June 3rd, 2005:

Not sure what i think of this just yet.

It’s a rare occasion that Jess and I find ourselves on a Friday night without plans. Tonight happens to be one of those Friday nights. So, I’m making plans… kind of.

I miss the days where, even if no plans were made, somehow, by the end of the day, a bunch of us would be together, somewhere, doing something unimportant. There was almost always a camera involved. And music usually played a role at some point. And everyone just got along and had fun. I know… that’s so 10 years ago but, damn it, I don’t care.

So, my plans for the evening are to go somewhere with my camera and do something with someone. I’ll consider it a decent night if I fill up half a GB of space with my camera and a GREAT night if I fill up a whole GB (that’s about 300 images, or, roughly, 10 rolls of film, for those of you that don’t know).

So, if you don’t have plans, or don’t like the plans you have, call, email, close your eyes and feel my aura then follow it, whatever. Maybe we’ll sit around at a park until it’s too dark to see. Maybe we’ll take turns doing jumps off a wall. Maybe we’ll play hide-and-seek in my neighborhood. Maybe we’ll paint our faces and go trick-or-treating… in June. Maybe we’ll buy one of those frozen dessert cakes at the grocery store and then sit down in the middle of the aisle with plastic forks and eat it.

If I were going to write a weblog/photoblog/image gallery/image purchasing application… these are the features it would have.

# Upload images.
# Images will be referenced by a generic URL (i.e. /images/843732984)
# Image URL should NOT be guessable (a la Flickr)
# Display EXIF Information
# Image Title, Description, Subject, Location, etc can be recorded
# Allow images to be published into a gallery
# Allow multiple galleries
# Allow galleries to be hidden from the gallery list
# Image Tagging
# Allow galleries to be password protected
# Blog Single Images
# Blog Entire Galleries
# Blog entries can have additional text
# Optional Comments on images
# Optional Comments on blog entries
# Optional comments on entire gallery
# RSS Feed by Gallery
# RSS Feed by Blog
# Blog tagging
# Optional Shopping Cart with Paypal and/or Authorize.net connectivity
# Flickr Syndication
# LiveJournal Syndication
# Photo.net, Photosig.com, Deviantart.com, etc syndication

This list of features should be fairly complete:

# I can publish an entire set of images to a “private” gallery for a client to view. With the shopping cart, clients can purchase images directly from the website.
# I can store single images for use in another page on another site.
# I can upload images but delay publishing them until I am ready to do so.
# I can tag images to make them easy to organize.
# I can break my published images into multiple galleries for better division or I can use a single gallery for all of the images.
# I can blog an image regardless of whether it has been published to a gallery or not.
# I can move an image from gallery to gallery and have it’s permalink maintained.
# I can blog an entire collection of images in one shot.
# I can associate the comments with a blog entry, an image, or a gallery.
# I can setup a shopping cart for select galleries and allow users to purchase images directly from the site.
# I can, possibly. syndicate my images to other sites in order to get more exposure.

Can you think of anything I’m missing or that should be done differently?

For the DFW locals (or ex-locals): Suggest to me a place in or near Irving that might be photogenic. I’ve grown a bit tired of my old standbys and am wanting to shoot a bit on my lunch break.

If you haven’t noticed a theme lately, I’m on a quest to make my life less complicated, while at the same time, being more interesting and more fruitful. I’ve started to weed out all of the little things in life that I hold on to so tightly that, in the end, don’t really buy me that much. I’ve started to care more about me and less about… well… you.

I think… perhaps… maybe… the next thing to go will be Linux on the desktop.

I hate to say it. It almost feels like I’m denouncing my faith in front of the entire congregation, and, in a way, I guess I am. As the open source world bleeds further and further across the platform boundaries, more and more of the tools that I’ve always claimed I needed and loved are available under Windows now.

Other than the obvious pride issues, the only reason I haven’t made the switch yet is because, in many situations, I use my Desktop as a quick and dirty server. While this is possible under Windows, I’ve tried it, and I don’t particularly care for it. It’s difficult to manage, and even more difficult to troubleshoot.

But, for all non-programming tasks, Windows has everything I need. I can run Firefox, Thunderbird, and Gaim on Windows. I can even run XChat. I can get a full suite of Unix command line tools. I can write Ruby scripts, Perl scripts, Bash scripts, and PHP scripts and run them, for the most part, with ease. If I don’t want to pay for Microsoft Word, I can use the OpenOffice.Org Office Suite, which, from what I can tell so far, works great under Windows.

I’ve mentioned lots of things that I can do in Windows that I can also do in Linux, but that’s no reason to switch. What is it that Windows does that Linux doesn’t?

