JPG Magazine (Toss It?)

I guess one of the behaviors of the new genre of subscriber/reader driven content and publishing in the magazine industry is the inevitability of covering the same topic more than once. ;-)



JPG Magazine, which did a story (including interviews) on Camera Tossing in it's formative youth (Issue 6), has pushed another Camera Toss article amusingly titled Get Fresh With Us: "Toss Your Camera" in Issue 16. Apparently JPG thinks seconds are fresher than firsts? This one however takes the form of a very brief photo challenge posed to it's readers/photographers online, and a selection of voted/edited picks of the result. Basically it's the magazine version of my "Pool Picks" postings except with JPG contributers being the "pool", and without really providing any instructive context, history, or origins for the readers and contributors. Ironically there was a user contributed howto article on the subject linked from the challenge pages, but all that content was left unpublished in the printed article.

In it's original posted form, their challenge didn't even get the concept/definition of a Camera Toss correct. I mean really folks, it's not that complicated. A couple of senior members in our community took it upon themselves to get them to at least honor the original concept and change the challenge criteria. Viewing the incoming submissions it became clear that many of their contributors were also missing the point, so a handful of our 5,000+ community members took it upon themselves to submit high quality camera tosses in an effort to notch up the presentation of the concept. Even still, the final published selection included some that were obviously not a thrown camera. But, almost all who submitted from our community made the published version. Congrats to them and way to show solidarity, something this labor union member/advocate certainly appreciates! ;-)



(Left: by David Hull, Right: by Christian Kinzler, Lower: by Marce Garal)

Please don't read this post as a criticism of the photos/photographers actually published. Most were indeed camera tosses and many quite interesting to look at. I just feel the methodology for coming up with the content in the first place left a little bit to be desired in the way of substance and professionalism.

Many JPG articles were great back in the days before they restructured, and some of them continue to be quite good, but I came away from this feeling like they just needed some space filler? Which, in itself is fine, but if you wish to showcase a technique, you should either give some great instructions or display some top quality work (ideally both?). Why else would you publish it, unless, perhaps your only aim is to make your own contributors (a.k.a. paying subscribers) feel good about themselves?

So three cheers to Derek and Heather for honoring our little niche of the photography universe with their original article, instructions, and interviews! (View online here) This second time around? Not so much.

As for the current editorial staff of JPG Magazine. If you wish to produce "fresh" content. Figure out a way to get your article/theme contributors to do their homework. A little tried and true journalism wouldn't hurt either. I'm sure you would have had an amazing spread if you popped into our forums and solicited the community to contribute (exactly what was done for the Issue 6 article).

How's that for "getting fresh with you"? ;-) Maybe by fresh you didn't mean "snarky". Oh well. ;-)

Links Related to this Posting:
Photo Challenge: Camera Toss (and all submissions)
Photo Challenge: Camera Toss (published contact-sheet)
JPG Magazine Issue 16
Unpublished JPG user contributed HOWTO
JPG Magazine Issue 6 Article (instructions, interviews, commentary)
Camera Toss Group on Flickr

clickykbd's picks - issue 29

And now for a long... long... LONG overdue selection of photos from the Camera Toss Photo Pool over at flickr. I realize this blog has been sorely out of date, and sorely off topic, for months now... and for that I apologize. That doesn't deter the great camera tossing experimenters and the submissions to the pool just keep coming. Congratulations especially to those new members shown here.








Authors: Hover to view author screen name, or click to visit their photo on flickr.

Copyright: All photographs are copyright the respective authors. To view individual copyright notices click the photo and proceed to the photo's page at flickr.

Urbanista Synopsis: WomWorld Meetup

There will be a few more posts in wrap-up mode related to my participation (now concluded) in the Nokia Urbanista Diaries and things I did along the way. But this one is particularly pertinent.

In London the WomWorld outfit (WOM standing for World of Mobile), organizers of the manpower behind the Urbanista project, scheduled a meetup for all their mobile device enthusiasts and beta/trail participants in the London area. They brought lots of the nseries devices for people to play with, including several more of the Nokia N82, the phone/camera I had been logging and documenting my whole journey with.

Here is a fellow meetup attendee performing the classic "over the head crowd/event portrait" shot. Exactly the same thing I was doing when I took his picture.



