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Last week my blog had a slight bit of drama that illuminated a bit how some of the big tech news sites work internally.
It started when I was reading my normal news sites and came across a surreal article on PetaPixel, a large photography-related news site that I follow daily. The article was surreal because it was claimed to be written by me (though it most certainly wasn't), using one of my photos to illustrate a point about browser color management. The subject of the short article was related to a sub-topic covered in my 2006 writeup “Introduction to Digital-Image Color Spaces”, but used this photo, from last year's “Another Day of Amazing Fall Colors in Kyoto”:
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — 1/500 sec, f/1.4, ISO 1000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Behind The Temple
Imakumano Kannonji Temple (今熊野観音寺)
Kyoto Japan
Again, the photo and the subject were strongly related to me, but I hadn't written the article. Surreal!
So, I sent a note to the editor at PetaPixel, Michael Zhang, asking what was up.
He got back to me quickly... it turns out to have been a series of mistakes. Some guy had found a copy of my image somewhere and used it to illustrate a short article on Reddit about browser color management. Of course he should have asked my permission to use my photo (and had he asked I would have said yes), but this kind of thing happens very often, so it's not something I tend to get bothered about.
Anyway, on Reddit it garnered a lot of attention, so Michael from PetaPixel had asked the guy whether PetaPixel could host the article as well, and the guy agreed. Unfortunately, Michael apparently hadn't been minding his p's and q's because he confused the photo credit for both the photo credit and the author credit, so when Michael put it up on his site, it got my byline.
This had been fixed by the time he responded to me with profuse apologies.
Moments later he responded with a followup: Gee, did the guy have permission to use my photo?
I replied “no, but isn't that something you should be checking before publication?” and went to bed, and woke up the next morning Kyoto time to find his reply (“sorry, I thought it was you”) and to see that the original PetaPixel article was now devoid of my image and my name, that any comments referencing me as the author had been deleted, and that the article now sported a different photo using my same wild color profile that highlights where there's a lack of color management. (I had explicitly released that color profile to the public domain, so its use here was quite appropriate.)
It was now as it should have been in the first place, but I found it odd that a supposed news site would quietly fix a material error without a correction notice.
As it turns out, I had also put a copy of that original image on my post about iOS color management: “So Much For That Glorious iPad Screen: iOS and its Apps are Not Even Color Managed”, and I brought the irony to Michael's attention: when I first published that article three months ago, I'd sent him a link suggesting that perhaps his readers would be interested in it. It was disappointing now to have been passed over for a short, fluff article.
He agreed, and confessed that he hadn't looked at the article closely enough when my initial message had come in, so the next day he published “Yup, Color Management is Absent in iOS” on PetaPixel, referencing my blog post.
Thus started a spike on my server, and as a bonus, garnering among the comments left at PetaPixel a number of truly stupid ones from people who didn't read it but felt themselves an expert nevertheless. I would expect nothing less from the Internet.
So that was that.
A day or two later, the folks at Gizmodo apparently noticed the sudden popularity of my blog post and decided that they'd like to get in on the action as well, so asked me whether they could “syndicate” it on their site. (That is, copy it so it looked like I wrote it for them.) The request is fine and not unexpected — they want content, without paying for it of course — but the way they presented the request was really smarmy, dropping some famous names of folks who have been so equally blessed to have been asked by Gizmodo to provide free content.
I responded with a simple link to one of my blog posts from 2008: “Jerks At Gizmodo: Way Uncool”. The short story there is that Gizmodo outright stole some content from my site, severely dumbed it down, and presented it as their own. And when I complained, they didn't even hint at an acknowledgment that they had done anything wrong, much less actually apologize. Their whole business model seemed to be based on stealing others' stuff, knowing that, practically speaking, the worst penalty will be having to delete the article. What assholes.
At least this time they actually asked instead of just taking the article (which to my knowledge they haven't done, though it's not like they would send a “hey, stole your stuff, thanks!” heads-up note). Still, little else seems to have changed.
