CREATIVE SPACES???

The technology news reported recently that the Apple Mac OS will have a new and different kind of Photo App next year with the next version of the Apple OS. Everyone reading this news, which at best is sketchy, has been very critical. Is it that they will miss iPhoto and Aperture, or is it just people don’t like the idea of change and having to learn something new and different?

But don’t blame Apple for making this change you may be apprehensive of, the real culprit is Intel. What they have done is make the next generation of processing chips which combine both CPU and GPU processing functions int an open environment. No longer will graphics be dependent on a separated processor function with all the inherent limitations of Open GL. Exactly how this will work with photographic functions has not been detailed in any understandable manner, Just generalizations as I have repeated. But you can be sure if Apple will be using this new processor with combined CPU.GPU processing, Microsoft will be offering new operating systems and some very different PC configurations will follow shortly.

Sadly a lot of the comments on this news were worries and concerns photographers would be pushed into switching to Lightroom or some version of Photoshop, and there present workflow is threatened. Sadly they are not aware there have always been very advantageous additional options I have been writing about for some time now, including the easy automated Organic Imaging 2.0; as well as the many versions of Lasersoft Imaging SilverFast software for all aspects of image editing and organizing. These two will also be able to take advantage of the new processing facilities of Intel chips making their advantages even more attractive very likely.

Hold fire, don’t abandon ship or decide you will have to make changes, the rats have not left the ship yet. So let’s all wait and see and maybe the future will look a lot different knowing what will actually be once this new Intel capability is made real in software that will be available next year.  

HP DREAMCOLOR Z24 LCD DISPLAY

The HP Dreamcolor name has been around for some time but it has not been a display I have suggested to my readers because most of you don’t have deep, deep pockets and waste what’s in them on overpriced dreams. But even if the name is the same a list price of $599 for their new 24 inch LCD display with a wide Adobe RGB color spectrum puts this HP Dreamcolor along with the few others I can recommend.  And like them this version is as new with an LED backlight and a second generation IPS screen with a size of 1920x1200 pixels. An added feature is a built-in color calibration engine attuned to a customized X-Rite i1 Display Pro accessory add-on.

The physical attributes are the same as other 24 inch pro-graphics displays, with a stand that supports vertical adjustment as well as screen angle and rotation. Built-in features include mode switches that include sRGB, Adobe RGB, native and a video spec alternative, as well as customizable modes. A full array of connection receptacles including DVI, display port and HDMI are part of the physical package. These features extend to an OSD (on screen display) that visually advises the user of the current function status of the display.

Now I’m just waiting until samples of this new HP Dreamcolor display are available. Shortly after that all the primary on-line dealers will be advertising this new affordable HP Dreamcolor Z24 and we will see if their prices put it in the same ball park as the Dell U2413 and Asus PA249Q models.

APRIL FOOL OR FORTUNE

Just as the month of April 2014 began the news circled around the web that Getty Images had just made some 35 million of its images free to the public. Yes you can go onto the Getty web site and find any one of their millions of images held on file for sale for photographers and artists and many can be downloaded into a web page at no cost now. So what does that do to the value of the image for the photographer who made the image? Virtually it reduces the value of those 35 million images Getty has given away to zero for each of the creators. That is a massive loss to many independent photographers if their individual portfolio of images for license through Getty Images has so drastically been reduced to nothing for the creator photographer.

No its not an April fools bad joke, it really happened. Can the photographers on the loosing end sue Getty? Not really, if you cannot prove you have actually lost anything, how can you convince a court to award you value when the image no longer has any worth. Maybe what this says is if there are so many images photographers have made to choose from, maybe they are not worth much individually any more except for a few rare exceptions. Maybe Getty made them free because it is no longer worth the cost of listing or supporting all those millions if most of them are not in demand and being paid substantial fees for their use. But of course making a gift to user of images sure can’t hurt Getty Images reputation with media users.

I am a photographer so this news about the Getty giveaway was shocking, but for me it just confirmed what I have learned being involved in photo magazine publishing since 1975. There are now many more thousands of photographers active than when I began working as a photographer back in 1952, and the result is they have produced countless numbers of images. There isn’t much today of interest that hans’t been photographed. So I wouldn’t want to be starting out again fresh at it today, and I sure wouldn’t expect that doing stock photography would afford much in future profits. 

THE GOOD NEWS THIS APRIL

It’s called a new image licensing marketplace, called pixels.com. What it makes me think of is when I was a child growing up in Canada, my father worked for what then was known as the world’s largest cooperative. Hundreds of farmers were members and used the cooperative to a large organization capable of selling wheat, oats barley, flax and all kinds of grains to the world’s markets. So each farmer maintained independence and individual freedom to farm in their own way, while the cooperative acted as every members sales agent for the products grown and harvested by the entire cooperative membership.

To some extent pixels.com is just that, it allows each individual to participate in a large group web site along with many others attracting media buyers by its size and diversity, while preserving each participants identity and ownership of the images free to set their own prices to license their images. Pixels.com suggests it has 10 million visitors which would bring it close to the volume of agencies like Getty Images.

Now that pixels.com is open and operating  I visited to look it over and found that it offers a variety of services a photographer can advantage even if their interest is just offering a fine arts image for printing, or to participate in social media image sharing. In other words many of the internet functions of interest to photographers of all kinds can be met by one of the many features that have been brought together by pixels.com. And most important, unlike private business agency representation, each photographers individuality and independence of image ownership remains in their individual hands. You don’t lose control of what happens to your images, they are not taken over and controlled by a business, but remain the sole property of each photographer who can set the fee and terms of usage that is provided to purchasers. Unlike what happened for many photographers by Getty Images giving rights and use of image away free, because if you join pixels.com your image ownership remains in you the photographers hands and cannot be given away. www.pixels.com

LED BACKLIGHT LCD PRO-GRAPHICS DISPLAYS

For photographers who need color managed computer editing and processing, a new class of professional grade displays has arrived. This was confirmed to me that NEC’s PA242W is an LED back-lit 24 inch LCD display offering a color range width of 99.3% of Adobe RGB. At a list price of $1,299 in todays market it better be more than good.

For the rest of us, Asus has a 24 inch LCD monitor with 1920x1200 resolution and an Adobe RGB color range that is selling on-line for just over $500. Very soon after receiving an Asus PA249Q for testing and an evaluation report I had it installed on my newest Mac mini. Adjusting, calibrating and profiling with an X-Rite i1 Display Pro resulted in the closest match to my selected aim points I have achieved with any recent display.

