An American Peyote Scribble

Web Monday Zurich #13

Mark — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 19:39:42 +0000

Web Monday Zurich #13 was held at the offices of Wuala in Zurich (I took a sticker for my laptop), and covered such lovely topics as why companies fear Facebook, the history of the music industry and the visual searching tool I always wanted but never knew existed. I had a headache during the presentations, but that didn’t deter from the coolness of the tech evening from settling into my neuron flow. To join future Web Monday meetings check out the Web Monday Zurich project on Amazee.

I can’t say where the pain in my head came from exactly, some combination of being sick last week, finishing a review of a new electroactive polymer paper, ski touring towards the Wildstrubel (before recovering) in a snow storm and building up an image of a beautiful woman next to a nuclear mushroom cloud is bound to put pressure on essential areas of my neural networks. Plus I think I need new glasses.

According to the book “Neuro Web Design: What Makes them Click?” (which I read for the last UX Book club Switzerland ), people love stories, and if you start one everyone will be captivated. This explains why iMusicianDigital AG was my favorite presentation of the night, because it was mainly a story, that of the music industry from the 1990’s till today.

The 90’s were the golden age of the music industry. People went crazy buying over-priced CDs and more money was made in this time than at any other time in the history of the industry. Then, around 2001 broadband hit along with cheap CD burners and P2P networks, and all the consumers who were pissed off at paying $20 for an album on CD with two good songs and a lot of crap on it were all too happy to pirate as much music as possible (this last part is my own take on the history). CD sales dropped and there was a 20% sales decline per year. Discount CD sales were pushed by big retailers like Media Markt and Best Buy (in the US) who lost money on CDs but made a killing on other stuff (first get them in the stores). While this all went down the local retailers and cool CD shops where put out of business…and now where are we?

Now it’s estimated that 60% of the music we consume is pirated in some way or another. Why? There is a theory, purported in books like “Free” and “Economies of Abundance” that the value of things like images, music, movies, and other media will always tend to zero in the long run (like your survival rate). So how does one make money on something with a declining perception of monetary value like a music album?

Well, first off, in the traditional model of the music industry there was no real-time accounting and the administration of selling music was very inefficient. In the new model, such as with iMusicianDigital the content is user generated whenever possible. An artist creates an account, uploads the album as uncompressed audio and that music is distributed to iTunes, Amazon, etc. The musician sees real-time stats for where the music is bought, what countries, how much, when, and is paid in a timely manner.

How successful an artist is financially is dependent on much more than the distribution system. The savvy musician needs to build a fan base, often through live shows (connect the poetry to the reader) and now through social networking tools like Facebook, MySpace, etc. It’s like anything else, you need some way to connect to the fan base and develop a community.

iMusicianDigital is attempting to fill that niche, that area of the music industry which is in flux. Artists upload their album and a little while later it’s available on iTunes, Amazon, etc. It’s interesting for me to learn about this stuff, because I want to the a similar thing with self-published books. Seeing how music is distributed and promoted online is similar to the publishing-on-demand business models for books, putting the promotion and marketing of the material in the hands of the creator.

Raphael Briner from HyperWeek gave the first presentation of the night about developing online social networking communities (think Facebook) for businesses. Why do businesses need his company? Because it’s too hard to build the platforms up from scratch. A few examples were shown including stackoverflow.com and it’s cool to hear about the development of this stuff. However, since I’m a consumer and am now overloaded with Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, my blog and Flickr, I stood around wondering when I’m going to actually start shooting pictures again (yes, my mind wanders, the result of too many social networking sites).

The last presentation was for Oskope, the visual search and find design I’ve always new was possible, and continually frustrated when it didn’t exist. The concept of Oskope was originally presented two years ago, but this was the first I’d seen of it (I’m often oblivious to the world, I admit it). The idea of Oskope is to present products as images, allowing you to search visually and have the image products grouped in a certain way that you can better find what you were looking for. Ever tried searching for “Shoes” on Amazon? I’ve even tried using eBags to find a cool leather bag, and ended up going to Scaramanga in the UK. To be fair, Scaramanga sells some of the coolest vintage bags I could imagine (perhaps I’m just shallow) but the point is that sites like Amazon are really a cluster-fuck to search through unless you specifically know what you want (or just accept what they want to see to you).

