The Online Photographer

Dodging the NEX Bullet

(Sorry, the title of this post might not be very appropriate, in light of the previous one. Nothing beyond the figurative expression intended.)

I love cameras, and for the most part I love using them—I even dream about using them, sometimes. And after struggling for years to commit to just one, I've given that up and now own a number of cameras. (I really do need to put a few of the less-exercised ones up on Ebay.)

Seldom, however, do cameras "grab me" like the NEX-7 did the other day. I just took to it instantly. Loved the way it felt in the hand and up to my eye, loved its apparent responsiveness and focus speed and control layout. It was a case of "want at first sight."

I figured this immediate and visceral camera-lust was my punishment for carefully reaffirming, just the other day, my commitment to Micro 4/3 and its lens system. Because when does a grass-is-greener option grab you more forcefully than when you've just come out publicly in favor of something else?

I even considered selling on my nearly-new OM-D to Ctein, who's been circling around one of those, and diving into a NEX-7 with both feet. True, it has few lenses, but it does have the one I need—a 35mm prime equivalent. It's even a Zeiss, my longtime favorite lens marque, and it's expensive—and I once notoriously declaimed the motto "You can never spend too much on your lenses." All good.

Or almost all. A commenter, Bill Mitchell, brought me thudding down to Earth again. He wrote simply: "No IS?"

Rats. No, no IS. I had just assumed it was in there. It's a Sony, after all. Sony, which early on accepted from Minolta the IBIS paradigm, went the other way in its mirrorless offerings. The E-mount lenses have their IS (Sony calls it "OSS," for "optical steady shot") in the lenses, not in the body.

And despite costing more than a thousand dollars, the Carl Zeiss Sonnar T* E 24mm ƒ/1.8 ZA doesn't have OSS. Double rats.

I had hoped that with video getting more and more prevalent, wide-angle lenses would increasingly have IS even though the conventional wisdom is that the wider the lens, the less IS is needed for still shots.

I've never been conventional, which is probably why the conventional wisdom doesn't seem to apply to me very often. Didn't Yogi Berra say something like "Ninety percent of baseball is half mental?" Well, I think 90% of handholding cameras is half mental. Image stabilization is partly a psychological feature...in my case. I'm convinced that when I shoot slow shutter speeds, I suffer from a version of what golfers call "the yips." That is, the act of trying too hard to hold the camera steady makes me jerky and trembly. Just by virtue of the fact that it's there, IS makes me relax, and I don't get the yips. I would probably hold a camera steadier at slow shutter speeds if I just thought it had IS.

But I need it. No; want it. So...no immediate gratification, no fence-jumping, no intemperate system-switching, no personal overindulgence, no abandonment of Micro 4/3 for now.

I still lust after a NEX-7, though.

Mike

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Will: "Not just IBIS is in play here, but the game changing '5-axis' stabilization of the OM-D, which in my experience is the absolute best IS anyone has come up with thus far. It is not a panacea for every situation, but when you need it, it makes one hell of a difference. As for 16 versus 24 MP, yawn. I have enough poster-sized prints with 12 MP and no complaints from any of my clients yet. Finally, yes, I also would like a 17.5mm ƒ/1.4 or ƒ/1.8 for Micro 4/3. Anybody want to bet something like this is not in the works at Oly or Panasonic? OM-D for me. Better system."

Featured Comment by kirk tuck: "To all the 50mm-equivalent lovers like me: Sony is introducing a 35mm ƒ/1.8 Nex lens next month. Now we're talking."

Featured Comment by Mike [not yr. hmbl. host —Ed.]: "I had an NEX-7, and sold it in favor of OM-D. The Olympus has faster and more reliable focusing. The facial recognition focusing is much more accurate and customizable then on the Sony—you can specify which eye to focus on—left/right/nearest. I marvel at how accurate it is,—a perfect thing for photographing portraits. Facial recognition focusing in combination with a touch screen allows to quickly switch between the two modes. Oly also has more accurate reproduction of skin tones. And a good prime lens in Micro 4/3 mount does not cost an arm and a leg. Sony has a very convenient in-camera HDR mode, and the form factor is just about perfect, but I still think that focusing speed of the OM-D is preferable."

