A while ago I wrote about how the Internet could eventually be combined with our physical reality in some fashion, overlaid so that our surroundings would basically gain all of the features of the Internet, including searchability and physical context-related information. At that point, a few mobile devices had GPS, but now that the new iPhone 3G is out and apparently selling like hotcakes, there are a slew of applications being made available these days that take advantage of the phone’s GPS to bring the virtual world of the Internet closer to our physical world. Basically, these devices know where you are (yes, I know it’s a scary thought, but I wonder if people might not be as frightened of this as it becomes more common), so information about everything around you is available through the device, a real-world Wikipedia: That interesting building across the street was built in 1903 and was the scene of a political assassination. There’s a tea house up this alley, but people say the Oolong is bit dodgy. Some got a really good picture of this empty house. There’s a squall moving in, we’d better get inside. That kind of thing.

Another aspect of this is that your phone not only knows about the physical world around you and your place in it, it will, through such (still rather sub-par) programs as Fire Eagle, Buddy Beacon, MyLoki, Britekite and the like, know where other people are, where they’ve been, even where they’re headed. This is a cool application, but I’m pretty sure I would lose a few friends when they see how I turn off my location beacon or hop on a bus as soon as they approach. Another strike against this will be not being able to send a text message I often send to people I’ve got appointments saying, “I’m almost there, just a few minutes!” when they can plainly see I’m still at home, in the bathtub, and I haven’t even scrubbed behind my ears.

Those little pixelated badges I’ve seen in the corners of a few websites recently confused me for a while. It turns out that they’re scannable QR codes that point your mobile device to a certain place on the Internet. Apparently they’re often used in Japan, and you can even make a badge to wear with such codes on it. If this kind of technology takes off, and it seems that businesses are designing these things into graphics, it will be another way the physical world is connected to the virtual.

Most of this interaction, so far, has been one-way, of the physical world being described and adjusted to by the virtual, but with the advent of 3D scanners, touch screens, interactive displays and even shape-shifting buildings, I wonder when and if the balance will tilt the other way, making the physical world “programmable” to a certain extent.

Every square foot of this planet has a history, whether people figure into it or not. Choose any street corner in your city and try to imagine all of the things that happened to all of the people standing in that very spot over the years. Now that we’re in a position to actually record these things and make them known, sooner or later a filter will be needed to deal with all of the massive amount of information that piles up. A good example of this is Panoramio on Google Earth: Eventually maps will be so covered in blue dots that you won’t be able to see the actual places unless you turn them off. Who will become the arbiter of such information? Who will decide what gets seen and what doesn’t? Now that’s the scary part, especially given the frightening, ongoing crackdown on personal photography in places like the US and UK, even as more and more CCTV cameras are put in place for the “official” version of the world. Give it 20 years, and the virtual world people have come to rely on overlaid onto and even able to change the physical world will be completely manipulable by those in control of the resources to do it. When that point comes, which reality will you believe?

You’ve probably been there: you’ve stumbled across a new Flickr user. Maybe they added you as a contact, maybe you found their page from a link. You look at their snapshots and think: hmm…more mundane, boring shots. Not terrible, just very…ordinary. Then you notice that underneath each mediocre image are hundreds of comments, favorites and notes. They also have pages of glowing testimonials.

How does this happen? These people aren’t celebrities of any sort, but somehow thousands of people are fascinated by their pictures of the seaside, their cat and various flowers.

In all fairness, there are no doubt people out there who see my photography in a similar fashion (and some have been nice enough to tell me so in the comments section below). However, I’m not the only one to have noticed a distinct decline of quality photography in Flickr’s Explore feature. A couple of years ago it was a treasure trove of beautiful, meaningful, powerful shots. These days, it’s full of pets, kids and women. It was inevitable, though, when you consider the huge influx of people from places like Yahoo! after they purchased the site. I’ve come to the conclusion, unlike some others, that “success” on Flickr is actually becoming antithetical to the goal of achieving good photography.

Speaking of the pursuit of good photography, I recently read Chris Weeks’ downloadable book Street Photography for the Purist. It starts out in an interesting fashion, with forwards by photographers describing their view on the subject followed by examples of their work. It became markedly less interesting when Weeks’ actual writing began in all its unedited glory. Basically, it boils down to this:

Chris Weeks really doesn’t give a fuck what you think, because you don’t know. You. just. don’t. If you don’t use a non-digital rangefinder, preferably a Leica, with black-and-white film, just STFU. Because you don’t know, you neophyte. You probably don’t know what depth of field is. But Chris Weeks doesn’t care what you say or do or what you got on your SAT. He really, really doesn’t give a fuck.

