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Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
[ By Steph in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]
While a spaceship-like pod balancing upon four impossibly tiny poles may not be the most realistic architectural concept ever proposed, some of these innovative fantasy structures from artist Dionisio Gonzalez make us wonder, ‘why not?’ Curving cast concrete forms interact with geometric volumes tilted at odd angles, and faceted glass and metal shapes hover off the ground in what look to be modular parametric designs. Other homes seem like contemporary buildings that have been taken apart like building blocks and put back together slightly off-kilter.
Perhaps architects and engineers could confirm whether or not any of these surreal architectural visions could actually be built. Entitled ‘Trans-Actions,’ the new series consists of raised residences with complex shapes, some seeming to take a common motif from contemporary architecture and simply repeat it over and over again in slightly different ways. Many seem to balance precariously upon the earth, as if one strong wind could blow them right off their foundations.
Each one is a bit past its prime, with surfaces that have gotten dirty or weathered over time. Half-dead vegetation clings to balconies as if nature is beginning to take back over, suggesting that what we are looking at is actually the remains of a structure no longer in use.
Gonzalez previously released a series of post-apocalyptic shell-like structures envisioned for Dauphin Island, a locale off the coast of Alabama that keeps getting slammed by storms. Check out 35 more bizarre and intriguing examples of ‘impossible architecture.’
Unbound by gravity, the need for structural soundness or any sense of real-world aesthetics, architecture becomes like a life form of its own, multiplying and …
Click Here to Read More »»
Some spots are such beautiful potential locations for a home, yet repeated natural disasters make them inhospitable for all but the strongest and most durable …
Click Here to Read More »»
Some cinematic experiences are defined by their built environments, be it the minimalist architectural plan outlines of Dogville or the lavish Mid-Century …
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[ By Steph in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]
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There’s a line in Return of the Jedi that has always struck me as particularly insightful, especially considering its inclusion in a movie filled with a two-ton slug-shaped bounty hunter and a planet full of fighting teddy bears. In a conversation with his former mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi, newly-minted Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker asks his sensei if Darth Vader is indeed his father. When Obi-Wan confirms the awful truth, Luke asks why his teacher had formerly lied to him, telling him instead that Darth Vader “betrayed and murdered your father.”
Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi discussing the importance of perspective.
“What I told you was true,” Kenobi calmly replies, “from a certain point of view.” Incredulous, Luke balks at this assertion and wonders aloud how his mentor can claim such a relativistic stance on what is, in his mind, clearly a black-and-white issue. With a dose of characteristic zen Kenobi explains to his pupil, “Luke, you’re going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.”
Without wading too deep into philosophical waters I just want to point out that this concept, also known as perspective, is critically important in photography, as well as cinematic space operas. Learning to shoot photos from different perspectives is a way of not only shaking up the status quo, but injecting new life into what might otherwise be dull, boring, or entirely pedestrian pictures. To illustrate how perspective changes can radically alter a picture, here are three examples that will hopefully give you an idea of some things to try if you want to breathe new life into your own photography.
Not a very photogenic location unless you look at it from a few different perspectives.
This is a fairly common scene you might find in any city: a fire plug with some tufts of grass sprouting clumps of purple seeds. It may not seem all that special, and indeed it’s the kind of scene I would probably pass by in pursuit of a more interesting picture. Look what happens with just a bit of perspective change, though:
Looking down and focusing on one strand of grass yields an entirely different picture.
By getting up close with one of the stalks of grass and focusing on its purple seeds dripping, and slightly bent with fresh rain, I now have an entirely new picture of the same exact scene. This little perspective change results in a photograph that is much more intimate and reveals details that were invisible in the initial photo. Background elements such as the out-of-focus grass still give the impression that this stalk is part of a much larger scene though we also lose a few things too: the bicycles and other buildings are gone, which means the picture is much more isolated than the first one and lacking a larger context. Neither picture is inherently better, but both are quite different, even though they contain the same subject. One final perspective shift results in an entirely different picture yet again.
Re-framing the same piece of grass makes for a new, and much more interesting image.
Now the same stalk of grass as the previous version (literally the exact same one and not a different piece of grass on the same plant) is given an entirely new context and the picture here is quite different. It has a much more urban feel with brick buildings instead of green grass in the background, and it feels more majestic and powerful overall. To get this picture I had to get out of my comfort zone a little by kneeling down and contorting my body, but the extra effort resulted in a photo that I like quite a lot. Perspective changes like this can add entirely new dimensions to a picture, and even change its whole meaning, and all it takes is a few seconds of extra work before you click the shutter.
For another example of how perspective can alter a picture here’s a shot I took of the Edmon Low Library on the campus of Oklahoma State University in the midwest United States:
This perspective shows the Low Library within a larger context, sitting between trees and at the end of a grassy open mall.
It’s an interesting shot but virtually identical to hundreds if not thousands of other pictures you might find on a simple Google Images search. Watch what happens when I change perspective just a bit by walking closer:
This perspective isolates the library itself, and imparts a feeling of scale and grandeur on the viewer that was missing in the first shot.