Featured Comment by Richard Parkin: If it is sometimes puzzling why cameras are designed the way they they are, it may be worth reading the description of the process [PDF link] at Sony for the RX100:

Kureishi (Product Planning):
At the beginning of the project we made a mock-up of the product brochure to clearly define what features and value we wanted to provide.

"Sony will not be alone in designing the product brochure first."

Too Close to Home

The red dot on the left is TOP World Headquarters. The dot on the right is the scene of this morning's Sikh Temple shooting.

Between 1880 and the beginning of the First World War, there existed a fashion for assassination in Europe, in the name of anarchism, nihilism, and propagande par le fait. That carnage pales compared to the number of French aristocrats who died in murders committed by duel during the reigns of Henry IV and Louis XIII, in the name of "honor," a practice once so widespread that its decline could hardly be conceived. We appear to be in the grip of another such murderous fashion in my own once enlightened country; we can only pray that this senseless fad will pass quickly.

Mike

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Ian Goodrick: "I live within site of the one of the largest Sikh Gurdwara outside India in a town in the U.K. that has had a Sikh community since the early 1960s, and I can say that the Sikh community is most welcoming to visitors.

"A couple of weeks ago when the Olympic torch was being transported across the U.K. it was taken to the Gurdwara as part of the celebrations prior to the opening ceremony. I went there to see the torch relay as I knew I could get some nice pictures.

"When we got there everyone we spoke to, invited us to come in to the Gurdwara and have a look around and as we had not seen the interior since it was finished we were happy to visit. We were 'adopted' by a young boy who my wife had taught at a local school who proudly gave us a tour of the interior. We were also invited to eat in the Langar hall and again we were welcomed and sat and eat with about 300 other people, sitting cross legged on the floor of the Langar.

"I know my experience is not out of the ordinary as several of my work colleagues are Sikh. They are all religious, but that part of their lives is always separate and private and never impinges on work and we are all given treats of sweets and food at the time of Sikh festivals.

"Knowing this just makes the shooting near you all the more shocking and tragic."

[Ian has some pictures of the Sikh Gurdwara ("Gate to the Guru," the place of worship for Sikhs) near Gravesend at his website. —Ed.]

Featured Comment by Mark Sampson: "Anytime something like this happens it's too close to home."

Mike replies: Just so, Mark. Randomly occurring violence should be equally alarming wherever it occurs, not just when it's rearby. The alaming thing about it is that it can happen anywhere, not where it actually has happened. Still, it's human nature to be more threatened by nearer events, and by associations in our thoughts...for instance, I'll bet a lot more people have felt a little more uncomfortable in movie theaters since the Colorado shooting, even though that's not strictly logical.

Open Mike: Our German Connection

Most Americans aren't "from here." We "come from" somewhere. My own heritage is mostly English and Scottish—both of my parents' families come from Indianapolis, Indiana, a center of the Scottish diaspora in America.

Wisconsin, where my father relocated our family when I was seven, absorbed immigrants of many nationalities—Czech, Polish, Swiss. They're all outnumbered, however, by the Germans. In the same year Wisconsin became a state, 1848, many Germans were forced into exile by the collapse of the Revolutions of 1848, and many—mostly from Mecklenburg, Pomerania, and Brandenburg—came to Wisconsin. Here, those reformists and former revolutionaries created the basis for Wisconsin's progressive political traditions.

In the second half of the 19th century, more than a million Germans immigrated to America. Milwaukee, then and now Wisconsin's largest city, was deliberately transformed into a center of Germanic culture. It became known as Deutsch-Athen, or "the German Athens." In 1900, fully one in three Wisconsin residents was either German-born or had at least one parent who was. German was the primary language of the Milwaukee public schools until 1922—all the way through the First World War.