For me Oskope is a window into how online shopping should be done. But the technology is distributed in a licensing model, and till now I never knew it existed. So where is the value in it? Promote it, get in online stores, revolutionize my online buying experience. If Oskope gets ported to Android (and as well the iPhone and iPad) I think it will really take off, as it’s the exact type of shopping experience a touch device consumer will love.

Jurgita – Informal Photo Sessions

Mark — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:43:05 +0000

Probably the most frustrating thing about shooting with someone is that you generally only get to do it once. You notice things during a shoot and afterwards, and often time I wish I could shoot more with folks like Demari Vi Syth, Margarita or Arctica, but one lives in England, the other is based in the Ukraine, the third is in Germany, and being models, they’re often traveling to different shoots anyways. So if I were able to shoot with any of them more than once a year, it would be a miracle.

That’s why it’s always awesome to have a local model to shoot with, and to develop a body of work with. When a model is living right next door you have the freedom to plan and re-shoot concepts as needed. You also come understand one another in a way, the shooting style, the posing methods, and this can bring a greater depth to a shoot and concepts. That’s why I’m eternally grateful that Jurgita lives next door.

I met Jurgita over the summer while shooting with Margarita, and we’ve since met to shoot on different occasions, either with a specific idea or just to produce some more imagery. We shoot in the studio and I’ve shot Jurgita around the Sulzer-Areal of Winterthur, that fabulous urban location every photographer in Winterthur and Zurich knows about. You go there on a sunny day in spring or summer and there’s always a wedding shoot, skate shoot, urban portrait thing or another going on.

Having access to the Areal is like having access to a large urban movie set. There’s a large parking garage to shoot in, which is mainly empty on the weekends and after 5pm on other days. I seems like you can basically do whatever you like there, including dry tooling (but probably you’d better not). There’s also a lot of small areas in the Sulzer-Areal complex including parking spaces, walls, staircases, and an illuminated bridge, all of which gives a vast canvas for the nimble photographer and model to play within.

On location and in the studio Jurgita is open and easy to work with. She has a certain look, a subtle shadow of knowing in her facial features and cheekbone structure which give a certain something to the images. Shadows curve around her eyes like the the old songs of a mystic fire dance. She also has an eye for style and posing, which makes the shoot all more natural and authentic (sometimes difficult to find).

Since both Jurgita and I like to shoot and model around, it’s been fun playing with lighting gear and concepts. For example, using an Orbis ringflash to add some shadow texture to the face, in a poorly-lit parking area. Or perhaps using a gridded octabox to define a lighting poem for the whole image, or just stepping out of that constrictive Strobist-Mindset and shooting with the natural street lights.

If you stagnate, your creativity and drive dies with your indecision and only the mediocre sentiments of lonely idea will sit upon your mind for a second before flying off into eternity. So stop hesitating and shoot, develop something and challenge yourself to be something which society has taught you that you’re not. My mind is a blank and the words have run on into obscurity so that I’ve forgotten the point.

If you’d like to work with Jurgita she’s on Model-Kartei…

Jurgita on Model-Kartei

Web Portraits Zurich – Mathias Shoot

Mark — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 22:38:29 +0000

The first willing subject for the Web Portraits Zurich project was Mathias Möller, Editor and Community Manager at Amazee who agreed to have his portrait taken.

The shoot was relaxed, the way a portrait shooting session should be. We had had a concept meeting a few weeks before, and organized some ideas on Google Wave, so there was a clear direction for the shoot. Grungy and not too bright, a little counter culture and gritty. This wasn’t a high pressure shoot, Mathias just dropped by the apartment studio and we talked about random stuff like the Spores (a band out of L.A.) and imagery from Joy Division. An observer might call this “connecting with the subject” but I just call it a fun time talking with an interesting person. There were two main looks we went with during the session, Mathias had a vintage Swiss Army jacket and a cool band denim jacket. I was shooting on white seamless with a few lights and reflectors.

Lighting Philosophy

Mathias wanted some darker sort of photos, which is what I’ve sort of developed a style shooting, so our expectations worked well together. For me this meant creating lighting with shadows and darkness, while allowing the main features of Mathias be revealed. This meant some directional lighting on the face, casting dark shadows across his body, and a grungy post-processing philosophy. I worked primarily with my Elinchrom BxRi 250ws strobes and a Sunpak 383, with Lastolite Trilite reflectors and a large 5-in-1 silver reflector.