This new Asus reproduces digital photographic images with accurate color, smooth tones and very fine detail. It made a number of portrait images easy to retouch manually with Photoshop, with the efficient clean up and correction of complexion errors were effortless to produce finely glamorous images to print. Land and city-scapes were equally easy to edit the image values to obtain an ideal balance of highlight to shadow detail, with a range of colors true as my vision could recall and imagine of the original scene. 

With this new LED backlight just introduced to professional level LCD displays, I was a bit skeptical as this form of backlight, even though it uses less electric power and generates less waste heat has been thought to also reproduce less accurate visual colors. But the RG Phosphor setting selection type the current i1 Display Pro software offers results in a profiled display screen that is a match to some of the best recent CCFL backlight displays I have used. The products from doing edits from high resolution raw scan files proved to me I can obtain an accurate visual perception of image values and adjust to an ideal I cannot improve on.

This technology world we live in keeps changing leaving us lost at almost every turn. But this latest Asus brought me back to where I needed to be to get the visual evidence on screen I require to do justice to photographic editing. Sometimes with new things we get more PR-speech than proof, and the change is just another pain where it hurts most. I cannot imagine doing professional quality photo editing with an iPhone, but that is the latest claim I read in my news today. No wonder many of us are wary of this new world we get as each day passes. It is re-assuring Asus understands the essential parameters that must be met to obtain good professional graphics on-screen reproduction, They set about providing it with no fuss or feathers, the PA249Q monitor is easy to deal with and provides what is needed, a very good quality LCD display at an affordable cost in today’s world many of us can afford.

If you have any questions or comments send David B Brooks an e-mail at goofotografx@gmail.com

MIRRORLESS SYSTEM CAMERAS ARE NOT SELLING IN AMERICA

I have been subscribed for a long time to Google’s news service for information on photography and technology. Usually what I get each week are references to stories I have already been aware of to some extent, so seldom exciting until this week. Google news service did a compilation of at least a dozen articles about digital camera sales in America and elsewhere. There was a great contrast with some news that mirrorless system cameras only have 2% of sales in the USA, and five times as many, 10% in Japan.

Google was circumspect about why Americans are not buying these new, technically capable but much slimmer and lighter camera packages, indicating Americans don’t think they are “real”. I’ll not be quite so indirect by saying what I read between the lines in what enthusiasts say to me in e-mail is that dSLR cameras are attractive to them because they have an obvious look and feel to their previous 35mm film counterparts. And , that the new mirrorless system cameras are just fancy point-and-shoot cameras they do not see any serious photography enthusiast being seen with one and being respected as a photographer. In other words it doesn’t matter what technology has accomplished by putting as much performance in a smaller, lighter mirrorless system camera, it does not resemble what they recognize as a serious camera.

America, I have to assume is still a major part of the world camera market, so if camera companies cannot sell but a very small part of what they develop for the future in the USA, and the rest of the world remains in a recession; this rejection of mirrorless system cameras could be a very large loss to camera companies other than Canon and Nikon who have been late and put little into their mirrorless system offerings. But I’ll not venture any predictions on how this will play out ahead. Maybe like me, other photo enthusiast will also get tired of lugging a large heavy bag of gear around. When I changed the mirrorless systems were not available, but a very small but high resolution Sigma DP1 replaced my dSLR. Would I have chosen one of the new mirrorless system cameras instead? Probably not as the cameras that interest me currently are the Fuji X series, a step in a slightly different technology direction. Photographers won’t follow any trends set for them, it’s just like trying to herd cats. 

What I wished for in days past before digital, was the time and resources to go out and make photographs with my 8x10 inch field camera.

THE DROUGHT OF PRO-GRAPHICS LCD DISPLAYS IS OVER

After the LaCie 324i was discontinued there have been few affordable LCD displays to choose from, with Dell’s Ultrasharp U2413 the remaining choice at about $500. 

In the last week two new Adobe RGB wide gamut LCD displays with all the specifications photographers and pro-graphics users require have been announced. 

The first of these new professional-graphics LCD displays  is the LG PrimeColor 27EA83-D model that is already on some store shelves. However, it is a large 27 inch model priced at just under $1000, a very modest amount for that large a screen. And, unlike all previous pro-graphics models, this new LG has LED backlight which had been avoided for continued use of CCFL by all previous makers including NEC and Eizo. But that difference may be minor if the display is accurately adjusted, calibrated and profiled, it should still reproduce a superior quality of reproduction of photographic images. The important capabilities that it can be reduced in white luminance brightness to 80.0 CD/m2, and has a 10-bit processor for smooth tone gradations, using an IPS screen, puts this new LG with an LED backlight in an equal category of performance with the much more costly established brands and models of pro-graphics LCD’s.

The second new premium pro-graphics LCD display with an LED backlight is a 24 inch model from Asus called the PA249Q that is not yet being delivered but is listed by many stores and on the web for just over $500 competing in price with the popular Dell Ultrasharp U2413. The performance specification of this new Asus are almost the same as the LG PrimeColor model with an Adobe RGB wide color gamut and being capable of adjustment in white luminance to 80.0 CD/m2 so it will be capable of supporting color managed printing without dark prints.

: TIME TRAVEL

What is life but a trip through time? Time is the one thing we cannot influence or control. As individuals, what was before can never be restored, because what went before is now a part of who we are, and restoration is just adding a new branch onto the tree that has become you and me. We do choose the journey somewhat if only by opening the doors of opportunity circumstance and others put in our faces to unlatch or pass by. The one opportunity I have usually opened doors to explore new paths, is photography.

I tried many other doors along the way, and with good luck learned more about myself, and the world I was living in. But now after 60 years of travel, I have settled to not opening any new doors, I’m road weary. So it is maybe a time, as long as I can do a little, to look back on my journey to understand where I have been and what that road now means to me, and maybe a few who travel parallel paths.

Of course because anyone reading this has a parallel interest in photography, that has to be the main focus of my thoughts. Because without subjects there is no photography, it necessarily complicates the story. Because for me photography was not just making pictures, but engaging in the adventures in living that involved my subjects. A lot of exploration and occasionally some adventure if not knowing much about your subject requires a lot of learning.