I have Jess run the download manager for the website that I get MP3s off of. The software doesn’t run under Linux and it’s a pain to deal with. I have them saved automatically into a Samba share on my Linux box, so it’s as though I’m running it anyway. Only now, if her computer is off, or if she isn’t running it, I can do it myself.

Samba just doesn’t work right. Attempting to fine tune all of the permissions and passwords aspects has left me in a situation where I simply open access to anyone with a valid password. Unfortunately, it wants to expire Jess’ password almost every time she connects, so I’ve had to teach her how to use Putty to SSH to my box and reset her Samba password. It’s just plain silly and I can’t seem to find a way to make it stop.

Printing. Sure, I can print under Linux. It works right 99% of the time. But, when I need to be picky about margins or spacing or anything that relates to making sure that what I see on my screen is what will come out of the printer, it generally fails in one way or another.

Sound and Recording. While there is some new software for Linux that allows multi-track recording, I haven’t tried it yet because my sound card isn’t supported very well. For whatever reason, sound is often distorted and quiet. I’ve tried to fix this a million different ways.

Graphics editing. I’ve jumped through *lots* of hoops to get an image editing work flow that I can live with. For the most part, I’m okay with it, but it’s less than ideal. I’d like to use ICC profiles to give everything I do that final touch of professionalism. Unfortunately, the only tool for Linux worth using to edit graphics is the Gimp, and, as good as the Gimp is, it doesn’t support ICC profiles. So, it looks like Photoshop is the way to go here.

There are lots of other little things. It all adds up after a while, and I’m finally just getting fed up with it all.

There’s still a lot of hesitation here. I love Linux. I use it at work. I use it at home. It powers my TiVo and my router and my website. I agree with the philosophy behind Linux. I mean, while Gimp isn’t as powerful as Photoshop, it gets closer and closer every day and, someday, it’ll be there. I use it every day and, other than ICC profiles, have never found it lacking. Depending on how you use it, it might work for you too. There’s no reason that Photoshop should cost the hundreds and hundreds of dollars that it does. Not when products like the Gimp are free and allow me to change the software to suit me should I desire to do so. The same goes for Windows. There’s no reason I should have to pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars for an operating system that, other than its hardware support and available software, offers little advantage over an entirely free and open system.

But, what does my philosophy buy me? In the end…. it saves me about $1000. That’s about it. Believe me when I say that the heartache and trouble I’ve endured making what I have work as easily as it does cost me a lot more than $1000 in time and anguish.

So… well… it’s a possibility, anyway.

Maybe I’ll get a Mac. It’s supposedly the best of both worlds, though, I’m sure something about it will annoy me too, and then I’ll be even more pissed off because I wasted A LOT of money on special hardware and software to use a system I don’t even like.

A big part of learning and appreciation is in looking at what other people create and how the world responds to them. To this end, I look at a lot of “photoblogs”:http://photoblogs.org/. Some of them had one lucky image that caused me to start watching, only to find that the rest of their images really aren’t that good and, eventually, I stop watching. Others, continue to impress me day after day. Regardless of why I’m looking at their art, I think it’s important to look at art, and talk about art and appreciate it.

While a lot can surely be learned from *bad* images, I don’t want to get into the habit of publically mentioning photographers that put out bad work. However, I do want to showcase those that produce images that mean something to me, or images that I can appreciate. This will, hopefully, be a daily/weekly/monthly thing.

And now, without further delay…

shattered — by David Kapp

(click to enlarge)

Today’s image is by “David Kapp”:http://blog.lifekapptured.com/. Dave is a working photographer living in San Francisco. “His gallery”:http://www.lifekapptured.com/gallery/index.htm is full of inspiring images and I encourage you to browse through it.

Today I will focus on his image entitled “Shattered”:http://digital.lifekapptured.com/index.php?showimage=128. I’m not sure if Dave is showing us the entire window or only the interesting portion of it, but it really doesn’t matter. His composition is incredible. With interesting elements in all of the right places, our eyes wander the edges of the broken glass. With a good use of reflection to produce brighter areas, our eyes eventually land on the point of impact. The use of black and white in this image is superb. The tones are varied, the image has lots of contrast and is very sharp. Technically, it’s top notch. Visually, it’s very interesting. And in this case, most importantly, it is dramatic, even when drama wasn’t present in the “real world”.

I encourage you to view the larger version of “Shattered”, discuss what you like or dislike about it here, let Dave know what you think, and add Dave to your list of people to watch in the future.

(If and when I ever get my photoblog up and running, I intend to do this there.)