Norma Desmond

+1 for intentional typo pun.

Straight is overrated . . . :eek:

Retired.

I actually once got hired as a consultant by a law firm to typographically dissect some fine print on corporate/consumer contracts. A litigant was claiming the typography didn't meet readability standards and I had to identify all typefaces, type sizes, leading, even problems with hyphenation and justification of text. I might have served as an expert witness but the case got settled out of court. It was kind of a fun respite from my usual work in the industry. I was actually kind of hoping for my day in court, but had to be satisfied with my next bout of jury duty. That's great. Fostering student creativity should never conflict with teaching technical skills and the basics. If they go hand in hand, and technique goes hand in hand with expression and aesthetics, both technique and expression/aesthetics benefit greatly. When I learned Greek, we started by reading the Iliad in the original Greek. We learned vocabulary and grammar as we progressed (SLOWLY) through the text. I found it much more rewarding to learn foreign words and grammar as a way to get the fullness of the language used in a Homeric poem as opposed to simply learning vocabulary and grammar in isolation. It gave me a good feel for the usage of the language and made an otherwise daunting learning curve a little more fun and appealing.

All good points, but I don't quite understand the researchers comparing readability of Arial to Times New Roman, the former being a sans serif and the latter a serif font, which is sort of comparing apples to oranges. A comparison of Arial to Helvetica makes more sense and I'd choose Arial as it is has softer, fuller, and more open curves, which make it more pleasant to my eye and more readable. Perhaps, most importantly, Arial's edges on letters like r, t, e, have a much more natural cut-off, the cut aligning with the natural angle its on instead of always being on the horizontal, as Helvetica is. The horizontal cuts on edges give Helvetica a more labored feel. Times New Roman, a serif font, is going to look more traditional and serif fonts were generally considered more readable for text. Obviously more recent studies are now showing that's up for debate. I think both serif and sans serif fonts can be made to be pretty readable if the size and spacing is done well within the context of the text. Having been a typographer/typesetter by trade for about 40 years, I generally choose my typefaces based not just on readability but also overall feel and mood, knowing that I can usually make a decent, not too extravagant or fancy, typeface pretty readable. Serif fonts like New Times Roman will often give off a more formal, sometimes more academic feel. Sans serifs tend to be more casual and have a softer feel.

May I introduce Man Ray, Jerry Uelsmann, Lucas Samaras. "Just the facts, mam, just the facts," indeed.

It looks like they are placemats. The photos, and caption, seem appropriate to that venue. Come to think of it, at the right dinner party, any one of us . . . particularly in a kitschy mood . . . might laminate some appropriate or even inappropriate photos on which to serve our salmon nicoise or franks and beans. :p Just think . . . a new vehicle for forcing friends to look at vacation pics!

nm :(

You may be assuming too much. I now realize that it’s stuff already shot you want to get a good print of, and not future shots you’re as concerned about. Not everything can be magically fixed. Sometimes, a bad result out of the camera, due to low light and resultant noise and artifacts, is going to mean you simply won’t get a good print. While photography is sometimes magical, it’s not magic. Yes, you can make lemonade from lemons, but not if the lemons are moldy and rotten. I can pretty well guess at what you’re talking about (since we see these kinds of bad results often) without your being able to post an example though, as others have said, if you can’t figure out or be bothered to learn how to post a photo here, a simple task indeed, you’re going to be hard-pressed to be able to work with a noise reduction or other “fix-it” software measures skillfully enough to get your current undesirable photos to look decent. It’s pretty important to have a tool that suits the job, and if you’re getting these kinds of bad results from a camera in this day and age, you’re using an inappropriate and ineffective tool, no matter how “nearly” perfect it is. If you love the tool, for whatever reasons, and want to stick with it, a) figure out what situations it works well in and stick to those, b) use it in undesirable situations and live with the bad results as a trade-off to working with a tool you love, c) get a different tool for situations in which you’d like to shoot where your present tool isn’t performing well. I’m pretty good at post processing and have worked with some pretty bad files due to low light or bad conditions and not having the right camera or lens available. Rarely are you going to adequately “fix” an extremely pixelated face or the nose you describe. I’ve had the best luck not trying to get a shot like that to look like an Ansel Adams print, but instead going in the direction of a more raw look. Take a look at some Japanese photographers whose “quality” differs greatly from what we typically consider technical perfection. In other words, work with what you’ve got instead of trying to dress it up. For example, if the face is dark and very noisy as is and/or lightening it will cause more noise and artifacts, darken it into more shadow instead, if you can thus create a mood. Many attempts to put lipstick on a pig just wind up looking like a pig with lipstick! :)

