Oh, and for what it’s worth, these were taken with my new Panasonic Lumix LX3 camera at the 24mm side of an amazing Leica lens. So far I am really loving this amazing little camera.

Luckly, there are real professionals working to scientifically disprove the authenticity of photographs. There is an interesting article on wired.com that talks about methods that companies like Adobe are developing to spot altered photos. Adobe seems like the last company you would turn to lead the hunt for photo hoaxers considering they have made a fortune off of convincing everybody how easy/safe/fun it is to enhance and manipulate our photographs. Nevertheless, as the industry leader in photo manipulation they have to address a growing concern about the authenticity of photography. So Adobe finds itself in an interesting conundrum. How do you use a technology that is meant to alter photography to identify the people who are creating hoaxes? Where does harmless photo enhancement end and illegal photo manipulation begin? How do you convince a skeptical population to trust photography as the truth? They have a quote from Kevin Connor, who is senior director of product management at Adobe. He says,

“There’s much more awareness and much more skepticism when (people) are looking at images. That’s why we think that’s something we need to get involved in. It’s not healthy to have people be too skeptical about what they saw.”

Not healthy to question what you see? That is a shocking statement when you consider what he is implying, that it is healthy to accept what you see as real without questioning. Yikes! The article closes without really giving much hope that there will ever be a trustworthy way of telling whether or not a photo has been altered. While that may seem like a tragedy, it is a side effect of an advancing civilization. Think about the past when photos represented the “truth.” That was a more dangerous time because it ignored the editorial nature of photography. Think of all the manipulation that happens to an image in camera. Somebody has to pick the subject matter. The photographer isn’t an emotionless bystander. He composes his shot with an agenda. He choses the exposure and controls the focus. These are editorial decisions. You can make the same old lady look like a saint or a witch just by how you choose to take her picture. To accept an image as “truth” regardless of how it was originated is dangerous. Defense attorneys, law enforcement, news organizations, protective governments, conspiracy theorists, traditionalists and photography purists will continue to find ways authenticate and de-authenticate photos. I can’t blame them, but I firmly believe that a skeptical population is a better alternative to blind unquestioning masses.

I finally got the camera I have always wanted. No, it wasn’t a Hasselblad or a Mamiya or a Leica. The camera that has been on my wish list longer than any other is the Pentax K1000. Sure, I could pick one up on Ebay for under $100 but I just figured that someday the classic camera would just find its way into my collection. That is pretty much what happened. I love having a story to go along with a camera and now I have one that I will probably be telling quite a few times in the future. Here is how the classic tank of a camera came into my collection…

I have coveted my friend Bennett’s K1000 for years and envied the $5 deal he found at a rummage sale. Knowing how much I coveted his Pentax, he has been on the lookout for a K1000 for me. After cleaning out his basement he made a trip to the landfill to drop off some junk. Shortly after entering the building he spotted something on a conveyor belt that looked familiar. It was a Pentax K1000! He flagged down a worker and was able to get the conveyor belts stopped. It took some negotiating, but he was able to save the camera from the doom of the landfill. Aside from a broken film counter, it was in perfect working condition. All it needed was a new battery and the light meter snapped back to life. Now that I have a K1000, I couldn’t be happier.

If you took a photography class in high school, chances are you used a K1000. The fully manual camera is (or was) the standard shooter for pimply-faced teens everywhere. Holding the Pentax K1000 is like going back in time to my days at Wentzville High. The faces of friends come back in focus. Walking the halls of the school with my friend Molly. The magic of the darkroom. The excitement of capturing something on film. And that sound! Is there a better sound in the world than the shutter releasing on a Pentax K1000 and the clicking as you advance the film? I don’t think so.

I would be willing to bet that part of the enduring appeal of the K1000 has a lot to do with similar nostalgia that the camera brings back to their owners. People that really cherish a camera know that it is more than just a picture making machine. It is an extension of who we are. As we look back through are photo albums and recall the special moments of our lives we remember that the camera was there. A silent friend, steadily documenting our lives and capturing the light that fills our memories.

iStopMotion Apple Remote Mapping:
* Plus: Play
* Left: Previous Frame
* Right: Next Frame
* Play: Capture Frame
* Play Hold: Save Movie

(Click here to download the iStopMotion Sofa Control script)

For Thanksgiving we drove home to Nebraska and I decided to make a timelapse of the drive. I strapped the camera to the dashboard and told the camera to take a picture every seven seconds. The result is what it would look like if you were driving at 25,000 miles per hour:

Since I snapped the picture almost ten years ago I have probably spent more time working with this image than any other image in my collection but I have never had it framed. I just couldn’t get it exactly right. At school I remember spending many frustrating hours in the darkroom working on enlargements. I nearly went broke dodging and burning and cropping and enlarging before I finally had a print that was acceptable. Years later, before I had access to a good film scanner I scanned the prints and began Photoshopping. Looking back at those files it is embarrassing to see how heavy-handed I was.

