Jeff Maurone

Photoblogging for a change

Have you seen Boston.com's The Big Picture? If you haven't, you must. The Big Picture is a beautifully-done photoblog that's getting a bunch of well-deserved press attention. There's much to be said for what happens to a photo after presenting it in a much larger way.

I've realized that lately I've shared umpteen more photos than I have words on jeffmaurone.com. And so it goes. Welcome to the new format. I edited my MovableType templates and widened this page to accommodate images that are one thousand pixels wide. Let's see where this takes us. I expect to include my own shots as well as shots taken by others that are licensed under CreativeCommons.

Ambivalence about Iraq

The Democrats swung to power in 2006 with what was, almost literally a mandate to do something about Iraq. The sentiment of the electorate in November 2006 was at an all-time low toward our ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan but, more specifically, Iraq. We all cheered as Pelosi through bills across W's desk with withdrawal timetables knowing a veto was likely. But ultimately that mandate came back as bankrupt as, in the interest of expediency, Democrats passed bills in support of business-as-usual in Iraq.

Fast forward to the months leading up to the 2008 election. We now have more troops in Iraq than we did in 2006, with the slightly inconvenient truth that the "surge" worked, markedly reducing crime rates. If Obama is elected, will it be the same mandate from 2006? No, but the sentiment remains anything but ambitious.

Not so fast, electorate. The reality is that no matter who we elect in the fall, accelerated withdrawal will remain a fantasy. That's why I adored Friedman's bit earlier this week, "Iraq: Still Inscrutable."

Photo composition, take two

Let's try another photo gallery. This time, a composition of nine shots I have taken in and around Seattle over the past month. I tried to devise the most cliched name possible. How successful was I? Seattle Moments.

Immersive photo galleries

I have been searching for a way to exert more control over how blog readers consume photos. On Flickr I'm dumping higher-quality shots from the Nikon as well as smartphone shots from the HTC and so I end up with a fragmented experience: clean photography interspersed with "hey look" shots out of my phone. Trying to view individual albums through the Flickr photostream or even the slideshow isn't exactly what I want. I want to be able to put together a number of photos, shrink-wrap them as an "experience" about a particular subject or concept and point you at them.

Here's my test gallery experience. I shared these photos already on this blog. These were from the war relocation camp at Manzanar in the Eastern Sierra Nevadas. If you already saw those, the shots shouldn't be too exciting, but you should see what I'm going for with an immersive photo experience.

The details

For the geeks, I've used AutoViewer to wire together this experience. I have a single SWF binary for all galleries and then compose lightweight XML files defining audio, photos, captions and sequence specific for each gallery experience. I'd highly recommend AutoViewer.

Twitter killed my blog

That photo needs top-billing commentary. Bill Stimpson, a photographer sharing his work on Flickr has done this fantastic set. In it, he redoes a number of classic photos using Lego figures and parts. He links to the original shot, shows his setup for the shot and, best of all, exposes everything under a Creative Commons license. That means I can post one of his shots here (above), attribute it to him and not break laws. It's so rare to see someone producing work of this quality and using CC. Cheers to open intellectual property rights. He's even been selling economically-priced prints of these shots. This is the most creative piece of art I've seen in, well, a while. The set, a growing work, is worth a perusal.

But back to the subject of this post. I used to hate Twitter. In its early days, its founders trumpeted it as a tool to answer the question, "What are you doing right now?" I riposted that I don't really care what you're doing right now. But Twitter's evolved into a micro-blogging platform and when I come across articles or content worth sharing, I post it there. And so I find less and less need to post medium-form content here. This isn't just me, either; I feel I read posts like this weekly.