All of this vitriolic advice is conveyed in short sentences and phrases that are paragraphs unto themselves, so that a relatively small amount of words spans an entire book.  Weeks’ photography is also featured, and I have to say, no matter how poor a writer the man is, he does take some nice shots. But I didn’t learn as much from the book as I had hoped to. Basically, I learned that I need to stop being hesitant to take people’s pictures.

It did, however, peak my interest in just what it’s like to use a rangefinder. I went down to the Leica store near the train station the other night and got to play around with some of their models, both film and digital rangefinders. The cameras seemed very large and blocky in my hands, and the focusing block in the middle of the tiny viewfinder seemed distracting and difficult to work, though I imagine eventually I’d get used to it. You have to hold the camera just so that your hand doesn’t block the view, and bring together the two tiny shadow images in the center of the frame at the point you want to focus, and then recompose the shot. With fast glass and a knowledge of lens dynamics you should be able to shoot from the hip, of course. The build, naturally, was as solid as the brand’s reputation.

I dug out an old Nikon FG body that I have from the old days, and was surprised at how good it felt in my hands. I’ve really missed the solidity, the texture and feel of the traditional cameras I used before the advent of digital forms. Even my 20D feels nothing like the old Nikon, which is also much better looking. That said, while the Leica looks retro, it still seemed unwieldy and oddly proportioned to me.

I took a few shots inside as well as on the street outside the store. The M8 is a nice camera, I suppose, if you can get the hang of it. There’s a great deal of debate on whether it’s a “real” Leica or not, but even the previously anti-digital Chris Weeks likes it, I found after Googling his opinion of Leica’s only digital M. At a price of over NT$160,000 for the camera and even more for each lens, there’s simply no way I could afford a single lens, much less the camera itself. I could swing a much-used Epson RD1, but a lens to go with it would still be out of reach. I could probably pick up a used film version for the cost of a couple of Canon 5Ds. But from my limited experience using the rangefinders, I simply can’t justify going into massive debt for the privelege of using a camera that I don’t even know I’ll end up getting used to, much less liking. It’s a great leap of faith. Yeah, I know all of the Great Masters of Yore used Leica rangefinders, but I have a hunch that if you gave a young Henri Cartier-Bresson a Canon point-and-shoot he’d still manage to come up with some pretty nice work. To me, Leicas are like Moleskine notebooks; great people did great things with them in the past, and they are fine tools for the job, but I don’t think not having them is a barrier to going said great things. If I had money to burn, sure, I’d buy one and see if I could get the hang of it. But I don’t.

I would like to delve more into street photography, though. Despite all of the cursing and insistence that he doesn’t care what I think because I just don’t know, man, and honestly I can flame him all I want because he’ll just delete my comments, etc.,Weeks’ book had a few interesting observations on the subject that aroused even more of an interest in the practice than I’d had before.

But getting back to the cameras themselves, DP Review has just added a new category to their camera review stats: pixel density, i.e. the number of pixels divided by the space they occupy. In other words, the higher pixel density you have, the greater chances that that point-and-shoot you bought with the huge yellow sticker trumpeting the fact that it has 12 MEGAPIXELS! is actually going to shoot crap pictures, especially in low light situations.

Will it work? I doubt it. In all honesty, it seems that consumers these days are so enamored of the megapixel myth that they will justify anything in order to keep believing it. Our standards of what constitutes good image quality have fallen over the past few years in deference to features like Face/Smile Recognition and My Sepia Vacation Mode. Photographers scour eBay in search of old Fuji F30s made before the company (and all the others) started cramming so many megapixels onto the tiny sensors that the IQ of today’s models is far inferior. Camera review sites mention IQ less and less, as if it’s an afterthought that photographers can do without.

And maybe they’re right, in a way. After all, what does saying “I’m a photographer” mean these days, when everyone is a photographer? It’s like saying “I wear shoes.” Perhaps that explains the need for a camera like the M8. It’s not just any shoe.

In any case, I hope to make more progress in my photographic endeavors, Leica-equipped or not. Luckily for me there are still some affordable cameras with decent image quality out there. For now.