It's almost over people

So with this year of tafe winding to a close I find myself looking back at all I have learnt and realise it has been a good year for me, while I still crave more education and a better inner understanding of my own skill, I am comfortable with how it has all gone.
What I have enjoyed most has been the people I have met along the way, a mixed bag of personalities and even country of origin all joined by a love of the art and the desire to be better at it.
I hope that in the months and years to come I remain close with all of you. I have been very happy to feed off your skills and share my own knowledge for the greater good.
Also the teachers that have guided me and taught me things I never thought I could do. Expanding my creative side and forcing me to think about things in a whole different light.

Thanks to all I have met this past 12 months while undergoing this tafe course, I feel I'm a better person because of it.

Sean Ray

Part 3 of 3. Phone cameras and their part in history

The Phone Camera.

For all my life my father has worked in telecommunications so being up to date and well informed of new technologies is something that is almost second nature to me.

I was lucky enough to get a mobile phone with a camera in it very early on in their development, in fact I had the first generation that was available to the Australian market and it was amazing (for the time) but since then the technology has been advancing at an amazing rate.

The first commercially available cell phone with a camera in it was the J-SH04 made by Sharp electronics (released in Japan, November 2000) and it had a whopping 0.1 megapixel capability.

It took one month for it to be replaced by the J-SH05, this was a flip phone and the first “modern” style of phone with a compact shape, low weight and colour screen with 256 colours, wow!

Today’s technology has allowed the camera phone to be an extremely useful device, allowing the user to capture images in high definition and upload them instantly to Flickr, facebook, a personal website or simply email them to anyone in the world.

A father can send a photo to his parents overseas of his wife and newborn child moments after it’s born. A detective can maintain discreet observation over a suspect without the need for obvious surveillance equipment.

The sky is the limit as to the applications of this once oddball feature from high end phones way back when Y2K was so 1999.

But the technology does have it’s own limitations. At the end of it all you are buying a phone and you don’t want it to be too big and heavy to fit in your shirt pocket all at the expense of a larger optical sensor and the memory card to support large files, not to mention the decreased batter life.

In conclusion mobile phones with cameras in them are here to stay and I think that’s a good things because they are very useful. I’m massively impressed that my phone has an 8.1mp camera in it, yet is still lightweight, thin & stylish and has a high definition LED screen, oh and it also makes phone calls.

References:

¨     http://gsmserver.com/articles/cameraphone.php - Author unknown.

¨     http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/05/the-evolution-of-cell-phone-design-between-1983-2009/ - Author unknown.

¨     http://www.thefreelibrary.com/A+Short+History+of+the+Camera+Phone-a01073959413 - Author, Neo Nashville.

3 Photos insipred by Jan Groover

3 pictures I took for my paper on Jan Groover, these were influenced by her series using kitchen utensils.

 

 

SmugMug

Hey there blog readers (all 2 of you)
It's time for another installment of what I think of the things I read on the interweb. If you watch channel 44 TVS then you might have seen a show called CNET Australia, this is a great show for nerds and those who like their tech gear. They have a great team of people who review and rate the new gear on the market from cameras, computers, software and the fresh and interesting apps that are out today.

A good little website they reviewed this week was SmugMug. A photo storage website aimed at the pro photographer for less that $40 Aussie gold coins you get unlimited online storage space. Which is incredible value when you consider how many photos you have on your harddrive(s) I have well over 30,000 and if I lost those I would be a crying mess.

Check out the article and the SmugMug website and see if you like it.
http://www.cnet.com.au/get-serious-about-photography-with-smugmug-339336362.htm
http://www.smugmug.com/

Happy shooting.
Sean Ray.

The history of photography part 2. Jan Groover

Jan Groover who died on New Year’s Day 2012 was one of the first people to blur the lines between art and photography back in the 1970’s.

She started out as a painter but soon moved towards expressing her vision through her camera. She is noted for being one who paid incredible attention to colour and film processes. And during her previous work with art she gained knowledge of and frequently used strong compositional elements with line and shape within her pictures

Her work with kitchen items and vegetables that were taken in her kitchen in an almost traditional “still life” style were seemingly boring to the uncouth onlooker but was a breakthrough in the art world showing that photography had a real place in the contemporary art scene and was no longer confined to sculptures and paintings. There was a very keen market to support this movement which these days has been all but forgotten by modern photographers who shy away from extreme modernism in favour of more emotive portraits of humans.

