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Chase Jarvis takes great images as a commercial photographer. But he could really take a page from Steve Jobs on his presentation skills.

Nonetheless, Jarvis hit a few great points on the nature of photography business. We’d been warned a few times back in college about them, but it was refreshing to hear them again from a successful pro. One interesting fact he made in this presentation was: Out of about 2,000 images during his shoots, only about six to 10 get picked for final editing — I once told Brian that great photography, skills and techniques aside, also has a lot to do with statistics. If I gave Bryan a digital camera to snap around all day long, a few of the images are bound to be interesting or even great to look at. However, it’s the consistency and depth at which great images are made that define the greatness of a photographer.

So off we go. Happy clicking.

via [Strobist]

Incidentally, Jarvis also has the sweetest on-location photography laptop setup…
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via [chasejarvis.com]

I bumped into this pretty interesting presentation from this year’s SIGGRAPH (to which I wish I’d gone). The idea is basically to allow resizing of digital images based on its content. Pretty cool technology if it ever makes to next gen of image editing programs!

via [Utata]

It wasn’t too long ago when Hong Kong movies often copied plots from big budget Hollywood films. But it seems the tide has been turning lately having seen a few Hollywood films simply buying out rights of foreign films and produce a big budget version of its own with inferiority in quality and depth.

I wasn’t surprised to see Martin Scorsese’s The Departed winning all kinds of awards in the West having known the plot is almost an exact copy of Hong Kong’s Infernal Affairs trilogy. But what I didn’t expect was how The Departed sucked in comparison to the original film that it borrowed ALL of its plot and characters from, but yet it won critical acclaims just because it attached a bigger budget, internationally known director and big shot actors. To be fair, The Departed is pretty ambitious in that it tries to condense a story told in trilogy with just one film. But the resulting movie wasn’t all that impressive given everything that was thrown behind this big budget film. Let’s just say it wasn’t the best work for most of the persons involved in this film. In comparison, with Infernal Affairs, it brought out the best in everyone who participated in the film.

It appears that Hollywood is running out of ideas as of late. They now produce more sequels, stories from old titles and foreign copies than genuinely fresh and interesting ideas (even though the Indies are supposed to take care of that problem, very few of them actually make it to nation wide release with big marketing push).

This morning Murdza forwarded me an email containing some stuff from Barnes and Noble. Upon closer inspection, I realized it was about some exclusive line of back to school products Barnes and Noble is promoting with SCAD. Looks like SCAD is really expanding its reach and influence by trying out different things. This may have been done with other schools before, but it’s certainly a first with SCAD that I am aware of.

Come to think of it, this is actually an excellent idea especially for art schools since these designs are originated from students currently attending the college. It really helps to shed the image of “starving artist” and bring more attention to how SCAD actually tries pretty hard to get students to land on their feet in the commercial market with a running start (or I should say, harder than most art and design schools that I know of). Some background info about this partnership with Barnes and Noble from BN’s website:

This item is part of a unique product development partnership with student artists from the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). Working with SCAD’s Working Class Studio, Barnes & Noble has produced an exclusive “Back-to-Campus Collection” consisting of nine journals, two pencil pouches, a sketchbook, and a canvas messenger bag decorated with student-designed contemporary graphics.

Working Class Studio is a product development venture of the Savannah College of Art and Design. Each academic quarter, students are selected as interns to form an interdisciplinary design team led by studio directors. The studio manufactures a line of products based on the team’s market research and designs which are then sold nationwide. This innovative concept for an educational institution marries function and fine art to deliver a well-curated mix of cutting-edge design.

SCAD is obviously taking risk on producing and marketing students’ work using its own resources. But I think that’s really a non-risk because SCAD students work have been pretty consistently excellent. I just hope the students who worked on these projects got paid a lot more than the “work study” wages.

Whatever innovation someone else comes up with, one thing is certain — Japanese are going to improve upon it, no matter how mundane or insignificant it is. Take the crop fields, long believed to be aliens’ messages to the low life earthlings about their 2nd coming, err, I meant first contact… Only Japanese can see past that crap and make them with an artistic twist.

