The Online Photographer

'Thoughts On Landscape' Newly Available

I'm pleased to pass along the news that Frank Gohlke's little gem of a book, Thoughts on Landscape: Collected Writings and Interviews, is newly available from Amazon. Gohlke is one of the best writers who is also an accomplished photographer—his thoughts and essays are articulate and thoughtful, and he's even lucid in interviews, of which there are several present here. In fact, one of the best chapters in the book is "Lieben und Arbeiten" from a 1984 Colorado College interview, which contains the famous aphorism, "At its best...photography asks us to return to the world from art."

He's written very little: the contents here span from 1976 to 2007. Everything of his I've ever seen is here. Present are his fine 1977 essay on Ben Lifson, and of course "A Volatile Core," from Aperture 98, which begins like this:

Some facts: On May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens in the Cascade Range of southwestern Washington state erupted explosively, two months after the first signs that a 123-year period of dormancy was ending. An earthquake caused the weakened north face of the mountain to avalanche into the Toutle River valley, instantaneously releasing the pressure on the upwelling magma below. The result was a lateral blast of incredible force that devastated 230 square miles of commercial timberland, recreational forest, and wilderness. Trees representing one billion board feet of timber were killed where they stood, flattened, or pulverized and blown away. Valleys were filled with debris, rivers were rerouted, old lakes were reshaped and new lakes created. Where before there had been a gleaming symmetrical cone 9700 feet high, there was now a gaping horseshoe-shaped crater whose rim was 1300 feet and whose floor was 3000 feet lower than the old summit. Perhaps two million animals of all species were killed, including sixty-five human beings. During the seven hours of the May 18 eruption the release of energy was estimated to equal one Hiroshima-sized bomb per second.

I have often been attracted to places where very little happened: plowed fields, front yards, quiet intersections; the things that took place in my photographs were non-dramatic, hardly events at all in the common understanding of the word. A tornado or a volcanic eruption is at the other end of the spectrum....

Even so, this is not so much as book for readers as for thinkers, and if you digested one chapter per month you might be taking it too fast. Not that it's difficult (it's not), just that it's contemplative and reflective. He has thought deeply about photography and landscape, and what he has to say makes the reader do the same. One could keep this volume for years and dip into it now and again with pleasure and avail. If you like to read about photography, recommended. Lord knows how long the print run will last.

Of course if you prefer the pictures I'm not going to argue.

Mike

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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Canon 5D Mark II Achieves Only 60% TOP Rating

SA***

The Canon 5D Mark II has achieved only a 60% rating from TOP, the world's leading camera review site. Although this might seem low to the camera's fans, there are very good reasons for this based upon our standard reviewing policies. Here is a list of the camera's demerits and downgrades:

• Only 167 features out of a possible 243. As everyone knows, features are weighted for bulk. Cameras are penalized 1% for every ten features by which they're short of the maximum, the maximum being always the most desirable state, and not just when it comes to features. Minus 7%.

• Not as heavy as the 1D or 1Ds. Heavier is better. Minus 2%

• No phone. Whoever heard of a camera you can't make calls from? It's like a phone that doesn't store MP3s. Minus 5%. 

• Doesn't store MP3s. Minus 1%. Would have been more of a downgrade, but the musical taste of many potential purchasers is sorry bordering on wretched. Speaking of which, if American Idol doesn't end soon you're going to have to get the noose ready, Farquar, because we're going to have to hang ourselves.

• People are using the naff device to shoot bloody television episodes with.* Any camera that so blatantly encourages its own misuse cannot be all good. Minus 6%.

• Nail clippers? Mini scissors? The little slide-in toothpick thingy? All missing. Minus 3%.

• Cameras exist with higher megapixel counts. Demonstrated extremes in megapixel counts reveal the limits of technical feasibility, and the limits of technical feasibility must be at least equaled for us to take a product seriously. Minus 2%

• Bad name. Naming cameras after weapons can get you shot at in war zones, especially if you use a zoom the size of a battering ram with your initials painted in big letters on the side, and your name is Ricardo Pesterman Grunwald. Minus 8%. Seems harsh, but there is no remedy for death under the terms of the warranty.

• Lack of Bluetooth connectivity for the phone. We know we already said it has no phone, but we expect Bluetooth connectivity for cameras with phones, and our policy is to downgrade cameras for all missing features. Sorry, no exceptions. Minus 3%. 

Total demerit score: Minus 37%. This results in a score of 60%**, which in turn leads to a rating of "Warmly Recommended." This is on the verge of a failing rating for us, since it comes five down in our rating hierarchy, after (in ascending order): Urgently Recommended; No Really Very Strenuously and Urgently Recommended; Critical To Your Happiness And Continuing Sense of Self Worth; and our top rating, We Are Debiting Your Bank Account And Sending You One Whether You Like It Or Not. 

It does takes great pictures, like that's enough.

Mike

*We employed Britishisms here because Hugh Laurie of House, in a canny Andy-Kaufmann-like existential vamp, gives interviews speaking in a really very plausible English accent.

**Note that the total score is arrived at arbitrarily. It has no relation to the total demerit score.

***Satire Alert. This means that this post is not serious. Before firing off angry comment, please refer to the definition of "satire," which may be found in most decent English dictionaries. Comes after sateless and before satori.

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Featured Comment by Mike Plews: "I understand the last episode of Jeeves and Wooster was shot on a Minolta 16. Or was that an Aaton 16? I get them confused."

Featured Comment by Louis McCullagh: "Re the episode of House shot on a Canon 5D Mark II: an interview with the producer, Greg Yaitanes, is on Philip Bloom's website."

The Faces of Semana Santa, Seville, Spain

Holy Week in Seville, Spain, is one of the city's most important traditions.

Photographs by Peter Turnley

Introduction: It's always great to receive a new visual essay from our friend Peter Turnley, TOP's unofficial Foreign Correspondent. During the week before Easter, Peter was teaching a workshop organized around the world famous Semana Santa procession in Seville, Spain, and of course he used the opportunity to create his own photo story. This is new work, never before seen, first published here on TOP, as part of our ongoing cooperation with Peter to try to provide an outlet for new photojournalism.

Semana Santa is a most holy religious observance by the people of Seville that dates back to the late Middle Ages. The heart of of the observance are brotherhoods which organize ceremonial processions from their home churches to the Cathedral of Seville and back. The oldest of the brotherhoods, El Silencio, dates from the mid-1300s. Each procession bears a cross and pasos (floats) depicting scenes from the passion of Christ, sometimes in silence and sometimes accompanied by drums and trumpets.

