

<p>I do know to how use Dreamweaver and I could have done most of this from scratch (would still have used some sort of gallery interface template), but, this saved me SO much time and I got results with which I am very happy.</p>

<p>I looked at the templates you linked to. They look good for the price. However, for a number of reasons, I didn't want to build a flash-only site.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>I am viewing using Firefox 3.5 with the colour handling settings changed to 'colour manage all images and to treat untagged as sRGB'. For me, your image looks fine. I would suggest, therefore, that the issue might be in its untagged state as according to Mike.</p>

<p>Chuck also makes a good point. I too have experienced delays of up to 12-24 hours for a replacement image to show up (unless of course you delete the whole image and then re-upload from scratch).</p>

<p>The image (sorry):</p>

<p>I tried to keep the original framing, and the original suggestions (remove red cord, deal with windows). I also tried to keep this looking natural — like it <em>could </em> have come out of the camera this way.</p>

<p>My results:</p>

<p>It is beyond both the laws of physics and economics to make an excellently sharp, distortion-free, constant f/2.8, wide zoom-range, VR, and inexpensive lens. Something has to give. You can not have it all.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>I assure you, there are plenty of working professional sports photographers using the D300 and getting their images published. The camera is not the issue here if your concern is in getting your work out there.</p>

<p>Here is the resulting image for web-posting (from a different frame).</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Alright, David, here is a comparison.</p>

<p>This is from my D300, ISO 200, 16-85mm lens (VR on, IIRC), f/8, 1/80th. It was hand-held.</p>

<p>This is a full-size jpg procuded from a 14-bit NEF in Lightroom at Lightroom defaults. No additional sharpening or noise reduction (beyond the Lightroom defaults), no output sharpening. Note the plane in the sky right of centre.</p>

<p>Sorry for the poor image, I don't use that lens much (mostly for IR on my D80) and I wanted to give you a sample with the same lens.</p>

<p>I see significantly less noise than in your ISO 200 images. I find your images noisy enough to be concerned (for ISO 200!). I suspect the problem lies in a poor sharpening algorithm. However, I have never used CaptureNX so, I can not really comment on that. Maybe you could try a 30-trial version of Lightroom and see how it handles the same NEF-files?</p>

<p> </p>

<img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/7871512-lg.jpg"width="700" height="700">

<p>Note: You can not upgrade from or between student versions.</p>

<p>That said, a student license is usually about the same cost as a single regular upgrade, so you haven't lost much even if you need to buy a full version next time.</p>

<p>Also, I have heard of some people contacting Adobe directly and being given permission individually to upgrade between student versions.</p>

<img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/7670341-md.jpg">

<img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/7952573-lg.jpg">

<img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/7604194-lg.jpg">

<p>Recent ratings means ratings given anonymously through the "rate recent" interface.<br>

All ratings is all ratings.</p>

<p>Sorting by the sum of the ratings means that all ratings are added together so a photo with 100 ratings will be sorted higher than one with 10 ratings – even if the individual ratings are much lower.<br>

Sorting by the average of the ratings sorts the photos by the average score regardless of how many ratings the image has received.</p>

<p>To be displayed in the queue, a minimum number of ratings must have been given. For 24 hour displays, the number used to be (and might still be) 5 ratings (and for the rate recent, there must 5 anonymous ratings). For 3 days, it used to 10 or 12. Beyond that, I know it is more, but I don't know how many.</p>

<p>Lex is also correct when he notes that the TRP interface seems to take a little bit of time to update. New ratings are not immediately reflected in the TRP – it can take an hour or so.<br>

Hope that helps. Nothing I said is to be taken as official. Just observations I have made back when I cared about ratings (I got over that a while ago).</p>

<p> </p>

<p>The last glimmer of the Earth's shadow.</p>

<br>

<img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/7997859-md.jpg">

<P>One of my favourite images from my portfolio and rated 3/3 by two

people and no further ratings or comments ever. Que sera sera. . .</p><BR>

 

<img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/7256648-md.jpg">

<P>The view directly behind you at the Snake River Overlook in Grand

Teton NP.</P><br>

 

<img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/7649473-md.jpg">