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February 15, 2008
Tokugawa Crest
Posted by Marcus at 2:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 6, 2008
Echoes from the past
The New York Public Library has put a huge collection of historic photographs taken in Japan and other Asian countries online. From the NYPL website:
Over 1,000 prints and photographs (mostly albumen, hand-colored albumen and gelatin silver prints) of East, Southeast and South Asia from the 18th century to the early 20th century, drawn from portfolios, photographic albums, photographically illustrated books and archival collections. Subjects include architecture, scenes of daily life, portraits of major political, religious and artistic figures of the time, "exotica," staged photographs for the tourist trade and travel postcards.
It's an outstanding collection for several reasons. Aside from their value as historic artifacts, many of these photos display great artistry in terms of their composition and (in many) their hand-tinting.
Oh, and although its not really Japan-related, The Library of Congress has begun putting some of its photographic collection online through Flickr. So far, there's a selection of black and white images from the 1910s as well as colour images from the 1940s, including photographs from the war years.
Posted by Marcus at 10:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 5, 2008
PicLens and Photophlow
I've been playing around with a couple of great new photography tools for the web: PicLens and Photophlow. The first is a useful plug-in for Firefox which allows users to browse PicLens-enabled websites such as Flickr, Picasa and Facebook in 3D. Its a lot of fun, and I can guarantee that once you play around with this plug-in, you'll never want to go back to browsing images the old way.
Photophlow brings Flickr into a chatroom environment so that users can share and discuss photos with one another in real time. The design is slick, although the interface takes some getting used to. Users navigate 'rooms' where they can meet with other users with similar interests. They then can search for particular photos, discuss them as a group and leave comments for the photographer.
Its all very web 2.0 – lots of lower case, big fonts, gradients and irony. I'm guessing some users will find the site's deliberate quirkiness annoying, but I stopped paying attention once I began meeting up with friends and commenting on the images.
Photophlow is invitation-only for the time being. You can either request an invitation from the Photophlow website, or ask one of your friends to invite you. I still have a couple of invitations left – let me know if you want to try it out. Naturally, its first come, first served. Oh, and this being a Yahoo! product, Hotmail addresses won't work (for the time being!)
Posted by Marcus at 11:06 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
February 4, 2008
Shinjuku Snow
Posted by Marcus at 1:03 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack