Why I Love the 903

At the outset I feel obligated to tell you that this should be my last post about cameras for a while. I plan on resuming my usual rambling next week, but I feel as though after my last post about cameras, I left the door open to talking about my newest camera - my 903SWC. I’ve run several rolls through this camera now, and have the results back (see the slideshow below!) to confirm my suspicions about the camera, as well as having used it enough to see if it’s “for me.”

A Leg Up on Information

The digital communications technology that was once imagined as a universe of transparent and perpetual illumination, in which cancerous falsehoods would perish beneath a saturation bombardment of irradiating data, has instead generated a much murkier and verification-free habitat where a google-generated search will deliver an electronic page on which links to lies and lunacy appear in identical format as those to truths and sanity. But why should we ever have assumed that technology and reason would be mutually self-reinforcing? The quickest visit to say, a site called Stormfront will persuade you that the demonic is in fact the best customer of the electronic. pp. 86-87

Schama, Simon. 2010. Scribble, scribble, scribble: writings on politics, ice cream, Churchill, and my mother. New York: Ecco.

Simon Schama’s most recent book had many thought-provoking quotes in it - and this one in particular got me to thinking about the information that we share and consume online.

Cameras: A Litany

Last week’s post loosely traced my development as a man and my use of the square frame as a photographer. I intentionally edited out any real mention of specific cameras, as I thought it might be interesting to do a second post about my development and my choice of camera. Before I start, I want to share with you that I have mixed feelings about this post. I think it’s interesting, but as I have gotten older, what a photographer uses as a camera has mattered less and less to me. I love talking cameras with people, but the camera that a photographer uses is no indicator as to whether or not they are good at photographing. I remember on Monhegan that a woman had an M9 that she was reading the manual for when she wasn’t taking photos. At least she is learning, I suppose - but I feel that that is a nice illustration to my point - the camera does not make a photographer. And now I am going to put that out of mind and begin my narrative.

Porta Brace CS-DC2R

I thought you all might enjoy, or, laugh at my video review for this camera bag. Cosby comes in about halfway through. Ha!

Thoughts on the Square Image

Jen and I are back from our vacation in Maine. We had a lovely time, and I am sure we will write more than you might want to read about the trip. As you might suspect, we took our cameras with us and made many photographs (360 to be exact) on the trip. We are waiting on the film to be developed and scanned so we can share our images with you. In the course of photographing (and thinking about cameras, in general) I thought a great deal about photography, as well as the choices that I make in my hobby. What originally started out as an homage to the square image has now become some hybrid of a homage and a narrative about how I feel about photography now.

A friend loaned me the book that has the perfect quote in it, describing the square in a bit more objective manner:

Authors, Recent and Favorite

Every night, Jen and I usually retire to the bedroom about 8:30 or 9. Now, before you make inappropriate jokes about this little phrase, we go get in bed, prop our pillows up, and tuck into whatever book we are reading at the time. This has grown to be not only something we look forward to, but part of our nightly routine. It has reminded me of why I “fell in love” with reading in the first place - and it has also given me a new opportunity to think about what I like and who my favorite authors are. So, rather than giving some exhaustive list of what I like reading, I would like to focus on authors, something Jen and I discussed as we were walking into the Fayetteville Public Library on Saturday. So here they are, in no particular order:

On the Impossibility of Classification

Last week was an exciting week for me, cataloging-wise, as the library where I work just received our subscriptions to Cataloger’s Desktop and Classification Web. In addition, we wrapped up training on our integrated library system, Millennium. I also finished up the new book of Alberto Manguel’s compiling his writings, A Reader on Reading. I don’t think there is a more erudite and pleasant author who writes on books and libraries than Manguel. Of course, little did I know that the Classification Web subscription and finishing the Manguel book would end up in the same busy week, prompting me to write this short discourse.