They’re a necessary evil: website ads that help content providers monetize their work. Without ads most websites would simply disappear. What if this could be avoided. What if there would be another way to enjoy the Web without having to be exposed to ads. Indeed, there is a new business model to monetize the Web. […]
Joined a tour the other day, visiting CERN where they explore the origins of the universe. It was a random group of people. One young woman, a girl rather, caught my attention. I seemed less interested in the proton accelerator and Higgs boson “God particle.” Is this voyeurism? Did a snap from the hip. Would you […]
By BRENDAN HUFFORD, PhotoMBA I remember once seeing a tweet from one of my favorite authors, Austin Kleon, where he said something to the effect of: We’re all struggling. Our Instagrams are lies. I’ve taught more than 800 photographers about how to improve their business. Every time I get to sit down and talk to […]
You can agree and you can disagree with liberals and conservatives alike. For heaven’s sake, just start thinking for yourself again! Doesn’t mean something they say must be real. Doesn’t mean it can be fake either. Just ask yourself: is it relevant? Does it matter? Why they say it? And most importantly: does it make […]
From now through March 4, 2017, Sony is having a “trade-in event” where you can save up to $480 when trading in any lens, mirrorless camera or DSLR. In addition to the trade-in bonus, the customer will also receive the value of their traded-in product as valued by Adorama’s used department. That’s right, you’ll receive […]
As photographers we’re all, in the broadest sense, media representatives. For this reason allow me the following thoughts. The 45th president of the United States of America isn’t a protectionist, but what can be produced back home shall be produced back home. Even before assuming office, POETUS Donald J. Trump received the support of car […]
What’s the point of New Year anyway. Next new day felt like the day before. Celebration? A break can help to adjust goals and leave sorrows, sadness and pain behind and restart with a smile. Yet pardon my French, I reckon many are forced into these behavioral patterns, such as having to celebrate Christmas and […]
Well, the consumer camera. Photokina this year? About two thirds the size two years ago, half the size four years ago. People take more and more pictures and use more cameras than ever before, yet the camera industry is in shatters. There’s hope though. There could be a “the best of all worlds”-camera. Why hasn’t […]
Must say I’m pretty impressed with the iPhone 7. Build quality is simply amazing, battery life way up and not to mention the haptics of the prime materials used with the tactile feedback. Beautiful. And then there is the camera. Awesome. And as you might know the latest iPhones with iOS 10 allow RAW photography, […]
Photographers, some, are a peculiar bunch of people. To call some of them snooty is a bit of an understatement. Because there is no easier way to show off money?! At least measurebators with their “my toy is bigger”-syndrome have luckily kind of vanished since the ascent of mobile photography. Still, the bigger the gear, […]
By OLIVIER DUONG It’s a good day to be a camera maker. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, there’s Hasselblad who’s blowing full-frame out of the water, and Fujifilm is pulling out an X-T2. Cameras are supposed to be a companion to the photographer, or at the very least a tool, but, while I […]
By NEAL RANTOUL I’m old. Believe me, I know it. I’ll be 70 in a few months. That fact may make it hard for you to take me seriously, but bear with me for just this post. With age comes wisdom, right? What I want to write here is that I think the field of […]
Photographers are the happier people. So says an extensive study published by the American Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Take a picture, and you will enjoy everything more. “While you might think photo-taking would detract from the enjoyment of everyday activities,” the study says, “research (…) suggests that people who take photos of their […]
Everything we see, feel and experience is an interpretation of “reality,” or “facts” if you want. Our cognitive senses are like filters. Nothing is perceived as is. Not two people on the planet see the exactly same things. Goes for reporting. Not two news reports report the same things, even though they report on the […]
We all face difficult times in life. It can be a sudden tragic event disrupting our daily routine, or for years we lead a life that just seems wrong and unsatisfying, yet we don’t find ways to break out, to shake off our lethargy and live the life that reflects our self. Photography is an […]
