Posted on October 30, 2009, 9:08 am, by Thomas Hawk, under
Bay Area News.
Just learned from my friend Troy Holden that apparently San Francisco based graffiti artist Girafa has been arrested.
From the Mercury News:
“San Jose police Thursday announced the arrest of a suspect they described as one of the most prolific graffiti artists in the Bay Area.
Steven Free, 30, of San Francisco was arrested Tuesday on a $100,000 warrant, charging him in 10 felony cases in San Jose involving $40,000 in damages
Free used the tagging moniker “Girafa,” and the cartoon character of a giraffe, police said.
During a search of his San Francisco home, officers discovered thousands of pictures of graffiti with the “Girafa” moniker and cartoon characters of giraffes on several of his social Web sites.
“He was just causing a lot of vandalism around the Bay Area, anywhere he would find a spot, he would use this moniker,” said San Jose police officer Jermaine Thomas.”
This is too bad. Girafa is one of my favorite graffiti artists in San Francisco. It amazes me that someone could be charged with 10 felonies for sharing their art with the world and making the world a more beautiful place. Girafa’s work mostly ended up on abandoned and shut down businesses. It is always a treat for me when I run across one of his paintings.
Artists like Girafa don’t belong in prison. They are a part of our cultural landscape. Troy has a great collection of Girafa images that you can see here. There is a group on Flickr devoted to his work here.
DeleteMe Uncensored was a thriving online community of 3000 photographers and critics hosted by Flickr, the Yahoo-owned photo-sharing platform. The group, which had called Yahoo home for years, was a popular, user-governed hub of free speech. But then someone at Flickr pushed a button and within seconds, thousands of photographs, conversations and connections were obliterated. All because of one user comment that Flickr censors deemed inappropriate. Flickr didn’t issue a warning, it didn’t delete the thread – it simply pulled the plug.
More from Adbusters here.
Posted on October 29, 2009, 7:34 pm, by Thomas Hawk, under
Photoblog.
Posted on October 29, 2009, 5:37 am, by Thomas Hawk, under
Photoblog.
Posted on October 27, 2009, 12:58 pm, by Thomas Hawk, under
Photoblog.
Posted on October 27, 2009, 12:21 pm, by Thomas Hawk, under
Photoblog.
Posted on October 25, 2009, 5:52 am, by Thomas Hawk, under
Photoblog.
On digg here.
I was disappointed today to read a report by my friend Troy Holden, who works on the Caliber blog over a run in that he and another photographer had with a group of security guards at 555 California Street. I’ve known Troy for a while and we’ve been out shooting a lot together. According to Troy, security guards there objected to him and a friend photographing the building based on “safety” issues. When challenged on the photography ban, according to Troy, one of the security guards asked him if he’d like to be punched in the face and threatened to break his f***ing camera.
I’m very disappointed to read about this terrible reaction by these guards at 555 California Street. Photography is not a crime, nor should be taking exterior photographs of buildings and architecture. Furthermore the reaction by this guard was totally uncalled for and extremeley unprofessional. I hope that he is disciplined for his behavior in this case.
Personally I’ve never had a problem with 555 California Street. Here is a set of images, in fact, that I’ve personally made of the property. Perhaps this is something new there or perhaps Troy just stumbled on the unfortunate day when a security guard decided to go on a power trip.
Voronado Realty manages the building. You can find some of their representatives to contact here in order to express your disappointment in how their guards handled this incident.
Posted on October 23, 2009, 8:38 am, by Thomas Hawk, under
Photoblog.
Posted on October 22, 2009, 10:48 am, by Thomas Hawk, under
Adobe.
At midnight last night Adobe opened up the free beta for their Lightroom 3.0 product. I’ve been trying to download it several times since then but I think that their servers are being hit pretty hard and haven’t actually had a chance to look at it yet myself because the download page keeps failing — a good problem to have I ‘m sure 
. I have seen screenshots from a presentation by Adobe on the product though and it looks like a nice improvement over 2.0. Tom Hogarty, the Lightroom Product Manager, has probably the best write up on the new features over at the Lightroom Journal. I’ll report more on my impressions on the new beta when I try it out soon.
Probably the two most significant improvements that I’m looking forward to playing with are the new post cropped vignetting tool (Lightroom’s old post crop vignetting tool made geometrically *perfect* vignetting while I prefer a more natural feel) which offers new styles of more natural vignetting as well as features to better sharpen and reduce noise in photos.
If you want to try to download the beta to try it out yourself, you can get it here. As mentioned before though, the page is likely getting hammered pretty hard with the beta only a few hours old so be patient.