It's really interesting to see the difference in Peter's coverage of the three events we've seen him cover: first, a humane and non-sensationalized look at the work on the ground after the terrible earthquake in Haiti; next, the seams, edges, and backdrops of Carnaval, one of the world's largest parties; and now Semana Santa, one of the world's most ritualized and historic public displays of religious fervor. All three are major events affecting and involving many people, but each is fundamentally different from each other. And although the artistic sensibility is the same, Peter's "take" on each event is so markedly different, in keeping, each time, with the nature of the event. As I said last week, this time Peter has focused on the faces in the crowds to help convey the unique atmosphere of Seville at Easter time.

Without further ado, on to the pictures. (If your have any comments, please leave them under the third post—thanks.)

Mike

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During a salida, an exit of a procession from a church, when a paso is carried out at the beginning of a Semana Santa procession, a man sings a capella saetas (sad songs) in honor of the moment.

Early in the day, on the first Sunday of Semana Santa, a man kisses the feet of a Christ figure inside the Church of  San Salvador, built in the 16th century.

A Semana Santa procession makes its way through narrow streets on its way to the Cathedral of Seville. These holy week processions have been going on since approximately 1350. Many of the people marching in these traditional processions called nazarenos wear costumes of different colors with pointed hoods called capirote, symbolizing repentance and grief.

During the processions incense is distributed, most often burned in metal containers (incensarios), which hang by a rope or chain and are swung about to disperse the scent. Some processions occur during the day while others are candlelit at night. During Semana Santa, the sweet smell of azahares (orange blossoms) muddled with incense and candle wax permeates the city.

A member of a hermandad, best described as a brotherhood, members of a church who are part of the procession. This is a monaguillos, a child dressed as a ciriales (priest) who hands out candy.

The traditional clothes worn by women on Holy Thursday (and sometimes on Good Friday) is known as La Mantilla. The outfit consists of the lace mantle, stiffened by shell or another material, and a black dress.

The penitential processions are performed by the brotherhoods' members, nazarenos wearing capirote. The colors worn by nazareno depend on the particular procession.

Some processions are silent, with no music, but many feature a drum and trumpet band behind the image of Christ and a brass band behind the virgin, playing religious hymns.

A paso carrying a wooden sculpture of Christ is carried through the streets of Seville.

The Semana Santa processions are a very emotional experience for many of the onlookers.

The men that carry the floats or pasos are called costaleros, which means "sack men," for their headdress. They lift and carry the very heavy pasos. Each paso requires 24 to 54 costaleros to move. The processions often last often many hours.

Residents of Seville head for one of the processions. Many men attending the processions wear dark suits.

Residents watch as a paso is carried through the narrow streets of Seville towards the Cathedral.

(Continued in the next post. All Photos © 2010 by Peter Turnley/Corbis. Please leave any comments under the third post.)

The Faces of Semana Santa, Seville, Spain—II

Thousands of residents of Seville and thousands of visitors are spectators.

Before the beginning of a Semana Santa procession, a member of one of the brotherhoods stands with a wooden cross inside a church.

A penitente, repenting for their sins by carrying one or more crosses over their shoulder.

Each procession includes a group of altar boys carrying chandeliers and incense.

Nazarenos on their way to or from a procession in a narrow street.

The traditions of Semana Santa, which date back to the Middle Ages, find themselves juxtaposed against the modern world of fashion.

(Continued in the next post. All Photos © 2010 by Peter Turnley/Corbis. Please leave any comments under the third post.)

The Faces of Semana Santa, Seville, Spain—III

A mother with her son, an altar boy.

Priests who will participate gather before a procession.

Children gather wax from a candle carried by one of the members of a procession.

A penitiente carries a cross.

A grandfather holds his grandchild.

In front of a church in the Triana district.

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(All Photos © 2010 by Peter Turnley.)

Open Mike: The New Ride

Salesman Levi Goines of Mercedes-Benz of Elmbrook stands
next to the car he sold me, a silver 2007 C280.

So...turns out, the answer to my question from last Sunday—"Volkswagen or Hyundai?"—is, of all things, "Mercedes-Benz."

Once Steve Rosenblum reformulated my priorities for me, the choice didn't take too long to make. The "Baby Benz"—which I bought used for about the same money as the new cars I was looking at—is thoroughly engineered for crashworthiness and has about every safety feature known to Man: all-wheel drive, traction control, ABS brakes, airbags out the wazoo, brights that can be seen from space, and so on. Seemed like the perfect car to share with Zander as he learns to drive. (He'll be more careful of it than he'd be of a beat-up elderly Ford, too.)

If it's a good choice for him, though, it's an unusual choice for me. It's as if I were buying a new camera and decided on a 1Ds and an all-in-one zoom lens the size of a Yule log.

In the course of my shopping odyssey I did find the perfect toy car for Mike. I liked the VW GTI a lot, and it had a decided practical side for an only car, but as a toy it paled in comparison to the Chevy Cobalt SS, a car that's been discontinued and is almost gone from dealer lots. The Cobalt SS is no frills, looks like an econobox, and drives like a race car. It has a superb, highly flexible 260 horsepower turbo four in a 2,926-lb. body (vs. the GTI's 200 hp and a hundred and eight more pounds of curb weight), a road-gripping suspension that can't be flummoxed by pavement nasties, and an outstanding short-throw shifter with a very positive action. Just a delight to drive—very much the car equivalent of the perfect Mike camera. Then consider its excellent Recaro-style front seats and jazz on the satellite radio, and I was in my automotive heaven.

Perfect Mike car: The Chevy Cobalt SS. Photo by Erich Healey.

By the numbers, the Cobalt SS is faster than the 1993 BMW M3 (a 6-cylinder, RWD car) and the 1989 V8 Corvette—and that's only because it can't get its power to the pavement. To that end, it has "launch control," an anti-burnout mode also found on Corvettes—you floor the throttle and the launch control limits the revs to 5000. Then you pop the clutch and feel the muscles in your neck. There's a lot more to a car than just straight-line acceleration, of course. The Cobalt SS is the current unofficial record-holder among front-wheel-drive cars for a lap around the Nürburgring.

It's almost painful to forgo the chance to buy a Cobalt SS new. But I can only afford one car at a time, and it would have been well into stupid territory to buy it as a dual driver to share with my 17-year-old new driver son. Also, my insurance agent offered the opinion that "insuring a 17-year-old for a Cobalt SS would have been through the roof." So the choice came down to: Cobalt SS for me and the 11-year-old Ford ZX2 for Zander, or a safer, more crashworthy car for both of us to share.