According to local historian John Gurda, there were two heavy body-blows to Germanic culture in Milwaukee in particular and Wisconsin in general in the early 20th century. The first, of course, was the First World War, when suddenly German descent was something Americans wanted to be very quiet about. Much of Milwaukee's German pride was de-emphasized in those years. The second was Prohibition—Milwaukee's German culture had revolved about beer-brewing and beer-imbibing, and although many of Milwaukee's famous beers—Blatz, Schlitz, Gettelman, Pabst, and Miller—survived, Prohibition interrupted many Germanic traditions locally. Today, all but one of the great beers are gone. Miller, the sole survivor, is still brewed here, but the company is owned by the British.

Wisconsin's German heritage isn't so evident now on the surface of things. Our most important immigrant group is now Mexicans. We are still the sister-city of Schwerin, the capital and second-largest city of the northern German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, where many of our German families originally came from, but relatively few residents of the city know that. Still, many of the city's most prominent families have German surnames. And although "Smith" is said to be the most common surname in America, here in Wisconsin they're far outnumbered by "Schmitts" and "Schmidts."

Mike

"Open Mike" is a series of off-topic posts by Yr. Hmbl. Ed. that appears only, but not always, on Sundays.

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Aubrey Silvertooth: "There are still a bunch us here in Texas. Many did change the name from Schmidt to Smith during World War I. That almost caused a divorce between my German great-grandfather and my English great-grandmother. The discord lasted until 1972, when he passed away. She almost had a coronary when she saw the headstone at the cemetary said Schmidt instead of Smith. There are a slew of Czechs down here as well. Come visit one day!"

Featured Comment by Paris: "It is odd to think about the inter-European prejudices that used to be common here. My wife's best friend from high school was warned, seriously, not to marry her German surnamed boyfriend because 'Germans all beat their wives.' It's been 30 years and so far so good, but we're keeping an eye on him. My father, whose surname was not obviously Italian, went away to college in the 1930s, when 'wop' and 'guinea' jokes were common. He never told anyone about his nationality, and never brought a college friend home to meet his immigrant parents."

Featured Comment by Carl Blesch: "I have to weigh in here as a Milwaukee native of German heritage. I was told that my grandmother's brother, a university professor in the early 20th century, had to stop teaching German during WWI, and to keep his job, learned Spanish and started teaching it. One of my early ancestors, upon emigrating from Germany, opened a brewery in Green Bay. I saw a photo of it in that city's Neville Public Museum. During my 1950s–60s childhood in suburban Milwaukee, I took gymnastic lessons at the Milwaukee Turners, a club descended from the German 'Turnverein' tradition. And I remember attending the annual folk festival at the Milwaukee auditorium, which of course was dominated by Milwaukee's two predominant ethnic groups, the Germans and Poles."

I Get to See a NEX-7

My friend Kevin Kallenbach at Mike Crivello's Camera in Brookfield (the Milwaukee suburb next to the older small town where I live) bought himself a NEX-7, and showed me the store's stock unit yesterday.

I had an extremely positive first impression. Granted, this is only from handling it in a camera store—and, also granted, I might have been influenced by the steady stream of admiring and positive comments from Kevin, standing next to me talking quietly about his own experiences as I looked the camera over.

Sony's tiny ninja. Online photographs tend to monumentalize small cameras. My in-the-hand impression was "small—but not too small."

Surprisingly, the ergonomics are outstanding. The camera is right-sized, with a very confident and comfortable right-hand grip and excellent overall lightness. The EVF is wonderfully well placed, too, and feels as natural as can be when the camera is raised to your right eye. Like the OM-D, the NEX-7 allows you to easily flip up the viewing screen for "waist-level" use, something I personally really like. 

The lens seems outsized relative to the body, but only visually. In terms of balance and weight—and handling—my sense was that this was just fine, likely to be a non-issue with the sub-10 oz. normal lenses (a description which includes the normal zoom).

The overall impression I got from dry-firing the camera was of razor-sharp responsiveness. The shutter has a great feel and the AF seems extremely quick as well. (Kevin says his NEX-7 might have have the best AF of any digital camera he's owned.)

