She had a floppy head of marshmallow orange curls like a muppet, and she had this allover soft—but not fat—body
quote & photo { Chelsea G. Summers }
photogs
‘Anaxagoras agrees with Leucippus and Democritus that the elements are infinite.’ –Aristotle
New theories suggest the big bang was not the beginning, and that we may live in the past of a parallel universe.
[…]
Time’s arrow may in a sense move in two directions, although any observer can only see and experience one.
photo { Tania Shcheglova and Roman Noven }
First principle, Clarice. Simplicity.
There seems to be wide support for the idea that we are living in an “age of complexity,” which implies that the world has never been more intricate. This idea is based on the rapid pace of technological changes, and the vast amount of information that we are generating (the two are related). Yet consider that philosophers like Leibniz (17th century) and Diderot (18th century) were already complaining about information overload. The “horrible mass of books” they referred to may have represented only a tiny portion of what we know today, but much of what we know today will be equally insignificant to future generations.
In any event, the relative complexity of different eras is of little matter to the person who is simply struggling to cope with it in everyday life. So perhaps the right question is not “Is this era more complex?” but “Why are some people more able to manage complexity?” Although complexity is context-dependent, it is also determined by a person’s disposition. In particular, there are three key psychological qualities that enhance our ability to manage complexity:
1. […] higher levels of IQ enable people to learn and solve novel problems faster […]
2. […] individuals with higher EQ [emotional quotient] are less susceptible to stress and anxiety […]
3. […] People with higher CQ [curiosity quotient] are more inquisitive and open to new experiences […] they are generally more tolerant of ambiguity.
{ Harvard Business Review | Continue reading }
photo { Never before seen Corinne Day shots }
‘The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government.’ —Tacitus
[T]he Office will refuse to register a claim if it determines that a human being did not create the work. […]
[T]he Office cannot register a work purportedly created by divine or supernatural beings. […]
A musical work created solely by an animal would not be registrable, such as a bird song or whale song. Likewise, music generated entirely by a mechanical or an automated process is not copyrightable. […]
To qualify as a work of authorship a choreographic work must be created by a human being and it must be intended for execution by humans. Dances performed or intended to be performed by animals, machines, or other animate or inanimate objects are not copyrightable and cannot be registered with the U.S. Copyright Office.
{ U.S. Copyright Office /Popular Science | Continue reading }
‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord.
Using data from an online hotel reservation site, the authors jointly examine consumers’ quality choice decision at the time of purchase and subsequent satisfaction with the hotel stay.
They identify three circumstantial variables at the time of purchase that are likely to influence both the choice decisions and the postpurchase satisfaction: the time gap between purchase and consumption, distance between purchase and consumption, and time of purchase (business/nonbusiness hours).
The authors incorporate these three circumstantial variables into a formal two-stage economic model and find that consumers who travel farther and make reservations during business hours are more likely to select higher-quality hotels but are less satisfied.
photo { Philip Lorca-diCorcia, Roy, ‘in his 20s’, Los Angeles, California, $50 (Hustlers series), 1990-1992 }
‘Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.’ –Descartes
Everybody knows that real blurry photos can’t be made sharp after the fact. But that’s exactly the premise of the new Illum camera from a startup called Lytro.
Instead of snapping a solitary image, the Illum captures a whole moment—known as the light field—so you can change focus and shift perspective after you’ve taken the shot.
Just by clicking around a screen, the viewer can focus on a birthday cake candle, the person blowing it out, or partygoers in the background.
Narcissists can feel empathy, research finds
Those parents at the park taking all those photos are actually paying less attention to the moment, she says, because they’re focused on the act of taking the photo.
“Then they’ve got a thousand photos, and then they just dump the photos somewhere and don’t really look at them very much, ’cause it’s too difficult to tag them and organize them,” says Maryanne Garry, a psychology professor at the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. […]
Henkel, who researches human memory at Fairfield University in Connecticut, found what she called a “photo-taking impairment effect.”
“The objects that they had taken photos of — they actually remembered fewer of them, and remembered fewer details about those objects. Like, how was this statue’s hands positioned, or what was this statue wearing on its head. They remembered fewer of the details if they took photos of them, rather than if they had just looked at them,” she says.
Henkel says her students’ memories were impaired because relying on an external memory aid means you subconsciously count on the camera to remember the details for you.