The Benz is a completely different driving experience, and one that is not at all unpleasant. It "wants" to be driven in a slightly brisk but essentially decorous and stately manner. You can feel the road nicely, but the suspension flows like oil. It's the very first car with an automatic transmission I've ever owned. I find driving automatics difficult and somewhat disconcerting—unnatural, really—and it's going to take some getting used to. But I'm sure I shall.

Its styling is lovely save for the slightly extroverted taillights, and the plethora of luxury features in its cockpit are delightfully over-the-top, with every luxury touch I could have dreamed up and then some. Lights everywhere, auto- and power-everything, dual climate zones, all for the earnest pampering and cossetting and cocooning of the lucky driver. I feel like quite the serious, privileged fellow proceeding magisterially down the boulevard. (As my friend Art wrote to me, "So, when did we grow up?")

I'm told it's "not as luxurious" as bigger Benzes or the serious models from the upscale Rising Sun marques, and that's an astonishing notion to me. It's by far the most luxurious car I've ever owned. Zander actually really likes it, too. If he gets "typed" for life to this style of car, he could certainly do worse.

I must add that the Mercedes people really have the sales experience down pat. Although you naturally have to disappoint all the salespeople you deal with during a car search except the last, I've met some nice folks all the way through my car-shopping journey—notably Adam Rolfson at Hall VW (whose website bringbackbrettfavre.com went viral in a way TOP has never approached), Chef Newhouse at Wilde Honda, and Mark Kelm at Boucher Chevrolet (really sorry I couldn't buy a car from you, Mark!)—but my experience at Mercedes of Elmbrook was noticeably a cut above. I met Levi Goines at the Milwaukee Auto Show, and he convinced me to come by the dealership even though I assured him repeatedly that there was no way I was ever going to buy a Mercedes anything. Shows how much I know. Levi fits my idea of the perfect car salesman: friendly, informative, helpful, and not pushy. If you're looking for a Mercedes in Southeastern Wisconsin or even from Chicago, please tell him I sent you.

My Old Faithful Ford is no more, bless her shining chrome heart. She's off to wholesale. A Pentax K-1000 of cars—built in November, 1998, in Mexico, and sold new to me in Chicago as a '99 model. It went a hundred thousand miles with nothing more serious than a loose tie rod—a cheap fix—providing fun, entertainment and staunch service all along the way. Great car. I'll miss it, and I'll think of it every time I hear Neil Young sing "Long May You Run*." The Benz actually has some formidable shoes to fill.

Mike

*Which was written about a car, despite its being pressed into service lately as an all-purpose musical-elder-statesman anthem.

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Featured Comment by Marc Lawrence: "Mister Johnston, that is no 'baby Benz,' good man. Meet our dear little fellow, known as 'Scruffy' (yeah, I name my cars, wanna fight about it? :) ):

He is both shopping trolley and dog-car. Okay, my requirements may have been just a tad different from yours, even putting aside that the 'baby' was not available to you. Nice choice, Mike (though I'd also have been empathetic with the Golf). So, what's his/her name? (I name my cameras too, and they're a crowd. It's only a problem amongst company.)"

Featured Comment by Grant Peterson: "Last July 12th at 1:00 a.m., a 23-year old kid—drunk, high, asleep at the wheel, or texting—veered off the road in front of our house, cut a ten-inch maple trunk clean in half, obliterated an iron post, and landed in our living room, all spun-around backwards. He must have been going 70 mph (as estimated by the cops), and by the time I got out of bed to see what was the matter, he'd taken off running down the street (later we found out he holed up in his girlfriend's house, about half a mile away).

"My p/s digital wasn't working, so I shot my Voigtlander Bessa L with 25/4 and a flash, aimed at the near pitch darkness, and got these photos. The car, a Mercedes, came through it remarkably well, and its driver, even better.

"Ultimately the guy was caught, he wrote a truly heroic letter of apology that may be the best letter of a apology ever written, and his dad's insurance paid for the house-fix, including eight five-inch cement-filled iron pipes that'll stop the next Mercedes that tries the same trick.

"I can't afford a Mercedes, but if I could, I sure would. Main thing: Good car choice!"

Judith Fox Still Does

Since the art critic Peter Schjeldahl has judged Henri Cartier-Bresson as being cold and without feeling—a charge I have to say I've never come across before, in years of reading about the photographer and his work—I thought I'd put in a cheer for a body of work that is undoubtedly suffused with feeling. In fact it might rank among the warmest, most affectionate, most quietly emotional picture books I've come across.

Sometimes, photography books aren't. On the surface, I Still Do: Loving and Living With Alzheimer's by Judith Fox might seem to be not a photography book, but a book about a disease, one of those specialty titles targeting a specific and defined demographic of people who are necessarily preoccupied, through no choice of their own, with a particular affliction or condition.

But it's not even that, really.

I noticed the book immediately on the "New Acquisitions" shelf at the local library because of its formally perfect and assured cover photo. (A painter would not do a better job of choosing that color palette.) And it is a photography book: Judith Fox is a committed photographer, and the foreword is a perceptive and helpful essay by Roy Flukinger, the distinguished Senior Curator of Photography and Film at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Attention from Roy Flukinger is a good sign that you're dealing with something beyond the ordinary, photographically speaking.

The book is simple. It's an extended portrait of Edmund Ackell with Alzheimer's, by his wife, who has become his caregiver. It's definitely a two-way portrait: the presence of the photographer wife is every bit as vivid and well-illuminated as the sufferer husband. And the pictures are a quiet triumph, it seems to me. They make a song with no note out of place, economical, quiet, but extraordinary. Definitely in a minor key. Sad. The story is one of trouble and decline, confusion and anguish, and the tragedy that in the end belongs to us all. But it's also suffused with acceptance, affection, and real devotion.

It's kind of odd, in a way. First the book struck me as something more specific than just a book of photographs that anyone could enjoy: something narrowed down, specialized, directed at Alzheimer's families specifically. But as I looked at it, it lost that quality, and broadened out again, far past being "just" a photography book, and became a book about the human condition. Because the subject of the book, when you get down to it, is the love between a couple. A young husband and wife in the prime of life and the flush of health could look through this together and be deeply moved, I think.

If you ever doubted that plain photographs could contain love, show a feeling so deep as that, take a leisurely look through this, and see.

Mike

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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

May 12, 2010

Mike,

I was enormously touched by—and pleased by—your review of my book I Still Do: Loving and Living with Alzheimer's. I intended the work to be multi-layered...about loving, partnering, humor, mortality, illness and hope as well as Alzheimer's...and you understand that. Thank you very much for the beautiful and thoughtful review, as well as for helping to spread the word about a horrific disease that impacts individuals, families and communities.

