Thomas Hawk

“I don’t know if all the women in the photographs are beautiful, but I do know that the women are beautiful in the photographs.” – Garry Winogrand Garry Winogrand’s one of my biggest personal heroes. The ultimate street photographer, Garry was a non-stop photographic machine. His were the pre-digital days. He devoured film with an appetite previously unmatched. He shot film like many photographers shoot digital today. Frenetic, non-stop, with only an occasional break to reload. He shot almost every day and while he crisscrossed the country shooting the best of America, he always remained a quintessential New Yorker at heart. When Garry died at an early age of 56 he left John Szarkowski, then director of the NY MOMA, with the task of editing what he left behind, 6,500 rolls of unprinted and 2,500 rolls of undeveloped 35mm negatives (about 300,000 frames). - Thomas Hawk

Thomas, a very interesting and thought provoking article. I do not have nearly as many hours on the street as you do, but as Brad stated on his comment on your Blog, I believe the direct approach is usually the best. If you act like you are trying to hide something, people often get suspicious. It also depends on where you shoot. SF is probably more hostile than Santa Cruz and the San... more... - Jeff P. Henderson

I think as long as you grab one of the corners or sides it will maintain the original image constraints? It's when you use the free-crop (IE: clicking somewhere in the middle and drawing a crop) that it breaks the ratio. - cmiper

It defaults to the last setting... try pushing the padlock - Johnny Worthington

"...this is definitely much more about system fucking." And now we know. - Christopher Harley

Over at the Getty Images Contributor Group on Flickr (it’s private and you have to be an accepted Flickr/Getty photographer in order to see it) there have been a number of threads started over the past few months where Getty/Flickr contributors have posted and shared basic information about how their sales are going through the Flickr/Getty partnership thus far. While it is probably far too early to accurately ascertain a lot of the statistics on how things are truly going, I thought I’d compile some of this information as anecdotal. - Thomas Hawk

Replace SF with LA and yeah. - Derrick

Here, in Ohio, it is great, and most of the places I visit in LA it is fine, but West Hollywood was a black hole - RAPatton from iPhone

"It's time to face facts: San Francisco is spectacularly mismanaged and arguably the worst-run big city in America. This year's city budget is an astonishing $6.6 billion — more than twice the budget for the entire state of Idaho — for roughly 800,000 residents. Yet despite that stratospheric amount, San Francisco can't point to progress on many of the social issues it spends liberally to tackle — and no one is made to answer when the city comes up short." - Thomas Hawk from Bookmarklet

Over the past couple of days Flickr has quietly begun censoring content viewed by people using Yahoo IDs coming from India. Flickr user crazydude2006 found this out the hard way when he noticed that he could no longer see photographs by many of his contacts or groups that he previously had been able to view. Flickr staffer Criz responded to his question with the following: “As you are coming in from a Yahoo! ID in India, and we just localized our site to India, you won’t be able to view moderate or restricted content.” This now adds India to the list of countries that are unable to view content rated moderate or restricted on Flickr in addition to Singapore, Hong Kong and Korea. Additionally users in Germany cannot view content rated restricted. - Thomas Hawk

"I just recently overheard a self-described "purist" photographer ranting on about how we're all cheaters and that the photographic masters before us lacked our current luxury--even desire--to "customize" (read: manipulate/photoshop) images. It was "...all about the the composition, a beautiful subject, and a properly exposed picture". I call horse-pucky. Above: Avedon's instructions to his printer." - Thomas Hawk from Bookmarklet

Larry Sultan, a highly influential California photographer whose 1977 collaboration, “Evidence” — a book made up solely of pictures culled from vast industrial and government archives — became a watershed in the history of art photography, died on Sunday at his home in Greenbrae, Calif. He was 63. - Thomas Hawk from Bookmarklet

I've got this - I like it. I bought it to replace the the 3021BPRO. The center-column's easy vertical-to-horizontal movement without taking the column out is a nice feature. recommended - though the column is a tad be short for me at times, but otherwise I do like it. - See-ming Lee 李思明 SML

I believe the 190CXPRO3 is about 1.1 pounds lighter than this one. An advantage of carbon fiber besides it being lighter is that it's also more rigid than aluminum and transfers less vibration. - tabbr

This is weird... I've got this one also!!! I have the 484 RC2. I use this only for my monopod though. - See-ming Lee 李思明 SML

"Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse is ready to take on that annoying blast of sound when TV commercials are just too loud and wants to compel the Federal Communications Commission to fix it and require the ads to be at the same decibel level as the programming. Whitehouse has introduced legislation called the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act of 2009, or CALM. New York Sen. Chuck Schumer (D) is a co-sponsor. Democrats say the FCC has received consumer complaints about commercials being louder than television shows since the 1960s. In the 25 quarterly reports on consumer complaints released by the FCC since 2002, 21 have listed as a top complaint the loudness of television commercials. Earlier this year, the Consumers Union, the nonprofit organization that publishes Consumer Reports, stated in testimony before the House of Representatives that "the CALM Act provides an elegant and common sense solution to finally ending a 45-year consumer complaint in the United States."" - Thomas Hawk from Bookmarklet

This is one reason I record just about every show I watch on my DVR and then watch it later sans commercials. - Jeff P. Henderson

