Trying out a darker, more neutral version of my old theme.  Inspiration taken from the NYT Lens Blog and a new version of Oulipo which is available for WordPress.com users (not self-hosted WordPress.org’ers like me.)

The majority of blogs have few comments but, as with all things Internet, that doesn’t mean they are not receiving lots of messages. The bulk of them are coming in the form of spam.

I have spam filters for my blog and they catch most everything. Occasionally, some will slip through and get deposited in comment purgatory, awaiting my judgment, approved or spam.

Many are not legible, most are just annoying and do not warrant a second thought, but it is the rare one which can be funny or elicit a smile.

Must be a fan of Kevin Nealon’s Subliminal Man.

Yesterday at the Shanghai World Expo Canon exhibited a new camera concept, the Wonder Camera.

Fans everywhere of Sleeper inspired design rejoiced…

Engadget story on the Wonder Camera and via Electronista.

I’m excited to announce that I have just joined up with Wonderful Machine, a web portal and photographers’ representative dedicated to connecting art buyers with photographers. Part sourcebook, part agent, Wonderful Machine actively promotes its photographers through its website, print ads, direct mail, email promos, and portfolio showings. It has managed to hold buyers attention in a crowded dissonant marketplace by carefully selecting its members and promoting them only within areas where Wonderful Machine sees a deep proficiency.

When you sign up with Wonderful Machine, as with any rep, they decide how you will be marketed and which images will be used. Users of the web portal can search by city or specialty, or contact Wonderful Machine directly to find the best fits for their projects.

It was great to see that Wonderful Machine’s photo editor saw the depth in my work to include me in five categories: architecture, corporate, institutional, landscape, and fine art.

My page at Wonderful Machine.

Wonderful Machine’s home page.

Wonderful Machine has a great blog, too. Well worth a look and a subscription.

For the moment I’m watching the iPad from afar. Already the owner of an iPhone and a laptop, the iPad is not jumping out at me as a necessity. You can’t tether to it when shooting without a laptop or a computer in the middle, so no benefit there. You can do what you can do on the iPhone, only larger, but also without the versatility of a laptop.

One area where it does show promise is as a portfolio but whether it can stand on its own or if it needs to act in concert with a printed portfolio is to be determined. The other area where it may have some effect is the magazine industry – potentially providing a new way for readers to view publications and a new way for publishers to present their content.

Some photographers and publishers are predicting a sea change, which when coupled with the video capabilities of new dslr’s or the Red camera, will drive motion to become the new still image. Witness the Alexx Henry videos such as this one for Viv magazine. When I watch it though – I just shake my head. Sure it can be done but how often and on whose budget? When I see the amount of work, the equipment used, and the size of the crews involved it’s hard to believe that this level of production is sustainable in any way.

Rob Haggart of aPhotoEditor.com has an insightful evaluation of the iPad and its implications for work, viewing photographs, and the magazine industry. Video samples of it in use as photographer’s portfolio and as a magazine e-reader are included.

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May 4th, 2010 – Update:

In addition to running aPhotoEditor.com, Rob Haggart is also the force behind aPhotoFolio.com. My site runs off his service. Rob announced yesterday that aPhotoFolio.com is the first portfolio web design company to release custom iPad versions of their members’ sites.

As seen below in the comments, regardless of where you fall on the iPad and its usefulness, having a site which re-formats itself to take advantage of the iPad is a smart move.

My web site is, as always,  jonroemer.com. To see how it re-formats itself for an iPad, view it on an iPad, or get a preview of the iPad version by going to ipad.jonroemer.com. This forces your web browser, on any computer, to launch the iPad version. It’s not as functional as it is on the iPad (you can’t swipe to move through the images or the thumbnails) but it gives a clear sense of layout and the automatic reformatting.

There is a profile of artist Butch Anthony in today’s New York Times. It’s an interesting piece – Anthony has walked his own path creating art and bringing others along for the ride. It may be the first tale of an anthropomorphic turnip launching not one but three art careers.

The NYT has a slide show of Anthony’s art, compound, and his Doo-Nanny festival. The article takes the stance of this as outsider art but admits that Anthony’s work is harder to categorize. After reading it I wonder if outsider art should be stricken from the lexicon. It’s like the term the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages were not dark, but named because of a lack of knowledge about a time. Outsider art is only outside because its being defined by those that feel they are inside. It is, simply, art, and, if anything, could be termed inside/out art as its best practitioners seem to have a more direct way of channeling their inner self into something the outer world can experience and enjoy.

Word comes this morning that insolvency proceedings against JOBO were initiated last week (via Online Photographer.)

JOBO holds many memories for me. They manufactured home/small-studio processors for film and prints. I didn’t get one until I started shooting 4×5 and was looking for a more consistent, less hands-in-the-chemicals, method of running the film than in trays. The JOBO CPP2 provided the answer. Large, very plastic, somehow it worked in spite of itself. How many hours did I spend in the company of this device? I can’t begin to fathom. For my personal work alone – I might come back from a trip with a couple hundred sheets of 4×5 Tri-x and the JOBO could only run 10 sheets at a time.

JOBO Expert Drum for 4x5 Film

It worked well enough that I ran my 35mm and 120mm b&w in it as well. The roll film module enabled eight or ten rolls to be run by extending the processing tube further and further. With a metal core in it you could use metal reels and in the end it provided a more civilized method than using two 4-reel stainless steel tanks simultaneously (aka – old school.)

I sold my JOBO equipment 4-5 years ago as the switch to digital became complete. While I had no problem parting with it, it’s hard to hear of JOBO’s demise and not think of the countless hours I spent running that device. Lots of whirring as it rotated, the fact that it was all still a very much wet process (the processing drums rested in a temperature controlled basin of water), the setup, the cleanup, and once all was done using the foot pump to pop the lid on the 4×5 expert drum and see the processed film for the first time.

JOBO did try transition to digital with small digital storage devices, digital frames, gps units, and a few other items. None of the new product line seemed to have legs but more importantly none of them provided what JOBO’s processor line had, a niche market to ensure JOBO’s survival.

CPN Europe has a wonderful interview with David Burnett on his work covering the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

Film, slow ISO’s (Kodachrome and Tri-X, even Tri-X @ ISO 400 qualifies as slow these days), slower lenses, manual focus, maneuvering to get the film out of the country, a different time. But Burnett makes the case that even though technology has advanced over the interim, people and history remain quite similar.

Additional interview and story at NYT’s Lens blog from last September.

Burnett’s book, 44 Days: Iran and the Remaking of the World, and web site.