With great appreciation,

Judith Fox
www.judithfox.com

And You Thought Your 40D Was Complicated

This is the back panel of a Denon AVR-4810Ci receiver. And you thought digital cameras were complicated. I'm just sayin'.

Speaking of things that make noise, I'm just useless today. The neighbors across the street are having their house worked on. So tell me, why it is that everyone who works on the outside of a house in any capacity has to plunk a cheap boombox down in the yard, find the most toxic talk radio show on the airwaves, and crank the volume until the tiny amp reaches maximum distortion? Is there some sort of Union rule that says this has to be done? Then they start running power tools which must completely drown out the radio—for them. Why is it that painters, roofers, and all other workmen of similar ilk have never heard of iPods? We need to get the word to them, somehow: it isn't 1978 any more. There is new technology, technology with the potential to let them listen to their heart's content to whatever frothy-mouthed, Brontosaurus-brained Amerifascist demagogue they want to without inflicting an incoherent din on the entire block.

Noise pollution just drives me insane. I had several things to write today but I might as well give up—I'm just not going to be able to get anything done, that's all there is to that. </rant>

Mike

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Featured Comment by Bob Thomas: "Gaah, don't you know anything? That is the 'Non-Union' rule. You wouldn't find genuine union workers listening to that. The job boss would but an end to it immediately."

Featured Comment by Dennis Hoover: "Mike, I used to be a finish carpenter who did site work, so I'm familiar with what you are saying. When the (insert your tradesman here) would blast the Rush Limbaugh Show all over the job site we would put on our ear muffs to screen out the toxic noise. One of the finishers called them Rush Guards."

Featured Comment by David Miller: "Every now and then the construction-worker noise is, well, quite wonderful: Lo these 35 or so years ago, a worker repairing our fire escape in Ottawa, at the break of day, was singing...loudly...operatic arias! Needless to say, he was Italian. He had a great tenor voice. He can come and shingle my roof anytime."

Henri Cartier-Bresson at MoMA and Elsewhere

You're probably aware that there's a major retrospective exhibition of the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, until June 28th. A few ancillaries:

• There's a fine show review by the admirable Peter Schjeldahl of The New Yorker called "Picture Perfect" that you can read online. Crisp, short, rich as chocolate, and one of the few appraisals I've read in recent years that isn't hagiographic. Critic Schjeldahl takes a rather dim view of the master. Although that is in a sense a very traditional take—the old-fashioned stance of art critics was to be patronizing of photography whatever else they did—he makes some astute points and digs up a couple of wonderful quotes. The essay is one of those rare ones that's both an opposing view and, in its own way, right. Recommended read.

• The new show catalog by MoMA curator Peter Galassi, Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century,  is now available. (Here's the U.K. link—different cover in the U.K.) If you are to have only one H.C.-B. book, or if you are new to him, I still recommend the big monograph Henri Cartier-Bresson: Photographer, which we are very lucky to still have in print. If that's too steep for you, I very much enjoyed Clement Cheroux's chock-a-block little pocket-sized introduction, ten bucks and cheap at twice the price. Good stuff.

• Finally, although it brings up less than pleasant memories of his rather daffy interview of Henri himself (which I reviewed here), Charlie Rose has interviewed Martine Franck, Henri's widow and the co-founder of his Foundation, which provided most of the prints for the MoMA show. The interviewed aired last night, as far as I can tell. I can't make the Charlie Rose website work—none of the links function for me—but maybe you'll have better luck.

Mike
(Thanks to numerous readers)

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Featured Comment by Eric Rose: "Charlie Rose interview can be seen here."

Of Verbs and Trademarks

By Ctein

So, I've been wondering. How do companies go about effectively protecting their trademarks in the age of the Internet? This came up a couple of weeks ago when I was having dinner with an IP attorney friend. We wondered about what steps companies have to take to protect themselves these days.

Some background, for folks who aren't familiar with trademarks: Unlike patents or copyrights, there's nothing inherently creative in a trademark. It's merely something that uniquely identifies your business. It can be an ordinary word, a real name, something made up. All that matters is that it identifies you and not your direct competitors.

You can claim trademark protection only within your sphere of business. There's nothing to prevent me from starting McDonald's Photographic Studio, because that's not an area of business in which McDonald's the hamburger chain operates. Similarly, Apple Computers (now just Apple, Inc.) and Apple Corps Ltd., the holding company founded by the Beatles, manage to coexist. That relationship has proven a dicey one, because the boundaries between computers and entertainment continue to morph. About every dozen years, they have to renegotiate who owns what turf.

Trademarks can be images or "looks." If I open a hamburger stand named CteinBurger, done up in a red and yellow color scheme with a yellow arch in front of it, I will hear from The Clown's attorneys. That's called "trade dress" and McDonald's has it protected.

How do you protect a trademark? Simple; you register it! First come, first served; prior use and art don't particularly enter into it.

Seems straightforward, right? Well, there's a big catch. If your trademark becomes (or already is) a generic term instead of being a unique identifier for your enterprise, you lose your protection. Contrary to what a reader commented several weeks ago, this is not happening to Xerox, FedEx, or Band-Aid. They are solid trademarks and are in little danger of being lost. Those words have not become common synonyms for "copy," "ship," and "adhesive bandage," and are not likely to.

Trademark holders have to be diligent and actively stamp out misuse of their marks. Xerox's attorneys regularly sent out letters to magazines reminding them that Xerox was a trademarked term and the article that referred to "Xeroxing a document" should have said "copying a document." Xerox fought hard to preserve its trademark. Nowadays, there's little risk, because there are so many copier brands on the market that few people automatically think Xerox when they think "photocopy."

Verbing the noun is okay so long as it refers to what's been trademarked. There's no risk when people talk about "googling" or "photoshopping," so long as they mean that they are using Google or Photoshop. Should people start generally saying "I googled Ctein on Bing" or "I photoshopped that picture in iPhoto," Google and Adobe will have a problem on their hands.

So far as I know, trademark law doesn't care about good intentions. It's not enough that companies make the effort to get people to use their trademark terms correctly. They have to succeed in preventing genericization! Here's where my wondering starts. It seems to me that this is an increasingly difficult thing to accomplish. In the era of print publications, there were relatively few sources of potential misuse to track. That's no longer true. There are a gazillion different little online publications, most of them written by people who wouldn't know a trademark if it hit them over the head. The fourth estate is a lot harder to police these days.