Photography, or rather nature talks, and we better listen. Nature is now speaking through Hollywood: a celebrity-studded campaign called Nature Is Speaking by Conservation International is somewhat stern and belittles us people with our anthropocentrism, us people believing humankind is the most important thing on the planet and immune to ecological truths. Truth is, we […]
Interesting piece in The New Yorker about the photography blues hardly anyone realizes. Titled “In the Future, We Photograph Everything and Look at Nothing,” the democratization of photography is lamented in a way that something doesn’t seem to exist anymore if it doesn’t exist to end in a photograph. That’s a Susan Sontag quote from […]
I love your minimalism. No heavy designs, just what’s needed, and you Apple know what people need. Your creation of demands — iPod, iPhone, iPad — is unmatched in the consumer world. Yet there are two minimalisms you provide, and the latter one is disturbing. Love your clean, minimalist designs and UI without frills. But […]
The average life expectancy of a digital photograph is not even a second at best. Many photos, just taken, immediately fall into complete obscurity, only to be lost in space and time forever. Well do the math. In 2015, more than one trillion photos were taken. That’s more than 1,000,000,000,000. Who’s looking at all those. […]
Not too long ago it was difficult to not make fun of Hasselblad. Lunar, Stellar, you know. Now there is hope the venerable camera maker, under new leadership, might rise like a phoenix from the ashes — BTW, did you know there are 12 Hasselblad cameras left on the surface of the moon? The lunar […]
Dear all, apologies for not having written and posted anything for so long. Appreciate your the emails received, rest assured all is fine over here, it’s just there are times in one’s life when one has to set priorities that are not always compatible with everyday life. And then there is the family. What’s more […]
Try finding a place today without GPS — gosh, has technology made life easier. The world is so much less complicated to navigate but, arguably, harder to know. Just the other day I’ve decided to walk to a place in Bangkok I’ve been driving to countless times before. By walking there I was able for […]
By ERWIN PUTS When you review the development of the camera technology since 1960, one can discern a 15-year cycle. The period of the full mechanical precision engineered camera started around 1950 and ended in 1966 when Konica announced the Autoreflex. The trend to automation culminated in the Canon A-1 in 1978 and found its […]
Welcome to a THEME 2.0 facelift! We’ve polished the site a bit, made it look fresher, airier and newsier, rounded some edges and, yes, it’s now responsive. Let know what you think. Miss the old ways? Another alternative I’m still looking at is making the site lighter with less content, focused on the live feeds […]
Does a photo have to be shot by a pro photographer to be more memorable? Or you could ask: who’s driving the extinction of pro photographers? Because the question is legitimate whether advanced camera phones have stunted our abilities to recognize professional photography. A new study by the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) explores the […]
The other day I had a short business trip to Bali. Lovely place, as you can imagine. Indonesia really got its act together lately. The government’s no longer focused on oil and mines solely to fill the state coffers with. A new focus is on tourism, and having been traveling to the mystic island since […]
How weak is your faith, how misunderstood your prophet and how lame a Muslim must you be to allow yourself to be reduced to a tool of butcherly ideology that kills for colorized ink on paper. The world’s — and Muslims’! — response to the coward execution of French editors of the satirical magazine Charlie […]
As a loyal reader of THEME it wasn’t hard to miss that my priorities since some time were less focused on maintaining the site than, well, doing other stuff. Been traveling a lot, exploring new ventures. I’ve been thinking a lot about what has been and what’s there to come. Instead of publishing daily about […]
Reductionism, as per definition, is the attempt to reduce subjects to their parts in an attempt to simplify the understanding of the whole. The opposite of holism. There is reductionism in cooking. Food reductionism, right, is a kind of puritanism. Cooking ingredients down, slowly, to get the essence of it. And that is what this […]
“Perfect understatement,” “perfectly understated” — do these marketing terms ring a bell? Leica M, right. The German boutique camera maker just announced the Leica M-A, a purely mechanical camera reduced to the essentials of photography with no monitor, no exposure meter, no battery. Alright, we have to bear with marketing phrases such as “the Leica […]