For the portrait with a Swiss Army jacket I put a BxRi in an extra small Photoflex octabox, and used this to create a large contrast on his face. A sort of Yin-and-Yang, darkside/lightside sort of lighting. A reflector and Orbis ringflash (with Sunpak 383) were used to maintain lighting detail of his cool vintage jacket. For post-processing I used some industrial grunge, including compositing Mathias into the old abandoned Packard car plant in Detroit, Michigan. Other background images and textures were shot around Zurich and Winterthur in Switzerland.

For a cleaner look, I shot Mathias with a BxRi flash in a large Creative Light softbox (60×90cm) with a grid, and added some fill using the Photoflex extra small octabox. The Creative Light softbox was placed on the side, and gave a lot of bright directional light, which works well for creating defined shadows with smooth but small transitions.

Visual Results

The idea with Mathias was to create images with a certain grungy darkness to them. This was accomplished via lighting and post-processing in Photoshop using layers of concrete and industrial scenes. Overall I think we accomplished the not-to-bright and not-to-sterile look without making Mathias look like a grungy gangster from the Zurich hood.

I’m always looking for new faces to shoot, if you’re interested in the idea of documenting the people from the Zurich startup and web scene it’s easy to get in contact with me to set up a concept meeting. More about the Web Portraits Zurich project can be found on Amazee.com or the articles here:

Web Portraits Zurich – Amazee Project
Web Portraits Zurich on the blog

Shooting the Psychotic Sister of the Girl Next Door

Mark — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 21:49:27 +0000

Demari Vi Syth describes herself as the “The beautiful girl next door’s psychotic little sister!” on her ModelMayhem page. So when she contacted me to see if I was interested in booking a shoot date, I found it hard to resist. She was in the Zurich/Winterthur area for a week, so it was just all to convenient for her to stop by my place to shoot.

I had a few goals for this shoot, one was the development of Protestlove imagery for my book, “Revolt from the Singles Table” and the second was the Barbie Hunter theme, which I originally thought up for Alexandra, who I worked with earlier in the year. Demari came with some Goth-styled latex from Jane Doe Latex a cool latex designer from London. Latex and fetish is the type of stuff I had never really desired to shoot, but figured it would be cool to experiment with (cheaper than going to art school).

Demari actually had the honor of being the first model I’ve paid to shoot with. If you’ve moved beyond the initial stages of photography, tooled around on Strobist for a while, and decided to setup a ModelMayhem account, then you’re probably looking for models to do Time for Prints (TFP) or CD shoots with, as I was (and still am). But I’m now sort of the opinion that dropping money on a model isn’t such a bad way to go. For many projects, unless you know the person before hand it’s hard to know what to expect. Pro and semi-pro models bring a certain level of professionalism and self-awareness, which is extremely valuable when time is of the essence (like if you’re taking the afternoon off from your job to shoot). You can get this from new models as well, but there’s also the question of art direction and motivations. With a TFP shoot there’s generally two motivations, that of the photographer to get their shot, and that of the model to get their look. Maybe the photographer wants head shots while the model wants full-length body shots, etc. But if the model is there on your dime (as a photographer) then it’s all about you and your vision. What can I say, I’m egotistic in this way, I want the shoot to be about my vision.

Demari also offered a new visual direction for me. Her portfolio has a lot of Goth imagery, and when you’re defining a style for yourself (which is a constant for me), then it pays to experiment with different shooting concepts. Goth is something that is actually very hard to do well and too often executed poorly by photographers who think an image will be cool and alternative just because the model is wearing skin-tight latex. Just like the misguided visionaries who think that posing a sexy woman with a gun will automatically make a strong image (they’re usually weak and lack authenticity). Good Goth imagery is hard and requires a lot of attention to detail. I wasn’t out to make these images (through my direction), but rather let Demari do her thing with posing and just shot away with different lighting setups.