What are companies doing about this? How are they policing the vox populi when those numbers are expanding exponentially? I'm sure we have some trademark experts and representatives from various companies reading this; I'd love to hear their comments on how they handle these issues and what their policies are.

Ctein

Ctein's regular weekly column appears on TOP every Thursday morning.

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Featured Comment by nick: "No discussion over trademark protection on the internet is complete without referencing Hormel and SPAM."

Giant Monkeys Endangering Redheads

They say you're not supposed to judge a book by its cover. I often do anyway. I subscribe to the regular email alerts from abebooks.com (ABE originally stood for Advanced Book Exchange—it's now been sucked up by the juggernaut that is Amazon, of which I am a tiny part) because I enjoy seeing the book covers. I think that's supposed to be an ape up there, but it looks the artist used a monkey hand puppet as a model. That just might be the best Poe cover ever, sez me. Nevermore!

As you know I've been car shopping lately, which feels like taking your brain out of its skull and leaving it out in a hailstorm. Shopping on the basis of appearance complicates a complicated matter even further. And yet I can't help myself. Some people don't care about how a car looks—my father didn't; he owned a Checker once, and another time sent his secretary out on her lunch break to buy a car for him (I believe his only instructions were that it had to be American and it had to have bench seats in front. She returned with a red AMC Gremlin, which was relatively quickly adopted by my youngest brother; my father was fond of saying my brother "drove the ass off it," a joke, as Gremlins looked like a normal American sedan with the trunk lopped off.)

There's another issue that seems to have raised its ugly head since I last went car shopping: many car companies seem to be trying to enforce a particular "look" across their entire line, mainly by making all the grilles match. So, for instance, not only does this Acura...

...have a snout that looks like it was drawn by...

...Dr. Seuss (do not buy this car in Grinch green!), but...they all look like that. Every single Acura has a close version of that same look. All very...orderly. Regimented, even. A bit Stepfordish. And, from a style standpoint, so very sad and wrong, for one reason. Acuras are very nice cars, and many people like the way they look. But just as surely some must not; and therein lies the problem. Because if all the cars in a manufacturer's line look exactly the same, and you happen not to like that look, then you are out of luck. You have no option. Love the little upturned smile, the Acura corporate look, or shop elsewhere. 

When I was pondering on this, what occurred to me was...Nikon. (Aha, you thought this was another off-topic post, didn't you? You thought this was another car post, because I have car-hail on the brain, didn't you? Well, it's not. Okay, it sort of is. But not entirely.) For years now, Nikon SLRs and DSLRs have had much the same style—and I wonder if it's not an expression of the same sort of corporate cultural conservatism that resulted in all Acuras looking like slightly morphed clones of each others. Oh, I know, I know, a lot of you will say so what, cameras are just tools, and it's good to have all the cameras have consistent controls and be familiar to the longtime user and yatta to the third power. Granted, granted. There's a good sound logical reason for the D700 to be a near-clone, style-wise, of the D3. But does a F5 really have to resemble an N80? Nobody ever bought both of those needing consistent controls. Do Nikons all have to look so much alike, one generation after another? The F2 didn't look like the F3, after all, which didn't look like the F4. 

Nikon F5 (film), D700, and D3. Okay, so the little red swoosh changed places.

I want a little variety once in a while. I would like a choice of styles, a choice of looks, without having to go to another manufacturer altogether. Damn me, I am just that superficial; I am just that hopelessly shallow. Call me trivial and trifling—I won't argue. But I'm just getting tired of the same old look.

Down with corporate conformity, I say, in cars and in cameras....

Mike

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Featured Comment by Hugh Crawford: "The Nikon lineup is the model of multifarious heterogeneity compared to Canon's collection of cameras consistently carved with convex curves confounding consumers craving corners."

Coming Up on TOP

Spanish women dressed in La Mantilla for Semana Santa. Photograph by Peter Turnley.

Turnley in Spain: It's exciting when we get to see a new photo essay by TOP's unofficial Foreign Correspondent, Peter Turnley. Peter's been in Seville teaching a workshop, and he's taken the opportunity to do a new essay. He created a new portfolio of work during Easter week at the ancient and fabled Semana Santa, one of the oldest and holiest public ceremonies in Christian Europe.

By concentrating more than usual on faces in the crowd, Peter has created a visual essay with a different feel than his reports from Haiti and the Brazilian Carnaval previously published here. He says, "Mankind, world-wide, is united by a series of life institutions that, in spite of difference of religion, geographical and ethnic origin, and age, connect people to Universal rituals and life pursuits. Photographers have long pursued an exploration of religious rites and events that connect people to various forms of spirituality." The intent, serious faces of the participants and spectators underscore the religious gravity of the traditional processions.

As part of the ongoing cooperation between Peter and TOP to explore new means of presenting extended photojournalism on the web, we will publish this beautiful new work in three parts next Monday morning, April 19th. Our goal is to present stories in greater depth, giving more authorial control to the photographer, than you would see in almost any printed magazine. As with Peter's other extended essays, a definite "do not miss."

-

Carl coats a sheet of rag paper with platinum/palladium solution.

Weese at Work: I'm pleased to announce that our next print sale will start at noon on Sunday, April 25th. The centerpiece of the offer will consist of 8x10-inch platinum/palladium contact prints by Carl Weese. There will be three choices—one from the "Drive-In Theaters" project featured recently in the New York Times' "Lens" blog, one a "rural ruin" Americana shot representative of much of Carl's large-format shooting, and one a pure nature shot.

And there's a further twist. Each picture will be offered in two versions: The platinum contact print, and the same negative scanned and printed digitally on Carl's new HP Z3200 printer. The purpose here is twofold: first, for educational interest, it will allow you to compare and contrast with your own eyes the aesthetic qualities of one of the oldest and noblest traditional B&W printing methods to that of a state-of-the-art inkjet print. And, as a bonus, it allows you to choose the same picture at two very different price points.

If you're not familiar with TOP print offers, what we do is collect the orders in advance during a short window (this sale will be open for five days), which allows the photographer to plan the printing in volume knowing the sales have already been made. That allows us to provide fine prints of the highest quality for far less than normal gallery prices. One thing I can virtually guarantee: you will not soon have the opportunity to acquire a handmade platinum print for less money.

Check back at noon on Sunday, April 25th, to see the pictures and find out all the details.

