Reporter Arrested for Photographing Senators, Donors at Democratic Convention

Once again we see a heavy hand coming down on those daring to use a camera in public. This time it was Denver police arresting an ABC News producer for taking pictures, on a public sidewalk, of Democratic senators and big contributor.

A police official later told lawyers for ABC News that Eslocker is being charged with trespass, interference, and failure to follow a lawful order. He also said the arrest followed a signed complaint from the Brown Palace Hotel.

Nothing like trespassing on a public sidewalk. This is just one more in an alarmingly growing series of people taking photographs being hassled by authorities. Maybe it's the memory of how video has captured police in brutal activities, or perhaps it's a thought that power brokers should be able to hide from public site even when out in the open. But it's bad.

SFMOMA Bullies Photographer?

Supposedly, San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art had a photographer forcibly ejected from the establishment because the man had the temerity to take photographs, even though the museum's own web site made it clear that it was permissible! The link comes via boingboing.

In that vein, I'll applaud Boston's Museum of Fine Art for generally allowing photography and only prohibiting it for specific exhibitions. One of my own favorite photos came from shooting a piece of modern sculpture on a first floor gallery.

Building Artificial Faces

Don't like your face online? There's software that can automatically swap out features from a library of other people's mugs. It looks like a variation on morphing, only the software is taking eyebrows, eyes, mouth, nose, and so forth, from one face and blending them into another's. It could be used to protect privacy -- but it also increases that unease over the nature of reality when that world meets a digital realm. Don't like your face on Match.com? Change it. I understand the desire for privacy, and yet I also appreciate how quickly we are slipping through the looking glass into a place where nothing is as it seems, literally.

Photographing an Eclipse

I've done a lot of night photography, and been known to shoot the moon, literally, but was taken with the idea, in an article, of photographing a solar eclipse. Personally, were I readying myself to head to Siberia or the North Pole (where the viewing is supposed to be particularly good), I'd probably set up both digital and film cameras to get all the advantage I could. As the author says, the only way to really get a good image, and not just glare behind a black disk, is to use mathematical modeling, which is similar to what the human vision does in registering differences in illumination and then turning that, via the brain, into an image.

The article's author is an academic who has done a lot of research and whose web site has some astoundingly good eclipse photos.

Photojournalism Pros Fade Out

Many editorial outlets look to microstock photography and sites like Flickr these days to pick up cheap (or free) images for their use. That means less work for professional photographers - a lot less. Here's an interesting article asking the question of what will become photojournalism in an age of amateurs.

SanDisk Introduces Non-Erasable SD Cards

SanDisk has come out with a write-once, read-many (WORM) SD memory card for cameras. Given the format, I think it's clearly taking aim at the prosumer and professional markets. Why would you want a card that would only record and never let you erase or modify an image? A couple of reasons come to mind. One, mentioned by the Engadget post, is in situations - law enforcement, legal uses - where you want to "prove" that the contents could not have changed. But there's another: when you are shooting something critical and you want to ensure that you've minimized the chances of losing data. Grant you, that would be seldom, as immediately dumping the contents onto one of those standalone back-up drives is generally enough, but when you want both the best and suspenders for peace of mind, it's nice to be able to get them both.

Afghan Art Price Competition Includes Photographers

A person who helped create a national art price in Afghanistan had a piece in the Financial Times describing it. Two photographers are involved, and if you scroll down the piece, you can see a shot from one of them: two soccer players looking playfully out of place in the mountainous landscape. It's a photo with humor, cultural relevance, and pleasing composition. It's one of the rare times I've seen a "rule of thirds" composition look so natural and unplanned, with leading lines helping to focus the eye. A very nice image.