Wore out my D200 shutter, apparently

Alienjones wrote:
Dudley Hanks wrote:
"Floyd L. Davidson" wrote in
message


There are *many* possible "right" photographs of any
given object, and there is no natural law that says each
photographer is limited to taking just one of them...

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)
Regarding taking notes, I use the other little digital
machine for that: DVR (Digital Voice Recorder).
I always walk around with my DVR hooked on my belt,
and it's a simple thing to pop it out and jot down the
gory details of whatever I'm shooting.
It helps a lot.
Take Care,
Dudley


You don't even need to be that active Dudley. I use a Panasonic DVR I
keep in my top pocket. I run it continuously during a shoot, recording
conversation as well as looking stupid talking to myself.

I found another use for it too. Making conversation with wedding guests
and then splicing their well wishes into the soundtrack of wedding story
DVD productions.

The hardest part is to remember to turn it on!

Neither of you understood what we were talking about in
terms of "photographic note taking". We are *not*
talking about notes pertaining to the photographs.
Recording information by using photographs, rather than
words, was the point.

Wanna know where you were at a given time? Take a
picture of the street signs at that time. Wanna know
what the part number of that doo-hickie that has to be
ordered? Don't write it down, just take a picture of
it. That sort of thing...

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)

On Wed, 02 Apr 2008 20:00:39 -0800, (Floyd L. Davidson)
wrote:
: Robert Coe wrote:
: : Yeah, it is called "Machine Gunning" or "Spraying Lead" and praying one
: : gets a keeper. It's sad that photography has come down to this hack job
: : philosophy. I agree that one should use each shot like it matters,
: : especially with digital.
:
: I don't agree with you; but I can't, in all honesty, prove that you're wrong.
: What I can say is that in all my 70+ years, reaching (obviously) way back into
: the film days, I've never seen a professional photographer work that way.
:
: You've been suckered into a line of thought that is
: nonsense.

I think I was misunderstood.

: Think about photo journalism for example. Specifically
: think about how professional photographers shoot a
: baseball game. It takes exactly 3 innings maximum to
: get a picture of each and every starting player on the
: field and in the batter's box.
:
: But have you ever heard of a pro who shoots baseball
: going home after the 3rd inning?
:
: According to the statements above it should be totally
: unnecessary for a good photog to hang around just
: shooting willy nilly trying to get a lucky shot (you
: know, little things like game winning home runs, or
: fence climbing catches...).
:
: I hate to tell you, but every one of those photogs is
: "Machine Gunning" each and every pitch or swing, and
: they all are "praying one gets a keeper". That is a
: simple necessity, because a typical game has about 100
: pitches, and only 1 of them can possibly have a game
: winning swing. And I'll bet the average photog covering
: a baseball game shoots far more than even just 100
: exposures. Yet how many of them publish more than 1
: image per game?

I entirely agree. I obviously phrased my statement in such a sloppy manner
that it could be construed to mean the opposite of what I intended. See my
other follow-up article for an expansion of what I meant to say.

Bob

"Floyd L. Davidson" wrote in message
...
Alienjones wrote:
Dudley Hanks wrote:
"Floyd L. Davidson" wrote in
message


There are *many* possible "right" photographs of any
given object, and there is no natural law that says each
photographer is limited to taking just one of them...

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)
Regarding taking notes, I use the other little digital
machine for that: DVR (Digital Voice Recorder).
I always walk around with my DVR hooked on my belt,
and it's a simple thing to pop it out and jot down the
gory details of whatever I'm shooting.
It helps a lot.
Take Care,
Dudley


You don't even need to be that active Dudley. I use a Panasonic DVR I
keep in my top pocket. I run it continuously during a shoot, recording
conversation as well as looking stupid talking to myself.

I found another use for it too. Making conversation with wedding guests
and then splicing their well wishes into the soundtrack of wedding story
DVD productions.

The hardest part is to remember to turn it on!

Neither of you understood what we were talking about in
terms of "photographic note taking". We are *not*
talking about notes pertaining to the photographs.
Recording information by using photographs, rather than
words, was the point.

Wanna know where you were at a given time? Take a
picture of the street signs at that time. Wanna know
what the part number of that doo-hickie that has to be
ordered? Don't write it down, just take a picture of
it. That sort of thing...

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)

Oops, sorry, Floyd, my bad. I'm so used to taking notes with my DVR I
thought that was what was being discussed.