To get this picture I walked about a hundred yards down the lawn which isolated the building from its environment, and now the picture is much more constrained: it’s about the building itself, not the building in relation to the surrounding campus features. The picture is similar but subtly different, and its overall meaning has been changed by taking a very short walk (and as a bonus, getting a bit of exercise in the process). Watch what happens with one final change in perspective:
Finally we see the same building, on the same day, but in a much more dynamic and interesting context.
It’s still the same library, but the picture has changed dramatically from the first shot. Instead of a static image of a building surrounded by green spaces, this now shows the library in a whole new context. The imposing bell tower looms large over the veranda, and the student walking past adds a new dynamic element, to what was formerly a rather boring picture. Showing the building from this angle as it recedes into the background, illustrates how it is part of a much larger campus, and overall I find this a much more interesting image.
Looking at buildings and nature is one thing, but changing perspective when taking pictures of people can blow the doors wide open when it comes to creating pictures that are new, interesting, and much more impactful. To illustrate this, here are a few photos of my nephew skipping rocks at the beach on a recent family vacation.
My nephew practicing his rock-skipping technique.
There’s nothing particularly wrong with this photo but there’s nothing especially interesting about it either. To get this picture I stood on the beach with my camera while he skipped rocks, and did put in much effort to take perspective into account. It’s a decent snapshot that more or less captures the scene, but watch what happened when I changed my perspective:
The same scene as above, but far more interesting with the background activity and low angle of view.
The scene has been drastically improved simply by walking 20 feet down to the beach, and crouching down to my nephew’s eye level. There’s now a sense of action and movement, and you can also see the intense concentration on the boy’s face as he winds up to skip a rock. In addition to these alterations you now have a sense of context; you see where the subject is in relation to his surroundings. By changing perspective I am able to show the rest of the beach, which includes some of his cousins and my brother having fun in the background. Here’s one final perspective change that alters the picture even more:
That rock went sailing, and skipped a half dozen times.
This one is all about my nephew with nothing else except the beach to provide a sense of context and is, in my opinion, the best of the bunch. You see him alone, along with the same intense expression as in the previous photograph but without any distracting background elements. To get this picture I waded into the water and crouched down until my camera was just a few inches above the surface. It was more difficult to get this shot, and certainly would have been easier if my camera had an articulating LCD screen, but the payoff was well worth it. Compare this to the initial shot, and you will see a massive difference just from a little work on my part to change perspective.
Hopefully these examples give you a few things to ponder the next time you are out with your camera. It takes a little more work to shoot things from different perspectives, but you may find yourself with new creative possibilities and new ways of looking at your subjects and the world around you.
What are your favorite tips and tricks for finding and exploring new photographic perspectives? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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The post Examples of Perspective Change for More Dynamic Images by Simon Ringsmuth appeared first on Digital Photography School.
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We’ve all seen that dreaded “out of storage” notification pop up on our phones.
(And usually at the worst times.)
But no need to fear! We’ve teamed up with our pals over at Trunx, who’ve provided a super handy guide to help you conquer the storage war on your iOS device.
So take note, ’cause more space means you’ll never have to miss out on an awesome photo op again!
5 Tips for More Device Storage
(…)
Read the rest of Storage Issues, Begone!
More Space for More Pics (606 words)
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How many photos do you have from a recent holiday, that you just haven’t had time to organize? Or, have you come back from a dream vacation and your photos just don’t seem to match up with your memories? You are not alone, as this is an all too common issue, and both of these questions have their roots in a simple and easy to fix problem.
I mean this literally, but also figuratively. Yes, overall take fewer photos. But, in reality this is a lesson in becoming more conscious of your photography. What is the point of the photo? Why are you clicking the shutter at that moment?
You may have heard many times, that in the era of digital cameras, you can shoot your heart’s desire (a.k.a. until your SD or CF card is full), unlike with film which needed to be developed and only had a limited number of photos on each roll. While that is true, it is not true that more photos equals better photos. Well, you may have also heard that professional photographers shoot hundreds, or thousands, of photos just to get one or several good ones. That is also true, but they are first and foremost shooting with a purpose. Literally shooting less will allow you to discover your point of view, and thus figuratively you will shoot less of everything, and more of something.
The story could be your personal story or could be of something else, but most important is that you communicate with your photos. If you are always shooting, you cannot create; you simply react. Creating a balance between creating and reacting will give you storytelling abilities. Be proactive by finding a place with good leading lines and waiting, not by rushing and hoping that one of your clicks is a keeper. Think about a beginning, middle, and an end. This can be easily depicted with shots at different focal lengths like a wide-angle (image above), a close-up (below), and finally a full-frame scene. The process of storytelling is something we have all grown up with – get back to it. Remember, the more simple the story, the more universal it can be.
Close-up gives direction.
Full-frame concludes the events.
