Conceivably off topic on this one; perhaps not if it inspires you as it does me.

Like some other southern school districts there is a push for neighborhood redistricting of schools.  If we are affluent we want our children staying in our ‘hood. “Don’t call me racist I just want the best for my kids” – easily understood but hopelessly shortsighted.

I’ve been both very affluent and moderately poor, and I will tell you from experience that poverty is not an easy thing to shed.  It was easier for me because I am educated from a good ‘hood.

Here’s testimony from a teacher.  I copied this from her blog but I’m sure she won’t mind.  Go to Down to Earth Mom for the entire post.

Poverty is a difficult thing.  People who have lived poverty, worked with people in poverty, taught in poverty know that it is a strange and difficult state of being.  It truly gets in your psyche, changes communities, changes thought process, gives a sense of fear, a sense of loyalty and place.  I will give you an example.  I had this student at Sanderson.  He was intelligent.  He was crazy intelligent.  He had a good head on his shoulders, common sense, and the ability to succeed, if only he tried.  He also came from poverty.  One day, after earning a D on an exam, I pulled him aside after class.  I asked him, “What happened?  I know that you know this information.  What is the problem? Is there something going on I can help you with?”

He looked me straight in the eye.  His response took the wind out of me.

“Ms. Fiore, I can’t do well.   I’d be disrespecting the block. You don’t know where I come from.”

I think I paused, took a deep breath, and blinked 10 times before I answered.

“D—–, you are right.  I can’t know. But let me ask you, is this your block?  When you are here, in this school, in this classroom, you are not on the block.  You are on my block.  And here, on my block, you only have to worry about one thing, disrespecting yourself.  You are a smart kid, with real potential. You need to honor that. Many people here and at home, are working to give you opportunities.  Respect them, and yourself, and grab those opportunities.”

I challenged him.

I gave him the permission to succeed.

Ben Stein

While I’ll continue to insist that Ben Stein’s greatest life role was as the Economics Teacher in Farris Bueller’s Day Off and sufficiently removed from his political views, he has some good advice that will ring true, and not just for recent college grads.

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Jess Lee - InVisage CEO

I’m geeking out on this one. Since everyone is a photographer and nearly everything is a camera, it may do the imagination good to understand where technology is going.  I always figured it inevitable that lens resolution would be the limiting factor with respect to image quality.  In some aspects it’s already the case, but I’m talking about what happens when the only way to improve imaging is to improve lens resolution.

How long will it take for your phone camera to be as good as many Digital SLRs?  a) Ten years?  b) Five years?  c) Less than two years?  Not only is “c” the correct answer but we are returning to film; quantum film made by embedding quantum dots into an emulation that coats a plate.

As you’d expect, anything named “quantum” is very small.  Each dot can be tuned to the light spectrum with early production showing a 4X increase in efficiency with significant cost savings as well.  This would mean that your 3 megapixel iPhone camera would be increased to 12 mp.

Interprelated to your high end digital camera, you can anticipate 80 megapixel quantum film cameras with a native ISO of 800 and greater bit depth (told you I’d geek out) means we’d be creating nearly unimaginable photographic detail with a hand held camera in very low light.  The race for technical quality will essentially end.  I’m guessing each photographic file created will be in the neighborhood of 500 megabytes per image as a tiff.

What does this mean for a profession already reeling from 6 years of crazy change?  Hard to know but I don’t see this post becoming irrelevant any time soon.

A more detailed explanation can be found HERE at dpreview.com

For more information, watch this short video in which InVisage CEO Jess Lee explains his company’s breakthrough:

I worked with Andy on a photo shoot when he was with Loeffler Ketchum Mountjoy in Charlotte, NC. – a.k.a. – I knew him when. He’s now at the Martin Agency working on the UPS account and as the TV personality for the Shipping Company.  He’s the guy who your wife points to on the TV and says: “Hey, it’s Andy Azula, he’s so cute!” … or is that my wife?

Regardless, Andy is a talented Dude at a great agency. Enjoy the interview by Kevin Kelly; a.k.a. Big Buzz Kevin.

Clay Shirky, author of “Here Comes Everybody” is one of everyone’s favorite TED speakers.  Here are a few of the points I took from his most recent on Cognitive Surplus – a title shared by his latest book.

Our new found connectivity is changing what we do in out free time.  A significant portion of our intrinsic motivations are not economic; As a society, we are discovering that we like to create and share. We like to create value for our civilization.

Through the sharing, we witness a host of stupid creations (he uses LOLcats as an example: cute cat photos with dumb captions) but the importance that shouldn’t be missed is that the gap between creating nothing and creating something is narrowing.  Stupid creativity is still creativity that can, and probably will, improve.

