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.
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.
Hey, I admit it. I Google myself every once in a while. It’s a good way to keep up on how my web site and my blog are being indexed. It’s also a convenient way to find out if photos of mine are appearing online. You never know what you may find…
A few days ago I came across this:
It’s the home page of an Austrian art gallery, Fotoforum West. They are having an exhibit of Miles Davis pictures, highlighting portraits of him along side his paintings and prints. Pretty cool. Even cooler is that that’s my photo as the lead image for the show. Cooler still is that I’m in great company – Annie Leibovitz and Anton Corbijn. You can’t ask for better than that.
The show is getting a lot of press in Austria and I’m even being lumped in with Annie and Anton as a starfotografen. Google translates that as a “star photographer” though it’s more likely a “photographer of celebrities” than the other way around. Not bad for an image of mine which is just over 22 years old.
There’s only one problem… I didn’t know anything about it. No one contacted me and asked me for permission. But what’s odder still is I don’t know how this gallery came up with a print. The photo has been published twice. Once in Rolling Stone (1987) and once in the book, The Art of Miles Davis (1991.)
Miles Davis, Rolling Stone, November 19, 1987.
I’ve never sold or given away a print of the image. So, as much as I am surprised to see the image re-surface, I’m curious to know what path it took. The only method I can think of is that someone copied the photo out of the book. I have begun to see if I can find out. The gallery in Austria has not returned my emails and a gallery in England (the exclusive agent for Davis’ artwork in Europe) knew nothing of the show nor my image.
An interesting side note to this – the portrait was taken within a few months of my having started out on my own. I was freelancing in New York and had fallen in with a publicist whose core group of clients was nightclubs. Davis had a show of his work at the Tunnel.
I remember getting a frantic phone call from the publicist telling me to hightail it over to the Tunnel to photograph Davis for Rolling Stone. Just like in a movie, I could be heard to say, Rolling Stone – this is my break! First problem was that I didn’t own any lights outside of a couple Vivitar flashes. So, I ran over to Lens & Repro, rented a Norman 200B, a stand, and an umbrella, and then cabbed it over to the Tunnel.
I set up my light and waited my turn. I was waiting a long time when I was told, “We don’t need you. Rolling Stone sent their own photographer.” I couldn’t believe it. This was my break, I was not giving it up. I don’t remember who I spoke with but I pleaded my case, pointed out the expense of having rented equipment (something the Rolling Stone photographer did not do), pointed out that I was already set up and ready to go, and asked for a minute or two with Mr. Davis. They gave me one.
1o to 15 seconds of it was spent photographing. I got off 6 frames in color slide on one camera, 6 in b&w on another. The remainder of the time was spent getting Davis to move back into position. He kept wandering over and standing directly under the one light. Long story short, the Rolling Stone photographer somehow messed up. His images didn’t come out so Rolling Stone ran mine.
In the end, I can’t say if this was mybreak (is there ever one?) or that it led directly to other assignments. A few years later, Davis passed away. I was able to see one of his last U.S. concerts. It was an amazing experience made all the more so by having had a few moments with him at the start of my career.
For the past few weeks I had a ShareThis button on the blog. First on posts viewed singly and then on all posts displayed on the home page. ShareThis allows readers to forward content to other services (email, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) I went with ShareThis because visually it was the least noxious of similar services.
How’d it work it? Neither here nor there. It saw a bit of use by readers but not enough to justify keeping it on the site. Overall, having looked at number of these services, I think they all suffer from overkill. Most don’t let you edit the number of links provided. So, it’s common for them to present 30-50 links, the majority of them being too obscure to warrant inclusion. I also think that many in the heavy social media user crowd will already have plug-ins for their web browsers negating the need for sharing buttons.
In other blog news, I’ve made some updates this morning:
The sidebar links and information now appear on every page.
The sidebar now scrolls with the page (this allows it to be visible via scrolling if the browser window is shorter than the sidebar column and it means the sidebar will not overlap the blog footer.)
Posts viewed singly now have navigation at the bottom allowing for easy movement to the next or to the previous post.
I got rid of that pesky, tiny, smiley face which was showing up in the footer. Turns out it appears when you use the WordPress.com Stats widget. The smiley face is seen by everyone except the admin (IOW, for the admin to see it the admin must view the blog when logged out.) There’s an easy way to get rid of it – the WordPress.com Stats Smiley Remover widget.
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12/5/09 – Already going back on my word. Trying a Share/Save button (different service from ShareThis.)
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12/6/09 – The flirtation continues… I tried the AddToAny Share/Save button. It’s nice and configurable, it can be anything from text or just an icon to a large horizontal button. I was impressed that it learns which services a person uses and puts those front and center. I also had some questions and its author sent me two emails this weekend. Impressive but the button wouldn’t play nice with my WordPress theme when viewed in Safari. This is a fault of Safari’s not the AddToAny code.