I shot Demari primarily on a white seamless background, using a pair of Elinchrom BxRi 250ws strobes coupled with a Sunpak 383 in a Kacey Beauty Reflector, and a large silver reflector. I was shooting with the Elinchrom Portalite softboxes (well why not, they came with the lights). These are my main lighting tools of choice at the moment for things in the studio. Lots of light shaping ability, and easy to position without an assistant. This was the first time I was using my now favorite camera-lens setup, a Sony A900 with a Sigma 70-200 f/2.8 HSM lens. Naturally, I used Elinchrom Skyports to trigger the lights, they’re integrated in the BxRi strobes and make like oh-so-easy when fine-tuning the exposure.

The A900+Sigma 70-200 combination really leaves little room for improvement for portraits and sharpness. Focus is spot-on, and you can see the texture of the skin better than in real life. This is the reason I like the A900, I never have any problems with the camera and can focus on getting the exposure I’m looking for. I focus on the eyes, press the shutter release and know the results will be tack-sharp.

Shooting with Demari was a cool experience. She knows how to carry herself, and is aware of her pose. For me one of the most important things with a model is that they have a good awareness of their body and form. Without this awareness the images can come out looking fake, without that certain element of truth and realness which makes a portrait look real. It’s a certain talent some people have and others learn to develop, and is essential for models to have. Of course, someone is bound to say the images look contrived, but nearly every photograph is.

If you’re interested in working with Demari Vi Syth, she can be contacted via ModelMayhem (#748253).

No related posts.

Web Monday Zurich #12

Mark — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 22:47:50 +0000

My mind is still bleeding with inspiration from Web Monday Zurich #12. I sometimes paint and at some point I get into a sort of trance with the colors and shapes that paint themselves on to the canvas – the madness takes over and I think I’ll crawl out of my skin. I admit this is an overly dramatic way to describe my reaction to a Geek gathering about web startups, but I don’t watch much TV, and never got into drugs – so it stands to reason that I have to get my kicks from somewhere – and in die Schweiz, there’s no Route 66. I keep thinking that one day I’ll get bored at these web gatherings but my mind is always on fire by the end of the night and I count the days till the next one. There were three topics at Web Monday Zurich #12 including, Memonic.com, the UBS Web 2.0 contest winners were revealed, and HowToPedia.org got my neurons moving. It was held at the offices of LIIP/Nektoon, and drinks were sponsored by UBS.

Memonic

Dorian Selz from Nektoon presented Memonic – a website where you “keep the essential” of your web journeys and save only what you need. I first saw Memonic at the UX Chuchi where we discussed their user interface and overall design. The current site looks a lot tighter than the initial offering and is serious competitor for a site I will actually use day to day. Basically, with Memonic you save elements of webpage you visit, and then organize those elements on your Memonic account. It was developed based on the needs Dorian and his colleagues saw as well as their experiences in their own web travels. Basically you go to a webpage, then click on a bookmark for Memonic, and you then can pick paragraphs of text, pictures, make multiple selection, basically click whatever is on the webpage, and these elements are saved to your account. Or you just bookmark the site as well. The point of course is that you just take those pieces which you need, and then can access that information quickly. You can also export that information in an email, to a twitter account, facebook, and also to a smart phone. This is great for traveling and really takes information storage beyond bookmarking, and therefore much more useful in daily life. These saved elements can be organized into sets on your account and that way organized. It’s similar to tagging, and then clicking on a set and getting all the saved information. Naturally you can have multiple sets, as pieces of information rarely fit in only one category, which is more how we store and access information in the brain.

Click here to view the embedded video.

“But, how do you make money?”

The business plan is always the first question at Web Monday during the question and answer session. Basically Memonic currently offers a free service, and later will offer a paid service with more functionality. These models are on a Business to Customer (B2C) design, but they also have ambitions to do Business to Business (B2B) to fulfill the needs of companies. Also in the future there are plans to actually use the information you’ve stored on Memonic as a search filter while you surf the web. So, it will be possible to analyze the stuff you’ve saved to Memonic, and use that as a filter to direct internet searches, which means a user should end up with more relevant search results (relevant to their needs) – very cool. When I think of competitors to Memonic I think of Zootool, but there’s also a US site called Evernote (which I had never heard of). I like Zootool because it’s based around saving imagery (the downside is that it doesn’t do text like Memonic), and is more of a visual-media/micro-blogging/almost-like-Flickr service, which also reminds me of Tumblr. Zootool operates very similar to Memonic when it comes to saving content and in my opinion currently has better social network integration (easier to share stuff) – but I see a lot of potential with Memonic for the future.