Mike

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Two Must-Download PDFs

From Square Trade...
...An interesting analysis of Camera Failure Rates. Among the highlights:

• On average, 10.7% of digital cameras fail within two years, and 15.6% are projected to fail within three years.
• Accidents account for slightly less than 40% of camera failures
• More expensive cameras tend to be more reliable than cheaper models.
• For point-and-shoot cameras under $300, Panasonic cameras had the lowest two year malfunction rates (5.3%), and Polaroid and Casio had the highest malfunction rates (11.9% and 13.0%).
• For DSLR Cameras, Nikon and Canon were equally reliable.

-

And from Carl Zeiss...
...Dr. Hubert Nasse's white paper on bokeh. (To download, go here and click on "Download PDF" under the big blue "35" in the upper-right-hand corner.) I haven't read it all yet—brain too small—but my good friend Oren, who reads even more complicated documents for a living, comments thusly: "Heavy going in places for many readers, but it will repay a close reading—on some of the subtler points, it's nicely complementary to Harold Merklinger's article. And more generally, it does a nice job of debunking folk wisdom on the topic. Free bonus: an explanation of onion-ring rendering in out-of-focus highlights! See page 32."

Mike
(Thanks to Oren Grad and Kevin Schoenmakers)

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Photoshop Disaster, Automotive Division

Pretty fancy driving, to have three cars doing burnouts so close together. Even fancier that the one in front appears to be doing it without a driver....

Mike
(Thanks to Jalopnik via Kevin Schoenmakers)

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Adobe Photoshop CS5: Worldwide Launch

By Vlatko Juric-Kokic

You've simply got to love the Internet. I watched the worldwide CS5 launch on the Adobe website. Yes, it was basically a 45-minute long advertisement for Creative Suite (I wonder whether the presenters were all instructed to wear black), but it did show what Adobe considers pertinent new features of the programs. Of course, Photoshop is what should interest photographers the most.

Yeah, the content-aware fill is in Photoshop. You can erase awkward things from your photos. And the warp puppet is in, so you can adjust the pose of your models in post-processing. It was interesting to note that they presented the features in the part of the presentation for "designers." Adobe has either intentionally closed their eyes to the implications for photography or they really didn't think about them.

Speaking about photographic features, there's better HDR creation with quite a nifty ghosting removal. You know, when stuff moves between one exposure and another. Now you can—apparently easily—remove ghosts of moving tree branches or something similar. They also added faux-HDR creation from a single exposure without the need to develop the photo twice, and they added some HDR presets.

They added a more elaborate noise removal and vignetting control in Adobe Camera Raw, as well as an ability to add grain to the photos directly in ACR. Inside Photoshop itself, Lens Correction filter gets a database of cameras and lenses, as well as an ability to upload your own lens profiles online for others to use. (The filter features both distortion and chromatic aberration corrections.)

Finally, mini-Bridge might prove to be the most welcome workflow addition. It seems you don't need to run Bridge and Photoshop concurrently anymore, because the mini-Bridge works as a panel inside Photoshop and you can see RAW photos without switching between the programs.

You can find out more at Adobe.

All in all, it looks like a worthy upgrade. I can't wait to get my hands on it.

Vlatko

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Featured Comment by Dave Polaschek: "One thing that hasn't gotten much play yet about content-aware-fill is that it is a great tool for removing dust, hair, water spots, etc. from scanned negatives / photos. Much quicker for me than the healing brush ever was, and cool enough that I bought a tablet to use with it.

"Disclaimer: I'm part of the Photoshop team. I didn't work on that feature, but have had some time to play with it, and am convinced that it's finally time to go back and re-scan all those old family photographs since I can actually get them cleaned up for printing this time around."

Car Quest #2

Forgive me for extending this off-road jaunt, but the previous post generated a lot of energy—this morning it broke the all-time record for comments to a single TOP post. The previous record was 217.

Several readers have noted that people seem to be more interested in cars than in cameras, but, in fairness, we talk about cameras a lot more often. I'm sure this site has received many thousands of comments about what camera to buy.

I have to say I wrote that car post for purely selfish reasons. I really did want peoples' advice. And I've read every single comment, even if no one else has.

The comment that has changed my thinking came from my good friend Steve Rosenblum, a cardiologist and fly-fishing maven from Ann Arbor, Michigan (he has a condo on a river in Colorado, where the trout run). His comment, in part:

I hate to say this, but the odds are overwhelming that your new driver son will get into an accident during his first year or so of driving, even if he is a careful kid. Both of my sons got into serious potentially life-threatening accidents while still in high school, and neither one was a wild driver. Teenagers just don't have very good judgement and they certainly don't have any experience. You combine those things and they get into accidents at an alarming rate. Given that, you need to get a car that is big enough and safe enough to allow them to walk away unscathed when the inevitable accident happens. So , IMHO, I think that you need to give the teenaged driver part of this equation priority over your own desires here [emphasis mine —MJ]. ...Hyper-reliable, relatively large, multi-air bag and ABS equipped cars...are likely to get Z out his teens alive until he gets the experience he needs and his frontal lobes finally mature.

Steve is right. I'd been approaching this problem purely from the perspective of trying to find the most driving enjoyment for myself from among the relatively few cars that I can comfortably afford, while satisfying our practical needs at the same time. Not an easy task, since I'm both cheap and also picky.

In fact, I'd been thinking of buying a new car for myself and giving the old ZX2 to Zander, my just-17-year-old son—who, by the way, is uninterested in cars and hasn't bothered to get his license yet. (He has a chauffeur.)

That might not be the right idea at all. The best approach might be to consider this problem with my responsibilities as a parent foremost in mind. What's best for Zander to learn to drive in? The old ZX2 has no traction control, no ABS brakes, is relatively light and flimsy, and has only front air bags. And it's actually pretty fast—only 150 HP (probably down a few since it was new), but it's light.

Definitely not the safest car for a green teen.

I might need to go back to Square One, as the saying goes, and start over. The fact is, I can wait five years to get a sporty car that's fun to drive. That presumes I'll still be around then; but, on the plus side, it gives me longer to save, so I can get a better car when I finally do get something just for myself.

Anyway, thanks for all the good comments. I honestly did appreciate all the advice. I'll keep you posted.

Mike

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Open Mike*: Buying a @#$!@% Car

Okay, completely hypothetical question for you, detached completely from any real situation: Let's say you have to buy a new car, because your old one is older than the latest batch of 'tween stars** and a new set of struts would cost approximately twice what the car is worth, and your son is about to get his driver's license and you're pretty sure the old buggy would not hold up under the added strain. And let's say you knew this day was coming, and you'd been saving up a down payment for an embarrassingly long time, and reading a lot of car magazines. And you went down to the Auto Show when it hit Milwaukee (say you live near Milwaukee) to see just which cars you could actually shoehorn your fat ass into and out of without cracking bones in either your spine or your knees or risking making a ludicrous spectacle of yourself at a high curb.