This gives you an opportunity to reflect, which gives meaning and helps you find purpose. Looking at your own writing helps you realize your patterns day by day, or travel experience by travel experience. Identifying structure will help you select moments and behaviours that lend themselves to your style of photography. You may see yourself getting up late despite your desire to have better golden hour photos, or that you feel more creative in the afternoon so you can set aside time to create your photographic stories when others are resting. You will also love reading what you write in 10 years!
Time is limited and you might just miss the moment. For a photographer, this manifests itself in too many photos, and too little purpose. The reality is you are always going to miss something, you can’t be in two places at the same time, and you definitely can’t turn back the clock. But that doesn’t mean that you must give in to the fleeting feeling. Let the event occur, or the scene develop, and visualize what you want from it. Be selective about your vision and then get it, not all of it. Three meaningful photos outweigh thirty so-so snapshots. You have worked hard for your days off and money saved for leisure; enjoy it and enjoy being productive with your photography.
This can be an exercise in patience and restraint. Buildings are not going anywhere, rivers will stay their course, and the coffee shop will always have another interesting customer. Find your concept in a developing scene, whether it is the arches of a building, reflections of the water, or a pair of hearty hands sipping a hot beverage. Know that your vision is attainable. Your concept can be simple or complicated, modern or traditional, but only needs to be defined and pursued by you. Just do it with conviction and don’t measure your concept against others. Go for it!
Creating a concept.
Slight variation of shooting through a window and making it B&W.
Going back to the concept and color to provide continuity.
There is an old Chinese proverb that says, “If it will happen, it will no matter your actions; if it will not happen, it will not no matter what you do.”. There are many circumstances which seem to be too peculiar to be a coincidence, and as a photographer these are the moments of pure brilliance. Be present for them; don’t chase after them. There is a whole world of events that are unfolding in front of us at each moment. Your awareness of them is subject to your willingness to be aware of them, not the existence of them.
Photography and traveling have always gone hand in hand. Both have ways of opening up new horizons and being in touch with new possibilities. Both are essential. Spend some time with an ethos of travel, a perspective of photography, and a philosophy of life – and watch your photos tell a story that speaks to the hearts and minds of more than just a few close friends. Instead of having photos sitting unedited, unorganized, and undiscovered; take less photos of everything and take more photos of something. Create a convergence between your photos and your ideas. Less really is more, especially when a photo is worth a thousand words.
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The post 5 Tips to Take Less Photos of Everything and Take More Photos That Mean Something by Branson Quenzer appeared first on Digital Photography School.
Editor’s note: this week we will be featuring a series of articles on posing for portraits. Look for a new one each day. If you miss any make sure you subscribe to our newsletter and you’ll get a reminder of all our articles once a week.
Posing kids is a whole different thing from posing models (unless you’re photographing a child model, and then you might not need this article). My biggest goal when capturing kids is to help them look as natural as possible, so truly I want to “unpose” them. Stiff, awkward, posed shots aren’t really what anyone wants, but I want to take this even a step further and talk about capturing kids’ true inner selves.
Have you ever had a kid in front of your camera, and whatever you tell them to do ends up looking like the most unnatural position ever? Chances are, the kid is as baffled as you are. He doesn’t know what you want from him. He hasn’t been studying pinterest boards and kid’s clothing catalogues. He just knows his mom dressed him up and told him not to get dirty or mess up his hair, and now some stranger is telling him to put his hand there, look over here, bend his elbow like this. Most kids don’t understand this.
Let me share some unposing tips with you for helping kids to be more nature, so you and your little model can get some great shots!
If you can just let a kid be themselves, and explore, sometimes the photos you get can be more adorable than anything you could think up yourself. Part of each session could be unstructured, no posing direction, kid-led, fun. Photos like the above could happen all on their own, or if the child is shy, you could ask them, “What’s in that window?” Make picture time into play time, and let kids be themselves.
Some props can be good, but sometimes they just add to the chaos, and you end up with a lot of canned, posed photos. I love kids’ cute faces, and that’s what I want to be the main focus of my photos. Don’t stress too much about making everything around the kid amazing. Like I said, kids don’t need much help to be adorable!
Sometimes kids are nervous and anxious about getting their photos taken. Letting them take a few photos with a beloved pet, favorite stuffed animal, or even Mom or Dad, can really help relieve the pressure, and help them feel comfortable.
Sometimes the most spontaneous laughs, the happiest smiles, and the most relaxed poses, just happen when they’ve got their buddy with them in the photos. Adding a live wiggly friend can add extra work to getting a photo, but the payoff is often worth the work. Have Mom or Dad help you keep the pet under control, and be quick. Encourage a lot of interaction, and be ready for anything!
Kids aren’t going to be patient with a lot of posing cues and tweaks. You can give general direction, and then shoot fast. You could give some quick commands, “Now laugh at the silly caterpillar on my head!”, but don’t take a long time moving their arm just so, or turning their heads just so. Most kids won’t respond well to that, and will quickly tire before you get any good photos.