UBS Web 2.0

So, basically UBS sponsored a contest to learn about Web 2.0 and banking applications. Andreas Hoffman and his colleagues awarded 5000 CHF for the three best presentation of ideas concerning what UBS should be doing with web 2.0 to connect with their customers. Winners included Go beyond ebanking today (Roland Studer), Collaborative Filtering (Amancio Bouza), and UBS Super Trader (Martin Moser and Roger Singer). To a certain extent, the presented ideas were not ground breaking in the sense of new technology, but rather applying existing ideas to the question of Web 2.0 and UBS banking applications. But this is how many great shifts in technology occur, not by totally new inventions, but by interpreting existing technology in new ways and applying them to new areas (Idea Generation and Development – Startup 2009 Basel). Overall many ideas were similar to what is currently being done in other places like Amazon.com or other websites which focus on customer interaction. The point was to apply those principles to a UBS business model. In my opinion the main idea is to give more freedom of interaction to the client, and not keep them fully dependent on the client advisor. I sent in a entry as well, basically I said they need to empower the Web 2.0 client, but I don’t think I was really able to communicate the concept I have in my head. Roland posted his entry to his blog in a post titled, Go beyond ebanking of today.

I think UBS should be awarded some sort of uber Web 2.0 Technology award for their efforts and I’m happy to say I’m a UBS banking customer, and I’m looking forward to seeing what they come up with. The banking world is generally seen as having linear thinking and business practices. I’ve been reading/listening to “Break from the Pack – How to succeed in a Copycat Economy” and I’m really impressed that UBS is taking initiative to educate themselves on the Web 2.0 opportunities. They’re helping to define the future of banking instead of waiting for someone else to do it, but without knowing what the eventual outcome will be for their profits. This is the exact type of dynamic, non-linear thinking companies should be doing to break from the pack and lead their industries. Plus, Andreas Hoffmann came to the Zurich web community and partnered with Dania Gerhardt (Amazee.com) to setup the competition. It’s good for UBS, good for the participants, good for technology and idea development, and there’s more to come. UBS also plans on putting together a small consultancy team from three of the competition participants to do a business study and presumably help develop their Web 2.0 platform, really awesome initiative – they should get a write up in Forbes.

HowToPedia.org

It was the last presentation of the night that really set my mind on fire. As my first beer was wearing off and before I had time to grab another one, Maud Châtelet talked about HowToPedia.org, a non-profit website with the goal of empowering people in developing countries and enabling for autonomous, sustainable development in their lives. Maud started by showing two world maps. On the first was plotted the areas of poverty. On the second, the number of languages within a certain geographic region. If you superimpose onto the other, they more or less match up perfectly. The basic conclusion is that difficulty in communication is a significant factor in the development of people and technology in their lives. So how do we empower people to change that trend?

The goal of HowToPedia is to manage and distribute practical knowledge to people throughout the world, which they can use to improve the quality of their lives. To me this is like empowering the engineer in all of us, no matter our educational background. I personally think everyone is a poet and an engineer, an artist and a scientist, and that you don’t need to study in a university to practice these things in your life. So, through the website, practical knowledge is presented such as, purifying water, how to build a windmill, or even making sandals from old tires. To reduce communication barriers a goal is to translate this information into various languages, so that a maximum number of people can use it. This type of information exists on other sites, but the point is for howtopedia.org to be the main place for knowledge management, so that various organizations aren’t duplicating their efforts and wasting resources. The information is for free, but the site needs money to work, so at the moment there’s a focus on fundraising. I’ve been interested in getting into a program like this. I know a couple people doing Engineering Without Borders in the US, but I haven’t been able to find EWB in Switzerland, plus I love the idea of empowering through knowledge distribution, so it looks like howtopedia could be a good way for me to give back with my engineering skills.

So, Web Monday Zurich rocked hardcore. If you’re interested in more info on the Startup scene around Switzerland check out :

StartWerk.ch (their German reporting on Web Monday #12)

Think of attending StartupCamp Switzerland 2010 on Feb. 13th in Basel

Check out Web Monday Zurich on Amazee.

An American Peyote Scribble

Web Monday Zurich #13

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Web Monday Zurich #12

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