People perceive religious and moral iconography in ambiguous objects, ranging from grilled cheese to bird feces
While both tourism research and photography research have grown into substantial academic disciplines, little has been written about their point of intersection: tourist photography. In this paper, I argue that a number of philosophically oriented theories of photography may offer useful perspectives on tourist photography. […]
When I was observing photographing tourists on the Pont Neuf and in the Jardin des Tuileries in Paris, one of the things that struck me was the fact that some tourists, when they came across a sculpture, first took a picture of it, and only started looking after the picture had been taken. Perhaps Sontag is right to argue that the production of pictures serves to appease the tourist’s anxiety about not working; in any case, this type of predatory photographic behavior promotes the accumulation of images to a goal in itself rather than a means to produce meaning or memories.
When I wake up in the afternoon, which it pleases me to do
What do you want to hear first: Good news or bad news?
Our answer to this question is different depending on whether we’re the one delivering the news or we’re the one receiving the news.
photo { Anna Grzelewska }
Ask Lictor Hackett or Lector Reade of Garda Growley
The exhibition that stands out for me is Horst Ademeit at the Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart in Berlin, 2011. In a small, often overlooked area of the museum was an overwhelming amount of meticulously ordered material by an artist I’d never heard of before. After being rejected by his parents, his wife, his school, and even his teacher – Joseph Beuys – Ademeit abandoned drawing and painting for photography and writing. He shot more than 6,000 Polaroids in isolation over a 14-year period, which engulfed the room.
In the margins of the Polaroids, and in seemingly endless calendars and booklets, he handwrote notations at a scale that borders on indecipherable. He was studying the impact of cold rays, earth rays, electromagnetic waves and other forms of radiation on his health and safety. He protected himself with magnets and herbs from what he perceived to be dangerous invisible forces, while obsessively creating this trove of records and evidence.
Keepin it real since 94 ☞ *Amaze*
“Would you please take a selfie of my friend and I in front of this window?”
She was not aware that she had approached a linguist. […]
It would not be like him to snarl that of my friend and I should be of my friend and me (or perhaps better, of me and my friend). Nor did he remonstrate with the woman over her rather extraordinary misuse of the noun selfie.
unrelated { Photographer countersues Empire State Building for $5M over topless photos }
‘Nothing in the universe is contingent.’ –Spinoza
{ Robert Heinecken, Lessons in Posing Subjects/Matching Facial Expressions, 1981 }
{ Robert Heinecken, Kodak Safety Film/Figure Horizon, 1971 }
{ Robert Heinecken, Cybill Shepherd/Phone Sex, 1992 | Robert Heinecken retrospective at MoMA, through September 7, 2014 }
Do I believe in me? Controversy, controversy.
You prefer apples to oranges, but cherries to apples. Yet if I offer you just cherries and oranges, you take the oranges. […] New research shows that sometimes a decision like this, which sounds irrational, can actually be the best one.
photo { James Tolich }
‘a book that is just every time pinochio is eaten by the whale in every iteration of the story, printed on sheets of lead’ —@BAKKOOONN
jennyapples
Looks like they did a pretty simple edit job. I’ve done more retouching on basic portrait work.ToHelenBackAgain
Then you’re a crap photographer.jennyapples
lololol colour balance, brightness, levels, these are all totally normal things to alter.ToHelenBackAgain
You can’t get a good shot in the first place, you’re the problem. Photographers did not always have retouching to fall back on, and they got some pretty damned good shots without it. You are advertising that you are unable to do that.jennyapples
After spending 15 years as a photographer and countless hours in the darkroom, I am authorized to say you don’t have a fucking clue what you’re talking about. Dodge and burn, fool. Dodge and burn.ToHelenBackAgain
Argument from authority, which tends to be problematic in the first place (look it up, fool), and also pre-invalidated by the very subject.
Dude, this is Annie Freakin’ Leibovitz. You’re not a better authority than she is, and she screwed up massively here.jennyapples
Have I personally offended you? I’ve seen you on here before and know you’re not a troll. Are you just a massive fucking asshole, or what is your deal? My point was that these aren’t particularly edited shots and that they were fairly true to the original photos, so the bounty on the pictures did not serve any purpose because there was almost nothing to reveal. And when I said I’ve done more editing on basic portrait work, I clearly, to anyone who isn’t you, was saying that these were edited with such a light touch that even regular old portrait work requires more editing (i.e. not much).ToHelenBackAgain
You’re just wrong, that’s all.
