Recently in Photography Category

It takes a while to get used to a film camera again after 6 years of shooting digital and digital only. Forget for a second how delicate film is—a blink of clumsiness—and it turns into a wreck in your hands. But then again. Even heavily damaged film has lots of character and style.

Cluj-Napoca, Transylvania, 2008. See it large on black.

Cluj-Napoca, Transylvania, 2008. See it large on black.

See? Light leaks on film. Love'em. Love'em!

I enjoy Flickr. Well, there are things that could be added, changed and improved, but all in all I like more things than I hate.

While using this service—and because of my love for photography I tend to use it a lot—I compiled a list of ten annoying habits some people have on Flickr.

Here it is.

10 Flickr no-nos

1. Heavy prettification

Adobe Photoshop has a glaring bug disguised in a feature: it comes bundled with a shitload of filters. "To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail," but to an eager man armed with a copy of Adobe Photoshop every JPEG looks like it needs some effects: heavy vignettes, fake DOFs and funny gaussian blur bokehs, lovely purple skies painted via color selection tools, flares, cross-hatchings to give a “sketch” effect, Warhol-style posterization and tons of other “improvements”.

Hell, I found even a couple of terminal cases of page-curl.

You only need 3 Photoshop filters: Gaussian Blur (for masking), Unsharp Mask and Add Noise. Use them responsibly.

2. Embellishments

If a picture is not beautiful enough, maybe a good frame will save it. If it’s beautiful, a nice double black frame or a good drop-shadow will make it twice as much. Maybe three times. Or—heck!—even more. And yes, fake Polaroid transfer borders make a distinct chapter here.

Note the word “fake”—it should answer all your questions.

Print your pictures and put them in a real frame—if you like frames so much—you’ll be a lot happier. Drop the fakes.

3. Color poopping, erm, popping

A color detail—in an otherwise black & white image. And the horror even has a name: color popping. You know what I’m talking about: eyes staring bright green irises in a B&W portrait, a red-red rose held by a gray-gray lady.

Don’t feed me those photo magazine examples—they often write what digital vulgarians want/deserve to read.

Run. Don’t look back.

4. Dead weight

Gone are the days when contact sheets were private and the photographer was ready to die rather than make 'em public. Nowadays they publish their contact sheets on Flickr for everyone to admire all the mistakes, the failures and the unimportant.

Select your shots. Post the best one. Okay, two—because you can’t decide.

5. Frame by frame

Some people regret the tragedy that Flickr only takes stills and not video; but the most intrepid photographer can compensate this misfortune by shooting torrents of stills—and posting them all. You have seen this: pages and pages of pictures from a concert or a sports event.

Buy a video camera and switch to YouTube, folks.

This is related to #4, so that advice works here as well: select your shots. Post the best one.

6. Graphomania

Photographers write on pictures for ages, you know that from your grand-grandparent’s postcard memorabilia. The thing is—at 1920 they did not use Comic Sans, though. Today they do.

Buy a comic strip if you like type on images.

There are other ways for transmitting information: captions, bylines, tagging, EXIF, metadata etc.

7. Hot mamma

No, your mother is okay and her polka-dot dress is kinda cute, but shouldn’t personal life be more—you know—personal?

Brides, mothers, brothers—maybe you forgot to set the privacy flag and mark the pictures “friends and family only”?

It’s easy: where it reads “This photo is public (edit)” click “edit” and select “Only You” and then “Your Friends” and/or “Your Family”.

8. Second goddamn Life

So you like playing with dolls but you lack the needed imagination and will, but Second Life can provide this for you. That is okay. But—please!—don't take screenshots of your avatar and post ’em in Flickr pools, tagged with keywords like “photo” and “portrait”.

I have two keywords for you: “seek” and “help”.

Or flag your screenshots accordingly. Here is how: find that "Flag your photo" link under Additional Information and select “Screenshot”.

9. Tag illiteracy

Car pictures tagged as “portraits”, dog pictures tagged as “nudes”: this calls for a PhD thesis titled “Bad creativity—when and how imagination lowers IQ.” This should be called tag-spamming because it pollutes tag-based searches.

It’s not that hard: a picture of a happy dog can be tagged with “dog” and “happy” but not “cat”, “carrot” or “car”.

Please use tags appropriately.

10. Rip-offs

Digital burglary is as easy as snatching the purse from a very, very old lady. And because it’s easy, people do it a lot, posting images they don’t own.