The guy at Gizmodo last week had a fresh opportunity to apologize for how his company had acted before, but instead sent a rambling note about just how great a guy the original asshole had been, and how much that guy loved photography, and how he was friends with such-and-such Famous People, how many BAZILLION hits any article Gizmodo puts up gets, etc. etc. etc.. It was a self-love-fest beyond smarmy back to surreal, as if this was at all relevant... to anything?
Notable, but not unexpected from this group, was the lack of an apology, so in disgust I replied lamenting that fact. Well, it turns out that he thinks he had apologized, and he might actually be right, sort of. Toward the end of his note he had written “Anyway, sorry about that.”. That came after the full-on self-serving egomaniacal blather of a reply that was devoid of any sense of apology or contriteness, so it naturally followed to read the “sorry” as a lament that they wouldn't get the free content they wanted. But, apparently, that was his idea of an apology. Gee, okay, wow.
Anyway, I pointed out that they didn't need anyone's permission to link to the blog post, and that they should do so if they thought their readers would benefit. Since they wanted to actually host the article, they clearly thought it was a benefit to their readers, but you know what's coming: they never bothered to do so. It seems that Gizmodo concern for their readers extends only as far as Gizmodo's ability to profit from an article.
My first characterization of them, “Jerks at Gizmodo”, seems as appropriate than ever, which is why I continue to avoid them.
Anyway, it was an interesting little bit of.... well... something.
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The other day I posted my first attempt at a waterfall shot, in “A Snapshot From Today's Hike: Kuuya-taki Waterfall in Western Kyoto”. I'd made an unplaned visit with Nicolas Joannin after the visit to the Gioji Temple that I've been posting about lately.
We discovered the waterfall in the same way that I discover a lot of thing, by following a small mountain road that I'd seen on a map and wondered why it was there. After a while of narrow deep-mountain winding sometimes-rough roads not unlike these I wrote about last year, we came to a small turnoff at a river, with a couple of footpaths leading away. It seemed as good a point as any to stop and investigate.
One path seemed to head up the mountain, while the other one looked to parallel the picturesque river. We took that one first.
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 4000 — map & image data — nearby photos
First Shot Needs Salt
just doesn't work at all: needs a tripod and a polarizer
My first reaction to a beautiful scene when I'm out with the camera is to take a picture, even when I know it won't come out, and indeed I often have my intuition confirmed. With flowing water you need a longer exposure to capture that sense of movement, but that requires a tripod, which I didn't bring. (Remember, I had no idea what, if anything, I would find when I picked the road in the first place.)
The first snapshot also came out really flat, telling me that I'd likely benefit from a polarizing filter, as I did earlier with the moss at the temple.
Upon hearing my whining about the lack of a tripod, Nicolas reaches into his small backpack and magically produces a Joby Gorillapod that he bought at Yodobashi Camera. I'd never really seen one of these, and thought it was a great chance to give it a try...
E-P2 — 1/25 sec, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Bad Hair Day
courtesy of the summer heat, a motorcycle helmet, and me being me
( but hey, at least I had a clean shave, unlike the other day's portraiture )
photo by Nicolas Joannin
As you can see in the photo above (at least if you can avert your eyes from the trainwreck that is my hair), the Gorillapod is pretty convenient.
Here's the first result with it, an 0.8 second exposure...
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 0.8 sec, f/8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Better
but still needs that polarizer
E-P2 + LUMIX G VARIO 14-45/F3.5-5.6 at an effective 28mm — 1/8 sec, f/3.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
New Setup
photo by Nicolas Joannin
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — 2 sec, f/8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
This is More Like It
I finally got around to using the polarizer, and used a longer two-second exposure to get more creamy blur, and the result finally enters the “at least it's not crap” range. Composition still leaves something to be desired, as does sharpness. The Gorillapod is nice, but was taxed by the heavy D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 combination, and the camera undulated like crazy in the wind.
Still, though not perfect, I was all for testing, since it was my first time with the tripod and with flowing water...