Too bad the NEX-7 doesn't have good image quality. Or wait...it does.

From what I hear, anyway. Wonder how its highlight rendition stacks up against the OM-D's? Kevin and I might have to get together for a little shootout.

Hopefully I can convince Kevin to write up some of his impressions for us. Crivello's is an old-line camera store—there are no mere "clerks." The level of photographic knowledge behind the counter is impressive.

And hey, the store even has its own jingle (bottom right at the topmost link). Beat that!

Mike

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Random Excellence: Colin Steel

I've always heard you shouldn't sit near a mirror while playing cards, but it does make for a more informative picture.

If the style of this shot looks vaguely familiar, maybe it should—Colin just got back from a Peter Turnley workshop in Istanbul. (Disclaimer: Peter's a friend, and an advertiser.) Colin wrote a short account describing the experience. His thoughts about eye contact were interesting. And he rather bravely put up some examples of his failures in the post.

Sounds to me like he liked Istanbul much more than he expected to.

Mike

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Proper Handling of Memory Cards for the Digital Photographer

By Lamberto Go

SA*

Tip #1. Download, email, post-process and/or print your images promptly. If you wait weeks or months, the colors could fade, saturation could suffer and color balance could shift. Or worse, image files could become corrupt or you could misplace your card.

Tip #2. When you're not going to use a memory card for a long time, it's a good idea to securely wrap it (make sure it's airtight) and store it in the freezer. Doing this helps preserve the card's ability to retain data so that your images remain crisp and sharp. To thaw the card, take it out of the freezer and place in the refrigerator for 24 hours. Then take it out of the fridge and place it away from direct heat and sunlight, until it reaches room temperature. Do not unwrap until it is fully thawed. That bit of moisture could affect the card's ability to hold the images. Do not microwave.

Tip #3. Try not to swap memory cards in direct sunlight. But if you must, at least shade it with your body. Never, ever swap cards in direct sunlight. It could melt some of those metal contacts. Store the filled-up card properly, and make sure the memory card compartment on your camera is shut tight after replacing the card. We don't want any stray light ruining our images now, do we? And what to do with the filled-up memory cards? Why, see Tip #1 above, of course.

Tip #4. Handle memory cards only by the edges. Avoid getting fingerprints on your card—they will show up in your images, leading to countless hours of Photoshopping. (Well, the upside is, at least you'll become a master of Photoshop.)

Tip #5. When traveling through airports, carry the cards with you. Don't pack them in checked luggage, where they could be subjected to strong X-rays, not to mention pilferage. Strong X-rays could fog not only images already on the card, but also those still to be taken. Fogging can be particularly severe if you shoot at high ISOs.

Follow these tips, and you'll be on your way to enjoying problem-free photography, at least where memory cards are concerned. Happy shooting!

Lamberto

*Satire alert.

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

It's Not Two Dogs in a Boat

William Wegman has the strangest career in all of art photography, maybe in the history of art photography. He takes pictures of trained dogs in costumes and in odd poses. For some odd inexplicable reason, he got started off being thought of not as cutesy and kitschy, but conceptual and deep. Serious museum curators and critics make dutiful noises over him; to me he's the king of the naked kings. We all have artists who just don't grab us, I guess.

Or maybe I just didn't get enough sleep last night.

Anyway, this photograph to me sums up everything about art photography that makes me tired. It was taken with the Polaroid 20x24, with huge lights set up on the shore. The technical challenges must have been formidable; the difficulty of getting the dogs and the sails in position simultaneously must have been beyond maddening. But after all that hard work and special sauce, it ends up as a simple snapshot with no photographic grace that I can discern. Even as a gag it's so worn I can't muster a smile. (The serious critics always talk about Wegman's "humor." I picture them in sensible shoes and bow ties, tittering mirthlessly.)

I would just never have the energy for this sort of thing. Just the idea of it makes me feel tired, sitting here in my comfy chair. A lot of "conceptual"-style art photography strikes me that way: long way to go for precious little. From now on, I think, this shot will stand for that feeling for me, a symbol of it. (To be a successful photographer of any sort, the Number One thing you need is lots of energy.)