Have your camera on a fairly fast shutter speed (I like mine at least 1/100th for kids), because they’re not going to hold very still for very long.
You don’t want to stand there, staring the kid down, waiting for them to spontaneously be in a spot with great light, doing something amazingly photogenic. You’ve got to give some direction, but try to do it in a way that makes the whole experience fun and relaxed. Here are some phrases that you could try:
Some kids love silly, others are pretty shy. Pay attention to how they react to you, and adjust accordingly. If they’re really rambunctious, you might want to dial down your silly a bit so you don’t get them too wound up. You can still have fun with them, but talk in a calm voice, and don’t ask them to do too many crazy things, because they’ll take what you say and bring it up a notch or two. Before you know it, you’ve got a kid running in circles that isn’t listening to a word you say.
If they’re really introverted, you might want to try to capture more serious photos, and let them be contemplative. Don’t ask them to do things they are obviously uncomfortable with. When they’ve warmed up to you a bit, you may be able to give more requests, but really pay attention to the cues kids are giving you, and focus on capturing who they are, not the canned five poses that you do with every kid.
I would love to hear your tips for getting great unposed shots of kids! What are the fun things that you say to coax a smile? How do you get their attention, and make photo time fun?
Check out Portrait Posing Tips- How to Help People to Relax and Take Better Photos for more in the posing series.
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The post 5 Unposing Tips for Kids for More Natural Photos by Melinda Smith appeared first on Digital Photography School.
Last week when Google Photos launched, I quickly tested it out and then wrote a post with my immediate initial reaction to the service. Much of my early disappointment centered around the fact that Google chose to limit the size of photos in the service to 16 megapixels. As a DSLR shooter this meant that a large portion of my library would be downsized with Google Photos. Bummer.
Flickr by contrast offers every user 1TB of free storage for your photos (which is more than 99.999% of photographers need at present) at full original high resolution.
So in my mind this made Flickr’s free offering a vastly superior offering over Google Photo’s free offering. Flickr’s had that offer out for a while now which is why I hoped that Google would respond by offering us a similar 1TB (or more) of full high res original storage. Google Photos will let you have a terabyte of storage for your high res photos as well, it will just cost you $ 120 per year vs. Flickr’s free deal.
David Pogue (who works for Yahoo) wrote up a thoughtful review today comparing Google Photos and Flickr and made the same observation pointing to the negative of Google downsizing your original photos in Google Photos.
Despite my disappointment about Google’s decision to downsize our photos with the free version of their product, after having spent a week seriously digging into Google Photos, I’m much more optimistic about the service than I was a week ago. There’s a lot to love here.
1. Google Photos will back up your RAW files.
At present I have two Drobo 5D units with 15TB worth of storage in each of them. In addition, I’ve got an 8TB Western Digital MyBook thunderbolt duo.
I don’t actually have 38TB of storage because both the Drobo and the Western Digital (each in their own way) replicate my data. This protects me against hard drive failure. While it doesn’t necessarily protect me against fire or theft, this is a pretty good first line of defense. Most of the storage that I’m using right now is dedicated to the hundreds of thousands (million?) of RAW frames that I’ve fired off over the last 10 years. These are my RAW, unedited, original negative files.
Flickr does not support RAW yet — although Flickr’s former Chief Bernardo Hernandez mentioned in a tweet after he left that RAW was “coming at some point,” at Flickr.
Even though I am losing a lot of data when Google Photos converts my RAW files to JPG photos and also downsizes them, something (for free) is better than nothing.
While it is still my responsibility to come up with a better suitable offsite backup solution for my terabytes of RAW photos, until I do I’d rather have a converted, compressed 16 megapixel version of my photo backed up online than nothing. I’ve been planning for a year or so now to duplicate all of my original RAW files and then store them on drives in a safety deposit box in a bank vault, but until I get around to doing that it’s nice to know that I’ll have at least an inferior version of my original RAW backed up online.
2. Google’s free offering is unlimited.
Flickr currently gives everyone a free terabyte of storage for your high res originals. In his review Pogue said that Flickr told him that less than 50 users out of 100 million are actually using over 1 terabyte.
One terabyte certainly seems more than enough for Flickr’s present offering for most people. I am one of those few prolific photographers who will exceed the 1 terabyte limit though. At present I’ve uploaded about 950 gigabytes to Flickr (which is about 105,000 high res photos) and I should cross the one terabyte limit sometime within the next year.
Fortunately for me, I was one of the original early Flickr users who signed up for their old paid “Pro” service ($ 24.99 per year). This service has since been discontinued, but old “Pro” accounts have been grandfathered their original unlimited high res storage deal and so I won’t need to worry about exceeding one terabyte when I hit it later this year.
Although I’m an extreme edge case, if we assume that in the future camera makers will continue pushing technology with more and more megapixels (i.e. larger and larger files) and at the same time people begin taking more and more photos, I can see where a lot more people than 50 will end up exceeding their free terabyte at Flickr over the course of their life.
