Huntington County, State Road 5.

Cheap Shooter: Firefox for Photographers

If you aren’t using Firefox yet, you should. Not only is Firefox more secure than other popular browsers like Internet Explorer, but also has a strong developer community creating extensions to make your browser do more. And as a result, there’s a plethora of plugins to turn your simple browser window into a photo sharing, displaying, browsing and uploading station. Link

Shorpy, The One Hundred Year Old Photoblog

"Shorpy.com is the 100-year-old photography blog that brings our ancestors back, at least to the desktop. What do they have to tell us? The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a boy who worked in an Alabama coal mine near the turn of the century." Link.

World War 2 In Color

Here is a good collection of color shot from World War 2. Note that early color films had extremely low ISO sensitivity, so all of these are likely to have been shot from a tripod. I took the liberty of cleaning up the caption image. Link.

A Few Odds and Ends

KEH.com is probably the best place online for finding used equipment. They have some incredibly rare cameras and lenses for sale, though getting to them is a bit rough. I believe their site is built with Microsoft code, and it is built in such a way that direct URLs aren't shown. Its about as bad as Cameraquest's site. Although to be fair, the latter is just a machinist/photographer's side business.

Galleries Of the Internet Part 1

A stunning studio gallery: PHears Phobias and PHealings

The Digital Pleasantry

My day job is parking cars. As a humble valet, I'm expected to greet everyone who approaches me. This gets quite old after a while. By the end of my shift my response to "thank you" sounds like "you're wacom." Yes, I do get some strange looks. I have come to hate these insincere exchanges. I'm a sincere and succinct person. And ceteris paribus, I don't really care how Joe Schmoe is doing today.
Likewise, I am perplexed when someone comments that one of my images is "sharp." Assuming they mean this in a technical sense; (as opposed to an adjective describing the aesthetic qualities - I think its a midwest thing) I feel as if I should respond by saying something like "Well, my lense thanks you for complimenting its resolving prowess." But then I'd come off as a sarcastic sob. I think I manage to avoid being that by only wanting to say it... I don't know. So... be succinct.

P.S. If you hate ellipses, my writing will annoy you... very much.

Mini Milestone

Wax has reached its first milestone: Linkage from another blog. Many thanks to Tom, who can be found at: http://amateurinspiration.blogspot.com/



Analogies and Musicians

I like analogies. They are a great way of comparing two totally different mediums concisely. The literal equivalent of a proportion. Speaking of two different mediums: photography and the words used to describe it. I have quite a pet peeve when it comes to any writer trying - in vain of course - to sum up a photographer's (or any visual art for that matter) entire body of work in a few succinct lines of text. Its like Mr. Bean's addition to the Mona Lisa: sloppy, though somewhat amusing. So here is my proposal: stop using adjectives to describe photography beyond the technical e.g. low key, high key, et cetera. Instead show me the image or a representative image out of a body of work - best picked by the photographer - and be done with it! That, or risk sounding like some over-sentimental hippy on X.

That would be the ideal. Alas, we live in an imperfect world. And the imperfect solution to this quandary? Analogies. I chose music, but any corollary art will do.

What is your analogy? What artist of a different medium are you most like?

As for your humble author: Elliot Smith, Blind Melon, with a little Smashing Pumpkins on the side. A sort of James Fee protege - in color.

A Quick Rundown

To start off this endeavor, I'll give you all a quick rundown of some popular photo sites that I'm familiar with:

http://www.dpreview.com/ 

This site is run by Phil Askey and has what are the most
comprehensive digicam reviews on the net, though with a
focus towards dSLRs and high end Point & Shoots. The
forums are heavily focused on hardware specific issues.
If you have a hardware issue and don't want to call tech
support quite yet, ask the fine people at the DPreview
forums.  Update: Dpreview has been bought by amazon.com.

http://www.dgrin.com/

Run by the guys responsible for Smugmug, these forums
aren't the most active, but you'll be hard pressed to
find a more eclectic group of forum Dwellers anywhere.
Lots of fine glass being put to use by these guys,
and contests with giveaways are quite frequent.

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/dimaging 

A little corner of the hulk that is Broadband Reports,
this forum (and companion hardware forum & gallery) is
one of the most friendly photo forums on the net. The
FAQ section is quite comprehensive on the software
side of things.

http://www.fredmiranda.com/

Maintained by Pro Photographer Fred Miranda, this is
the premier hangout for pro photographers on the net.
Lots of forums, lots of pros, and a few snobs.
Excellent as a resource, this vast site also includes
user posted lens reviews and a very active Buy & Sell
forum. Update: Buy and Sell forum requires membership
now, Forum speed issues still haven't been addressed.
Not recommended.