At least now the picture has meaning for me...maybe I should buy a print.

Mike

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Peeve: "I never understood the appeal of that One-Trick Weimaraner Wegman either."

Featured Comment by Paul Van: "Perhaps it's just the fact that I discovered William Wegman without being aware of him as an art photographer—but his work has often made me smile (at least in small doses). Even after learning more about him, I persist in seeing his pictures as a form of 'a boy and his dog.' The dog lover in me rejoices. ;-) "

Featured [partial] Comment by robert e: "Well, Mike, your post (and the photo you linked to) actually forced me to think about why I can't, much as I wish I could, just dismiss Wegman as a lightweight joker.

"While his work isn't to my taste, Wegman strikes me as conscious and conscientious, not only in terms of craft, which he has clearly mastered, and the (in)famous content, but also about the aesthetic and social aspects of art photography. I suspect he has his tongue firmly in cheek, and laughs during his frequent trips to the bank.

"If he were shooting people with the same mastery and ambition he applies to dogs, we'd be celebrating Wegman as a portraitist (and he'd be making less $$ perhaps), but that mastery and effort I think is a crucial part of the gag--a deeper gag than just dressing and posing dogs. They're stupid, yes, but some of the portraits are just so...stunning. Stupid and stunningly good.

"And some of his images provoke me to think—at length—about photographs and art and portraiture and aesthetics and iconography. Not because they're bad, but because they're so good—technically, formally, aesthetically, conceptually (and I'm not talking about the dogs)—which makes it all the more absurd, which in turn is a large part of the point (for me). Mere kitsch doesn't do that.

"So yes, his work is cutesy and kitschy, and conceptual and at least somewhat deep (the best of it, anyway)."

Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam....

Just in case you might be curious, TOP got more than a thousand spam comments today. That must be a record for one 24-hour period.

Give thanks for spam filters, because without them this enterprise (a probably a lot of others too) would be sunk.

Mike

UPDATE: The above is just a very rough, seat-of-the-pants estimate. I started a hard count at midnight last night, just out of curiosity. I'll update you at midnight tonight. So far, at 2:06 p.m., there are 553 spam comments in the spam folder.

I used to sift through all of them just in case a "real" comment had somehow gotten routed to the spam folder by mistake, which happens occasionally, but it's just too much work now. But just so you know, comments that include lots of links or that are overly long sometimes get grabbed by the spam filter. There must be algorithms that determine the specific limits for these (i.e., number of links relative to words of text), but I don't know what they are.

This has been a really tough week for blogging. I just have too much to do. Right now, we sorely need a new post on TOP, but I have to go get the car inspected. Have to.  No choice. I'm sorry, and I'll try to make it up to you next week....

UPDATE #2: There were 923 spam comments from midnight to midnight on August 2nd. Aaand...

...Zap!

Ctein Does Not Have 1000 True Fans

By Ctein

It's been nearly three and a half years since I started my "1000 True Fans" experiment and a good two years since I've written about its progress. Here's the latest—and probably final—update on how it's been going.

People who don't know or don't remember what this is all about should read the following two columns and associated comments so they'll have the background for this column. (This is one of the great things about the Internet; writers don't have to repeat themselves ad nauseum. Unless they're getting paid by the word, that is. I'm not.)

1000 Photographic Fans...Maybe?

Does Ctein Have 100 'True Fans'?

Here are the summary results of this experiment: Economically, it was a success. I've netted about $30,000 from it; that's the real income in my pocket, less taxes of course. On a dollars per hour basis it was excellent money and paid for many, many hours of creative time.

Strategically, it was a failure. As a long-term stable source of income it did not work, and it failed for reasons I predicted in my earlier columns. (People who want to read the intermediate reports can read these three columns:

Tips for Finding '1000 True Fans'

Supporting 1000 True Fans

Keeping 1000 True Fans

The real issue was not whether I could get the initial Contributors, but whether I could maintain and even increase the level of support. There is inevitably subscriber rot, well known to anybody who's running a subscription business. One problem is that no mechanism exists for doing this as open-ended ongoing billing; all the subscriptions have a finite run time and then you have to convince people to sign up again. This is the well-known "opt in vs. opt out" problem.