So, in one of those weekend sidetrack projects I’m known for – I made my own links that get added automatically on Learning to See’s home page and when individual posts are viewed. The code was cobbled together from suggestions on two sites (Anidandesign.com and MichaelMerrell.com) along with some reverse engineering of sites I’ve seen online. It’s very simple as you can see below, just text based links, but the advantage of doing it this way is that it can fit within the style of your WordPress theme. It won’t call undue attention to itself (a problem with the rows of colored icons many folks use.)
I’m not big on social media myself beyond having a blog but I can see the usefulness in helping those that are and in giving this a longer test run. Since, ’tis the season, here’s Jon’s make-your-own text based social media bar:
I’ve dubbed it ShareLink but you should feel free to call it anything you want. A title may not be needed at all. If you want it in your single posts then add it to the single.php file, if you want it on your index page then add it to your index.php file.
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1/26/10 – It’s been just over seven weeks since adding the ShareLink links mentioned above. In that time my site and blog had over 10,000 pageviews. With all those views ShareLink was used only ten times (1/10 of 1 Percent of pageviews.) Five times for Facebook, four times for email, and one time for Twitter. Given that, I’ve deleted the links for Del.icio.us, Stumbleupon, Digg, and Linkedin.
I know another photographer who named his blog, Zero Comments. I think that’s a great name. It speaks to the majority of bloggers who are writing for writing’s sake or posting images regardless of recognition. For those of us toiling away under these conditions it’s kind of exciting when you do get a blog comment. Someone cared enough to write!
Unfortunately, more often than not, the comment you get is not really a comment. It’s an ad or a questionable hyperlink disguised as a comment. I’ve gotten a few of these lately and some forensic Googling has shown some odd meeting points.
Here’s a comment I received Monday morning,
Hi, I’ve just come across your website while searching around the Internet as I am looking for some information on electric cellos!. It’s a very interesting site so I have bookmarked you and I will revisit soon to have a more indepth look when I’ll more free time.
Now, I double-checked my blog. While I have written about music, I have never written about cellos or electric cellos. The closet thing I have on my blog are images from Monticello. So, there’s no type of search which would lead the commenter to my site. I also know from my site stats that they did not find me by using a search engine.
In the commenter’s name they did leave a link to a site about electric cellos and that’s where things get strange. I’m not going to link to their site because I don’t want to fulfill their goals of publishing their links but suffice it to say their site looks like this:
Almost looks legit until you look at the site’s links. Every external link leads to one Amazon.com page. A page of electric cellos. Seeing this I wondered, what’s the point? Why create a site whose sole purpose is to lead to an Amazon page of electric cellos? Why create the software or pay people to leave blog comments pointing to the same?
On a whim I Googled parts of the comment I received. It led me to other blogs, all with similar comments. Here’s one I found,
Hi there, I’ve just stumbled upon your blog whilst hunting around Google as I am looking for some info on engine lifts!. It’s a good blog so I bookmarked your site and will revisit you soon to allow more time for a more indepth look when I can give it more time.
Its author has a hyperlink to this site:
Look familiar? In keeping with the electric cello format, the external links on this site lead to an Amazon search page of engine lifts.
Now scroll down to either Amazon search page and look through the Customers with Similar Searches window. You’ll find that people who search for engine lifts also search for electric cellos and vice versa.
I’m not one for conspiracy theories but there’s definitely something afoot here… Maybe there is a little known group of Internet manipulating electric cello playing mechanics?
I heard back from Six Apart this afternoon (see the prior post for the beginning of this story.) They did delete my TypePad account. While that’s great, their excuse for the current set up at TypePad (forcing all users, without their consent, into accounts which cannot be deleted) is that a “delete everything” button has not been created. They claim to have fast-tracked this but they are not sure how quickly it can be done. Additionally, their explanation for the behavior of the TypePad Rep who said that “accounts cannot generally be deleted,” is that she is “just trying to keep customers.”
I find these points wanting to say the least. It’s hard to see how TypePad’s policies are anything but created to force all users into permanent never-to-be-deleted accounts.
I made the following suggestions to Six Apart as interim steps to take while they create their delete button:
Don’t automatically create a Profile page without a TypePad user’s consent.
Don’t automatically force a paying customer who deletes their blog into TypePad Micro account without their consent.
Make it abundantly clear prior to signing up, for users of paid TypePad accounts or of free TypePad Micro accounts, whether they can delete their accounts at any time in the future.
Change TypePad’s stock answer when deletion requests like mine are made. The free profile accounts can’t generally be deleted statement is not true.
If you are a TypePad user and find yourself forced into a free account or into free services like the profile page without your consent then go directly to Six Apart’s getsatisfaction.com forum and post a complaint. This bypasses TypePad and will hopefully lead to any corrections you request.
