Category: People

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Flickr a Day 358: ‘PopCorn Culture’

Go figure, I had planned to feature something more traditional for Christmas Eve but couldn’t resist self-titled “PopCorn Culture”, which J Mark Dodds captured eight years ago today using Fujifilm FinePix E900. Vitals: f/2.8, ISO 800, 1/4 sec, 7.2mm. The pic is a reminder about what matters — people, particularly those whom we are closely bounded, and major reason this series focuses (no pun, honestly!) more on them than the things.

“I’m a photographer with a lot of food and drink experience in restaurants, bars, clubs and pubs. The distractions of a life full of inescapable things gets in the way of taking and processing photographs—and I spend a lot of time with my boys who are becoming men”, he says. 

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Flickr a Day 352: ‘Left Alone’

What’s missing makes the photographic art of John Meadows so commanding. Color for one. Digital for another. The modern is absent, too. If you look at portraits from one-hundred years ago and earlier, the subjects often don’t smile; typically there’s a seriousness to their facial expressions and bodily postures. The look, feel, and mood is similar; most any of his captures could easily be mistaken for a picture from the 1910s.

But John is a modern shooter blending past and present techniques. “As time goes on, I find myself moving more and more drawn back to film-based photography and historic processes such as Cyanotype and Van Dyke Brown”, he says. “However, I will take advantage of certain digital technology, so even when stating with a film negative my workflow tends to be hybrid”. 

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Flickr a Day 349: ‘I’m a Little Photographer’

Sigma compacts are lean on extras, including video capture, and they demand patience—taking time to thoughtfully compose each shot. They can be point-and-shoots, but they aren’t meant to be. Rather, in competent hands, they produce spectacular IQ (e.g. image quality).

Ben Keough is spot on in his review of the Sigma DP3 Merrill, which Jay Hsu used to capture our selection: “The software deficiencies are all variations on a single theme: If a feature doesn’t help you take an unadulterated still image, the DP3 doesn’t have it. No picture effects, no scene modes, no panoramas, no collages, no dynamic range compensation, and no HDR capture”. The camera is no frills and slow to focus. Oh, but the IQ!