Steve Albini sadly passed away last month, but he left us a new record. With his band Shellac he produced To All Trains.
It is now available on Touch and Go. On vinyl and on CD.
Of course, we buy vinyl. For Steve.
I almost forgot to look up to get a good look at how this light could fall so beautifully into the hall of Glasgow Central station.
There is no good reason why you should still rely on Google search for your search engine. Read this excellent article on Google’s practices, and Big Tech chills run down your spine. There are ample good alternative search engines these days that do have integrity:
Bing (though also Big Tech and historically suspect)
And there are more.
Lately, I’ve been using Ecosia and DuckDuckGo side by side. I don’t feel like I’m missing anything about Google.
Kronkeling has the most fun blog about photography.
Kronkeling has a hard time photographing on vacation. I don’t share this struggle. I always takes pictures. Sometimes it’s for the image, the beautiful picture, sometimes for the subject, so just the snapshot. I decide the goals afterward, but then I am different from Kronkeling.
Tips for your holiday pictures from Kronkeling are here.
Sometimes, there are miniseries, like when our car broke down, and we had to wait until a mechanic came to help us. I photographed all the trash in the parking lot.
Or, during vacations, photographing tourists.
Or hotel rooms.
Or art on the wall.
Or numbers.
Nina Katchadourian is a super creative source of inspiration.
More than a year ago, I became a vegetarian. In fact, I am a pescatarian; I do eat fish, although I try to limit that, too.
Sometimes, it’s hard to eat vegetarian. When visiting people who are not prepared for it, for example, and also at home, when the rest of the family does want to eat meat. (And I’m not the evangelical type; they have to decide for themselves.)
But it also has advantages. In a restaurant, a vegetarian diet pleasantly limits the choices to no more than a handful of options. Easy, no choice, stress.
Sometimes the choice is limited to a bare pasta, but then you’re in the wrong restaurant anyway.
When Artificial Intelligence-generated images win photo contests, should we oppose that?
I just think the developments of AI are telling us to do things differently, to stand out. AI has become the competition (and maybe just a tool), just like all other photographers are. So, we have to treat AI as competition, too. You can try to deny this reality, but you can also look at how you, as a photographer or artist, can differentiate yourself from this new collegue/competition.
Ideas:
Personal and analog distinguish you from the aggregated, statistically generated products of AI.
First, we drive to Eilean Donan Castle, originally a thirteenth-century castle that was restored and opened in the 20th century. This famous castle turns out to be a huge tourist trap. We are not the only ones who refrain from visiting, and from the other side of the river, we take some pictures of this castle and the stream of people entering it. There are two rooms in the castle to visit, sic!
To Achnasheen, The Midge Bite where we were before and once again drink a fine cappuccino. Tent lives up to its name. And it’s low season, in terms of midges, and thus bites, too. In the car, we terminate a few more midgets before they can make their move.
Next, we pass Loch Maree, a three-star lake according to Michelin, and the old Caledonian forest—exclusivity largely hidden from us behind roadside bushes.
Gairloch is a nice coastal town where we stretch our legs and eat our sandwiches.
At the waterfall Corrieshalloch Gorge National Nature Reserve, we get out again to stretch our legs and conquer vertigo in a deep gorge with a suspension bridge.
Then we went to Ullapool. We walked into town, which is small but nice. It’s much smaller than we thought, even smaller than Thurso, but also nicer.