The larger problem is that tangible art works differently from experiential art; people will eventually decide they've added enough Ctein work to their collection and choose not to renew.

The first year, "1000 True Fans" brought in about one third of my living expenses, and that brought me a lot of free time to work on my art. The second year worked better than I predicted. Although the renewal rate was at about 70–75%, I picked up new subscribers and people moved to higher tiers of support. My final net was 95% of what it was the first year.

The third year the amount of money coming in dropped by over 50%. The 2012 level of support is negligible; the total money is under $1000. That's not worth it to me. Unless there is a huge uptick in Contributors between now and December 31st, I'm going to let it die (if someone wants to join in on this, they can do so by going here). This is unlikely.

Most of that meager income is still profit for me; there is no fixed overhead to this project and all the startup costs (in terms of both time and money) were taken care of in the first year. It's just that it's not serving the purpose intended, which was to buy me free time to work on art. The amount of time I get out of this level of money, spread out over a year, isn't enough to matter, and there is the mental distraction of having to track and take care of the occasional subscription fulfillments. It simply isn't worth the bother.

The solution to subscriber rot is to expand your audience. It's nice to think that as time goes on your existing audience will grow to like you more and more and more, but that's not the way it mostly works in the real world of arts and entertainment. You will not convert many of your existing audience from "fans" to "True Fans."

In my case, audience expansion failed. I tried several different kinds of incentives to bring in new people or to produce more of what are what are referred to as "Raving Fans;" fans who are so enthusiastic about what you're doing that they go recruit others. None of these incentives produced any measurable rate of return.

Emphasizing the difference between "fans" and "True Fans," with each of my print sales (save for the most recent) I included a promotional flyer (a version of the copy that appears on the CollectCtein webpage). Over the past several years over 500 of these flyers went out, mostly to people who were participating in the TOP print sales I ran here.

These are all people who laid out $100 and up for particular prints of mine that they liked. They're established as folks who like at least some of my work. So, what fraction of them do you think were interested in laying out $9.50 a month in return for two 11x14 prints of their choice at the end of the year?

Zero. Or it might be I picked up one or two Contributors this way, I honestly can't remember. Essentially, none of these folks who were happy to buy specific works of mine qualified as True Fans.

As I said, a palpable economic success; I'm entirely glad I did it. As a long-term strategy, still not proven to work. And please don't get me wrong. I am grateful to each and every person who ever buys a photograph of mine, for whatever reason, because you keep me going as an artist. You're all wonderful in my book.

That's the rap. And the wrap.

Ctein

Ctein's <1000 true fans can find his weekly columns on TOP on Wednesdays.

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Ben Marks: "Ctein's experiment has produced some very interesting results and I think his candid post is a huge benefit to folks who are trying to understand how to use social media to market hand-made objects. My instinct is that the initial enthusiasm and success of his project was some intersection of the worlds of folks who like his photography and those who like what they know of him from his technical articles and interactions here, which are always informative and respectful.

"However, most of us have a finite amount of space to devote to art display and storage. I, for instance, live in a 1,100 square foot house and much of the wall space is already spoken for (art of my genius children, friends, my own photography etc.) I did not sign up for Ctein's experiment because I just don't collect or display art in the way that a successful subscription run would produce. Also, if I wanted one of Ctein's prints—a single purchase that does fit into the way I purchase and display art—I could always go to his website and satisfy that need. So in that sense, I am not a 'true fan,' and not the target audience for this experiment. Paradoxically, because of my space limitations, I am not sure it is a different answer even if you were to collect 50 artists and generalize the subscription terms so that it wouldn't be just the work of one artist that comes to the house.

