Because I authenticate Flickr photo ownership before posting pics, each new find is an adventure. With Vancouver, British columbia-based fashion photographer Kris Krüg the journey is an archaeological dig into the social web’s iterations over a decade.
I started simply, by searching Flickr for “Saturday”—appropriate given that’s today. The photo above caught my attention, for its rich, vibrant color, contrast, and composition. The EXIF data revealed the camera to be the Fujifilm SP-2000. Huh, that one is new to me. Some Googling here and raw EXIF there, and I discovered the camera was a scanner. Oh la la! Kris shot film!
I then discovered that while the Jan. 6, 2007-dated photo first appeared to stand alone in his Flickr stream, it actually belongs to set “Cold Wet Saturday“, which Kris describes: “With the help of a few rolls of expired slide film, some fun friends, and and endless supply of awesome vintage clothes, we turned this cold wet Saturday into a fun afternoon photoshoot”.
You gotta love film in the right hands, and Kris’ are that. I don’t know the camera used then, but do know that now he shoots with the Canon 5D Mark III with several different Canon L lenses.
I had some basic information, and enough to begin the excavation, starting with Flickr, where Kris has been since July 2004. That makes him a lifer. The service opened for business just a few months earlier. He is a prolific poster, with nearly 75,000 photos and more than 1,000 album sets. His Flickr profile led me to his site Static Photography, which promotes his business—10 years ago!
The primer on Static Photography is dated July 6, 2005, and reads:
Static photography was born out of a passion for all things photographic and a desire to share that passion with others. Capturing the world around us—be it people, architecture, shelves in bathrooms—excites us which is why we do it well. Photographically we will not be constrained to any limits and that’s what keeps it exciting for us. We take advantage of everything digital technology has to offer us including the cost benefit for our clients, quick and easy viewing and eventblogging.
That was all bleeding-edge stuff a decade ago. He had the pulse, but the site’s last dated-entry is Oct. 2, 2012, yet his Flickr stream is current, as in January 2015. Mmmm. I followed the breadcrumbs to kriskrug.com, which should have been, doh, obvious first destination. I love the title: “Creativity, Change, Culture, and Communication”, but there isn’t much of the latter, with the last posted-entry dated Aug. 22, 2013.
Finally, with a little Google assist, I found currency. Kris is on Twitter and posts actively. He joined the service a month before me, in November 2006, making us both eighters going on niners. We may have joined around the same time, but he was smarter. You’ve heard perhaps how coveted are three-letter twitter handles? Kris’ is two! To think I snatched my name and felt proud about it. Dufus!
Kris’ Twitter pointed me to Rebel Mouse. Ha! He is a Mouser! I have an account somewhere (abandoned). He also is on Facebook, where he polishes his Wall with regularly fresh content. We have eight mutual friends, including Thomas Hawk and Robert Scoble (both great guys). Oh, yeah, count Instagram, too, for frequent Kris posting.
Surely there’s a metaphor here about the fashion photographer going where is fashionable—and what that is. It’s not his business website or blog that bears his name but several active and popular social networks: Facebook, Flickr, Instagram, and Twitter. Ello perhaps?
Photo Credit: Kris Krüg