So this weekend I went back to this image to see if I can “remaster” it. I decided to ditch my earlier digital scans taken from prints and rescan the original negative. I dug the negative out and was relieved that it was still in good shape. I got a good scan and brought it into Photoshop. I have struggled with cropping the image before and decided not to crop it this time. I tried to be very subtle in my dodging and burning. In the past I tried to push the contrast so that every detail was as defined as possible. This time I held back and left things alone so that it would look more natural. Interestingly, this “final” print probably took less time than any of my earlier attempts because I didn’t try to make it something that it wasn’t. It feels good to finally be satisfied with the print and be able to let it live in my archive instead of my to-do list.

Traveling Music
More Adventurous by Rilo Kiley
This is the new favorite of mine. Great songwriting and lovely female voice. It is what I hoped Neko Case would sound like when I looked her up based on her work with the New Pornographers.

Traffic and Weather by Fountains of Wayne
These guys never write a bad pop song – perfect driving music.

Cassadaga by Bright Eyes
Maybe it will grow on me like his other stuff has. Cool album art comes with a decoder, so don’t buy this one on iTunes.

Reading
JPG Magazine
My first issue after I finally got a subscription. The best photography magazine available. It doesn’t take itself too seriously and it is produced by passionate contributors. Love it.

How To Become a Marketing Superstar by Jeffrey J. Fox
Pretty obvious stuff here. Nothing cutting edge. It is a quick read, though, and might make a good starter book for anyone oblivious to marketing. In other words, buy it for clients who are clueless about marketing.

Designing Pornotopia by Rick Poynor
I have been struggling my way through this one for a while and finally finished it. It is a bunch of essays by Rick Poynor loosely connected to the use (appropriate or not) of sexual images in modern times. Great at times. Mundane at others. I haven’t decided if it is worth a full review on Be A Design Group or not.

Driving
A transmission fluid leak took our Honda Odyssey out of commission days before our first trip to Nebraska. The transmission needed to be replaced, but luckly it was covered by warranty. I take back the bad things I said about our local Honda dealership.

In Indiana I got a Mazda 3 for my rental car. I want one. Compared to my old Tercel it is lighning fast. Nice stereo system, well designed interior. I would have to do some research before I pulled the trigger, but you can bet I will be looking into it next time I am in the market for a car.

Photography
I took about 50gb worth of photos of RVs. Gruelling work that I am glad to have behind me. For fun I saw an Ansel Adams show and ran a roll through my new toy: a Yashica Electro 35. Watch for posts on my photo blog in the near future if you care about any of that.

Watched
This was the week of catching up on garbage movies. I saw Ghost Rider at the cheap theatre in Mishawaka. It might have been worth the $1.50 I paid, but not a penny more. At the hotel I caught Anaconda, Terminator 3 and Chronicles of Riddick. Enough said.

Probably the best thing I have seen lately is Heroes which I have been watching on NBC’s website. They have every episode on their site so people like me who have been living in a hole can catch up.

So that’s what I have been up to the last couple weeks. Hopefully I can get on a regular posting schedule one of these days, but no promises.

A few years ago, I found myself in a dumpster taking photos of some lovely textures (What, you have never been in a dumpster before?). Among the garbage I found a box of photographs. I was so fascinated by these found images that I have been collecting discarded photos ever since. I love the idea of finding beauty in things that other people consider garbage. Whether it is a texture on the inside of a dumpster, or in a photograph you find in the trash, the exercise of keeping your eyes open for design is something I believe most designers practice. Actually, this is the same process that BE A DESIGN GROUP is built around. Our collection of BA photos is a metaphor for always keeping our eyes open to ways design is interacting with the world around us.

As a way to display some of my own photography as well as to share my collection of found photographs, I just finished creating a photo blog called Found Photography. I have been sharpening my Movable Type skills with the plan of incorporating the templates of Found Photography in the upcoming BE A DESIGN GROUP photo blog. Hopefully all it will need is a quick tweak to convert it, but let me know if you have any suggestions that would improve the usability or structure of the site. Look for us to launch our photo blog in October.