Category: Design
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Gotta Get Either…
Better, cheaper, bigger, smaller, or weirder if you are going to make it in the photo world. ‘Cause most of the easy seats are filled and musical chairs is still going on. Suppose you have a standard camera – it can be a full-frame or APS-C – and you fancy a new lens. You probably…
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” I Don’t Know What All The Buttons Are For “
” So it’s a bad camera “ Of course it is. if anything or anyone is more sophisticated and intelligent than you are, they must be bad. The whole world is filled with bad people and cameras… However, you can beat them. You can get sneaky: a. take the camera to a shop and ask…
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The Entire Plan
And why we don’t have one. I never realised at the start of my photographic career…and I use the term in its broadest sense…that I never had a complete plan. I was within a small circle of endeavour that was whole; the photos I took and developed were for the high school yearbook, and this…
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The Exhibition Catalogue
One of the hardest books to write – and the easiest to illustrate – is an exhibition catalogue. It can also be one of the dullest. A lot of my photographic bookshelves contain these sorts of thing. I have purchased them from second-hand shops as examples of a famous photographer’s work. Often these are the…
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An Attack Of The Moralities
The recent and on-going kerfuffle about AI generation of images has prompted me to examine my own ethics when it comes to making use of other people’s images. For years I have cheerfully shot pictures in art galleries of the interesting things on display. I comment on them, but never claim them for my own.…
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The Raising Of Wild Hares
When the day slows and you seem to have run out of things to do, settle down in a chair and concoct a scheme. This need not be world domination or pyramid selling or anything like that. It can be as simple as a plan for a new palatial dwelling to be built on the…
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The Second Time You Leap Off The Cliff
This is not about love affairs or business ventures…it’s about home-designed engineering. The fine art of making a limousine out of a kiddy-car and a bag of dead fish. In my case I have a car so no need for the smelly Roller. But I always need newer and weirder photographic gear, and the prices…
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The Answer To A Scientific Question…
Can be yes, no, or perhaps…sometimes. The value that you derive from asking depends entirely upon your willingness to listen carefully and to think about what you hear. The idea of not taking no for an answer lies in the realms of tyrants and used car salesmen. I have wondered for some time if there…
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If You Could Point And Shoot…
Would you? Or would you insist on changing a lens, a setting, a point of view, the subject, or your underwear? Are you capable of accepting things as they are without feeling the need to change? If you are a camera designer or software developer, the answer to these questions is always ” No ”…
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If It Works…
And does exactly what you are trying to accomplish. Do not replace it with the next advertised product. This may seem to be basic Franklinian logic, and welcome, but you would be surprised at how it grates upon the sensibilities of major equipment makers. It is anathema to every department in their company. Change is…
Dr. Stein's Photographic Establishment 