Articles from Keith Marshall

Going Lomo in Brussels

nobody@ipernity.com (Keith Marshall) — Mon, 21 Oct 2013 23:10:11 +0000

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Brussels is full of interesting things to take pictures of, and as well as some B&W film shots, I decided to do a little "lomography". The above sculpture is known as "La Cycliste". No idea what it is supposed to signify, if anything!

I picked up this Halina 160 camera in a charity shop for a couple of pounds - it's a black plastic thing but it has a built-in flash, which works, and is still light-tight.

You may have heard of the Mannekin Pis, which for some reason they dress up in clothes on certain days, but fewer people know about the Zinneke Pis, below...

This Ferrania film came in a box of 50(!) I picked up cheap, branded as "London Camera Exchange". It was already a little expired when I bought it, and two years on it's showing some serious colour shifts.

I had a couple of shots left on my first roll of Lomochrome Purple - in a more serious camera, the Canon EOS 300 with 40mm pancake lens. This is a new film produced just in the last few months by the Lomography folks - it's.. well.. "purple"...

This lovely old cash register was in a fantastic art deco bar called The Greenwich. The shot is untreated, this is how the film comes out, naturally.

And finally, no visit to Brussels is complete without a smurf...

The best or the rest?

nobody@ipernity.com (Keith Marshall) — Thu, 30 May 2013 08:12:44 +0000

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Something I've always struggled with is whether to only post the very best shots that I take, or post a selection of whatever I'm doing at the time. On Flickr, it was definitely the latter - I'd normally post the best one or two shots of the set, even if they didn't match up to the highest standards. Here at Ipernity, I have the chance to think about a new approach.

For example, my latest batch of shots was from a 120 roll of B&W film shot in an ancient Agfa Clack. The results are OK-ish, they're not stunning - it's hardly the world's best camera(!) and I didn't choose ideal subject matter for it, either. For now, I've dumped them on the lomography site where they look at things a little differently. Previously, I'd have uploaded at least one of these shots to Flickr, but I'm hesitating about uploading them here, in case they dilute my stream.

The same applies to my Flickr back file - of course, as I followed this policy before, not everything there is very good. Right now, I've still only transferred a handful of my best shots - there's definitely more to bring over, but do I bring everything, warts and all, or do I have a cleanout?

One thing I'm always mindful of: photography is so subjective, some people might actually think the stuff I'm discarding is better than the stuff I'm keeping. I guess that's up to me though, as to how I want to represent myself.

The urge to publish and share is strong, but the skill and discipline in maintaining a high standard portfolio might be something I should aim for.

A week in Ipernity

nobody@ipernity.com (Keith Marshall) — Tue, 28 May 2013 08:00:57 +0000

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I'm here because Flickr annoyed me - I'm not going to dwell on that, though. I've signed up for two years, so now I'm committed thought it would be more positive to sum up my opinions on Ipernity after a week of use.

First off, the interface is much cleaner than the new Flickr one. I think some of the navigation is less intuitive, but perhaps that's just because I'm so used to Flickr. It's clearly influenced by the old Flickr interface but there are some subtle differences. It does seem to take more clicks to get to places. I'd like slightly quicker access to the "activity" page, or maybe a summary of its content on the home page, perhaps, but when you get there it's very good. The ability to reply to comments right there within the activity page is great.

I was a little uneasy, at first, about the fact that it's clearly visible who has looked at pictures, so people could easily see when I'd been on their photos. However, this featue has quickly grown on me - I love seeing who has been in my photos, and when I go and look at their streams, they've all got great stuff. Perhaps some of them will see I've been looking, and come visit my stream too. Referral stats, like Flickr's, would be a nice future enhancement for club members. I'm guessing there aren't too many referral accesses at the moment though, since Ipernity doesn't have the presence that Flickr does.

Iin general, the quality of photography I'm seeing here is better than the Flickr average - don't get me wrong, there are some stunning photographers on Flickr but the average on Flickr is not that high - it seems better here (so far, at least). I do find the dolls in "explore" quite creepy, but the standard of photography there is high, and as more Flickr folks come over and start interacting we can already see explore changing.

One thing I'm finding hard is that hardly any of my contacts have followed me over - or at least if they have, I haven't found them yet. On the positive side, I seem to be making new contacts quite quickly, and a couple of my old friends were here already from the last big Flickr migration, so I'm not feeling lonely just yet! In fact I think I've been getting around the same number of views/comments/faves as I would have expected on Flickr, which is surprising given that I have hundreds of contacts there and there are so many more people in general.

Embedding pictures in comments: I never liked it when people did this on my pictures on Flickr. Thankfully no-one has yet done it to me here. I'd love an option to prevent it on my own pictures. In groups, it's quite useful - and the basis for many group activities on Flickr. It's restricted to club members only here, which I'm split on - I understand the guys have to make money, and I don't think it's expensive, but it does limit those kinds of groups, which can generate a lot of community spirit.

About that community spirit: it's good here, at the moment - perhaps because so many of us have come over at once, there's a shared sense of loss and excitement. I hope this survives, and I hope that our mass influx doesn't kill the site for existing users!

Of course, we also have the ability to write articles here, which is a nice feature - I might make more use of that in future for some of my film technique posts.

It's a wrench, leaving behind 600,000 views and seven-and-a-half years of activity. I haven't closed my Flickr account and I don't know if I will, but I'm fully signed up here and this is where my new pictures will go for the foreseeable future. My old pics - well, I'll migrate them over in small numbers, as I feel like it. I'm not going to do a big transfer of everything, there's a lot of rubbish, time for a spring clean...