Category: photography

Digital Pictures & Posterity

Ashley Bischoff5 Comments

The article “No home for digital pictures?” over at The BBC’s website points out an acute problem with digital imaging. Namely, what happens to pictures if their media becomes obsolete?

In fact, it turns out that images stored electronically just 15 years ago are already becoming difficult to access. The Domesday Project, a multimedia archive of British life in 1986 designed as a digital counterpart to the original Domesday Book compiled by monks in 1086, was stored on laser discs.

Digital cameras 27% of new cameras sold are digital The equipment needed to view the images on these discs is already very rare, yet the Domesday book, written on paper, is still accessible more than 1,000 years after it was produced. […]

It’s for that reason that, though I still intend on (eventually) buying a digital camera, I’ll also be buying an analog counterpart.

Thomas Struth Photography

Ashley Bischoff2 Comments

Today, I took my parents (who are visiting) to the Dallas Museum of Art, specifically to the Thomas Struth photography exhibit. It was better than I thought, and I was looking forward to it in the first place.

The exhibit features dozens of prints. But, many of the prints are 3’ x 4’ or larger — so, many of the landscape-type prints are like looking out a window (into Tokyo or Singapore). And, the man’s sense of composition was astounding. Much like a designer, he selects the optimum balance between the elements in the photograph, and he makes it look so natural, almost as if you’re standing right there.

It was a great exhibit, and I’d recommend it to anyone, especially those who appreciate photogtraphy. Perhaps my only complaint was that the captions only featured the title, year, and date of the photograph. As a novice photographer myself, I would have appreciated information about lens size, film stock, and camera body.

Incidentally, I noticed that the exhibit halls had one characteristic common to almost all museums — echo-y halls. Or, more accurately, revereration-filled halls. That is, should anyone talk, the sound magnifies and bothers all present. Really, why not install some sound proofing so as to allow the public to hold conversations without disturbing others?