So you're ready to go. But, being a good shopper but rather astonishingly poor at making actual decisions, you're kind of going around and around.

So let's say it's basically come down to two choices. On the one hand, there's the Volkswagen GTI, which is what you really want, because it's a hot little car but not ridiculously hot, and not ostentatious, which (if it was) wouldn't suit the rest of your lifestyle, since, let's say, the rest of your lifestyle is kinda frumpy and downmarket. And it's tallish so it's easy to get into and out of. And there are a bazillion aftermarket parts available, which includes multiple choices for back seat covers, so you could keep Lulu's claws off the upholstery.

But on the other hand there's the Hyundai Sonata, which comes with a stick shift, and has a decently spirited engine. This makes it unlike the frigging Mazda 6 and Honda Accord and Ford Fusion, all of which are built to accommodate six-cylinder engines but only come with a manual transmission on the four-cylinder versions, and, although there is a certain symmetry to one's personage in a car that is too overweight for its powerplant, the effect of all these cars is a certain anemia. So anyway the Hyundai weighs just that little bit less and has just those few extra horsepower that it seems adequate as opposed to anemic.

2011 Sonata, with exaggerated Californian styling.

In fact the Hyundai is the hard-boiled practical choice in just about every way. It has a longer warranty. XM radio is not an extra (we're saying you listen to jazz, in a market where the last commercial jazz station bit the dust two years ago). And it is a whopping six grand cheaper, which all by itself is an awful lot of money to your hypothetical self. In fact you're kind of balking at the fact that the only GTI at the local dealer has fancy wheels you don't even like that tack an additional $750 on to the price of the car. You're just enough of a skinflint that it bothers you to spend $750 on something you don't really want. Oh, okay, easily enough of a skinflint.

But the GTI is just so sweet. Rides like butter, sweet shifter, nice torquey engine (I probably forgot to mention you tend to prefer good torque to high-revving fours like the one in the Civic Si, since it makes ordinary driving in traffic more entertaining). You don't care for the dopey plaid seats or the red stitching on the steering wheel, but in terms of mechanicals it's basically exactly what you want—and you're essentially the type of person who only cares about mechanicals. (Although the incredibly crappy interior of the Chevy Cobalt SS outweighs its wonderfully capable drivetrain. Even you have your limits.)

Biff and Ashlee pose next to a 4-door GTI. Note dopey wheels.

And did I mention that you're 53 years old but have only bought three cars in your entire lifetime? That Bill Clinton was President when you bought your last one? So that whatever you buy, it's likely to be with you for a very long time, and, when you think about it, spending twenty grand and still not getting what you really want seems like a false economy, in a way?

Finally, say that of the only two real "car guys" you know (hello Art, hello Paul), one loves Volkswagens with a passion, and the other hates Volkswagens with a passion, making objective judgments a bit hard to come by locally.

So anyway, what would you do, in this purely hypothetical situation? The practical choice, or the indulgent option?

Just curious.

And as for me, it's back to car reviews, as I sink ever deeper into the tarpit of shopping paralysis.

Mike

*A week or so ago, a reader took me to task for not writing about photography enough. Which, of course, made me want to write a whole week's worth of off-topic posts. I resisted that temptation; regular readers will recall, however, that on some Sundays I write off-topic posts under the heading "Open Mike."

**Apropos 'tween stars, I have to note, if you happened to see "Saturday Night Live" last night, that being just tall enough to look Tina Fey right in the boobs is an enticing thought even for an middle-aged guy. Maybe especially for a middle-aged guy.

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ADDENDUM: I got a not-quite-appropriate comment I didn't post from a reader who is unemployed (which I highly sympathize with—as I've said before, been there, done that, and I realize it can range from an inconvenience to a very serious personal and family crisis). He suggested I should invest in the "local" (i.e., U.S.) economy. The Volkswagen GTI is built in Wolfsburg, Germany, but the 2011 Hyundai Sonata is built in Montgomery, Alabama—where Hyundai employs some 2,700 people. Only the transmission is made in South Korea.

Of the other cars I've looked at, the ones from the solidly all-American nameplate, Ford, namely the Fusion/Milan twins, are built in Mexico—as was my current Ford, a 1998 Escort ZX2.

The Subaru I test-drove is built in Indiana (I pass the plant when I drive to Indianapolis to visit relatives), the Honda Accord in Ohio, and the Mazda 6 in Michigan.

I'm mainly interested in cars with manual transmissions, just because that's what I'm accustomed to and enjoy, so that's been my first exclusion criterion for cars to look at. Manual transmissions are very scarce here in the Midwest, where they are very unpopular—my Ford dealer checked, and there is not a single manual-transmission Mercury Milan for sale in the entire state of Wisconsin. Hyundai expects to sell only 2% of its 2011 Sonatas with stick shifts. (Presumably this will affect resale value, too. On the other hand, it's a theft deterrent.) Anyway one of the upcoming "American" cars that is expected to be available with a stick is the 2011 Buick Regal. The first ones sold here will be built in Russelsheim, Germany (the car is sold as an Opel in Europe and as a Vauxhall in the U.K.), with production transitioning to Oshawa, Canada in calendar 2011. The same car will be built in China for the Chinese market.

So is it more patriotic to buy a Mexican Ford or a Hyundai made in Alabama? I can't answer that. The point is simply that things are not always what they seem when it comes to "buying local." —MJ

No Fun at All

Apropos the discussion of printer problems, Dilbert this morning seems pretty topical. Funny how often Dilbert can seem to reflect whatever you've already been thinking about, like a properly written horoscope.

Here at TOP, we just passed our 50,000th published reader comment since we moved to TypePad in June of 2007. I noticed this just after the magic number passed by, and I thought, just for fun, I'd count back and see what the actual 50,000th comment was, and maybe cobble together some sort of tongue-in-cheek prize. So I counted back, and...I was the 50,000th commenter. No fun at all. However, now that I know that, I can retroactively announce that the prize for the 50,000th comment is a new car.

And, in other news, if you put a dozen monkeys in a room with typewriters, sooner or later they'd write a Shakespeare play, but if you let me play golf for a billion years I'd never go eagle-eagle-birdie. I'm just sayin'.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Dennis Allshouse: "Okay, I'm being a spoil-sport. The monkey/typewriter story is a total myth. The probability of getting Hamlet is roughly 10^(–164345) i.e. 10 raised to the negative power shown. The probability of getting Hamlet in the lifetime of the current universe is 10^(–164316). Reference: Thermal Physics by Charles Kittel and Herbert Kroemer, p. 57. I'm not sure how to calculate the probability of the golf event described."