While Yahoo could always extend the offer to two terabytes or raise their limits as people’s storage use increases over their lives, their is no guarantee that they will. It would be a bummer if you spent 10 years uploading all of your photos to Flickr and then ran out of space, which sounds unlikely, but might actually be more likely than we realize, especially given that some of us may actually live to be 150 or more in the future!
Google Photos by contrast is offering unlimited storage if you downsize your photos.
3. Google has interesting facial recognition software.
Google’s facial recognition software is pretty slick. It’s very clever how the software can actually track a face as it ages and include a baby photo in the same batch of photos of someone when they are older. It seems to work best where you have a lot of photos for them to analyze and I found photos of my family members were much more accurately grouped than photos of strangers in crowds or people who I only have one or two photos of.
Flickr doesn’t do facial recognition yet, but I get it’s something that they are working on. One of the advantages that Google has over Flickr here though is that their service is 100% a private service. 100% of your photos on Google can only be seen by your account unless you manually choose to create a link and share it with others. Facial recognition software can be scary stuff and even though Google doesn’t attach names and faces together, it’s the sort of thing that people get easily freaked out over.
Flickr is a hybrid public/private service. Even though by default you can upload your photos privately to Flickr, you can also upload them publicly by default as well. Sometimes even a simple thing like a public vs. private setting on a photo can be screwed up by your average user. It’s not that Flickr won’t offer facial recognition in the future (they probably will) it’s just that they probably need to think a little bit more about privacy and the implications of people accidently making things public that they might not want to.
4. Google Photos Assistant is fun.
Although we’ve all probably seen way too many gifs in our lifetime already, when your own photos are turned into gifs just for you it can still be delightful. Because my photos are personal to me, I find that I’m enjoying Google Photos gifs much more than I thought I would. If someone else posted a gif of Jerry Seinfield moving his microphone stand around on stage I’d probably think it was boring, but when I was actually at the comedy show and watched him do it, and the gif was made from my photos, somehow it makes it more interesting to me. Most people could care less about my dog Bucky sitting in my friend Scott Jordan’s Pocketmobile, but it tickles me to see it — and Scott will probably like it too and I can share it with him and I bet he even posts it on Facebook. 
I find myself going back to my Google Photos assistant several times a day and hoping that they will have more treats for me.
5. Google Photos is an interesting digital diary.
Although Flickr has Camera Roll, Flickr doesn’t include all of my RAW photos so it is not as complete as Google Photos is turning out to be for me. I’m finding it more enjoyable to just randomly choose times in my life and scroll through my photos on Google Photos. There’s something about all the bad photos, unedited, raw material that feels like a more complete digital diary for me than the finished processed photos I’m posting on Flickr. I’d never want anyone else to see my raw material unedited and bad photos, but just for my eyes only I’m finding it a very interesting experience.
It will be interesting to me to see how I like Google Photos as my digital diary when I’ve finally got everything uploaded into the service. In my case, I have a feeling that this will take a few years. So far I’ve uploaded 39,312 to the site in a little over a week. I’ve had it running pretty much non-stop since Google Photos launched. Sometimes it feels like it’s hanging and I’ll force Google Photos to quit and relaunch it, but still, it’s going to take a long, long time to get all of my photos up there. By the way, Google Photos doesn’t provide you a photo count of your photos, but if you want to see how many you have uploaded you can get that number here (it’s in light gray in the upper right hand corner).
6. Google can give you back all of your photos at once.
One of the things that I like about Google Photos is that they give me an option to get all of my photos back at once. While Flickr will let you get all of your photos back as well, you have to manually drag and select your photos at Flickr (us use an album) to get them put into a zip file that they send you. With tens or even hundreds of thousands of photos online, I like the way that Google can deliver all of my photos back to me better. Although I don’t ever plan on having to get all of my photos back at once, I feel good knowing that Google will let me have them all back with just a few clicks vs. Flickr’s more difficult way.
7. No ads.
It’s nice that Google is giving you Google Photos completely ad-free. Although as a paid Pro Flickr user my Flickr experience is also ad-free, Flickr’s free service does/will have ads. When I’ve browsed Flickr outside of my Pro account I’ve noticed ads every so often. They don’t feel very disruptive, but still, no ads are always better than even just a little.
I did think it was interesting earlier this week when it felt like Apple CEO Tim Cook took a pretty direct swipe at Google’s new photo offering in a speech that he gave highlighting the importance of your digital privacy.
“We believe the customer should be in control of their own information. You might like these so-called free services, but we don’t think they’re worth having your email, your search history and now even your family photos data mined and sold off for god knows what advertising purpose. And we think some day, customers will see this for what it is,” said Cook.