Of course being based in Hollywood to do my photography the one natural subject there are the many beautiful and interesting women in town for a variety of reasons. The challenge is always to what extent the interests and intentions of women as subjects coincides with my interest in photographing them. A challenge always, as the relationship was never much more than a guessing game because very few of my subjects made it simple. And when they did, very often the photographic potential suffered. Complexity is a mystery very often worth exploring. It’s much richer than mutual exploitation to fill simple, particularly common needs.

Hollywood is also a place that needs dilution and counterpoint. So the fact getting in a car usually and seeking picture adventures with distinctly diverse subjects was essential to both my work and perspective. I learned this early when I was a reluctant military person stationed in Alaska. The people I knew there were mostly indifferent or impossible challenges to get along with. But free time off base was a land full of challenge I now wish I had the skill then to capture photographically, much better than I was able to do.

But in the early 1950’s just learning how to do all of the photographic process was a thousand times the challenge it is today. Yes I accept, but resent the advancements that have made photography easier, because today due to easy there are many billions of mediocre images of almost every corner of environment, and kind of human, this planet contains. The results seems to me that photography no longer attracts much serious interest as a way to express a creative talent, so few do that. Is that a reason for me to be cynical and negative about the democratization of photography?

No for many reasons, but the most recent to come to mind arose from this year’s carnival season. From just one magazine I read, The Atlantic, I was able to enjoy quite fine photography from Rio’s Carnival. Besides the mind boggling display of creativity captured in the pictures; to know so immediately that the joy of life is so well celebrated in Brazil, provides much more hope than despair about this world today. It also reminds me that the change from analogue to digital that began for me in 1989, afforded a new opportunity to learn and explore; and to acquire new tools to better perform the skills I have been developing for most of my life.

One might suggest it is all the result of attitude, and for a photographer it is an attitude of an open and exploring vision. You can only make photographs of what you see in your mind’s eye as a picture. The way life and things looked yesterday may be very different in tomorrow’s world. So, how people are looking and seeing today may suggest those new attitudes of vision. That does not mean the obvious of taking up and doing photography with an iPhone or the camera in the latest tablet computer. But how does having a camera integrated into one’s daily living tools affect how we see life from moment to moment. This was so readily illustrated by a one in a century meteorite which struck earth in the Russian Urals near a city and was captured in its flight across the sky by many different cameras, some stationary, some in vehicles and in the hands of people. So now everyone in the world can see some of what that experience looked like, and maybe it will be another century before a meteor strikes again, but now we all know what it looks like.

             Daydream -2000

PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE NEW MEDIA CULTURE

“Just as the Eskimo has been de-tribalized via print, going in the course of a few years from primitive nomad to literate technician, so we, in an equally brief period, are becoming tribalized via electronic channels.”

-Edmund Carpenter / Marshall McLuhan - Explorations In Communications

Most who do photography today are very aware making images has been revolutionized in process from an analogue to a digital media. To a large extent that change has masked the even greater change photography plays in the culture of our times. Most of what organizes our images is a different media that has not changed picture content, but how we use photography as a communication within the cultural environment.

Photography has over a century old place in our history, but only recently have photos been shared and communicated through the internet as part of every aspect of our daily exchanges between people. In the analogue days of photography what camera users did was a specialty isolated as a hobby or profession in the culture. That distinction and isolation no longer exists with FaceBook, Flickr, Instagram and hundreds of similar media hosts connecting all of us to a world of pictures and much more. News and advertising accessing us through ours and others images - we live in a global museum of pictures of ourselves and the world. Google anything and you find what it looks like in a digital photo on a computer display screen.

The tribalization McLuhan and Carpenter referred to in 1960 has largely occurred in my adult lifetime from the mid’50’s to the present. Photographs as cultural material content

has remained largely the same although improved significantly in image quality over time. What has changed is the role images play in our culture, the global village is now a space well known through photographs. The great varieties of ethnic distinctions in people has diminished in two generations. Everyone today looks like another human being to our younger generations. But of course some old-timers are anxious and fearful their presence has disappeared with their past.

We have known the phrase Global Village for half a century and have realized the technologies of today make the world a smaller place through travel, shipping and communications. But are we aware of the cultural changes. Hardly, as they are evolving in and around is unseen but still apparent and powerful. Some college teachers have noted their students are now different than before, and we call them millennials. But do we of the older generations know them? I could say what does the word ‘gangnam’ mean. You can look it up on Google and you will find: you get ten different breakdowns of the term mostly referring to style. "Gangnam Style" is a Korean neologism mainly associated with upscale fashion and a lavish lifestyle associated with trendsetters in Seoul’s Gangnam district, which is considered the most affluent part of the metropolitan area. In colloquial usage, it is comparable to the English slang terms “swag” or “yolo”. Although half way around the world in a country with a spoken and written language very alien to our own english & european counterparts, its culture has spread into the western world in many ways beyond their Samsung and LG electronic products and Kia and Hyundai automobiles. There are no leaders in Korea intentionally exporting their cultural idioms. It’s just mutual human interest through music and fashions that propel differences around the world.

How we are being tribalized can in part be blamed on new technologies like cell phones and and the internet; but hardware does not explain behavior and culture. The the physical means ideas and concepts are communicated and how that has changed our view of reality influencing how people act and react, is something more. Now we exist as if we really are living in a small village that now encompasses the entire planet, or most of it. The term viral expresses all this occurs instantly, but how it comes about is inexplicable. Something that has universal meaning happens significantly in one place, and its affects spread around the world. The most immediate example was the gang rape on a bus in Delhi, India. The news spread instantaneously well beyond India, and one affect was fear among women. Since that awful rape and death of the victim, women in India and elsewhere are beginning to come out into the open to criticize their society, a typically paternalistic authoritarian but supposedly democratic regime, of its failing half of their population. That story resonates in much of the world and the result is a lessening of the establishment’s power in this “man’s” world, and extending a common populism to another including everyone.

As photographers, is there anything we need to do? No, pictures are like words they are neutral. We just have to be vigilant they are not used intentionally to do harm to others. Culture evolves of its own without much governance. Making laws that inhibit culture has never worked. We just have to live with it and keep it connected to reality as much as possible, supporting that which has a positive meaning to human life. 

Hackers in China Attacked The Times for Last 4 Months

For the last four months, Chinese hackers have persistently attacked The New York Times, infiltrating its computer systems and getting passwords for its reporters and other employees.

After surreptitiously tracking the intruders to study their movements and help erect better defenses to block them, The Times and computer security experts have expelled the attackers and kept them from breaking back in.

