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The Line Extends Down The Block
Cinema and sports fans have long been accustomed to lining up outside of their local movie theatre or stadium to get tickets to an upcoming event. In the case of the sports events that are a one-off affair, the availability of tickets becomes a subject of secondary commerce; scalpers buy up blocks of tickets from…
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Action! Camera! Lights! Idea!
If you think that was a misprint in the sequence of the title, I assure you it was not. That is exactly the how some of the action-camera shooters operate their GoPros and other similar devices. I’ve seen the results and I would willingly watch hours of footage from aerial surveys or ant farms in…
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The FL
Does anyone out there in my readers know what an FL is? Or does? I put the title onto a new posting and then got called away – it was never completed and I cannot remember what I was going to write about. If it had read Fl and then stopped I would assume that I…
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The Centerfold – Or The Staples In The Good Bits
I am assuming that you have seen a Playboy magazine. If you have not, the following may be confusing. Centerfolds – or centrefolds if you insist upon being British about it – were the paper Phooo-Arrr of my youth. A youth spent in the 1960’s I hasten to add and spent mostly in Canada and…
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Just Past The 400 Mark
This column has just passed the 400 mark in postings – or at any rate there seem to have been 401 put into the hopper, whether they have shaken out onto the table yet. This is a frightening number, considering that this is a second weblog from me, with the first one well past the…
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The Photographic Litmus Test
Remember litmus paper in the Chemistry 101 class at school? It was pretty tame stuff as chemistry goes – nothing blew up or stunk – but it was a philosophically intelligent material. It could tell the difference between an strong acid and an equally strong alkali when you couldn’t. And it saved you from the…
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The Good Idea Vs The Idea From The Design Bureau After A Long Liquid Lunch
I can pick ’em. I’m trained in it – I have qualifications. I drink at lunch sometimes. Oh, not a Fleet Street Liquid Lunch, you understand. Lunchtime O’Booze was always the figure of fun in the old PRIVATE EYE and I’ve taken warning from that. But I occasionally have a bottle of beer with my sandwich,…
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The Anti-Instant Camera
For over 176 years photography has tried to speed up. It started so slowly – an eight-hour exposure – and then ran faster and faster over the decades. 10 minutes, 30 seconds, 5 seconds, 1/25 of a second….and then forward to consumer digital cameras that whack the shutter open and shut in 1/8000 of a…
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That Innocuous Little Hatch On The Bottom
Turn your digital camera over and look at the hatch or door that covers the battery compartment. Look for a little section on the body of the camera near this door that is at the edge of the opening. It will be made of rubber or plastic and may be painted black or silver, depending upon…
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So A Graphic Designer, An Art Director, And A Stylist Walk Into A Bar…
The first thing to find out is who put the bar there At face height and how did they know these three were going to come along? And where did they put the light bulbs that they took out of the street lamp to disguise the bar? And are they still breathing? I’m betting it…