steve, the incidental incidental incident.
So I'm taking an image class and one project involves taking photos throughout a day using POV photos to tell a story.
Well what that comes down to is that I have to buy a damn camera. I've been avoiding it this long but my professor straight up walked over to me after class and was like "the point and click has to stop." Heads up: anyone that tells you that you don't have to pay for anything outside of class when it comes to project-oriented classes is lying to you (or they go to CalTech).
So yeah. Well I wasn't going to buy a $400 camera for one last project, and then I remembered that the Narrative exists.
The Narrative Clip is a camera that you pin to your sleeve or shirt that takes pictures every 30 seconds. They're all POV shots and they exist so that you "never have to miss a moment." Perfect for my project, but it led to me thinking about something else. Privacy.
I've seen TONS of people complain about this stupid thing, it's crazy. It's the size of a postage stamp but it makes people hella uncomfortable in public and whatnot. I've seen accusations of photos being uploaded "straight to NSA servers", even.
On the other side of the spectrum, I've seen people complaining about this thing like crazy because it's "useless and frivolous" and "who wants to have 1000 pictures every day?" The counterpoint to this is that lifelogging can be useful. Lifelogging is where you digitize and quantify every aspect of yourself (a concept that's been floating around since the 90s but is more possible than ever now). This side argues that 1000 terrible photos is worth it for 15 good ones. I've also seen it argued that having a clip like this helps stave off people from looking at everything through the lens of their phone's camera, rather than experiencing whatever is in front of them, themselves.
I mean either way I'm buying the damn thing because it fits my project perfectly and $130 is not the same as fucking 400. But I might conduct a few days worth of sessions after the project is done, just to see how it goes.
Anyways. Thoughts? kleinbl00 for being tech-oriented and older than Gandalf. lil for her wisdom. Everyone else is open to comment as well.
Edit: Oh yeah, off-topic question: podcast! Diversity in videogames. PM me if you're interested.
You don't understand photos. Let's fix that. Photography is the knack of turning perspective into art. It's not the random process of capturing images at random times. Even when you think it's a highly mechanical thing - like "ISS passing in front of the eclipsed moon" - The framing of that final image and the fact that there's multiple exposures of the ISS cruising by reflects the composition of Theirry Regault, not just his presence in the right place at the right time with the right equipment. Cameras are stupid simple. They're basically boxes with holes in them. You have control over how long the hole stays open and how wide it is and what the glass in front of it is doing. That's largely it. What makes photography art - what makes photography compelling - is how you turn your presence and your perspective into narrative. Your stupid little gadget is just a fucking dashcam for your sweater. I'm not your prof but if I were, I'd fail your ass for going that way. It's fucking insulting to propose that random 30-second increments of your position as distilled through a $130 pinhole CMOS will tell your audience as much about your "point of view" as a conscious effort to say "look at this, fuckers." I don't give two shits about what your sweater was pointed at this morning. I want to know what you saw, asshole. I want to know what you noticed. I want to know what you considered to be worth relaying to the outside world. I don't want the fuckin' black box, I want the captain's log. You know why bullshit POV cams are annoying? Because they communicate three things: 1) "I don't care enough about you to tell you I'm taking your picture." 2) "I don't care enough about anyone else to make sure I'm showing them something good." 3) "I'm too precious to waste my own sweet time condensing and distilling the moments of my life into those bits that are actually interesting." Know who bleeds out their life staring through viewfinders? amateurs. People who don't understand photography. People who haven't found the balance between experience and relation, people who don't understand that cameras aren't for mediation, they're for magnification. If I were to guess, your prof is working you through that process. More than that - Hey, remember this? What you're effectively doing is making a conscious decision not to learn a skill. And I've never seen you do that before. Buy a Rebel for $400. Use it for the class. Then sell it for $350. Maybe buy another when you can afford it. But in the interim, don't do this stupid shit. It's beneath you as a storyteller, it's beneath you as a communicator, it's beneath you as a proponent of the visual arts, and it's beneath you as a member of the human race.