The timing of the attacks coincided with the reporting for a Times investigation, published online on Oct. 25, that found that the relatives of Wen Jiabao, China’s prime minister, had accumulated a fortune worth several billion dollars through business dealings.

Really, how can any force silence thousands and thousands of cell-phone users living in every corner of the global village, all talking to each other? There is no security against the talk that fills every village and changes feelings and ideas. Centralized force is becoming absurd, but not defeated. The powers of politics will stir the pot, so let’s be vigilant, so that it does not spoil the stew.

SPIRITS OF SIGHT, SOUND AND MOTION

Our senses afford us the experience of life. The arts that derive from our senses are the rewards of care, value, as well as the gifts of many others that make up our world. Although we are flooded today with the arts of the senses we are yet to become immune to their heritage and influence.

It was a very different world we lived in when we could not share in worlds of spirits not our own. And what is our own is more now a commonality than an exclusion. Life has become much larger as our world has become smaller. Yet we cannot accept others or get along with them because their spirits are somehow foreign although as human as our own. We become smaller not larger by taking without giving the appreciation of all the many others that share their spirits with us.

I have learned that one spirit teaches another. My spirit was first awakened by music. Then the necessities of life interrupted and I became aware of a visual spirit I found in photography. Although it consumed my interest in and dominated my spirit for some time, I have gradually returned to a life  involving both the audial realm as well as the seeing one.

Little by little the two spirits I follow have come together with a little help. That was a four year long project of working in photography to illustrate many different kinds of music. It opened my ears to music I had not known before and provided new challenges to my being able to see the world as photographs. But most that sight and sound can be related spirits, not antagonistic worlds unto themselves. That is not unusual as many listen and look at the same time. But the extent to which they are related is seldom thought of except by circumstance. An opera, a musical theater, naturally bring all the spirits together. But we do that intentionally and it seldom occurs without trying and deliberate effort.

However there are many instances in life around the world like carnival in Venice and Rio where it is a natural coincidence, others as well I am aware of too that are less obvious to most people.  The spirits of sight, sound and motion live well together when people get together and celebrate this life we all take part in. So why not enjoy it all as one where our spirits flourish together.

This can happen individually too if we want it to. It doesn’t have to be passive, just having music as a background to daily tasks. The spirit of the images I create and work with can be related to the sounds I care about; conjoined together enhancing each other. It only requires an openness to something that is only divided in our minds as to how things should be, but should they? 

Many of the photographers I have known have also been musicians, or is it vice-versa. One I have recently corresponded with works at both music and making photographs, but apparently keeps each realm unto itself. That seems natural, but is it really; or is it the result of a culture we live in that assumes divisions that may not be true but endured none the less. My faith is that the spirits we all live with are one and the same, so dividing them is maybe a false promise, to what I do not know. 

I have learned after a lot of being oblivious that what has made me appreciate the spirit of sound and sight are from the same being just human. What divisions and limitations we apply to ourselves as part of being in a culture are real but not an imprisonment. We are really free to be as fully who we are as we have the courage to be.

A REALLY GREAT SALE OF THE DELL ULTRASHARP U2410 LCD DISPLAY

A couple of years ago or so a friend alerted me to a really good quality LCD display that supports professional-level digital image editing and color management. It is the Dell Ultrasharp U2410 display that when introduced had a list price of $599. Since then many of my readers have purchased this Dell U2410 and not one has faulted its very good performance.

Now a reader brought my attention to the Dell Ultrasharp U24110 being on sale for $200 less than its introductory list price. Now this excellent performing product is available for just $399. So even if you don’t need a new display LCD display today, get one now so when you need it you will have one. Just go to http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=soho&cs=ussoho1&sku=320-8277

IS A PHOTOGRAPHERS VISION TRUE

Recently an article has appeared in severals place on the web that is based on a exhibition and story by Mia Fineman a curator of photography at New York’s Metropolitan Museum. It looks at the pat, mostly the Pictorialist dominated history of photography that began just before the beginning of the 20^th century,but brings into question the use of Photoshop in this current digital era of photography.

FAKING IT: MANIPULATED PHOTOGRAPHY BEFORE PHOTOSHOP

“By tracing the history of manipulated photography from the earliest days of the medium to the release of Photoshop 1.0 in 1990, Mia Fineman offers a corrective to the dominant narrative of photography’s development, in which champions of photographic “purity,” such as Paul Strand, Edward Weston, and Henri Cartier-Bresson, get all the glory, while devotees of manipulation, including Henry Peach Robinson, Edward Steichen, and John Heartfield, are treated as conspicuous anomalies. Among the techniques discussed on these pages—abundantly illustrated with works from an international array of public and private collections—are multiple exposure, combination printing, photomontage, composite portraiture, over-painting, hand coloring, and retouching. The resulting images are as diverse in style and motivation as they are in technique. Taking her argument beyond fine art into the realms of politics, journalism, fashion, entertainment, and advertising, Fineman demonstrates that the old adage “the camera does not lie” is one of photography’s great fictions.” Metropolitan Museum of Art book description on Amazon.com

What Did We Do Before Photoshop?

MIA FINEMAN: Most of the earliest manipulated photographs were attempts to compensate for the new medium's technical limitations -- specifically, its inability to depict the world as it appears to the naked eye.

The idea for the exhibition grew out of a question that was posed at nearly every presentation on photography that I've given or attended in recent years: How has digital technology, especially image-processing software like Photoshop, changed photography's relationship to truth?

I discovered a connection between trick photography and stage magic, which was the most popular form of mass entertainment in the late 19th century. Stage magicians often performed illusions featuring decapitation and "talking heads," and this motif was quickly picked up by photographers, both professional and amateur.

Photographers have always used whatever technical means were available to them to create the pictures they wanted to create -- Photoshop is the latest tool. That said, I do think there's a tendency among some contemporary image-makers to overuse digital tools and effects -- but it's mostly a matter of taste. In the commercial world, especially in magazines and advertisements, digital retouchers sometimes get sloppy, but the general public has gotten very good at spotting telltale blunders like missing limbs or misaligned body parts, models with weirdly poreless skin, and errant shadows cast by absent objects.

WHAT MIA FINEMAN DOES NOT ESTABLISH: CAN ANY PHOTOGRAPH BE TRUE?