But really, in classic British form, the whole event was a chance to talk, socialize, and of course, drink. Which, combined with the other activity planned for the evening, THROWING CAMERAS, makes for some amusing situations. Not really a full blown workshop like my last effort in Italy, but more of an informal demo followed by LOTS of impromptu participation. Organizers brought some rope lights and "fairy lights" (which I learned is what they call "christmas lights" in England) and some soft surfaces for cameras to land on. Just about everyone had a go at it and the best results were emailed to WOMWorld, where the staff picked their favorite.

Their winner was Abul Hussain, who took this photo in his first evening of camera tossing using his camera phone (a nokia for sure, but not sure which one):


Photo by Abul Hussain, 2008
at the WOMWorld Meetup at The Crown, London on March 5th

There was a good turn out to the event, and although I had to leave early to rest up for another full day in London, the party went on into the late hours. Here is another view of the scene at The Crown. Not a great shot but does demonstrate the powerful punch of the zenon flash on the N82.



I actually wish I had more of the camera toss results from everyone that evening to share. If you were there and reading this, head over to the flickr group and stick them in the pool or discussion threads.

Urbanista: The End (perhaps)

The Nokia Urbanista Diaries come to an unfortunate end today, as I blog this from my last city, Helsinki, on my last day (heading to the airport shortly). Helsinki feels to be a magical place but 24 hours really is not enough time! I promise this white city of the north that I shall return some day!

Although this is the end of my physical journey, I don't think Nokia is done hosting urbanistas. In my meeting with a few of the team yesterday over lunch (including eating yummy smoked raindeer (sorry Roudolph!)) they indicated many of their international offices now want to start organizing urbanista projects.

I didn't get a chance to write much feedback or stories of the travel on the go, so the next couple weeks I'll be catching my flickr up to date and expounding a little more on the experience here. I'll also populate that page posted earlier with all sorts of geodata goodies. The pace was just too fast to pull it off on the go.

I'll also be trying to organize all my feedback about the N82 and respective applications I was using, as that was one objective of the trial while traveling. On the go I simply concentrated on really getting the most of the camera features.

Long overdue update...

Despite the inactivity on this blog, yes, I am still traveling with the Nokia Urbanista Diaries project. Due to the pace of my journey and lack of accessible internet in most stops along the way I have not kept up the posting as I thought I might be able to, but the photos are still going up in near real-time on my flickr stream. Definitely the best reference for following along despite my best laid plans to have more interactive alternatives. Unfortunately, the nseries interface seems to have mostly folded due to inadequate planning for the volume of route data and photos it is trying to serve up. Unfortunate because I think I've been posting some pretty nice photos in the 'urbanista' spirit.

I've been to Vienna, Berlin, Milan/Florence, Paris, Bristol. I am now in London (my first day of two here). I was speaking with our organizer at WOMWorld about the problem of blogging while traveling on my journey and looked down at the chalkboard where we had stopped for breakfast. "Free WiFi". Finally!

This evening is scheduled a WOMWorld meetup. I hear they've thrown together quite a spectrum of opportunity for the attendees to explore camera tossing with nseries camera phones. Should be interesting. Read here for details of when and where.

Here's some more photo highlights from the previous cities, (follow through to flickr and click the map links if you want to see where):

Urbanista: Vienna

02-25-2008, originally uploaded by clickykbd.

I haven't had much of a chance to blog, lack of internet access. But I have been through Vienna, Berlin, Florence (substituted for Milan), and this morning I am off to Paris.

This photo was a relative highlight from Vienna, my first stop. On a subway platform watching a couple kiss and talk. Considering it is a camera phone I am relatively blown away by how I managed to time this one. A favorite so far.

More posts soon I hope.

Off I Go...

note: post delayed, in Vienna as I publish, was written before leaving.

My contribution to the Nokia Urbanista Diaries begins today! At 11:35pm CST on Feb. 21st I board a plane for Washington, and then on to Vienna, Austria, where I will be meeting up with Ms. Jen, the previous participant as she concludes her 2 weeks in India.

After that short stop in my beloved city with lovely cafes, it gets a little more hectic and fast paced! See my previously posted itinerary or just look at this map for where i'll be stopping off during my two weeks...


View Larger Map

You can follow me and view photos I produce over at nseries.com (if your machine doesn't choke on their intensive FLASH) but I've particularly enjoyed watching Ms. Jen's photos scroll past in my news reader (Google Reader) after subscribing to her flickr stream.

