Hot Headed! [365.178]

    Newer Older

    (damn it aperture crashed when uploading and I lost a bunch of text grrrrr!)
    Anyways, after seeing a couple of video clips on flickr, I decided to do a time lapse of a fire burning. This quick shot was at the end of that process (scroll down for a link to the video).

    My initial reaction, aside from surprise, when I learned that flickr would be adding video, was disappointment. As many have stated, flickr is a photo sharing community. That's why I like it, for sure! How might it change if video were added, and why not just post links to youtube to keep things separate and keep bandwidth for photos?

    This got me thinking. What is photography? It seems to me that photography has always been a fairly dynamic medium. It has changed steadily with technology since it's beginnings (though not always necessarily progress). Whether it's origins are light sensitive chemicals, or CCD sensors, it's a form of expression that can include collage, superimposition, and other forms of manipulation.

    What are the limits of photography? Is HDR photography? Is a photograph of a drawing photography? Is purely digital art photography? How much can we alter a photograph and have it still be a photograph?

    What limits should flickr place if any? Well, the pornographic is an obvious one. Aside from this, should we limit the expression of the members of flickr? Personally, I follow the photographic explorations of a number of people, and I'm consistently inspired and amazed by the care, the patience, and the creativity of these people, and I don't want to place any limits on them. Certainly there will be tremendous amounts of careless, uninspired videos uploaded to flickr. But are there not thousands of careless uninspired photographs as well? (hopefully this is not overly harsh - I really think people do this flickr thing for very different reasons).

    The most compelling argument against flickr video I've heard relates to bandwidth. I hope that it won't slow things down too much, and they will increase resources accordingly. I understand the argument also for keeping video on youtube and photos on flickr, but is iTunes worse off for having podcasts, movies, and tv shows? I don't think so.

    Anyways, I recently got a youtube account so I posted my little fire video (my first youtube video ever!) here. It's silent, and not all that exciting, buy hey, it's 5 seconds long.

    Oh yeah, and I'm leaving for my last little trip of my study abroad: Basel, Switzerland tomorrow for about three days. I think we'll have internet though...

    keyboard shortcuts: ← previous photo → next photo L view in light box F favorite < scroll film strip left > scroll film strip right ? show all shortcuts