Most experienced photographers realize from working with the process that every photograph is a distortion of reality, it is never true to objective reality or for that matter to what we see with our eyes. And for that matter neither is human vision anything but another kind of manipulation of objective reality. We are all fooled by our own minds to believe what we have learned to be “true”.

Fortunately many photographers in the last 150 years of its history have also written about their ideas  of what making a photograph is and should be. From soon after the beginning of the use of the process in England and France there  has been a movement of enthusiasts to have photography accepted as one of the established arts. Fortunately many of these statements have been published in a single book: A PHOTOGRAPHIC VISION - Pictorial Photography, 1889 - 1923, edited by Peter C. Bunnell.

Although much of what was written by many, some of whom have images referenced by Mia Fineman, smacks of political ideology of one primary purpose, that photography becomes an accepted medium among the arts establishment. In that regard various techniques were promoted as being more or less art-like, while a few argued for using a technique that rendered images truer to the nature of the photographic process, Sadakichi Hartmann in particular. One statement in 1896 by Gertrude Kasebier however was more autobiographically candid, indicating that what is true to a photographers vision should not be subject to the styles of what is commercially successful. “The key to artistic photography is to work out your own thoughts, by yourselves. Imitation leads to certain disaster...... New ideas are always antagonized. Do not mind that. If a thing is good it will survive.” 

The concluding 1923 section is edited by John Wallace Gillies after receiving letters from Clarence H. White, Dr. A D Chaffee, Edward Weston, Alexander P Milne and W H Porterfield as Statements by Pictorialists. Gilles comments leading into the series of letters. “In the Pictorial section of photography one can make almost any kind of statement he pleases, and some will nod sagely, ‘Yes‘ and others will disagree with great heat. It is right or wrong as it happens to strike the other fellow. There is nothing absolute, nothing settled. It is an art, or not an art as we please to have it. Stieglitz at present makes his pictures sharp and is ready to tell everybody that a fuzzy picture is not the thing. Clarence White likes his pictures softer, and has  held to that view, which speaks well for his opinion. Steichen made them fuzzy years ago, and now cannot get them sharp enough. So what are we to think? Each one has something to say and each statement is different. One might think from this that Pictorial Photography must be an art, for we find the same conditions among painters, all wrangling about what is best. True it is, therefor, that photographers have all the indispositions of artists and, if that makes art we surely have it in photography.

By Edward Weston

Dear Gillies:-

“You ask me to write a short ms. on “Pictorial Photography,” in other words “illustrative photography,” for such is my understanding of the word pictorial. Well I cannot, for it has been years since I left the genre field, and anyhow there are so many painters well fitted to carry on this little by-product of literature. Forgive me, Gillies, for playing with words, but really, is not just “Photography” good or bad, significant without “Pictorial” or “Artistic” tacked on?  .............

Gillies Note:

Mr. Weston, my very good friend and a man of impeccable honesty, has fallen in with words, written by gentlemen who use them to hide behind. With the exception of Sherwood Anderson and John Tenant, these gentlemen who talk glibly about logic of things, using photography as a blind, are all more or less lost in delusion and smoke a sort of mental pipe together when they produce their manuscripts.

THE HISTORY OF PICTORIALISM CONTINUED WELL AFTER 1923

In America, and where else, did an unusual talent from Hollywood become the modern popular leader of Pictorialism in William Mortensen. But after being Cecil B. DeMille’s still photographer his individuality and self-driven vision soon drove him out of the studio dictatorships to Laguna Beach where he set up a small studio and taught students, created his own photographic visions while writing books and articles in popular enthusiast magazines. 

When I was still a photography student in Santa Barbara I drove down to Laguna Beach and visited with Mortensen. Some twenty years later, after his death, I was an editor at Petersen’s PhotoGraphic magazine and obtained an assignment to publish a retrospective of William Mortensen’s work in PhotoGraphic. I was helped by his widow and supported in this effort by the Photographic Society of America, as well as by several of his students from his years in Laguna Beach. 

Since then in 1998 The Center for Creative Photography Arizona Board of Regents published William Mortensen, A REVIVAL. His vision was democratic and reflected in his own words, “the man whose interest is in the picture itself. He may seek his picture in many different fields: in landscapes, in character studies, in portraits, in still life, in the ‘pure’ representations of textures. He may pursue his pictures with a box camera, with a luxury model miniature, or with an eight-by-ten view camera.He may prefer straight contact prints, paper negatives, fresson, or bromoil transfers. But, when all is said and done, his basic interest is the picture itself. Not how it was secured, or what process was used in making it, or what it may accomplish; but simply and solely the picture.”

CONCLUSION

Although many professional photographers in their hire to others accept the vision of who has hired them, so manipulation if there is any is for the purposes of the vision a photographer is hired to produce; it is just a job to solve someone else’s problem in a way that satisfies their vision. Many of us who have made a living by being a hired photographer realize they are not creating their own vision, but one for someone else. Even if you are making portraits for someone sitting for your camera, the vision created by the camera is the subject’s vision, or you may find few who will recommend you to make a portrait of them. The images a professional photographer makes for himself these days, are referred to by them as ‘personal work’; and from the better known of them you will find expensive coffee-table books of this kind of visualization.

If you want to create photographs from your own personal vision, you must be a photographer who is working only for one’s self, no one else. I think this is reflected in what photographers say about themselves. The manipulation and retouching now, in many cases is not done by the photographer before release to the client, but usually afterwards by pre-press technicians and retouching specialists.  Photographers are not ‘manipulating’ images to fool anyone else, unless of course they are part of a circus side-show or represented in YouTube, FaceBook or the like, seeking to go viral on the web. Manipulation of images to result in the best image you can imagine is not a dishonesty by most photographers, it is just a refinement of one’s own vision. 

In my collection of books and magazines, mostly about photography, there is one, ‘VERUSCHKA’, Trans-figurations, by Vera Lehndorff and Holger Trulzsch 1986, done before Photoshop, involving every imaginable manipulation of the subject envisioned by both the model-artist Vera Lehndorff (Veruschka) and her partner Holger Trulzsch. Whose visions are they; are they both, or either Veruschka or the photographer Trulzsch. Not one or the other surely, but only they really know. If it is anything it is a truth that vision is as consistent as the subject and image are and can be from any human perspective.

http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&rlz=&q=veruschka+transfigurations&oq=Veruschka&gs_l=igoogle.1.2.0l10.360.5635.0.14416.9.6.0.2.2.0.280.521.3j0j1.4.0...0.0...1ac.1.Y1-xcy8o7Ow

UPGRADE: MAYBE NOT, BUT THEN WHAT?