Mike replies: Dennis, I believe you about the first. The probability of the golf event as described is 100%, believe me.

The Trouble with Recommendations

Ezra Dyer recently wrote a funny piece for Automobile magazine (which unfortunately I haven't been able to find online) about the perils of recommending things. He notes that when he unloads on some piece-of-crap car, it's inevitable that whoever he's talking to will own one and love it. And when he recommends something specific, his in-laws will buy one and proceed to have endless problems with it. He concludes that the only safe thing to do is to recommend the Ferrari 599 in all circumstances. As in, "What would you recommend, Mr. Dyer, an Accord, or a Camry?" "I'd definitely go with the Ferrari 599."

Which brings me to the late, not-so-great HP B9180.

Which I recommended a few years ago.

I got not one of them, but two, from my contact at HP. The first one they sent me, packaged as new, turned out to be a repack, which left HP with a touch of egg on its face. I had a lot of trouble getting HP to take it back; they basically didn't want it to be returned, but no one at HP was willing to say straight out that I could keep it, either. Somewhat amusingly, the various people I spoke to about it at HP kept referring to "what HP wants" and "what HP usually does" and so forth, as if there were some sort of all-powerful Wizard-of-Oz corporate Will running things. They kept suggesting I could "talk to HP" without seeming to realize that I was talking to HP, because they worked for HP and I was talking to them. I don't keep review items in any case (although sometimes I'm shamefully lax about getting them back), so I donated the first printer to a local college, and managed to pay HP some paltry sum for the second one.

"Should I buy an Epson or a Canon?"

Some time back, I decided it would be better for my blood pressure if I just disconnected the second B9180, and let it go sit on the floor in the corner of the living room. It had already paid for itself many times over, which is the only reason I'm in no danger of blowing a gasket over it. It was, shall we say, frustrating. Not always. Just most of the time.

It made very nice prints when it was working right.

It appears the experience was somewhat frustrating for HP, too, as the company has recently recently discontinued its mid-line pigment-ink pro-am printers—the B9150 and its stripped-down brother the B8850—and doesn't appear to be gearing up to put any replacements in play. Retiring from the field, in that segment of the printer market?

My contact at HP, too, has "left the company."

And may I just say, I really have no idea why people keep repeating the old platitude that to print digital, "all you have to do is press a button." What? Have those people never printed digital? That's nothing close to my experience. Printing digital badly might be easy. Printing digital really well is hard. It requires attentiveness, knowledge, investment, preparation, and a certain thoroughness of mind.

So what printer would I recommend to the serious photographer nowadays? That's easy. I suggest you go with the Ferrari 599.

Mike

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The Picture on the iPad

Photo by Richard Misrach

Richard Misrach is a photographer I've been aware of literally since art school. He's been working for many years and has created an extensive body of work, mainly of western (U.S.) landscapes. His first-ever commercially licensed photo, "Pyramid Lake (at Night)," from 2004, above, used to be his own personal screensaver—and now it's the official background photo for the iPad. It was taken by the light of the moon on an Indian reservation in Nevada.

Misrach had been in negotiations with Apple, but the rollout came as a surprise. "'I was in bed watching Inglorious Bastards [sic] when I got a call from Jeffrey Fraenkel, my dealer in San Francisco, and he said, "Do you know what's going on live here?"' Misrach told ARTINFO. 'I was totally shocked. Naturally my other galleries started calling and my family was all atwitter....'"

Nice work if you can get it! ARTINFO has the happy story.

And speaking of the iPad, I wonder if the device might become the default portfolio presentation device for photographers. Seems well suited. I've read all sort of accounts of inventive portfolio implementations over the years—including one photographer who used a service that made placemats! As in, for the dining room table. After discovering that conventional laminations scuffed and aged too easily under rough handling by clients, he found that the "placemats" wore like iron and were impervious to scratches and hazing, so a box of his photos so treated became his working portfolio. Another photographer had all his work reproduced as 8x10 transparencies which he mounted with black mat board surrounds. He would visit Art Directors and other potential clients with a portable light box in a briefcase. Showing his work wouldn't have been a casual experience, but must have made a memorable effect. This was innovative when I heard about it in the '80s, but I think it became a common enough method of presentation in subsequent years—the photographer I remember had custom-made his own lightbox-briefcase, but I vaguely remember a commercial version for sale at one point.

The iPad seems tailor-made for portfolio presentations to potential clients. Not sure it would work as a drop-off, though.

Mike
(Thanks to many tipsters)

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Featured (partial) Comment by Eric: "Short answer for me is yes. Photos are just beautiful on this thing (my company is developing software for them so we have a few around here). They really pop. I'll still make prints, but just due to the sheer ease of portfolio maintenance the iPad is the way to go. The black Apple iPad case just seals the deal for me. Once you put the iPad in that it's as nice as a portfolio as I've ever used."

Featured Comment by JackM: "I have used a laptop for a portfolio presentation and hated the keyboard. The iPad is superior. Apple is already talking about a smaller iPad; I already want one bigger. But that is in part because I like placemat-sized portfolios. As much as I like the iPad for stills, it is even better for video. Prints in a portfolio have always been possible, but video in a portfolio required a screen. Now we have one. By the way, your blog looks much better on the iPad than on the iPhone."

Featured Comment by Marc Rochkind: "When I first started up my iPad, I thought those star trails were scratches. A few others have commented on this as well. Regarding the iPad for showing photos: It's easy to move photos from, say, Lightroom to the iPad, in case anyone is wondering. No need to go through iPhoto or anything like that. (You sync with iTunes, but you don't load the photos into iTunes. Once you set up the drop folder, the rest is automated.) There's no information I know of about color management on the iPad. I assume sRGB is what you use for a profile. Someone asked here yesterday, I think, about calibration. No way to do that at this point, and probably will not be a way unless 1) Apple has supplied suitable application-program interfaces (APIs) and 2) special hardware is made that interfaces to the iPad's connector. I think both are unlikely."

Featured Comment by Ailsa: "Interesting that Misrach thinks the decision to use his image may have been made at the last moment. The same thing happened to Ian Cameron, a photographer I know who's based in the north of Scotland. A few years ago he was up working very late one night, when his phone rang. It turned out to be someone from Apple HQ, asking for permission to use one of his images as wallpaper for the iPhone—which was being launched the next day. I get the impression Ian was pretty much able to name his price. He never told me how much he was paid for it, but I believe it was a pretty tidy sum. Here's Ian's website."