E-P2 + LUMIX G VARIO 14-45/F3.5-5.6 at an effective 28mm — 1/8 sec, f/3.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Precarious
photo by Nicolas Joannin
(You can see above that I'm “wearing” the repurposed lens bag that I wrote about earlier this year.)
Here's the shot I got with the setup seen above...
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — 2.5 sec, f/8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Meh
was worth a try
(The stairs of the path along the river is slightly visible in the far upper right of the photo.)
Nicolas, a genetic biologist by trade, tends to like bugs, a subject covered in this blog post. He found a fuzzy caterpillar he wanted to photograph up close, so employed my Voigtländer 125mm with an adapter on his Olympus E-P2...
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — 1/250 sec, f/1.4, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Challenging Setup
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — 1/320 sec, f/1.4, ISO 5600 — map & image data — nearby photos
In Action
We slowly made our way up the mountain on the well-paved path along the river, stopping every few moments for more wonders to photograph.
At one point a small stream joined the river, running by some kind of monument with what at first glance seemed to be a bunch of old rusty pistons...
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 5600 — map & image data — nearby photos
Monument To The White-Snake King?
perhaps related to the legends I've heard of about white snakes that guard the area's water supply?
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/250 sec, f/2.5, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Buckets
( not pistons )
At random intervals one finds remnants of walls that indicate that things were going on in previous generations (centuries? millennia?)...
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — 1/125 sec, f/2.8, ISO 2200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Remnants
and, in the background, the modern garbage that is ubiquitous in Japanese nature
Tons of gorgeous ferns everywhere, but I never get a picture that I feel does them justice, though I try...
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/100 sec, f/5.6, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/200 sec, f/2.5, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
“Protect the Forest From Fire”
We eventually came across a cluster of modern (but tightly buttoned up) buildings that seemed to be part of a shrine of some sort.
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Shrine
apparently to this “Dragon King”, whatever that is
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 4000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Nicolas With His Gorillapod
The main path seemed to run through the cluster of buildings, though as we took it I wasn't 100% sure it was necessarily open to the public because the area was unmarked and had more of a feeling of someone's unkempt backyard strewn with “stuff” than a public hiking trail. Since the path did lead directly there, one would expect “no entry” signs if not open to the public, so lacking those, with a sense of adventure and discover, we pressed forward.
We did notice, however, off to the side the ruins of an old stone staircase launching up the side of the mountain in a manner that screamed “deathtrap”, and I half expected Indiana Jones to come flying down with a look of terror (and a slight mischievous smile) on his face....
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 3600 — map & image data — nearby photos
Staircase Ruins
precariously steep and highly dilapidated, leading..... where?
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Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Hodgepodge Wall
at the Shouseien Temple (渉成園), Kyoto Japan
Today was another busy day leaving little room for a blog post (on the plus side, I cleaned my room, but on the other hand, so to speak, Anthony fractured a finger while playing ball at school), so like yesterday, I'm taking it easy, this time with a few simple images from the Shouseien Temple (渉成園), which we first saw the other day in “First Peek at the Shouseien Temple in Downtown Kyoto”.
I'm normally good about getting an “establishing shot” that shows the context for some detail or other that I want to share, but I seem to have neglected to do that with the stone wall above. If I recall correctly, the wall was about as tall as I am.
Elsewhere in the same wall was an old grinding wheel...
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Living on the Edge
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/500 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Balcony
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Septapus Flower
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/640 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Bridge
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Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/8, ISO 4000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Burst
I've been busy with my Lightroom plugin stuff all weekend, so just a simple post today on some pretty flowers found among the moss during a recent visit to the Gioji Temple (祇王寺) in Kyoto.
We'll start with what I assume is some hydrangea (ajisai · アジサイ) just beginning to bloom...
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Budding Hydrangea
It frankly doesn't look much in the small thumbnail, but clicking through to the larger version has the tiny buds in the center come alive like stars in a nebulae (or something like that).
I tried a side-view approach to get the petals edge on, and I shouldn't have been surprised when it caused the result to fall flat....