Is the number of cynics increasing? Do more and more people think an upgrade is just a ploy to make money without providing much or anything?

That conclusion could be why upgrades like the new Microsoft Windows 8 is not getting very much enthusiasm. But it could be a lot of other ideas, concerns and people do get tired of old habits. I remember during my youth each fall the big thing was to visit all the car dealers to kick the tires on all the new auto models. It was an expected unofficial holiday and almost every auto brand complied with new models every year and always in the fall. But these days trading in a year old car for a new one when the leaves turned color is a forgotten habit half the current population never knew. Now it is the realm of high-tech products. Currently the more fashionable thing to show off is your new laptop computer, it just lacks the excitement of everything chrome with finned rear fenders. And sadly the office crowd is blase about almost everything, thanks to IT managers who like nothing better than saying no, or was it the politicians that took over that world.

Anyway, upgrades maybe don’t deserve cynicism. The computer operating systems are just trying to keep up with the kids and their newest gizmos. Smart phones and tablets also have operating systems, so it has made practical business sense to incorporate the new device systems with what runs a personal computer. The short side of that is these new operating system upgrades do not run all the older software or have support for older hardware accessories like film scanners. Oh yes, there are workarounds, but a lot of computer users are just sitting tight and running their old system like Windows XP; and that includes many corporations. In fact Apple OS10.6.8 is becoming much like Windows XP in the hearts of users. But then you can’t buy new hardware like the latest Apple Mac or PC laptop and have it delivered with an older operating system, in many cases the new machinery will not run except with the latest software. More work-arounds, maybe and maybe not.

So has high technology created its own Catch 22 for itself? Yes if the companies like Apple, Adobe and Microsoft ignore the data indicating fewer and fewer people are choosing to upgrade. Of course some of the drag is just a kind of satisfaction in getting along with what one has, and a good part of that is that comfort comes with familiarity and there is an innate fear of having to learn new ways to do things - unless there is a very good reason to change. But as more and more computers have improved reliability, product failure is less of an incentive to invest in the newest system or to upgrade the operating software.

All this would be helped a lot if forced obsolescence was avoided in the process of upgrading. So why don’t companies that upgrade make a priority list of what helps not just them and their business, but what helps people. One solution is to make newer systems backwards compatible. This is built into CD/DVD disc design - my oldest music CD’s play well using almost any kind of disc drive in the newest devices. But of course Apple believes disc drives are no longer necessary, so it leaves them out of their newest computers - but fortunately you can add a disc drive externally connected to an Apple Mac. So as long as there is a readily accessible alternative you can hang onto the old, familiar and often essential ways to get things done.

I just wish this was taken all the way so all of your established tools and techniques can be preserved. For instance if you have an old Mac that is worn out you can get a new one and easily transfer all of the data on the old Mac onto the new one quite easily. Unfortunately if some of those goodies don’t work with the new one you are left hanging in an empty world. So why not also allow copying the old system too, and provide a way to run it virtually in the new one????? In a way this has been done by software companies like Parallels systems, which allows Microsoft Windows operating systems to run in virtual mode on an Apple Mac. But sadly neither Apple’s Boot Camp or Parallels allows running Apple’s 10.6 operating system virtually on a newer Mac that runs OS 10.7 or 10.8. 

This makes me reluctant and not inclined to buy a new Mac, because I have one relatively recent Mac mini with OS 10.7 and it won’t run all of my older scanners or the software I prefer to do my work. So this almost new Mac mini  gets used very little, and that pisses me off with Apple enough to not even think about buying a new toy. And that Apple has provided the joy in my life. I am not just into having things, but I get irritated when anyone gets in the way of my doing the work I most enjoy. So, Apple, Adobe, Microsoft et al when are you going to begin thinking more about the consequences of upgrades and that to some of us they are really downgrades!

IS PHOTOGRAPHY AN ART OR A SCIENCE?

Since photography began popularly at the end of the 19^th century an argument has gone on whether making a photograph is an art or is it a science. It is a continuing question that has never been resolved for much of the 20^th century, and still remains a question. Of course some photographer’s work is now accepted by the establishment and publicly as art. But the fact that the photographic process is scientifically based, even more so in the digital age, leaves much doubt and misunderstanding in the minds of many who adopt using a camera.

Much of that doubt and confusion is the result of a photographic business community that keeps the process as secretive and so little understood deliberately. Mystery is to their benefit in the marketplace - would you buy a sausage if you really knew what’s in  it? So the public is at the mercy of what companies are willing to share, and it does not amount to much understanding of the hardware and software they are using However, one thing you can be sure of is that the science behind photography demands that the photographer must think scientifically rather than artfully to make photographs.

Fortunately people are not so easily led to abide to the dictates of the establishment, and think and do more as their spirit demands. So a side business has developed that supports every creative image manipulation method imaginable to satisfy the quirks of individuality and self-expression. Sadly that has not added much to photographers understanding of how the medium, a camera, a computer and software function. Mystery still prevails and the “magic” remains in the hands of the establishment’s secretive possession. This is further complicated and made ever more obscure as today’s computers and software are inept at providing much control over the photographic process.

The personal computer business began in ernest in the mid-80’s with a lot more garage factories putting together components than is commonly known. But these were mostly difficult to use requiring the user learn command-line control. So the next development making computers user friendly was what is called a GUI (Graphic User Interface), that led to some off-shoots like computer games and digital image editing and processing. But the typical personal computer was always a mix of often not very compatible pieces designed and constructed to provide independent color reproduction. That situation still dominates and a personal computer has no idea of what image is presented on-screen and cannot identify what the subject of the picture is, even that it might be a photo of something natural.

In the mid 1990’s Color Management was introduced and soon was supported by the two most popular computer operating systems. This allowed for a translation of color values so any RGB number set would reproduce the same objective colors in a color reproduction device like a display or printer. Color management however is a limited value as it does not assure that the RGB color captured in a digital image is true to the subject color photographed. And, Color Management is still far from being universally used by photographers.

This leaves digital photographic imaging being subject the photographers’ perception to be able to adjust, edit and process digital camera or film scanned images to match or not the image that was the subject. So photo images, however they are reproduced are done so by personal, individual visual perception and evaluation. Whatever the image is in relationship to the subject is the photographer’s choice. As a choice made by diverse minds it must be called accurately art of some kind; good or bad.

