03 Dec 08 Spring in Sydney with a Flash
In Spring, Sydney’s suburbs are filled with colour. Streets are lined with a lavish wash of purple as the jacaranda’s blossom and the scent of a hundred blooms fill the air…
I included this post as a change of pace from the political negativity I usually indulge in.
Tra la la la la, the joys of Spring…
I’m also using it as a means of testing the NextGEN Gallery plugin which is available from wordpress plugins. Jeroen Wijering’s flash based image rotator has been used to display the slideshows included in this plugin, which unfortunately is no longer available in the easy configuration wizard on his site, however, you can still access the image rotator here. The plugin makes including slideshows such as the example above very easy in Word Press blogs.
Jeroen Wijering’s site allows a number of options for including flash based video and audio players on web pages, blogs etc. An example of the JW Flash player in action can be found here. These players are easy to configure and embed and are free for non commercial purposes. They now support WMV and WMA in addition to flv and MP3 files and the new Microsoft Silverlight. Highly recommended.
Tags: jacaranda, jeroen wijering, jw flash player, silverlight, spring, sydney, wma, wmv
01 Dec 08 Bending the truth
Morning a Passchendaele, Frank Hurley, 1917
There has been some concern in the media about the digital manipulation of photographs and possible legal and ethical implications. Manipulated images can of course be used to misrepresent the truth in many ways, but this kind of manipulation is really nothing new.
Frank Hurley was Australian photographer, film maker and adventurer. A recent ABC documentary gave fascinating insights into Hurley’s work.
View the documentary here. Hurley participated in a number of expeditions to Antarctica and served as an official photographer with Australian forces during both world wars. Hurley became frustrated during the war as capturing the images he wanted was difficult and turned to making composite montages. He was widely criticised for the practice. Although it is undeniable that his photographs are spectacular they are often quite implausible.
Defence of Rorke's Drift, 1880
As an official war photographer, Hurley was expected to capture “the truth”. Hurley’s work attracted significant controversy and has been criticised for diminishing the work’s value as an accurate historical record. Other war artists who chose painting as their medium exercised much more artistic freedom. This was also the case with artists from previous generations who created heroic epics. In Hurley’s time photography had not really come into its own as an art form, and the idea that the camera never lies has persisted. In fact, all photographs are manipulated in some way during their production; Hurley just took things a step further.
It makes you wonder what Frank Hurley would have made of Photoshop and other digital tools. With even a basic knowledge of such things anyone can create montages like Hurley’s with a fraction of the time and effort and skill involved. “Traditional” and digital photography are now all but indistinguishable in quality. ”Purist” photographers who dismiss all things digital should recognise that the digital medium is just another set of tools available to artists. If unable to accept this, perhaps they should go back to banging rocks together.
Digital photography and graphics are still to achieve the status of a recognised art form. It faces the same misconceptions that applied to early photography. If a work is intended as art, manipulation is the name of the game. Documenting “the truth” can be left to forensic photographers and photo finishes in horse races.
Tags: digital manipulation, digital photography, Frank Hurley, photography