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Flat
not in a good way
I paused to sit on the steps to a small building and found myself looking at this fence.
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Simple
And over to one side saw a few potted flowers....
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Orchard
of low-hanging photographic fruit
The pink fuzz in there was seen in “Rich Colors: A Good Start to an Amazing Day in Kyoto”.
The yellow flowers made great fodder for depth-of-field fun, along the lines of the previous post (“Little Orange Mushrooms and Depth-of-Field Comparisons”), so here are a few shots of the same flower seen at the start of this post, from the same vantage point. The only differences among them from a composition point of view are: 1) how close I was to the flower, 2) where I placed the focus, and 3 the aperture size.
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 360 — map & image data — nearby photos
Subtle Petal Detail
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 720 — map & image data — nearby photos
Quietly Emerging
from a vat of yellow milk
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 640 — map & image data — nearby photos
Pollen Stonehenge
And finally, this... thing... whatever it is, caught my eye...
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Thing
looks oddly tasty
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Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Really Tiny Little Orange Mushrooms
Gioji Temple (祇王寺), Kyoto Japan
Back again to the mossy temple visit from “Tag Along With Me on a Photo Shoot at Kyoto’s Gioji Temple”, with an orange followup counterpart to the “Gioji Temple Photo Shoot: Nicolas’s White Little Mushrooms” post.
The temple's entrance gate is covered by a little roof of bamboo and decaying moss-covered wood. For context, here's a photo of the roof with Nicolas under it (photographing a spider):
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — 1/320 sec, f/1.4, ISO 2000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Temple Entrance Gate
with its moss-covered roof
The bamboo on the roof makes a grid of squares... the mushrooms of today's post are in the lower-rightmost square:
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 900 — map & image data — nearby photos
The Orange Dots
are the mushrooms
Once Nicolas was done, I moved in with my all-time favorite lens, the mouthwatering-bokeh 1:1-macro Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 to get up close and personal with my new orange friends....
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Jungle
I always have a question about what aperture is best, because that controls the depth of field... how quickly things in the foreground and background fade into a delicious bokeh. I'm a real fan of that effect, seen many times here on the blog, such as this and this and this and this and this and this and a hundred others, I'm sure.
But sometimes a bit more in focus helps. In the recent passion-fruit flower post, many shots of the spaceship-like flower were with a small aperture (large “f” number) because they ended up looking better than the ultra-thin-depth shots.
In the same vein as the moss polarizer-filter examples from the other day, here's a comparison of depth-of-field between wide open at f/2.5, and stopped down a bit at f/8:
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby photos
mouseover a button to see that image
Notice the little red dot in the center of the f/2.5 image? That's a little bug that moves over a bit to the right for the f/8 image where he stands in nice profile, though slightly out of focus. (You can see much better in the larger versions that clicking on the thumbnails brings you to>)
Anyway, I can't tell which I prefer, and my indecision grows the more I jump back and forth.
Here's another pair, this time between the far limits of the lens, f/2.5 and f/22:
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1600 — map & image data — nearby photos
mouseover a button to see that image
The f/22 one is fairly blurry because 125mm hand-held at 1:1 macro for 1/20th of a second will not go well even in the most steady hands. I was at the limit of my tippy-tippy-toe stretch to begin with just to get the camera close enough.
(Sometimes I can do very well with hand-held long exposures, such as in “Pushing Lowlight-Photography Limits: The Atta Terrace Hotel at Night” from early 2009, but it's more luck than skill.)
Anyway, blurriness aside, the f/22 one in this case is merely documenting the mushroom so I don't care for it; the f/2.5 one has a sense of small-world mystery and adventure. YMMV.
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/250 sec, f/5.6, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Towering
Here's one more depth-of-field comparison, among f/2.5, f/16, and f/22:
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 2200 — map & image data — nearby photos
mouseover a button to see that image
I wish I had the full progression from f/2.5 to f/22, but it seems I neglected to take it. I try often, but without a tripod it's almost impossible. It's difficult enough to do the minor cropping and rotating required to get these pairs to match up well.