THE ACCELERATION OF CHANGE

We are on the cusp of changes regardless politically of what next months voting results. Although many would like America to be like it was in the past anyone who is a serious photography enthusiast knows that is a fading interest. The digital photography world has almost completely obliterated the film photography of the last century and more. My Shutterbug readers are nearly all over 50 years of age and they are getting older and of course fewer. I have not received any e-mail from a younger photo enthusiast in recent years, but maybe that’s because I’m an old guy even though someone new to reading Shutterbug does not know what my age might be.

That today is different than yesterday I am reminded of by my colleagues, those who write about digital media because computer editing photo images is my primary subject. For instance one magazine just featured new 27 inch LCD computer displays, and not one is a model I could recommend for a serious digital photographer. All three are LED backlit which demands using the newest display management system to accurately calibrate and profile the display. In addition all three have a color range limited to the sRGB range that is just 2/3^rd the color gamut of any camera that offers Raw files from the sensor capture. Additionally all are very bright with a high white luminance that may not allow adjustment to reproduce the equivalent of paper white to be able to edit for color managed printing.

But displays are a small part of computing changes. Microsoft is about to offer Windows 8 and so far it is not known how many older software applications and hardware devices like scanners will be supported. And today’s commentary is critical,”Where is the Start button?” All brands of desktop personal computers are reporting fewer sales and have concerns the demand will continue to be smaller, as more and more users buy tablets. Even the camera companies are concerned about their future prospects as more smart-phones and tablets offer better and better built-in cameras. Even Google is now offering a Chrome laptop at a very modest cost, further weakening the market for the established brands.

In the 20^th century although serious and professional photography was a small niche specialty it was led by sufficient companies like Kodak, Dupont, Canon and Nikon as well as many smaller brands that were able to maintain long and consistent places in the marketplace. But today, with digital photography so dependent on computer editing and processing, the photo imaging industry is even a smaller, largely ignored step-child of a much newer technology. 

However, the needs of marketing for professional photographic services will continue and high-end photo and graphics computing products will remain. But as there are fewer and fewer professional quality-level enthusiasts left over from the 20^th century film days, the smaller number of camera sales will drive prices for high-end photo and graphics computing performance to pricier levels beyond the reach of most amateurs. That will weaken and narrow the interest now supportive of these products. The aspiring wannabe professional will face an increasing challenge to afford involvement, competing and establishing themselves at a profitable level. And it is easy enough for advertising and marketing illustration to option other ways to produce marketing images of products in what is a volatile and changing segment of the consumer industry.

So, am I painting a bleak scenario for a future of serious photographic enthusiasm? No one knows what tomorrow may bring. There may be new technology options that will make enthusiasm both practical and exciting, I cannot imagine. But being too old and too tired to still participate fully as I did in the 20^th century, and realistically not inclined to look very far ahead is its own bias. Maybe I know too well the 20^th century will not return or be repeated.

SHARING & FREE SPEECH

A lot has occurred in the world’s news in the last couple of weeks, and maybe some things should be all added together because even though separately reported, combined they make a difference. That was seen, although not entirely at the UN General Assembly this last week, with Barack Obama said he is sad for the uprisings the Islamophobic You Tube video caused, while at the same time arguing for our Constitutional protection of free speech as a foundation for democracy for everyone. Of course even the newly elected leaders of Muslim countries argued against free speech, not realizing that without cell phones, computers, and the internet, the new democracies in the middle east may not have developed as they did. 

Today free speech is a reality for much of the world that is now connected by cell phones and computers, that are quite capable of transcending the differences in languages between all the varied countries on this planet. Earlier in the week, Google one of the largest sources and conduits of information in the world announced they are purchasing NIK software which can provide a photo processing and editing capability to their network. Photographs as much as speech are a part of the stories individuals tell to each other over the internet and cell wireless networks.

Also this week a technology dispatch in The Atlantic reported that Harvard University neuroscience research had found why people share on the new social media networks. It is because the sharing activates the brain’s reward system, increases dopamine activity. This reward apparently comes from the activity of sharing information, telling your story to others and they doing the same. Apparently the sharing for each is a rewarding experience when it is about the person telling the story, and to some extent the listener. Maybe checking one’s e-mail or FaceBook pages is not just an idle task but plays into our basic motivations. Looking back to simpler, earlier times when people lived in villages the culture was learned from story tellers amongst the older generation, what public schools are supposed to do today.

These and many more new technology capabilities change our culture and are ways of connecting with the world and each other. Because conservatives are very afraid of change, and are trying to hold it back is not a solution, it just creates more problems. The world continues to get smaller and has become the global village Marshall McLuhan described 50 years ago. Now we need to learn how to live in that village and get long with our neighbors. It is happening inadvertently, the Foxconn factory making iPhones in China has workers who are beginning to realize they are important and must be taken seriously; and a factory of workers in Pakistan was not and most died in a fire. The world is beginning to know these things. So now, how do we encourage and help with understanding throughout this world we all influence and participate in to make it work for everyone?

DIGITAL & FILM PHOTOGRAPHY ARE NOT ALIKE, BUT ESSENTIALLY DIFFERENT

Although there is little difference in the appearance of a dSLR camera and its 35mm film predecessor, that has to do with the human ergonomic way of using tools and obscures the fact digital photography has little in common with film photography.Yes both cameras use lenses and shutters and similar viewfinders, but the process is not alike even though both can produce photographic looking images.

The camera originated as a mechanical, optical-chemical device from the industrial revolution well over 100 years ago. Some of it’s first image making tasks were to record the movement of horses running and birds flying, and provided insights and understandings that began the modern machines of transportation we now have with railroads, automobiles and airplanes. But the cameras and the pictures they reproduced were physical objects made by a machine process of exposing light sensitive silver to the light reflected through a lens onto film. And the process of development was a physical change to the exposed silver by chemical reaction, producing an object and product of a machine, a thing that is a physical photographic image we know as a transparency, negative and print.

For the sake of mutual understanding let’s assume all subjects are a part of nature reflecting light that can be focused onto a light sensitive medium, either photo film or a digital camera sensor chip. Even though the subject may include artificial man-made objects like an automobile, a bicycle, or a house, they are all manufactured from natural ingredients, so they are really as natural as grass, trees, water, air and people.