It’s only when you look at the pictures that you realise the art lies not in the object itself but in the shape and form of the photo, the use of line and great attention to colour. Jan worked with colour and shadow in a time where black and white was still king.

I personally enjoy her work due to the strong forward thought that has gone into the composition and the clever use of line and reflections within objects that make the boring “pedestrian” utensils seem larger than life and exciting. Any person who can take a photo of a fork and make it look interesting has a rare skill indeed. A skill that unfortunately is lost these days with popular photography.

References:

Ø  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Groover

Ø  http://www.sauer-thompson.com/junkforcode/archives/2010/11/american-photog-3.html

Ø  http://www.designwonderland.net/blog/?p=7275

Ø  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204257504577150583461782386.html

New Canon "Astrophotography" camera

http://www.dpreview.com/news/2012/04/03/Canon-EOS-60Da-for-astrophotography

New gear for those start gazing nerds out there (like me)

Canon has released a new camera that is aimed at capturing the night sky with better details and low light capabilities.

For those of you that have an interest in photographing the night sky you will know that your DSLR has an inbuilt IR filter that stops you from seeing all the incredible details of the heavens above. This new camera has a modified infra-red blocker allowing more of the red from the astral nebula to be captured by the sensor, giving you a truly "out of this world" photo (I could not help the lame pun)

Other features include a variable angle flip-out screen with incredible resolution, this is very handy as you will be most likely aiming this at the sky on your tripod. So you are now saved a sore neck.

I will keep a look out for some sample/comparison images and post when I can.

For a nerd like me this is a pretty cool bit of kit for the amateur shooter as the previous method of taking such photos was to remove the IR blocker from the camera, which cannot be replaced easily and renders the camera useless in the daylight.

Happy shooting

Sean Ray.

The History of photography. From 35mm to Digital

{Part one of three}

In my world the history of photography started with my Aunt’s film SLR back in the early 90’s. I loved the way the steel body felt and was fascinated by the sounds it made but in 2002 I got given my first camera, a 3.2 megapixel Sony and there were so many wonderful moments captured with it. For me the passion for the art started with that digital camera and I have seen incredible growth in technology since that analogue SLR to the latest 80 megapixel camera used by Ken Duncan.

But as for world history we must go back much further than that.

Eastman/Kodak brought photography to the masses making it simple for people to capture what they saw in the world. 35mm film has shown us all some amazing and unforgettable moments in time. We know the photo by Steve McCurry captured on Kodak kodachrome film in 1984 of an Afghan girl in a refugee camp.

Kodachrome film was the standard amongst professionals and sophisticated amateurs alike since it was released in 1935 till its death in 2010 after a steady decline in sales due to its time consuming developing process and the surge in digital technology. A surge that would eventually be the end of Kodak.

It’s little known that the first digital camera was created by Kodak in 1975 but it was not till the late 90’s that the technology became accessible to the public and the developments since then have been amazing.

Swedish camera maker Hasselblad offer a 200 megapixel camera that’s costs AU$43,000 while you can find spy cameras built into a pen on ebay for $20.

These days almost everyone with a mobile phone will have a small camera in the back of it and they can be up to 8MP that can instantly upload to Flickr. But the new kid on the block is the Lytro “light field” camera. It does not work with pixels but with light vectors and is literally the birth of a new and monumentally mesmerizing technology. The future is most exciting.

So in conclusion.

Eastman/Kodak started it all in the late 1890’s and sadly they are now a bankrupt company that failed to move with technology despite inventing an abundance of it, the same can be said for Poloaroid, a fun and instant way of taking a picture that is now seen as overly expensive and pointless with the new generation. Even optics giant Olympus is having a very public battle with the bean counters.

So will the Lytro camera make it in this new tech world? The film world rejected the digital revolution and thus far the digital world is not warming to this new invention. It remains to be seen but if history has taught me anything it’s that if I don’t keep up with the ever changing utensils of the trade I risk appearing out of touch with the world I have so much passion for, luckily I’m a techno nerd.

References:

ª     Kodak/George Eastman website

ª     Lytro.com

ª     Hasselblad.com

ª     Ebay.com.au

ª     Stevemccurry.com

ª     Cnet.com.au

ª     Smh.com.au

ª     Personal conversations with Ken Duncan