David, while we’re in basic agreement and I think there’s merit in what you say, it may be important to consider where some exceptions take us. Art often is NOT just a “one-man show.” These “disconnects” can sometimes be as important a part of the process as is sole authorship by a single artist. A playwright, for example, like a musical composer, often relies on others for control of the presentation. Mozart likely never dreamed (though he of all people may have!) of the way a contemporary orchestra would sound. He very likely tailored his composing to the very sounds produced by instruments of his day. Nevertheless, most of us know Mozart via the sound of today’s instruments. While some listeners swear that the only “true” way to listen to Mozart is on original instruments, I’d maintain that our connection to Mozart is as strong when we listen on today’s instruments, due to a variety of factors, especially that our ears are more accustomed to today’s instruments so his music sounds more familiar and less eccentric on instruments we're more accustomed to hearing. I’d be surprised if Mozart wouldn’t be thrilled by how his music sounds several centuries after he wrote it for what was then a very different medium. And he might very well feel more connected to it because of its ability to traverse mediums rather than less connected to it for that reason. There are great photos being restored, sometimes more in keeping with today’s norms rather than with an eye toward exactly what the medium would have been like decades ago. Some are being scanned for renewed viewings by a generation that is more comfortable with screen than print viewing, and I don’t see it as a disconnect, but rather a very rich tapestry of interconnections, in the viewing of art. Maybe the moral of the story can be summed up by listening to Whitney Houston’s cover of Dolly Parton’s I Will Always Love You. It’s a case where the original artist didn’t have full control of presentation and yet much of the world would probably agree that Houston brought things to that song that Parton’s performance and interpretation never did. Is Houston’s cover a disconnect? I’d say, no. I’d say it’s just the kind of artistic shared energy that can be vital to many great works of art, one artist building on another’s work. I’m thinking art is more like connection in various links that create a great chain than it is like the chain itself which divides one thing from another. Interestingly, this example also makes David’s point about how the presentation and medium can’t be separated from the art. The medium through which we hear the song, voice and interpretation, physical sound and emotional context, is as much the song as what the composer wrote down on the page or devised with her own voice and musical gifts.

Sounds like it may not be the perfect camera after all, at least in low light situations. Software may be an adequate solution for some people and in some low light solutions, but there’s often a trade-off to getting rid of noise that way in terms of other qualities. I’d consider a camera/lens that does better at higher ISOs, or avoid shooting in low light, or use a flash or other fill light subtly for support when the light is too low.

Thanks. Some very poignant photos, for sure, and his attitude toward war photography seems genuine and admirable. On the lighter side, the photo of Picasso is just great!

In my last sentence, I meant say “screen images and prints often seem simply to substitute for each other . . . “

Also, backlighting has a strong influence which doesn’t always seem as desirable a way to view an image. Tradition may be taken into consideration. Some galleries get a lot of great, natural light which could render screens less than ideal. Prints can in some cases show subtleties that screens don’t (though screens can have some effects that prints don’t). David, screen images may often seem simply to substitute for each other, but I think of them as two different mediums, each with a set of characteristics, often affecting the images they bear in some subtle and some more blatant ways.

Get over it. Digital is not supposed to be free and no one but straw men and red herrings . . . and an occasional ape . . . claims it is.

Satellite.

Vincent, you need to change your avatar from an ape to a lapdog.

No! That term means what it always has, “prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior.” JDM talked about stereotyping, not about prejudice, discrimination, antagonism, or inferiority, so I’m not sure why the term “racism” is being brought up, other than as a red herring.

Nice shot! Good instinctual timing. I’d probably see it as more of a nature than a landscape shot, but I don’t particularly care for using categories as a means of exclusion, so I’m glad you posted it.

I don’t know either. I’m not sure, though, that it will be easy or even productive to decide whether ignorance or lack of care on the part of teachers is worse. Both are regrettable. Would you prefer a doctor with great scientific skills and lousy bedside manner or the reverse? I’ve had teachers I really didn’t like who could be coarse and come off as uncaring but who wound up teaching me more than some of my more affable teachers. In any case, there’s plenty that’s bad about the educational system and it’s not all on teachers and teacher ignorance isn’t necessarily the worst thing for the system. There are bad administrators, inexperienced and ill-suited political appointees, and know-nothings at the top of and on down the educational food chain promoting bad educational policy and doing a lot to actually undermine the many good teachers out there. When a system is failing, it’s a good idea to consider all parts of that system rather than laying most of the blame at the feet of what seems unfortunately to have become the easy mark in today’s world, the teacher.

For context, before PN 2.0 was launched about a year and a half ago, this capability existed on PN for many years.