Just curious, but isn't it tough to search / retrieve graphical data? While
it might be quicker to take a picture of a part number, it seems like it's a
bit wasteful of storage capacity and would take a rather expensive / cpu
intensive application to search this type of data.

I guess I'm a bit behind the times in this area...

Take Care,
Dudley

Robert Coe wrote:
On Wed, 02 Apr 2008 20:00:39 -0800, (Floyd L. Davidson)
wrote:
: Robert Coe wrote:
: : Yeah, it is called "Machine Gunning" or "Spraying Lead" and praying one
: : gets a keeper. It's sad that photography has come down to this hack job
: : philosophy. I agree that one should use each shot like it matters,
: : especially with digital.
:
: I don't agree with you; but I can't, in all honesty, prove that you're wrong.
: What I can say is that in all my 70+ years, reaching (obviously) way back into
: the film days, I've never seen a professional photographer work that way.
:
: You've been suckered into a line of thought that is
: nonsense.

I think I was misunderstood.

Yep. Typos are a pain sometimes! That one entirely changed
what you meant, and I certainly didn't catch that you'd
accidentally said it backwards that one time in only one place.

However, I'm glad you did it, because I'd not have replied it
you had not, and it happens that in trying to figure out how to
express my thoughts, for once the example was a pretty good one!
So I'll credit you (and your typo) with inspiration.


: Think about photo journalism for example. Specifically
: think about how professional photographers shoot a
: baseball game. It takes exactly 3 innings maximum to
: get a picture of each and every starting player on the
: field and in the batter's box.
:
: But have you ever heard of a pro who shoots baseball
: going home after the 3rd inning?
:
: According to the statements above it should be totally
: unnecessary for a good photog to hang around just
: shooting willy nilly trying to get a lucky shot (you
: know, little things like game winning home runs, or
: fence climbing catches...).
:
: I hate to tell you, but every one of those photogs is
: "Machine Gunning" each and every pitch or swing, and
: they all are "praying one gets a keeper". That is a
: simple necessity, because a typical game has about 100
: pitches, and only 1 of them can possibly have a game
: winning swing. And I'll bet the average photog covering
: a baseball game shoots far more than even just 100
: exposures. Yet how many of them publish more than 1
: image per game?

I entirely agree. I obviously phrased my statement in such a sloppy manner
that it could be construed to mean the opposite of what I intended. See my
other follow-up article for an expansion of what I meant to say.

Yep. I saw it. We agree.

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)

"Dudley Hanks" wrote:
"Floyd L. Davidson" wrote:
Oops, sorry, Floyd, my bad. I'm so used to taking notes with my DVR I
thought that was what was being discussed.

Hee hee, I did think it was funny that you drifted in a
different direction, mostly because I'm sure that a
voice recorder is a very essential part of your daily
life. Which also means you'll quickly catch the
significance of using photographic notes, even if they
wouldn't do you much good.

Just curious, but isn't it tough to search / retrieve graphical data?

Yes! (In much the same way that your voice recordings
are going to be difficult to search.) It's not great
for anything that cannot be categorized in some way
_other_ than the visual data itself. Hence, keywords in
a database, or the filenames, have to be what triggers
retrieval from a database.

Of course, not everything goes into a database...

While
it might be quicker to take a picture of a part number, it seems like it's a
bit wasteful of storage capacity and would take a rather expensive / cpu
intensive application to search this type of data.

Bah humbug! I know a local guy who does techie type
work on everything from refrigeration to electronics
(all across the North Slope, so he may be 300 miles from
home doing this). He carries around a little digital
camera to take notes! He needs to order a new
compressor? Take a picture of the name plate, and of
anything unusual about it. Then when he gets back to
the shop, whether he does it immediately or puts it off
for a day or two, when he looks at the images he gets
far more in the way of a memory refresh than he would
from written notes (which he used to lose often enough)
or even a voice recorder! Sometimes he sees things in
the pictures that he had not noticed on site...

I guess I'm a bit behind the times in this area...

Well, my best example is from years ago, when the idea
was a bit revolutionary. We started using digital
cameras, supplied by the company (as were laptops and
GPS units), for digital notes in the late 1990's, as
described in a previous article. When I suggested
taking massive numbers of photographs of each remote
site, putting it all onto a CDROM and distributing those
to everyone and anyone who might ever need to look...
well, as you might expect there were believers, but
there were Luddites too!

