Bacon Lettuce Photo

by Joe

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Amit is an entrepreneur that lives in San Francisco. He takes photos, twitter, and sometimes blogs. He runs Photojojo, it’s about photography + awesomeness.

Tell me about the beginnings of Photojojo?

Photojojo started as a fun side project, I felt like there’s some interesting stuff to do with photography and crafting and I figured let’s launch it and see what happens.

Do you have a personal interest in Photography?

Yeah! I did a lot of photography in High School I actually got into video photography. I’ve been shooting for 14 years and I guess to me I like to take photos casually and I’m an amateur. When I got to New York I got my first Digital SLR because NY is incredible it’s hard not to be really excited about photography when in NY.

Where did you get the idea for Photojojo?

I saw a lot of interesting stuff going on in digital photography, a lot of my friends were taking lots and lots of photos when they got their digital cameras, usually hundreds and thousands of photos a year. The photos would just pile up and get forgotten about on their computer. It’s kind of sad that we’re generating and recording all these happy moments and never looking back because theirs just too many photos to keep track up. I also noticed a lot of people getting excited about DIY (Do it yourself) and crafts and customized products and making stuff come alive. Seemed like an interesting place to cross those two, digital photography and having people get more into making stuff again.

You guys seem to have a lot of great ideas, are those user submitted or do you come up with those on your own?

A little bit of both, some ideas we come up with originally and some we get on the web or our friends and readers submit things, we try to credit them when that happens. It’s a good mix.

How large is your staff at Photojojo?

We are 4.5, and the half is my mom who helps part time.

Most of our photography and digital photography are shot with my Nikon D70 which definitely fits the bill for online stuff, works great for shooting with the web which is what we’re usually doing. A lot of our photographs for our book were shot on the same camera and a Canon Rebel XTI. All these cameras are not huge monster cameras, they’re the bottom when it comes to digital SLR’s. Yet I’m not a real big gear head when it comes to that, I’m all about what you can do with what stuff you can do with your photographs and not so much the gear used and lens comparisons. You could really take great photographs with just about anything, I use my iPhone’s camera more then any other camera and I get some good stuff out of it.

What do you think about photo communities like Flickr or Picasa? Have they reached their potential or do they have room to grown and where do you think Photojojo has a place in that?

I’d have to say there’s a lot of potential for these to grow, I think Flickr is great and is probably my favorite online photo community. I think Facebook’s got the most potential for doing something interesting just because they’ve got a larger space and a broad spectrum of users. It’s not just professionals but amateurs…Facebook hasn’t done much with photography but I’m hoping that they’ll look at that…when it comes to integrating a lot of social apps I think they have a lot of interesting things they can do.

If you could magically improve photo communities wordlwide what would you do? Would you like to expand and grow the photo safaris you do now?

Yeah, like with anything else though, as a small company we have to be cautious about where we spend out time and resources but we definitely want to do more… we have to strike a balance between what we do with events, and the store, and the book that’s coming out. But definitely is a different experience when we bring people together that have a common interest in the real world instead of online it brings and and creates a much stronger relationship with people. We’d love to do that more. The ones that we have done so far are in New York and Las Vegas and we’ve really enjoyed them.

What is your favorite type of camera?

Small. Smaller is better. I honestly wish if I could just have a camera that was as good as a DSLR but could fit in my pocket I’d be just so jazzed about that. I think the best camera is the one that you have with you all the time. I’m actually in the market right now because I spilled some water on my camera at PMA and it stopped working and I’ve been looking around and I just wish there was something small and wonderful like on my phone so I wouldn’t have to have a second device to carry around. The camera on the iPhone is too crappy.

by Jesse

Ed Magliaro is a man caught between many mediums, always looking through his lens for something that rattles him. A 2008 graduate of The Museum School at Tufts, Magliaro has been exploring the outer realms of art for years. Between painting, playing bass in his band, Creoles and doing graffiti, he has been able to generate and capture a full range of emotions.

His thoughts on photography express a man willing to adapt to the digital age, while at the same time refining a need for the traditional, accepting art and style for what they are in their medium.