"Still, Ctein's experiment seems far from a failure, as $30K ain't chickenfeed and there are many folks who now have his prints who might not have purchased otherwise. I am sure that one of the motivations was that in the past (say, during the Renaissance) most great art was produced for patrons (church, Medicis, kings etc.). I view Ctein's experiment as an attempt to democratize this...successful, but only to a point. I think he did show that it is hard to hold the attention of 1,000 people (or even 10 people) over a sustained period of time for this kind of photography. (Question: Same answer for, say, cartoons (Doonesbury, Calvin & Hobbes, Larson), essays (insert your favorite syndicated columnist here) etc.?)"

Featured Comment by Gato: "It strikes me that the True Fans model may work better for intangible or ephemeral work than for physical work such as prints or sculpture. How many Ctein prints does a person want, unless one sees them as an investment? Hell, if I could afford Rembrandt paintings there are only four or five I'd really want. After that I'd move on to Van Gogh or somebody.

"The True Fan model seems more suited to writers or musicians, whose work takes up less physical space and doesn't require display. In the past it has worked for any number of newsletters and, of course, magazines. (Most people don't save magazines.) It seems to be working for a few blogs and websites. The New York Times finally got even a cheapskate like me to put in a credit card.

"Subscriber churn is a part of the business. No matter how compelling your product some people will lose interest or die off.

"If someone wanted to go for this model I think Mike would have a much better chance with TOP than Ctein with print sales. And a tech site like Strobist might have the best chance of all."

Balance Is Good (OT)

Larisa Semyonovna Latynina in 1960

I'm bleary-eyed this week from staying up late watching the Olympics. My only complaint is that according to the NBC coverage, the USA is pretty much the only team there. We get a few glimpses of other countries, but usually only where they're needed as a foil to set off the USA triumphing. Naturally I'm pleased when our American athletes do well (especially "these girls," as the Fabulous Five refer to each other), but I get weary of the jingoism, explicit and implied.

As a modest corrective, here are a couple of pictures of Larisa Latynina, the Soviet (born Ukrainian, now Russian) gymnast whose all-time Olympic medal record was broken by Michael Phelps and three of his teammates yesterday. She lives like a capitalist now—her daughter is married to a Russian billionaire and she lives on a gracious estate outside Moscow. She was in attendance when Phelps broke her record, but the Olympic Committee, stuffy as ever, wouldn't allow her to present him with his 19th medal. Hmmph.

I found this rather interesting. A short film of women's gymnastics c. 1936 (well before Larisa's era). Interesting how the sport has changed—they showed grace and control then, but it wasn't nearly as acrobatic as today.

And the film solves a mystery for me—the balance beam was originally a device to show you could keep your balance, rather than as a platform for harrowing flips and acrobatic tricks. (I never enjoy watching balance beam—disaster's too close by—and I could never imagine why anybody thought it up in the first place, except perhaps to satisfy a cruel streak.)

I'm smitten with our friend Gabby Douglas—what a magical flying squirrel of a child—although my favorite single trick was McKayla Maroney's improbable soaring vault—how that didn't deserve a perfect score is (permanently, so don't try) beyond me. She defies gravity like His Airness did. (Compare it with the vaults at the end of the clip above.)

Here's Larisa Latynina performing.

Mike

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Ed Hawco: "This is rare; a case where I, as a Canadian, seem to be better off media-wise than some U.S.ers. I can snap on my TV and watch a variety of events on two different HD channels, one in English, one in French, and when I want to see U.S. teams (and a lot of hokey schmaltz about mothers, etc.) I tune into NBC. ;-) "

Featured Comment by Mark Cotter: "Can I gloat? (Actually, I can.) Being in the U.K., I've got coverage up to my eyeballs—and not just U.K. athletes or teams. Every match of every sport is either broadcast or can be streamed from the BBC website. I've been watching a lot of badminton via the streams from the website. Unfortunately, because of IOC rules, it can't be viewed from outside of the U.K. My father relies on the BBC iPlayer to listen to BBC radio but can't get it at all while the Olympics is on as the BBC has pulled the international service. However, even we in the U.K. don't get what we want. While the mens' gymnastics finals were on, we were told that the pictures were coming from a Japanese TV company.