Yup, of course you can do the same with me, but I thought I'd go a little further in the effort to make following along easy, and experiment with other "tracking" web-services. I've assembled a page that pulls in location plus data from all kinds of places (my friendfeed.com feed) that I'll be posting media and text during this journey, and even means to reach me on the go. If you are a mobile geek or GIS/GPS geek be sure to check it out, as this is my first effort at such things. But, I mostly threw it together (indeed, one sitting and quite crude) for my closest friends to keep tabs on me and invariably harass me.

OH HAI, A LONG TAIL, I HAS IT! or...
Following Clicky, The Definitive Guide
http://projects.ryangallagher.name/nokia/urbanista/

I'll be posting here when I get the chance... but that might be infrequent, so definitely use that cheat-sheet if you want constant updates. Are you stalking me? Do I know you? (Half Joke, Half Scary)


The Goa Airport Tarmac
originally uploaded by Ms. Jen

What is a dollar worth?

These days, the US Dollar isn't really worth that much. I am not even sure you can get most newspapers for under a dollar. My last trip to the laundry mat certainly didn't qualify. And I'll DEFINITELY notice it during the pending currency conversions to the Euro and the Pound.

But the difference of a dollar is another story entirely.

WOMWorld was trying to send me my 'Urbanista Kit' which included spare Nokia N82s, batteries, rapid-charger, keyboard, SIMS, and other goodies for the upcoming trip. I got a call day before yesterday from FedEx Trade Network that it was stuck in US Customs due to missing paperwork. With two days before my departure date there was quite a scramble to fax documents and make corrections.

One of those items of paperwork I was responsible for. This was a piece of red tape, providing my Tax ID or Social Security number, and only required when the total value of the international shipment is 2000.00 USD or greater.

Guess what value WOMWorld had declared my package. 2000.00 dollars exactly. Next time, when dealing with governments and bureaucracy... don't round up, UNROUND DOWN, 1999.00 and we would have been smooth sailing!

However, I'm happy to report the package did make it this morning, with 24 hours to spare. ;-)

chaos makes the world go round...

Fone frow 1, originally uploaded by birdlouise.

As demonstrated by Bird Louise with this camera toss photograph posted to our community gallery on flickr. Interestingly the distortion achieved with this simple interaction of the sensor and motion resembles the very popular digital transform manipulation referred to as micro planets, typically achieved with panoramic techniques and coordinate re-mappings. But seen here produced entirely in camera!

But boy is the sentiment accurate. Just under 3 days before my departure to Europe on the Nokia Urbanista Diaries project and today I was informed by FedEx that my necessary hardware gear (N82 model phones, SIMs, etc etc) being shipped from London is now stuck in US Customs due to paperwork errors. What else could go wrong? Well we have yet to reconcile the nature of a photo license agreement with Nokia for the project! Hmmm what else. Ohh the fact I don't own a credit card thusly no Hotel accommodations beyond the first city have been made. I suppose all the disorder is appropriate for someone who actively encourages people to embrace a little more chaos in their image and art-making. Irony can be a headache sometimes.

Wish me luck. Shortly I will be posting some tools beyond the interface Nokia provides for keeping up with me on the journey, now obviously destined to be brimming with chaotic forces.

cool concepts: Aviary!

Web creative types listen up! Wouldn't it be cool if you could take all your favorite creative desktop applications and wrap one web community around them, track sources, attribute authors, create, and share!

Seems impossible... but that's just what the folks of worth1000.com are trying to do with their new effort, called Aviary [http://a.viary.com]!



Currently they have a few tools, all written as web-served Adobe AIR/RIA applications, in private Beta. Primarily Pheonix, their brush-based image editing tool. But they also are dropping tantalizing teasers of their others tools on their tool blog, which uses range the gamut including font-creation, pattern generation, 3d-works, image fingerprinting, etc etc. A designer's dream suite, free... and on the web. These insane folks in New York have rolled in an impressive list of up and coming technology, not to mention embracing some ideals about content and rights management that are long overdue. More on that in the business blog.

This is hands down the most exciting and innovative web service startup I've seen since, well, since flickr. I've been playing with Pheonix for 4 days now, the tools still need some work but are by far the most powerful web-based version of such things I've seen. Worth1000 itself (A photo editing contest forum) is kinda fun, but I think Aviary is going to be paradigm shifting! Hold on tight.

The silly buzzword of "web3.0" might even be appropriate here. Bravo!

Not to mention, if there was an award for "best looking" (as in aesthetics)... Aviary takes the cake.