Cook’s comment does make you think just a little bit about how much data you may end up giving sites like Google Photos and Flickr with all of these photos. On the other hand, I’m sure a lot of people probably wonder why you’d want to pay for Apple’s iCloud storage when Google or Flickr will give you all you need for free. Google and Flickr are competitors to Apple’s paid storage service and so you have to wonder how much of Cook’s warning is dire vs. how much is just that he’d rather you pay Apple to store your photos for you than let Flickr or Google do it for free.
Anyways, those are my more detailed thoughts on Google Photos thus far. I’m sure I’ll blog more about Google Photos as I use it more, but after a week of use I have a much more optimistic view of it than I thought I would. I find myself using it much more and going back to it several times a day over and over again.
Disclaimer: yeah, yeah, yeah, nothing is forever (except diamonds right?), both Flickr and Google could always renege on whatever deal they currently are marketing out there.
Thomas Hawk Digital Connection
[ By Delana in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]
When real estate developers come knocking, it seems that the majority of homeowners are willing to move out for the right price – but then there are some who take a stand and refuse to give up their homes no matter what. Called “holdouts” in some parts of the world and “nail houses” in others, these strong-willed folks decided that they weren’t going to move…so the developers had no choice but to build around them.
In 2005, attorney Randal Acker purchased a small Queen Anne Victorian home in downtown Portland, Oregon from which to operate his practice. The very next year, developers started buying up all of the property around the building. When they knocked on Acker’s door, they could never have guessed what was in store for them.
Acker calls the building The Figo House, named after his dog who is in turn named after Portuguese soccer player Luis Figo. Although the lawyer’s specialty is in commercial litigation, he resolved to commit as much time as necessary to eminent domain law to save this little piece of Portland history. In 2008, the developer resolved to leave Acker and the Figo house alone – but that didn’t mean they would scrap their construction project. They built a huge Portland State University residence hall around the Figo house – and amazingly, there seem to be no hard feelings on either side.
The construction of the hall to the west of the Figo house was limited to two stories so it would not block the view of the sunset, and a large courtyard lies behind the house, giving the law office plenty of natural light. PSU officials and representatives from the construction company building the residence hall even stopped by with cookies for Acker on the day they broke ground on the project. In 2011, as a nod to the situation’s similarity to the movie Up, Acker proudly flew 400 helium balloons from his chimney, adding a cheery note to this charming story which could only happen in Portland.
When city planners wanted to connect the road network to a new tunnel under the Pearl River, they needed to make space by clearing some residences from the area. What those planners failed to plan for, however, were the three families who would refuse to leave their homes.
As reported by China Daily, the plans for the four-lane flyover went ahead anyway – with the holdout households right in the middle. While we can’t imagine it’s pleasant for those families to live right in the middle of all that traffic noise, we definitely appreciate the gumption that it takes to stand your ground, even when bulldozers are right outside of your door.
Anyone who has passed the former Wickhams Department Store in London’s East End has probably noticed a rather odd feature: a tiny building that seems to be stuck into the big store’s facade. That little store has a fascinating past and might be one of the greatest real estate holdout stories ever. It was formerly Spiegelhalters Jewellers, a family business dating back to the early 19th century.
In 1892, Spiegelhalters acquiesced to Wickhams when the larger store wanted to expand; the jewelers moved their shop down the street. When Wickhams wanted to expand again in the 1920s and again asked Spiegelhalters to move, the store owners refused. Wickhams, not to be thwarted in their quest for domination of Mile End Road, adjusted the architecture of their gigantic building so that it would wrap around the little jeweler’s shop.
The result was somewhat humorous – the “central” tower had to be moved to one side of the little shop, and the hole in the facade threw off the symmetry of the building. But Spiegelhalters held tight and managed to outlast the Goliath that had overshadowed them for decades. Wickhams closed in the 1960s and Spiegelhalters remained in business until 1982. In early 2015, developers again wanted to knock down the little building but were thwarted by thousands of signatures on a petition to save the shop. Sadly, all that remained of it at that point is the facade – but even that little piece of the original Spiegelhalters is a cherished landmark that Londoners won’t soon let go of.
China is full of strange stories of so-called ‘nail houses’ – homes of people who refuse to move to make way for a large development project.
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Despite the emergence of highways, shopping malls, frighteningly deep pits and even moats around them, the tenacious owners of these older structures refused …
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Building a home with traditional methods is a long and drawn-out process often full of delays, disappointments and stress.
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[ By Delana in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]
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[ By Steve in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]
From low low prices to low low sales: at these abandoned new & used car dealerships, showroom traffic’s been reduced to a permanent state of gridlock.
Pontiac hasn’t made or sold any vehicles since GM discontinued the historic brand five years ago; the iconic Indian Chief logo vanished from Pontiac products decades earlier. As such, McNamara Pontiac-Isuzu‘s magnificent neon sign is truly a blast from the past on multiple levels. This Orlando, Florida dealer has been closed and abandoned for some time now and the fate of its sign is in jeopardy. If Chief Pontiac could shed a tear, he surely would.
