Slow Photography — Why It Makes Sense to Use Your Digital Like a Film Camera
As suggested in a recent rant, the Net to a large extent consists of irrelevancy and narcissism. We’re mostly fed what we already know. What we’re served is hardly about relevance, but crude attempts...
View ArticleWhat Photographers Actually Mean When They Say…
For once, let’s not be too serious…: Check this camera’s dynamic range. (Technology will compensate for my inability to get an accurate exposure on my own.) I’m a street photographer. (Tried portraits,...
View ArticleCrash Course in Philosophy — Photographs Are Neither True Nor False
Filmmaker Errol Morris caused quite a stir. We photographers supposedly understand what we’re doing, yet there comes a guy like Morris telling us that, in the end, all photographs are posed. Doesn’t...
View ArticleMythbuster: Professionals Use Large Sensors
Could as well write: professionals never use Micro Four Thirds. There’s a lot of misinformation wandering around the business of technology. Fact is, as we all know, Micro Four Thirds, the pioneer of a...
View ArticleThe Best Camera Can Be the One You Leave at Home
Much has been said and written about photography’s probably most quoted quote, “The best camera is the one that’s with you.” Or is it? This quote is a great equalizer. The image doesn’t matter. The...
View ArticleWho Needs a Display! Leica Walks the “Perfect Understatement” Talk
“Perfect understatement,” “perfectly understated” — do these marketing terms ring a bell? Leica M, right. The German boutique camera maker just announced the Leica M-A, a purely mechanical camera...
View ArticleOn Reductionism and Photography
Reductionism, as per definition, is the attempt to reduce subjects to its parts in an attempt to simplify the understanding of the whole. The opposite of holism. There is reductionism in cooking. Food...
View ArticleAnother Year in Retrospect
As a loyal reader of THEME it wasn’t hard to miss that my priorities since some time were less focused on maintaining the site than, well, doing other stuff. Been traveling a lot, exploring new...
View ArticleA Few Words About Charlie Hebdo, the Prophet and Photoshop
How weak is your faith, how misunderstood your prophet and how lame a Muslim must you be to allow yourself to be reduced to a tool of butcherly ideology that kills for colorized ink on paper. The...
View ArticleSometimes, Please Don’t Smile
The other day I had a short business trip to Bali. Lovely place, as you can imagine. Indonesia really got its act together lately. The government’s no longer focused on oil and mines solely to fill the...
View ArticleWhat Makes a Photo Memorable?
Does a photo have to be shot by a pro photographer to be more memorable? Or you could ask: who’s driving the extinction of pro photographers? Because the question is legitimate whether advanced camera...
View ArticleTHEME 2.0 Goes Responsive
Welcome to a THEME 2.0 facelift! We’ve polished the site a bit, made it look fresher, airier and newsier, rounded some edges and, yes, it’s now responsive. Let know what you think. Miss the old ways?...
View ArticleCamera Industry’s 15-Year Cycle
By ERWIN PUTS When you review the development of the camera technology since 1960, one can discern a 15-year cycle. The period of the full mechanical precision engineered camera started around 1950 and...
View ArticleWhat We Lose When Technology Does All the Photographing for Us
Try finding a place today without GPS — gosh, has technology made life easier. The world is so much less complicated to navigate but, arguably, harder to know. Just the other day I’ve decided to walk...
View ArticleSign of Life
Dear all, apologies for not having written and posted anything for so long. Appreciate your the emails received, rest assured all is fine over here, it’s just there are times in one’s life when one has...
View ArticlePhoenix Hasselblad?
Not too long ago it was difficult to not make fun of Hasselblad. Lunar, Stellar, you know. Now there is hope the venerable camera maker, under new leadership, might rise like a phoenix from the ashes —...
View ArticleLife and Death of an Average Photograph — Call for “Digital Detox”
The average life expectancy of a digital photograph is not even a second at best. Many photos, just taken, immediately fall into complete obscurity, only to be lost in space and time forever. Well do...
View ArticleDear Apple, an Open Letter on Your Mac Update Fatigue:
I love your minimalism. No heavy designs, just what’s needed, and you Apple know what people need. Your creation of demands — iPod, iPhone, iPad — is unmatched in the consumer world. Yet there are two...
View ArticlePhotography’s Automation — We Snap Everything and Look at Nothing
Interesting piece in The New Yorker about the photography blues hardly anyone realizes. Titled “In the Future, We Photograph Everything and Look at Nothing,” the democratization of photography is...
View ArticleWhen Images Speak
Photography, or rather nature talks, and we better listen. Nature is now speaking through Hollywood: a celebrity-studded campaign called Nature Is Speaking by Conservation International is somewhat...
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