“I became interested in photography through my sister Erica, who shoots mostly with a large format 4″x5″ film camera.  Those cameras produce an extremely detailed sharp image, the same camera that said photographers such as Ansel Adams used,” Magliaro says.  Before diving into digital he believes you must understand the reason and method digital photography borrows from.

“For people to really understand why and how digital photography has changed photography and the way the it is viewed they had to first start off doing traditional darkroom processes, for example black and white silver printing, nonsilver processes etc…”, he explains.

With the crisp sharp quality of 4”x5” film cameras comes a fragile, 30 pound burden that you wouldn’t want to lug across the rugged Na’Pali coast of Kauai’s, one of Magliaro’s many adventures.

Na’Pali coast of Kauai, Hawaii

“So this brings me to why I like digital photography.  It’s portable, can produce almost equally amazing images, although the tones may be different,” Magliaro says.

What bothers Magliaro is why so many people are always comparing digital against traditional photography. He accepts the differences for what they are.

“People are so hung up about comparing digital photography and traditional photography. One must realize that when it’s all said and done, they’re different,” he says.

“I could almost venture to say different mediums like drawing and painting, they hold the same basic qualities, light exposure, image rendering, but both digital and traditional photography go through a completely different process to get to the end point,” Magliaro adds.

The 23-year-old knows the lasting impact on digital photography as breaking free from basic traditional forms.

“I see the digital age of photography creating its own independence, if it hasn’t already, from traditional photography; it’s a whole different animal.  One thing that digital cameras have seriously changed in people is the way they see, their mind’s eye. For example before external view screens were created on every little handheld camera people had to look through a lens, a viewfinder, to frame up an a shot.  Whether or not most people realize it upon looking though a lens they’re simply magnifying the data in their eye, it is a personal relationship with your body,” Magliaro explains.

He grumbles at the notion, “But now with all these LCD screens on the back of every damn camera it’s like looking at a television screen, you might as well be sitting at home drinking a beer on the couch, because many of the personal qualities of photography are robbed…by these damn little screens!”

Magliaro thinks this reflects the state of our culture, “People stopped going outside as much, watching more TV, interacting with other people, staring at computers more.  I’m not saying digital cameras or photography is bad but it has completely changed the physiology behind and the physical way people record events in their daily lives.

He is a foot soldier, having cut his way from Philadelphia to New York, to Boston, and later out to Honolulu, firing photos, skating and rebelling in his own form.

“I really love art that has moxy, balls…something that actually makes a statement point, Political art, graffiti,” Magliaro says.

On the social state of his generation, he is fed up.

“People have been sitting around their studios painting their dreams and self prophecies long enough. I am 23 years old and I cordially invite one person in my generation to get off their couch. We are the most we’ll educated generation and we do nothing about all this war and political stuff in our country.  Go OUTSIDE and paint something,” he says.

For as progressive as he is, Magliaro often returns to traditional photography.

“I still love to do traditional processes but doing stuff on the computer does totally kick ass…there are no toxic chemicals, you don’t have to be in the dark.  The new versions of Photoshop are awesome; it’s like carrying a ridiculously high-end darkroom in my backpack,” he says. “ I shoot with a Nikon D70, it kind of sucks but I don’t have any money to upgrade, but I do really love Nikon lens,” Magliaro explains.

Magliaro keeps the present in perspective, always working on several projects, thoughts and areas of his life at once.

“Right now I’m in limbo between trying to be a musician, artist, uncle, traveler, photojournalist…they’re all good things though so it’s all good.”

Ed Magliaro’s band, Creoles, can be listened at http://myspace.com/creoles

In the realm of Digital Voyeurism:
Justin Jernigan on photography

by Jesse

On a late night subway ride through Brooklyn, Justin Jernigan reaches into his pocket. He sees a grimy weirdo across from him. With the flip of his cell phone he nonchalantly takes a picture, capturing a moment that normally would have gone unnoticed, never mind undocumented.

