Category: People

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Flickr a Day 215: ‘Do You Know What a Model Test Is?’

The question that Alba Soler poses, but more importantly answers, matters to anyone interested in fashion photography. A brand ambassador for Profoto, the fashion and advertising photographer works from London and Spain.

She posted self-titled “Do You Know What a Model Test Is?” to Flickr on Jan. 8, 2014, stripping out camera info from the EXIF. She uploaded the portrait to two different accounts—one associated with her “The Thinking Hat” website. That one is All Rights Reserved. The other version, which I selected, is Creative Commons. Hehe, she has yet a third Flickr, too. 

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Flickr a Day 210: ‘Doctors Make Me Nervous’

Other than perhaps physical size, today’s compacts little resemble models that advanced the category, like the 3.3-megapixel Canon S20 I purchased in mid-2000. Price differs, too. The then state-of-the-art digicam sold for about $900, if I recall rightly. Gasp, or was it more? Fifteen years later, compacts like the Nikon CoolPix A put some of the best features of the dSLR into a much smaller device, for much less spent. The camera packs in an APS-C sensor—DX in Nikon-speak—excellent low-light performance, and fixed-focal length (e.g, prime) lens.

Jake Stimpson demonstrates just what image quality a camera like the Nikon A delivers in competent hands. The pastor for Biserica Piatra Vie, in Bucharest, Romania, captures candids that make you wonder: “What?” He shot self-titled “Doctors Make Me Nervous” on April 24, 2015. Vitals: f/2.8, ISO 1600, 1/250 sec, 18.5mm. The pic takes the Day for clarity and composition and for being interesting. 

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Night at the Park

Sometimes San Diego delights most unexpectedly. Yesterday, I entered an alternate universe—a lovely neighborhood that could have been from a 1980s Steven Spielberg movie. Kids played everywhere. Freely. The clang of metal baseball bats rang out from the park, where parents cheered and encouraged their middle-school players. Pretty homes, none too different from another, lined clean streets, from which the sound of playing children created intoxicating atmosphere.

My journey started with a request: Provide transportation to the Rebelution and Sublime concert at the Sleep Train Amphitheater. My soon-to-be 21 year-old daughter asks for rides so infrequently now, I couldn’t refuse. But given heavy traffic around the venue, 27-km distance drive, and her plan to return in two hours or so, I figured to stay in Chula Vista rather than roundtrip. But where to hang out—from the commercial-property isolated locale?