"According to deputy city controller Monique Zmuda, the Department of Public Works currently spends $3.7 million per year on its antigraffiti program. That sum dwarfs the $1.9 million spent annually in San Jose, which, with its population of 1 million, is 25 percent larger than San Francisco. It's also more than twice as much per capita as Los Angeles, a city of 3.8 million people that spends $7 million per year fighting graffiti. This is big money, particularly at a time when the city is facing an intractable budget crisis. Last month, the Board of Supervisors was desperately trying to scrounge up $8 million to prevent layoffs among public health workers. The Public Works graffiti-abatement program burns through that much in less than three years. Is it worth it?" - Thomas Hawk from Bookmarklet

check out max blast program for cloning drives, for bit by bit backup of disk - bob phillips

free from seagate site - bob phillips

I'm not a fan of Seagate, and I'll tell you why. - tabbr

"A community of ‘candid’ photographers of men in public situations (all of whom have paid for their accounts in good faith) has been displaced and silenced on photo-sharing site Flickr in less than a fortnight. Four prominent photostreams as well as countless photos vanished from July 6th 2009 to July 13th 2009 without warning or right to appeal. At least one site had over a million hits in less than a year. Flickr has stubbornly refused to give a reason for its recent axe-grinding mission against these sites, but one user was given the reason ‘voyeur content’ after more than 8 days of asking for a reason yet that particular site contained pictures of men in public which is legal. Flickr has refused to expand on the reason it gave, but cited its ambiguous and open-ended ‘Don’t be creepy’ clause in its Terms of Service asjustification for terminating at least one photostream. Flickr has also silenced debate about the issue on its Help Forum. When confronted with whether or nor the... more... - Thomas Hawk

As someone who has, quite unfairly, had their name featured several times in the Flickr is Fascist Blog, and who knows who the perpetrator is I can understand why Flickr would want to protect it’s users in this way. The person behind it not only has a malicious personal vendetta against certain people on the site but also promotes the censorship, deletion and suspension of other peoples... more... - david Martyn

"Yahoo isn’t happy that a detailed menu of the spying services it provides law enforcement agencies has leaked onto the web. Shortly after Threat Level reported this week that Yahoo had blocked the FOIA release of its law enforcement and intelligence price list, someone provided a copy of the company’s spying guide to the whistleblower site Cryptome. The 17-page guide describes Yahoo’s data retention policies and the surveillance capabilities it can provide law enforcement, with a pricing list for these services. Cryptome also published lawful data-interception guides for Cox Communications, SBC, Cingular, Nextel, GTE and other telecoms and service providers. But of all those companies, it appears to be Yahoo’s lawyers alone who have issued a DMCA takedown notice to Cryptome demanding the document be removed. Yahoo claims that publication of the document is a copyright violation, and gave Cryptome owner John Young a Thursday deadline for removing the document. So far, Young has refused." - Thomas Hawk from Bookmarklet

But could a Yahoo staffer cross reference things like Flickr groups/mail, Yahoo mail, and Yahoo chat based on IP address? I understand that in general someone there would not be interested in the actions of an individual. But if a staffer was interested in the actions of an individual could they pull up this sort of information on a single user and at what level/authorizations. I'm... more... - Thomas Hawk

:( oh no, that is bad! - Rachel Lea Fox

if you're looking for fast and solid, go Bibble Pro v4 ... Mac/PC/Linux ... - Terence Kearns

"This is a very rare Canon 5200mm photographic lens. THE largest & most powerful prime lens ever created for dedicated SLR photographic use. Made in Japan. It is my understanding that a customized SLR/DSLR/EF mount can be created/included by the team of optical engineers who presently look after the lens. Due to its large size, it may be better suited to astronomy applications & others... It takes two strong people to lift the lens. It could also be mounted on a customized truck or SUV. A large geared or motorized support head would be needed to get the most out it. The magnification of this lens is truly staggering. If mounted to a Canon HD XL series video camera for example, a reach of 1000x optical (at least) would be possible (approx 37,500mm). The lens could also be mounted to HD & cine cameras. Manual focus & drop-in filters can be used. With so few ever built Canon spent a tonne on the R&D, not to mention the manufacturer of this lens. The Canon factory picture shows the lens... more... - Thomas Hawk from Bookmarklet

What! No IS! I'd like to see the tripod that you need to hold that sucker up! - Jeff P. Henderson

Not to be used with the Mac Pro. - Akiva Moskovitz

Yeah, the problems reported have been intermittent. It worked flawlessly for the first couple of days and then began to have connectivity issues. Sometimes it wouldn't scroll properly, sometimes the mouse was erratic, and then sometimes it'd just lose it all together. I was also disappointed that there weren't more gestures available. - Akiva Moskovitz

"Ms Jorgensen reckons that between her and her rivals the total number of limos in Copenhagen next week has already broken the 1,200 barrier. The French alone rang up on Thursday and ordered another 42. "We haven't got enough limos in the country to fulfil the demand," she says. "We're having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden." And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? "Five," says Ms Jorgensen. "The government has some alternative fuel cars but the rest will be petrol or diesel. We don't have any hybrids in Denmark, unfortunately, due to the extreme taxes on those cars. It makes no sense at all, but it's very Danish." The airport says it is expecting up to 140 extra private jets during the peak period alone, so far over its capacity that the planes will have to fly off to regional airports – or to Sweden – to park, returning to Copenhagen to pick up their VIP passengers." - Thomas Hawk from Bookmarklet

Caviar wedges? Where the heck is my invitation? - MVB (Grinch of FF)

I grew up in Big Tujunga Canyon in the Angeles National Forest down in Los Angeles. When I was a kid I remember a massive wild fire came through the canyon in 1975. It scorched our property, but my dad saved the house by staying behind to fight the fire with my grandfather who was a Los Angeles County firefighter. It had been 34 years since that fire when the Station Fire swept through Big Tujunga Canyon earlier this Fall. Once again my dad chose to ignore the evacuation orders and stayed behind to defend the property. The fire scorched most of the property that my parents still live on today. They lost a few vehicles, a trailer and an old storage shed, but my dad fought the fire all by himself with a garden hose and saved the house itself as well as other structures on the property. - Thomas Hawk