Back in those days there was no such thing as easily
available software for a photo archive; hence in order
to do this on the scale I was suggesting, somebody in
the IT department was going to have to implement such a
database. IT didn't like that idea at all! The
operations and maintenance people all thought it was a
great idea. But the guy who went into fits of euphoria
was the Chief Draftsman. he had to produce drawings
from written and/or verbal descriptions, and he knew
exactly where most of the mistakes in As-Built drawings
came from, and he could envision a ten times improvement
in his work product!

But still, the big problem 10 years ago was how to
simplify the whole thing so that anyone could generate
several copies of a CDROM with thousands of images from
a dozen or so locations... and get them into some kind
of order where anyone who wanted to know what was at a
given site, in Row 1 Bay 3, slots CD and CE, could find
it. For that particular use, names that indicated the
site and the location of the photos in a given
directory, was a simple and very usable method.

Incidentally, AT&T has a *massive* database for exactly
that information, in text form, for every rack of
equipment they own in the entire country. They even
make somewhat of an effort to generate visual graphics
from that data, though IMHO it is exceedingly poor in
quality at this time. They can generate, for example, a
diagram of a circuit based on that data. (At one time I
worked for a couple of years drawing Auto-CAD diagrams
of telecom circuits for Circuit Layout Cards, so I am
very seriously pedantic about how such information can
and should be presented graphically to maintenance
personnel.)

Whatever, as a photographer I am today very much
influenced by the history that I have in the industrial
application of imaging. Often if I photograph some kind
of "event", part of what I do is simply take at least
one picture of virtually everyone who is there, if I
can. It's just a way to document who, what, where,
when, and a high quality image is nice, but unnecessary.
Sometimes that turns out to be very useful a few years
later... we've generated lists of who was there, and
we've discovered that the only known photograph of
someone who passed away came from such documentation.

Being "snap happy" just because with digital it doesn't
cost money, is sometimes a very valuable commodity.

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)

Robert Coe wrote:
=

I entirely agree. I obviously phrased my statement in such a sloppy manner
that it could be construed to mean the opposite of what I intended. See my
other follow-up article for an expansion of what I meant to say.

Bob

Any chance of getting lessons in that method Robert? It could come in
handy when I deal with insurance companies!

--

from Douglas,
If my PGP key is missing, the
post is a forgery. Ignore it.


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"Floyd L. Davidson" wrote in message
...
"Dudley Hanks" wrote:
"Floyd L. Davidson" wrote:
Oops, sorry, Floyd, my bad. I'm so used to taking notes with my DVR I
thought that was what was being discussed.

Hee hee, I did think it was funny that you drifted in a
different direction, mostly because I'm sure that a
voice recorder is a very essential part of your daily
life. Which also means you'll quickly catch the
significance of using photographic notes, even if they
wouldn't do you much good.

Bingo! I just had one of those "AHA!" moments when something clicks.

For decades, I've been using tape-recorders and digital voice recorders to
"take notes," and the digital camera is, basically, the sighted world's
equivalent of that technique. But, Floyd, the last part of your observation
is a bit off. This technique is actually proving to be quite beneficial to
me.

Now that the price has come down substantially, and the cameras are
available in pocket-sized models, I have started toting a digital camera
around as much as I do the DVR. And, I'm toting it for the same reason; I
just didn't make the connection.

I viewed the camera as more of an extention of my visual system, as sort of
crude bionic eyes that allowed me to snap a picture of something and then
show it to a sighted individual for elaboration. In cases where I've
encountered an unknown obstacle in my travels, heard a weird sound coming
from a certain direction or when my guide wouldn't take me a particular
place I wanted to go, I used this technique to "fill in the gaps" with the
assistance of a sighted person's description of my shot.

You only need check out my blog (http://blind-aperture.blogspot.com) for an
example. I was confronted by a bunch of tree cuttings blocking my path, so
I snapped a picture, and I used it to illustrate how a sighted person's
thoughtless actions (those two words tend to have a more negative conotation
than I wish to convey, but they are fundamentally the problem) result in
hazards for blind commuters. While my photographic skills were barely
adequate, I was able to do a better job of describing the situation with the
aid of the shot than I would have done without it. (In the future, I need
to step back a bit further when trying to shoot an obstacle of similar
size.)

From now on, I will have to put my digital camera and DVR in the same
catagory; they are both digital note-takers. And, I'm sure that as my
skills start coming back, I will tend to rely on it as much as I do on my
DVR.

