Colouring truth--before Photoshop

'Kapuscinski - non-fiction' is the title of the recently-published biography of travel journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski (1932-2007). Author Artur Domoslawski calls Kapuscinski his 'mentor', but he did not turn a blind eye on his mentor's shortcomings. For he uncovered that Kapuscinski sometimes 'gave reality a bit more colour' by inventing things that had not happened.

How like the Photoshop discussion is that! There is no problem at all if a writer of fiction invents stories, invents even an whole world, just like 'art' photographers and Photoshop-buffs may do. But journalists (and that is how Kapuscinski presented himself!) to me must abide by the same rules that govern photo journalists: no fiddling with reality!

I have a couple of books by Kapuscinski and loved to read them, but mostly because I thought I could learn something about the problems of Africa, about the horrors of Russia. It was a good read and I admired his ability to give style to reality. But now it appears I basically was reading fiction (more style than reality) and I feel betrayed. IFFFFF Domoslawski wrote truth--whose writing can we trust more?

(Domoslawski's book is not yet available on Amazon; does it exist at all, then?)

Happy birthday, Photoshop! Real life wins!

It was 20 years today, Photoshop taught the band to play...

Photoshop really was first marketed in February 1990. The Sgt.'s Pepper in those days were brothers Thomas and John Knoll. Thomas remained among the Photoshop developers until the current version, CS4. John moved into graphic effects in the movie industry, says Wikipedia.

Whatever advantages Potoshop has given us, even Lars van den Brink, a photographer who likes to play with Photoshop to tell his stories ("Sometimes, it's like I summarise an hour in a single picture"), and who was interviewed for the NRC's Cultural supplement last Friday, admits in the end: "Real life is so surprising; you cannot beat that with Photoshop."

That's a quote I like!

Culture Fair in the Public Library

Just a link, twittered in real-time by co-clubmember René, from yesterday's Culture Fair:


Hopefully, we got a handful of people interested in our camera club. I'd spent more than enough time on designing a flyer, printing some pictures, getting the laptop + large screen ready to show club members' photos to passers-by, etc. And then the three of us spent a whole evening on being there.

The laptop's screenshow was quite effective, by the way: a lot of people stopped to watch it. TV-like screens apparently are irresistible and as marketeers know, getting people to pay attention and (literally) stop is the beginning! Then you can start talking with them.

Some of the musicians playing at the fair were really good, as well. Special recommendation: check out guitar player Casper van Vulpen on Youtube. Enjoy!

Photos, photoshop and reality

'Between all the plastic surgery and Photoshop, who knows what celebrities really look like anymore?' Something I just stumbled upon here.
Just for fun ;-)

HDR built-in: New Sony camera A550

Rumours had been around in the internet for more than half a year already, so I am a bit late to discover that the recently released Sony α550 camera has a trick inbuilt to make HDR pictures. HDR = High Dynamic Range and means that you can get pictures that show detail in the dark parts as well as in the light parts. Without HDR you'd get details in the dark parts but a pure white spot of clouds, or the other way around: well-deatiled clouds but completely black shadows. The α550 takes two pictures successively and combines them automatically to an HDR picture! That is almost the ideal I was waiting for, as I admitted some time ago: an HDR-sensor. Anyone interested in my "old" α700? ;-)