See, up until smartphones it took a modicum of skill to take a decent photo. It took an investment. It made photos something of value, however ephemeral that value may have been. It made the art of taking photos something that people valued as a skill.
> fucking dashcam for your sweater lol. Cute kid BTW. When I was in high school I was really into manual photography. Then I lost that hobby for a long time and a year or so ago I bought a Nikon D3000 with the intention of getting back into it. Only have the one 18-55 lens. Man, it is a lot of work to relearn and understand all that stuff. I am still not any good. It is shit like this: 
That's damn good, yo. The moon is a stone bitch to photograph. Anyone will tell you so. Really, the trick is to just put the sucker in aperture-priority and rip. I know people who insist on shooting full manual but they're stupid. The point is to get the picture and if the exposure is even halfway there you'll nail it once you dump it into the computer. Depth-of-field isn't something you can get after the fact, Lytro be damned, and shooting wide open will work 90% of the time. Only other trick is to get a couple decent primes. They're really cheap, particularly if you stick to the holy trinity of 28mm/50mm/70mm. A 50 f/1.8 will make any portrait look magical.
Sure you can, you just need to a stereo pair to recover the depth. Taking a stereo pair so you can add depth of field with your computer is a little bit Rube Goldberg, but you can do it.Depth-of-field isn't something you can get after the fact, Lytro be damned, and shooting wide open will work 90% of the time.
Right - so either you sport a stereo rig or you only take pictures of things that don't move. Would you prefer it if I said "depth-of-field isn't something you can practically get after the fact?" 'cuz I've worked with stereo rigs and I'm here to say - beam splitters are unpleasant.
I've never seen someone have such a negative view towards something, and also be on the exact opposite position as I. IMO, photos are a useless waste of time. No point in ever taking one, besides for practical purposes: to have a photo of the thing you need a picture of, whether it be to distribute it electronically, or to provide a memory keepsake to remind yourself of the past. Outside of these two uses, I don't see any point for wasting $400 on a dedicated picture taking machine. My multi-function phone and iPod both easily take pictures. That said, I see massive appeal in 'life logging'. And having something auto-take a POV shot every 30 seconds seems like an easy way to get visuals for a journal or to simply share what you've been up to without having to lug around a camera and spend forever learning to fine tune it and get "that perfect shot". I'd much rather have a device that auto-grabbed visual memories for me than something I have to fiddle around with to effectively do the same thing. As it stands now, every single photo I've ever taken had a practical purpose behind it. Be it logging visual progress (hair regrowth), providing a visual for a journal, or sending visual information to someone across the internet. Not once has it ever been for art. IMO, pictures should match what I see. Nothing more, nothing less. If I could just rip images from my eyes and upload them, I would. Why waste time with anything else?
Have you ever tried taking a picture at night with an iPhone? Does that look remotely close to what you're seeing with your eyes? If so, your eyes are pretty shit. Having a better camera makes a vast difference in scenarios like that.My multi-function phone and iPod both easily take pictures.
If I could just rip images from my eyes and upload them, I would. Why waste time with anything else?
I don't have an iPhone. As far as night pictures go, they tend to vary. I don't take pictures at night though, no need. My vision at night sucks. But no, I haven't seen any camera be able to replicate what I see at night or at day. It's always a lot of fiddling and it's still off.Have you ever tried taking a picture at night with an iPhone?
Does that look remotely close to what you're seeing with your eyes? If so, your eyes are pretty shit.
He thought it was a great idea...I never said he was good. But FIIIINE I'll see if someone in class has one I can borrow first, one of these rich cali fuckers is holding out on me, I know it.I'm not your prof but if I were, I'd fail your ass for going that way.