Taking that initial step is like going to the gym; the first step out the door is the toughest. After that first step fitness comes easier as does creativity.  The first step in the creative process is the hardest: doing.

The next step in the use of our free time is in creativing value for society which Shirky calls Cognitive surplus.  His talk is worth view.

Here’s both a behind the scene and preview about Spike Jonze ongoing project, I’m Here.  His approach is inspiring; the imagination he applies to telling a great story is strong but more than that, this short video demonstrates clever problem solving.  He continues to be original.

I’m Here premiered at Sundance this year to excited reviews.  You can view it in seating blocks by follow the link to the official site.

[via The Creators Project] Director of the films Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Where the Wild Things Are; director of music videos for Sonic Youth, The Chemical Brothers, Beastie Boys, Weezer, Björk, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs; Creator and Executive Producer of Jackass

Taking a photo allows ownership of the subject.  Many cultures fear loss of soul through photographs. In brutal frankness, photographers characteristically pinch intimacy and trigger vulnerability that only close examination bares. Anyone retouching a high resolution image can tell you they risk knowing way too much about their subject.

Seth Mydanshe in a post for the New York Times blog “Lens” introduces the documentary “Camera, Camera”.  I have yet to see the film but still it inspired this post.

["Camera, Camera" was directed by Malcolm Murray, written by Michael Meyer and produced by Josh Haner, who is a co-editor of the Lens blog and has photographed Laos for The Times.]

Yes. My photography is being deeply affected by the democratization of quality imagery but, wait, there’s more.  The “more” is a cultural affectation that has relatively little to do with me. It has to do with an extreme global loss of the objective observer.

[via Wikipedia] The ideal observer is one who causes no unnecessary perturbations to the system being observed. An observation made by such an observer is called an objective observation. In basic school education of physics and chemistry, we routinely assume that our observations are objective.

But reality seldom, if ever, provides us with ideals. The real observer always causes an unnecessary perturbation of some kind. Scientists must remain alert in their efforts to minimize the magnitudes of these perturbations. The extent to which they succeed determines the level of confidence they can claim in their results and, therefore, the certainty they can expect in their knowledge of things.

As a professional I’ve spent decades making photos and, with unmistakable irony, it took digital imaging for me to discover that I can’t make something better than what is there to take. In other words, the harder I try to make my own reality, the more I am disappointed with its legitimacy. The act of observing destroys what I hope to capture.

While I may want to disappear with a camera in my hand, the ubiquitous photographer is changing what there is to observe. The camera is coming between culture and the unperturbed experience. We are witnessing life through an abstract medium and mistaking it for truth. The souls I steal are now permanently altered no matter how light I tread.

A quote from a favorite authors on creativity:

Creative people, as I see them, are distinguished by the fact that they can live with anxiety, even though a high price may be paid in terms of insecurity, sensitivity, and defenselessness for the gift of the “divine Madness, “ to borrow the term used by the classical Greeks. They do not run away from non-being, but by encountering and wrestling with it, force it to produce being. They knock on silence for an answering music; they pursue meaninglessness until they can force it to mean. – Rollo May

This quote is found in Rollo May’s book “The Courage to Create” copyright 1975 published as a Norton Paperback in 1994. The quote can be found on page 93 in chapter Creativity and Encounter.

Building Art - James Powderly

In my research for my post on Banksy I stumbled onto James Powderly, an incredible high tech street artist.  James gives us a demonstration in this video [via The Creators Project]. You’ll be shaking your head by the end.

James Powderly:

[via F.A.T. Free Art and Technology]

James was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, U.S.A. in the year of the dragon, 1976. He has been making technology and media at the fringes of robotics, graffiti, space science, tattoos and rock n roll since 1992. James was a Senior Research Fellow in the Eyebeam R&D OpenLab developing creative tools and media to directly enrich the public domain.    more …

http://graffitiresearchlab.com/

http://robotclothes.com/

http://honeybeerobotics.com/

http://research.eyebeam.org/

Powderly’s CV

Alex Bogusky

I try to keep up with Alex and Guests but I fell behind a couple weeks. This may be long but it’s also a great discussion among three of the industries leading figures.  Among many things, they discuss what creativity is like in the advertising business now and the near future.

Alex Bogusky (basically retired and doing what the F he feels like) Co-chairman @ CPB Group.  BTW – Alex if you see this, when you’re Googled this was the sponsored link:

Alex Bogusky at Amazon

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Faris Yakob : Chief Innovation Officer at MDC Partners

Miles Nadal: Chief Executive Officer, President and founder of MDC Partners

Watch live video from Fearless QA on Justin.tv