On September 20th of 2003, Flickr user Onasill ~ Bill Badzo visited this strikingly lonely abandoned car dealer and service center in Brookhaven, Mississippi. We’re guessing he didn’t receive the expected level of service.
Dig that ornate filigree trim just a-rusting away in the salty Gulf Coast breeze! Though Kees Motor Co. would appear to be as deserted as the day is long, peeking through the front window appear to be an American flag, office furniture and the headlights of a mid-1960s vintage vehicle.
Signage of any kind is sorely lacking at this abandoned used car dealership in San Francisco’s Mission district, unless one counts the mystifying image gazing out from the front facade’s central window. Kudos to Nik Daum for capturing this carefree yet car-less scene sometime during the summer of 2010.
Citation Motors of Oakville, Ontario, closed in 1988 for reasons that remain unclear: some say it had its concession license revoked while others point to the fact that BMW was reducing its dealer network at that time. Perhaps hoping he’d someday be allowed to sell Bimmers again, the owner has kept the “ghost” dealership (and at least a few unsold period BMWs) in reasonable, “frozen in time” condition.
When contacted recently by a reporter from Jalopnik, the owner merely stated “you have to be crazy about cars, like you and I, to enjoy owning a place like this.” Crazy… like a fox!
The showroom floors are bare and the alluring aroma of new car smell has long since dissipated from these dozen down-in-the-dumps abandoned auto dealerships.
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In some cases disaster strikes. In others, changing technologies render old designs obsolete, leaving majestic airplanes and giant steamers to rust and gather …
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Painted pink and encrusted with graffiti, the abandoned UFO House in Homestead, Florida, has a backstory as mysterious as its otherworldly architecture.
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[ By Steve in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]
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Having had a few weeks now to spend significant time exploring Flickr 4.0, I thought I’d write up another more detailed post about my ongoing thoughts on the recent update by Flickr.
1. Autotagging. Autotagging has received a mixed reception by the Flickr community as well as the broader press. Initially a lot of the Flickr diehards have very vocally opposed it.
On the one hand, every time Flickr makes any change whatsoever a certain segment of the community will vocally oppose it no matter what the change is. The “who moved my cheese” crowd is strong and vocal at Flickr, so it’s easy to dismiss at least some of the initial criticism from the community as typical and predictable. On the other hand, many people have spent hundreds of hours organizing their tags on their Flickr photos and have a certain sort of emotional connection around tagging as it relates to their photos, which are very personal.
Any time you try to use image recognition software to recognize things you will get false positives. This is no different at Flickr. The more sensational the press can spin a story, the more clicks they end up getting. This week you saw news outlets like the Daily Mail come out with stories highlighting that Flickr was tagging concentration camps jungle gyms and black people apes. CNN reported that “Flickr’s new auto-tags are racist and offensive.” This is bad because most of the general public make assumptions based on headlines without thinking deeper about the issues at hand and most are not intimately involved with the inner mechanics of Flickr.
We also saw Google called racist this week because the White House was associated with a search for a derogatory racial term.
Personally, I’m more optimistic about Flickr using image search technology going forward and hope that the bad PR doesn’t set their efforts back there. Flickr and Yahoo are not racist (either is Google). The people who work there are a very well meaning and forward thinking group. I’m sure they will work on their algorithm to get it more and more accurate, but part of that accuracy involves getting feedback from their community when inaccuracies arise. Longer-term I think we will all benefit from having more accurate and complete search available through Flickr.
There is also part of me that wonders if Flickr’s autotagging efforts are not part of a longer-term effort to better organize this content in order to eventually partner with their community in a more significant way with stock photography. Stock photography is a multi-billion dollar business. Flickr is probably the most potentially disruptive site out there to this industry. As Yahoo thinks about monetizing Flickr in a more meaningful way, the better organized their library the more successfully they might be able to do this.
I do think Flickr should offer a setting to opt out of autotagging and I’m guessing they probably will eventually. If autotagging is on by default 99.9% of Flick users will still be using it. By creating an setting to opt out this would be an immediate way to deflect the criticism from the vocal power users that dislike it.
2. Search. Unfortunately my initial enthusiasm for search has been fading fast the past two weeks. While search looks cleaner and I do like the new view of smaller thumbnails that allow me to browse search results quickly, I’ve lost one of the most important functions of search, which is to search by my contacts.
Over the past 10 years I’ve carefully and methodically built a very large number of contacts whose photography I like and want to see more of. When I’m interested in photos of a particular subject, location, event, etc., I always do searches filtered by my contacts. This allows me the highest quality search results and gets rid of all the noisy, watermarked, junky, inaccurate images that oftentimes come up a broader search of everybody’s photos.
With the new search functionality this filtering capability is completely broken for me. What bums me out even more is that this broken functionality for my search experience is most likely affecting only people with a large number of contacts (like me) and thus is not likely to be addressed or fixed by Flickr for a long, long time.
Search is one of the most significant ways I use Flickr and with the update it is now dramatically worse for me.
Also, although I do like the two smaller view options Flickr gives you for search (a small sized photo or a thumbnail option), I do find myself missing the old larger views at the same time. Sometimes you want to search Flickr with images small so you can go fast, but other times you want to search Flickr to more carefully examine photos and here at least a medium view option would be nice to have back.
Maybe Flickr could have three possible views, medium, small and thumbnail.
One of the new features with the new search is that you can now search by date taken in addition to date posted. While date taken and posted are somewhat similar, I do see how date taken will become more and more useful over time, especially when using Flickr to search for breaking news.
3. As far as the Camera Roll and the uploader, I’m finding that I’m not using either. This doesn’t mean they are not important though. For more casual users having a view like this makes sense as a way to try to organize their offline photos in the cloud. I think this is really important for most casual users and as a way for Flickr to appeal to a broader general audience.
Personally, I carefully keyword all of my photos in Adobe Lightroom before uploading them to Flickr and then I use Jeremy Brook’s brilliant program SuprSetr to build albums based on these keywords. The only negative with this approach is that Flickr limits my sets to 4,500 photos when using Jeremy’s SuprSetr. 
Magic view was fun to look at once, but I probably will never use it or go back. I prefer the way that I’ve organized my photos more than Flickr’s auto-organization.
I don’t use the uploader because for me Flickr is not a personal shoebox for all of my photos. Rather, for me, Flickr is a place to present and share my photos to the world. I don’t want random photos from my hard drive cluttering up my Flickr photostream even if they are private. 99.99% of the photos I publish to Flickr are public and the current web page uploader does a good enough job getting two batches a day up for me (except not last weekend).
4. The Flickr mobile app. To me the new Flickr mobile app is slightly better than the old app but it’s still far from ideal.
My biggest criticism is that sometimes it is so slow, laggy and clunky. Again, some of these issues may affect me more adversely than others because of the way I power use Flickr, but I find that going to my notifications can take 20-60 seconds sometimes on an LTE or wifi connection and that is just too long to have to wait. Sometimes it does go faster, but typically after not using it for a period of hours it frequently is just painful to use. It comes and goes, but I don’t have a consistent, fast experience with the mobile app. Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and most of all Instagram are so much responsive for me when I use them than the Flickr app.
Another problem I have with the app is that frequently I’ll want to favorite a photo and so I double tap on it to do this, but Flickr misreads my attempted double tap and thinks I want to open the photo up and see it large instead. I’m not really sure that there is a solution to that problem, but it’s one that frustrates me that I don’t have with Instagram.
I also find that if I look at my contact’s photos for more than about 10 minutes or so I run out of photos to look at and Flickr defaults “suggested” photos that I’ve already seen and favorited months ago. Sometimes I’ll be sitting on the train for more than 10 minutes, or working out, or doing something where I want to spend more than 10 minutes browsing my contact’s photos and wish that Flickr could expand the number of photos I’m allowed to see from my contacts on the mobile app.
I don’t use the camera or the camera roll on the Flickr app at all. I use my iPhone’s camera and then edit with Snapseed or Priime which offer far more robust editing capabilities.
5. The new album view. The new album view is more of a postscript to the new Flickr 4.0 than a part of the initial release. Earlier this week Flickr changed the primary album view on Flickr incorporating supersized huge photos into the album view layout. I really like this change. I think photos look sooooooo much better full-sized and large (which is one of the reasons why I enjoy Ello so much). Predictably many in the help forum hate this new view as they hate all change.
I do think the header in the new album view is too large. I also think that Flickr should only choose photos to enlarge that are high res originals and that fit the crop format of their large view. Small sized photos or mobile photos don’t look as good as DSLR photos when blown up huge. Also having a bad crop on a large view, really makes that view look bad.
In other news around Flickr’s new release, Bernardo Hernandez, who was managing Flickr resigned shortly after the new launch. I like Bernardo a lot and think that he was a very good leader for Flickr. After so many years in the wilderness with really ineffective management, I think Bernardo (and Markus Spiering before him) did a really good job promoting positive change at Flickr. I hope that whoever ends up replacing him is as strong and committed to the potential for what Flickr can become. After leaving Flickr, Bernardo did tweet that Flickr would be offering up support for RAW photos, this was the first time I’d seen this mentioned anywhere online and think that RAW support would be a huge positive for Flickr — especially given that Google is supposedly coming out with something new in the photo sharing space potentially as soon as the end of this month.
It’s been refreshing watching how serious a contender Flickr has become in the photo sharing world since Marissa Mayer took the helm at Yahoo. Along with Bernardo and Markus, she and everyone working on the Flickr team deserve a ton of credit for orchestrating such a remarkable turnaround over the course of the last several years. Flickr continues to get better and better and really is turning into something much better than I ever would have thought 4 years ago. I still can’t believe that I’ve been on Flickr over 10 years now and am definitely looking forward to the next 10.
Thomas Hawk Digital Connection
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