Thanks for the new insight, Floyd.
Dudley

"Dudley Hanks" wrote:
"Floyd L. Davidson" wrote:
"Dudley Hanks" wrote:
"Floyd L. Davidson" wrote:
Oops, sorry, Floyd, my bad. I'm so used to taking notes with my DVR I
thought that was what was being discussed.

Hee hee, I did think it was funny that you drifted in a
different direction, mostly because I'm sure that a
voice recorder is a very essential part of your daily
life. Which also means you'll quickly catch the
significance of using photographic notes, even if they
wouldn't do you much good.

Bingo! I just had one of those "AHA!" moments when something clicks.

For decades, I've been using tape-recorders and digital voice recorders to
"take notes," and the digital camera is, basically, the sighted world's
equivalent of that technique. But, Floyd, the last part of your observation
is a bit off. This technique is actually proving to be quite beneficial to
me.

Heh, I missed that concept completely! You can take a picture
of something you can't actually *see*; then take it home and
display the picture in a way that allows you to examine it...
to see what you could not see before. And sometimes that
ability to "see" amounts to having somebody with good eyes look
at the picture and just simply tell you what in the heck that
was! I imagine that often brings a lot of satisfaction, and probably
helps you recognize similar things in the future without having to
wait for later identification.

Thanks for the new insight, Floyd.

Oh, you got my imagination going too. Thanks!

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)

"Floyd L. Davidson" wrote in message
...
"Dudley Hanks" wrote:
"Floyd L. Davidson" wrote:
"Dudley Hanks" wrote:
"Floyd L. Davidson" wrote:
Oops, sorry, Floyd, my bad. I'm so used to taking notes with my DVR I
thought that was what was being discussed.

Hee hee, I did think it was funny that you drifted in a
different direction, mostly because I'm sure that a
voice recorder is a very essential part of your daily
life. Which also means you'll quickly catch the
significance of using photographic notes, even if they
wouldn't do you much good.

Bingo! I just had one of those "AHA!" moments when something clicks.

For decades, I've been using tape-recorders and digital voice recorders to
"take notes," and the digital camera is, basically, the sighted world's
equivalent of that technique. But, Floyd, the last part of your
observation
is a bit off. This technique is actually proving to be quite beneficial
to
me.

Heh, I missed that concept completely! You can take a picture
of something you can't actually *see*; then take it home and
display the picture in a way that allows you to examine it...
to see what you could not see before. And sometimes that
ability to "see" amounts to having somebody with good eyes look
at the picture and just simply tell you what in the heck that
was! I imagine that often brings a lot of satisfaction, and probably
helps you recognize similar things in the future without having to
wait for later identification.

Exactly. You noted that you document your gatherings and often end up with
shots of folks that come in handy later on. Well, I tend to take shots at
gatherings, and then I check them out with magnification software later just
to see what my friends and relates look like. It's a lot more socially
acceptable than sitting there staring at them...

The use of digicams has greatly enhanced the usefulness of what little
residual vision I have.

And, of course, it also enhances my independence. As noted in my last post,
when I'm out and about, I can take shots of stuff and get family / friends
to describe what's there later. This helps me to track down photographic
subjects. Let's say I'm out in a park. I first can take a wider angled
shot of an area. I take it home and my wife or one of the kids can tell me
what is there. If something strikes my fancy, I can take a second trip to
the area and try to either zoom in on that area to get a better view, or
"zoom with my feet" (as Rita would say) to either get physically closer, or
to get a different angle. I keep repeating the process until I get the shot
I want.

Obviously, this REALLY slows down the photographic process, but I end up
with "interactive" shots that are the result of a collaborative process
between myself and a few others. Everyone involved enjoys the final
results.

As I keep saying. Beauty isn't just in the eye of the beholder; it tends
to reside in the mind as well.

Take Care,
Dudley

Floyd L. Davidson wrote:

Heh, I missed that concept completely! You can take a picture
of something you can't actually *see*; then take it home and
display the picture in a way that allows you to examine it...
to see what you could not see before. And sometimes that
ability to "see" amounts to having somebody with good eyes look
at the picture and just simply tell you what in the heck that
was! I imagine that often brings a lot of satisfaction, and probably
helps you recognize similar things in the future without having to
wait for later identification.

If you can find it, have a look at the 1991 Australian movie Proof, with
Hugo Weaving and Russell Crowe. Exactly the scenario you described, with
twists. :-)

http://www.urbancinefile.com.au/home...p?a=9307&s=DVD
http://www.michaeldvd.com.au/Reviews...ws.asp?ID=5166