“One of the reasons I enjoy taking photos so much is the voyeuristic aspect of the medium. I love the ability to capture people’s private moments discretely - taking their angst, joy or indifference and blowing it up - exposing their fragile emotions and surroundings. In this way I think of graffiti, another passion of mine, which is raw, disposable, in your face and around every corner,” Jernigan says.

The 23-year-old self-proclaimed freelance photographer and fulltime troublemaker lives in an inconspicuous warehouse in Newark New Jersey-A.K.A. “Brick City,” across the Hudson River from New York. Riding bicycles and frequenting underground electronic music parties consumes his life, with a camera always in reach.  What began nine years ago while tinkering around with his parent’s two-mega pixel point-and-shoot Canon has developed into a daily expression that merges art with the exponentially growing digital age.

“For me digital photography is the ultimate disposable medium; light converted to numbers saved to magnetic media- the miracle of transubstantiation ready to be washed/electro-shocked/censured away in the blink of an eye. Film is so expensive, so physical, so spacious- I like that digital is cheap and dirty and easily disseminated to the masses at the click of a button,” he explains.

His current weapon of choice is a Nikon D90 that he totes around in a bright red canvas lunch bag.

“I can’t put it down and it takes HD video. The new live view on it is nice when trying to capture hard angles in precarious spots and the stock 88-105mm lens is pretty solid, especially with its built in vibration reduction mechanism. When I was commuting to work in Manhattan I liked to take photos with the camera on my cell phone as I rarely had my DSLR and the lighting on the subway is usually very bright,” Jernigan says.

Recently Jernigan worked on the Obama campaign in Reading, Pennsylvania, snapping photos whenever he could.

“I didn’t have a lot of time to shoot because we worked so hard for so long, but I got a few quality shots, including some with me and Howard Dean. Probably the worst experience I had there was carrying trays of catered food from a car into an office with my camera around my neck and having soup leak out onto my lens,” he say.

Though he assured it would, “pale in comparison to my time trying to shoot Bike Kill VI in Brooklyn a few weeks later when my camera faced a constant onslaught of rain, beer, fireworks, CO2 dust from a fire extinguisher, glitter, food fight food, blood, spit, flying bike parts, mud and grime to name a few.”

While backpacking across Puerto Rico over the holidays he constantly found himself having anxiety over his camera being exposed to the elements, including booming surf and unpredictable gusts of sand on the beach.

Editing from his lofty studio, Jernigan has experimented with a variety of programs in both the PC and Mac world, using Adobe Bridge for its RAW support, Creative Suite, Adobe Photoshop and had some time to explore iLovephotos along with Bacon Lettuce Photo.

“Both Windows and Mac OS X have horrible built in photo organization software and after using iLovePhotos on a friend’s laptop it seems like a steep improvement compared to using iPhoto/Finder to find and organize your photos. Bacon Lettuce Photo is a good blog, useful information and nice shots. Could do without the meat-centric title though,” Jernigan says.

With the exponential growth of digital photography, he believes it has irreversibly changed the photo world forever.

“On the one hand it’s great that more people are taking more pictures - but at what cost? My concern is that instead of entrusting a young child with a disposable Kodak point and shoot - which can weather the woods, beach and other adventures without fear of too much wear and tear - we are tying a whole generation of photographers to a new form of a technology that is entirely dependent on a fragile and expensive digital backbone,” he explains, adding,  “A child in Africa or Latin America cant take pictures anymore because their family cant afford a computer and the camera shop in town doesn’t sell film for his old hand me down camera.”

Recently he was inspired by a photo essay on a man who fitted his cat with a camera and sent it marauding around the neighborhood, as the camera remotely took photos every minute. This endeavor is something Jernigan believes could have not been possible on a consumer budget 10 years ago.

Thirsting for a Mac and eager to travel again, Jernigan will continue to shoot openly-and secretly for as long as he can get away with it.

“I hear they’re trying to pass legislation mandating all camera phones make a ’shutter click’ sound - no fun.”

Justin Jernigan’s work can be seen at http://fakedomainname.org