The one key difference that distinguishes digital from the old mechanical method of producing a photo image of reality is that it is now done with electricity. Another distinction is that the digital area array senor is actually a matrix of pixels or sensor sites which applies its form to the reflected light of a subject. The result is the exposure is a measurement of millions of independent matrix elements which defines a metrical pattern. So what is reproduced is a representation of light measurement reading that fit into a matrix form and the electricity generated by this measurement is recorded as number values of different amounts of red, green and blue values. In other words a metrical collection of numbers recorded as a file that if read with an editor would not reveal a picture. Just pages of rows and rows of numbers and a few letters.

A digital photo only looks like a picture when opened with a photo application and the RGB pixel values are displayed as pixel colors in an LCD display. A personal computer has no idea of what a user is seeing on screen. LCD display adjustment, calibration and profiling will help match the screen image to what is printed using a color managed application like versions of Photoshop. But still the adjustment of image values is mechanical using basically the same mechanical adjustment tools first offered in computer paint programs in the 1980’s - nothing has changed basically just refinements. However there are exceptions in software that does recognize the matrix pattern of image content by a computer. First of all cameras and some photo applications have borrowed surveillance face recognition technology. The Professional Portrait retouching application also recognizes digital camera matrix patterns to automatically retouch face pictures made with digital cameras. And of course the Elpical.com system of automatic image adjustment editing recently released to individual users as Organic Imaging functions on the basis of a massive library of digital images they have recorded and processed over the last decade.

Otherwise the typical personal computer is blind to the information it processes when the content is digital camera made files. The main processor is device independent from the display - there is no personal computer recognition of digital images by either the computer or the display, which is only there to provide a GUI feedback and control of what the computer’s applications are processing. An adjustment of displayed digital photographic qualities has to be evaluated by user’s perception and adjusted by sight and individual judgment. The hardware and software are potentially capable of digital matrix pattern recognition and automated adjustment, but the companies that design, make and sell personal computers so far have not even acknowledged that digital image recognition and automated adjustment based on image recognition is possible or of any interest to users. So don’t expect a new model personal computer that is digital photo image aware  and capable of automated digital image adjustment any time soon. What we are getting is a slicker package design with faster and faster CPU chips, but basically the same design capabilities that were available in 1990.

Of course I must add that scanning film images produces a digital photo file that is electrically generated and a hybrid version of digital photographs. This fact allows the editing of these images advantages of both the film and digital mediums. But unfortunately matrix pattern sensitive automated function like retouching do not work the same to support automatic retouching as effectively as it can be done with digital camera produced portraits. However, the Organic Imaging (organicimaging.com) application and process seems to automatically adjust scanned film images as effectively as digital camera made photographs.

COTTON BALLS IN THE SKY

How do you store digital photographic image files is a question photographers send to me in various forms; wanting to know how, and what products to consider. Security that the data stored will be safe from loss or damage is a prime issue, you can’t replace an image file if it is the only one and is lost. File storage has been a computer user issue from the earliest days of personal computing, and for most of the time since then it has been up to the user to provide a solution. There are many choices from hard drives installed in computers to external HD’s connected to a computer; and including mirrored duplicate drive in what is called a RAID system. Then there is the possible choice of disc drives now standardized on CD and DVD, with the recent addition of the Millenniata DVD discs using a proprietary long lasting disc material and requiring a  special LGE writing drive.

In recent times a technology that provides the sharing of commercially owned storage farms called “cloud storage” has been opened to individual computer users either directly or through a photo service company or organization. For the individual user there is an unusually complete and accurate information resource to get an understanding of the “cloud storage” technology on Wikipedia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_storage) I would be confident the experts in the field have applied thorough editing to this Wikipedia  document to see it is as complete and as objective as possible. And it does cover the subject of data and individual security, indicating that these “cloud storage” services are privately or corporately owned, and the companies could become bankrupt, go out of business or suffer physical disruption and even destruction of facilities by both natural and other disorders could make access via the internet as well as their power supply no longer viable.

That their are security issues is in the news frequently when one or another vendor reports the loss of the personal account and password data of large numbers of ordinary customers. But like any disaster occurs affecting many people it is not news that sinks in, people do not relate to what they now call “big data”, its not personal. But just a few days ago a journalist who writes for Wired magazine had his cloud accounts hacked into and he lost the use of his MacBook, iPad and iPhone as well as all of the data stored on his work tools - he was not backed up on a hard disk of his own. (http://sfist.com/2012/08/09/listen_in_horror_as_mat_honan_recou.php)   This news went viral all over the global village, and at least two major technology companies have since hardened their username/password security as a result.

I cannot claim being clairvoyant about image fie storage security. I adopted an old system using gold/gold CD discs I began using almost 20 year ago, the only affordable system then available. It was a lucky choice as all the image files I have produced over the years are still available to me, I have not lost one file, and no hacker can get even near my CD stored files. I just follow an old saying, “if you want it done right do it yourself”. It is not that I distrust Apple, Amazon or any of the other large corporations that have computer hard drive farms located now all over the world, but many of these companies except Apple did not even exist when I started doing digital photographic images, and many of the familiar companies then are now gone, or on a downward track to who knows where like Kodak. Fortunately, unlike it was back in the 90’s good quality secure storage hardware is available to individuals now at very affordable costs. The only thing you might miss by letting the clouds overhead drift by is convenience, the cloud is not free, you rent space one way or another. 

LA CIE 324i LCD DISPLAY IS GOING...ALMOST GONE

The end of this week I received an e-mail LaCie sales notice with a surprise. The LaCie 324i LCD display I reviewed in Shutterbug, was featured with a $769 price. So I called LaCie and spoke with a sales representative and got some interesting news. LaCie is discontinuing its sales of displays and the 324i like the one I purchased and have written about has been discontinued; there are no more new ones available. The $769 price advertised is for refurbished units of  this excellent 24 inch, wide color gamut LCD display. It comes with a 180 day warranty and does not include a hood or LaCie’s calibration hardware and software. 

For those interested in a high quality pro-graphics LCD display the few refurbished models in stock may be a real value. I have been using mine for about two years now and its performance is excellent. But I am sorry LaCie displays will no longer be available as LaCie has been a good source for quality  displays for some years now, and I am still using one of the earlier models I purchased many years ago before the addition of my recent 324i. To connect to obtain more specifics on this sale by LaCie go to:

http://www.lacie.com/products/clearance/