Apparently this guy has been doing it for years. Check out more of his other work. Now that’s something even the UFOs could appreciate.

via [Core77]

For you artists out there… this is freaking awesome! Beats comments like “I wish my wife was this dirty” or “Wash me.”

It’s hard to believe that 2007 came, then Spring came and is almost gone… Ever since having Bryan, life seems to go by that much faster. But at the same time, the life that Grace and I have have blossomed with Bryan around.

On a different note, I hope that “baby luck*” Bryan brought with him hangs around a little longer.

One of SCAD’s “competitors” in the mid-size art school category has been Academy of Art University. They areliterally all over the place like mushrooms after a spring rain. But one of the things that will make me absolutely advise AGAINST anyone to attend that school is its pathetic quality of commercials on TV.

At first I thought the piss-poorly produced ads were a local problem — you know, your typical variation of locally produced bad-taste TV commercials. But then when I saw a similar ad from AAU’s Las Vegas campus, I knew they did it to corner a specific segment of the art and design education market — the idiotic segment.

This begs the question though — how can an ART and DESIGN school be of any high quality when its commercials, the very representation about what the school is, are produced with such poor, anti-artistic and anti-design in quality? Sure, SCAD also welcomes anyone with pockets full of cash to attend it. But, for god’s sake, at least SCAD works for that cash — It prints high quality brochures, fliers and follow-up postcards. SCADtv is no high-budget production either, but there’s no half-assing when it comes to self-promotion and anything that has to do with cosmetically improving the image of the college. And that’s a lesson AAU should take to heart.

How can anyone serious about art and design go to that school having seen their commercials? Seriously.

The much anticipated and rumored replacement of Fujifilm’s S3 Pro DSLR was finally unveiled today. But instead of the usual increment to “S4″, Fujifilm decided to call this upgrade the “S5″…. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Japanese don’t really like the number “4″?

Anyway… the features were a little disappointing for a high end toy. I was looking forward to this upgrade since the S3 was considered my dream toy when it was first released. At my wedding, two out of the three professional photographers there had the S2 (the other guy had a Nikon)! I guess that says something about Fujifilm’s professional cameras.

Even though the price isn’t available yet, I have a feeling it’s going to be at around $2500 to $3000. That was how much the S3 cost when it first came out. But then the price has been dropped to around $1500 after about 2 years being in the market.

Back in 2000/2001, I had an idea for my MFA thesis — to programmatically generate art through DNA, genetics or something of that sort. But of course, back then, I didn’t have the technical know-how, the connections nor the time to follow it through.

Over the years, there’s been a few companies built around this idea: DNA 11, DNA Artistry… among others. And then there’s Genetic Art, and Kandid and other genetic-related art projects. But I haven’t really seen one that generates an image based on an URL.

Web2DNA is the first one that converts a website into “dna art”… Neat stuff.

I sometimes I wish I can be just like Moto to do art for a living (not just any art, digital fine art!). But at least someday when he’s really famous, I’ll be able to tell everyone that I am good friends with Motomichi! Hmm… Maybe I should start buying up his “limited edition” prints while he’s still relatively an underground hit (for now).

Remember all those money making emails you get from Africa (“I am the son of the late Price _______. I have a great proposition for you…” )? I have always wanted to reply them with a plan to scam them but never got the time to really think about how to do it. But apparently a group of people did.

It made me feel good reading it…

After having putting off reorganizing my CD binders for months, I finally decided to go ahead and consolidate all my data CDs, separating all the PC discs from my Mac disks. But while I was going through THAT, I realized I actually had more than half a dozen backup CDs of my art and design works from back in college. So then I decided I might as well consolidate all of THAT as well… Ah~ how I miss creating art.

So I threw away a bunch of discs, made DVDs where I could to save space. But I was saddened that one of my Houdini project backup CDs was corrupted (damn cheap CDRs). So on my DVDR, I decided to make 2 copies of the consolidated backup files. Murdza once told me he actually made backups, and then backups of backups, and then backups of backups of backups…. He kept one copy in his fire-proof safe and another at the bank (or so I remember)…. I should probably revisit those files every couple of years and reburn them just in case…