If you are trying to learn photography, hanging a camera around your neck probably isn't the best way to do it. If you are trying to BS your way through a class, seems like this wouldn't be too hard to sell - "narcissism and technology explored through conceptual art" or something like that. I have a friend in a top 50 school who made a banana suit and did the peanut butter jelly time dance for his final. He got an A. And don't forget this "major landmark in 20th-century art." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp) . It's all about how you sell it.
So basically he just hates cameraphones. I guess I wanted it to be more complicated.
gr8 montage bro Seriously though, I do like that style of art. Asymmetric abstraction that still has structure and could tell a story, if the author feels like sharing.
I feel like sharing Each square (and solo circle) is made from the cloth of my mom's tobes, traditional sudanese robes for women. The blue one is a circle because it's her favorite. The rest of the concept is aesthetic, but a lot of them are important: Green one was during her wedding, that goldish one on the bottom right the one she wore after she brought my new-born sister from the hospital. So yeah.
You're turning this into a contest of "how much I'm not willing to buy shit" and you don't want to go that route because I'm terribly cheap if it means I can find an out elsewhere. Slight-tangent question: where does that put you with fitness wearables then?
If I had a spare camera to lend you, I'd lend it. Fitness wearables? Like fitbits? My take is that I count calories, and those calories are counted against an "active" lifestyle. If I subtract a fitbit from those calories it's giving me fake achievements. However, if I choose a "sedentary" lifestyle and subtract a fitbit from them, it should give me the exact same measurement as I had without the fitbit. Except I had to buy (and wear) a fitbit.
What a coincidence that the ISS and the moon were lined up when he was taking a rapid sequence of HD photos of the eclipse! /s Seconded. If he hated pointing and clicking, and you're removing the pointing, ehhhhh not great. Edit: Even if the prof said "POV" style shots, don't think of it like "Oh I better always have my camera at head height and limit myself to typical thoroughfares"....I'd fail your ass for going that way.
Actually I know a little something about those things. Microsoft put out an experimental version of it about 10 years ago. It was called Sensecam and also took photos every 30 seconds. Early research involved taking seniors with various stages of Alzheimers on a trip, say, and testing their memory of the trip. Then they'd show the pictures (sometimes with narrative, sometimes edited http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/cambridge/projects/sensecam/memory.htm It's interesting to see that a version of this is now available to everyone at only $130. After the original research, no one seemed to know quite what to do with it. Now they do.Without any aids to recall, Mrs. B typically completely forgets everything about an event after five days or less. However, during the course of this period of assisted recall using SenseCam, Mrs. B’s memory for the event steadily increased, and after two weeks she could recall around 80 percent of the event in question. What is perhaps more remarkable is that following the two-week period of aided recall, Mrs. B appears to have a lasting ability to recall the event even without reviewing the images.
They still don't know what to do with it. It was a GoPro before there were GoPros, a dashcam before dashcams. The issue is that scientists said "we can record every minute of your life - now how do we make people want to do that?" rather than finding a problem and proposing a solution. I'm not opposed to giving memory aids to Alzheimer's sufferers but Microsoft's study had an N of 1 and was conducted against a diary. That the study was done ten years ago and didn't really lead to much further research is telling, I think; basically, Microsoft demonstrated that making an Alzheimer's patient review an hour-long event for an hour every two days keeps that event in short term memory for as long as the patient is reviewing the photos.
Yeah, that research went nowhere and was abandoned. Given that cops can wear a bodycam and have it running (or not) when they assault or save people, the 30-second picture doesn't seem to have much use. Imagine a cop wearing a Narrative Clip during an interrogation.
Corporate shill amirite? :) I like Fred Amisten's selfie stick pics of his latest trip to Italy.
I'm not a big picture taker at all, and I'm really not for this whole movement of just categorizing as many moments in our lives as we can to be saved on a profile somewhere. For me I'm more than ok with not understanding why a moment made me happy, or excited. If you were to look at my instagram or something along those lines there are maybe five pictures of my recent vacation. Im interested in that podcast btw.