Don’t disgrace yourself.

If you notice stolen content you can “submit”:http://info.yahoo.com/copyright/details.html a Notice of Infringement to the Yahoo! Copyright Team.

This is where you step in

If you’re annoyed by things that are not listed above, please jot them down and continue the list in the comments.

How to create a cool background texture in 3 easy steps

1. Find a river

A river or a lake on a windy day—water with small waves.

2. Find a building

A building reflecting in the river/lake, that is. More lines in the architecture, more intricate the texture. A sunny day helps.

3. Shoot the water

Shoot that building's reflection in the water. Play with the picture, change the colors, get crazy if you feel the urge.

A voicelessly despaired brass robot head, all beaten up, scratched and dented—look closely and you'll notice those heartbreaking tears.

A take on that Faces in Places mildly delusional idea.

Yes, I can

Listen, if The Sartorialist guy can do it, then I can, too: real-life style photography. Staggering findings of urban sophistication. Elegance. Panache. Hell, why not even style commentary—if I want to.

Style and all things chic

Now really. Look at this: les annees folles of transition economy, wild parties and champagne in the morning—a few sips too many—and she hits the street dressed with a sofa cover, prettified with an assemblage of lovely fluffy tassels dangling limp like a strangled family of little animals.

Quite a warning. There are things going on underneath, mysterious things. Ambiguous and intriguing things. Artifacts obliviously hanging out, probably by design—post-modernly quoting the misfortunes of wardrobe malfunction. Design should be, though, because those flowery baits will shrewdly entice your hungry eye—like a stupid little puppy—toward the vicious curves concealed underneath like boas in the jungle, unmerciful and relentless.

And then, the finishing BDSM touch: cheeky not-so-tiny golden hand-cuffs, sprinkled with blinding Swarovski crystals, teasingly barring the way to the vast carnal temptations sequestered underneath. Do sailors blush?

Peace Wall

Graffiti over Peace Wall's thousands of tiles painted by schoolchildren on Arbat pedestrian street in Moscow. Project "Our Names".

• Peace Wall — full format 1600 × 1200
• Peace Wall — wide format 1920 × 1200

The Wall of Tsoi

The Wall of Tsoi on Arbat St. in Moscow is covered with graffiti dedicated to Russian rock musician Viktor Tsoi (Russian: Виктор Робертович Цой), leader of the rock group Kino, who died in a car accident in 1990.

• The Wall of Tsoi — full format 1600 × 1200
• The Wall of Tsoi — wide format 1920 × 1200

Scratches

Scratched inscriptions on a house wall in Bucharest.

• Scratches — full format — 1600 × 1200
• Scratches — wide format — 1920 × 1200

Pro versions

For the graphic professionals that cannot afford saturated colors on their desktop, low contrast versions (grayscale picture + 50% opacity neutral gray) are available:

• Peace Wall — pro, full format 1600 × 1200
• Peace Wall — pro, wide format 1920 × 1200
• The Wall of Tsoi — pro, full format 1600 × 1200
• The Wall of Tsoi — pro, wide format — 1920 × 1200
• Scratches — pro, full format — 1600 × 1200
• Scratches — pro, wide format — 1920 × 1200

Send 'em in

If you decide to use one of these wallpapers and you don't mind sending a screenshot of your desktop (e-mail to kit at kitblog followed by dot com) along with your name and/or web site address, your precious captures will be appended to this post.

Be brave — if you’ve got it, why not flaunt it? Send 'em in!

The stencil reads "Do not climb on the hood Danger of electrocution 27000V".

Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are.

A, there's a previous nowhere.

"There are many that know, but only few of them understand"

A.G. Weinberger swamped Spice Club with blues tonight — and I had the pleasure of meeting him.

The concert was part of his 'Spreading The Blues and looking for the players' tour.

'Professional Photographer of the Year' at IPA

Cosmin, Bucharest, July 2005

Cosmin Bumbuț confirmed his professional stature once again at this year's edition of International Photography Awards Competition / International Photographer of the Year Competition by winning a 1st place in Editorial category with images from Aiud prison series and a 3rd place in Travel-Tourism category with images from Transit series, along with no less than 12 Honorable Mentions.

This results qualify Cosmin's work for inclusion in both IPA 2006 Annual Awards book and 2006 IPA Best of Show exhibition.

I am very proud I could contribute to his outstanding results by sponsoring the cutting-edge custom pre-press process of his Transit book, a first in Romania.