Month: June 2008

Like a lot of people I’ve been eagerly awaiting news on the new iPhone. I love my iPhone and it’s definitely been the best phone I’ve ever had. That said, there’s a good chance that I won’t be upgrading when the new iPhones come out. I still haven’t decided 100% or not yet, but in my book the upgrade path seems like a pretty crappy deal for the Apple faithful who purchased iPhones from the beginning.

The best that I can tell, the only thing I’d be getting with a new iPhone is faster internet speed. Apparently the 3G speeds are about twice as fast as the Edge network speeds (which royally suck). Other than this though I don’t really get anything. There’s no GPS in the new phones. There’s no video. I don’t use my iPhone for corporate email so I don’t benefit from that. And I’m just not sure a slight boost in speed is really worth the upgrade price.

Now I’m not 100% totally versed on how the upgrade deal is going to work yet, but from what I’ve read it seems like I’d be eligible to upgrade, but would need to buy a new $199 phone, plus pay $10 extra per month, plus lock into a new two year contract.

So let’s do the math. $199 (plus California sales tax I’m sure) = $215.92. Then I’ve got to pay an extra $10 per month for 2 years or another $240.

Now, I just checked my history on my iPhone for the last week and in the last week I accessed 46 web pages on my iPhone. I should use my iPhone’s browser more but AT&T;’s network just sucks so bad that I hardly ever do.

Interestingly enough, of those 46 pages that I loaded in the last week, 28 of them were loaded at McCarran Airport on Sunday in Las Vegas where they had free wifi. So in the last week I really would have only benefited from a faster internet connection for 18 pages. Now right now it takes anywhere from about 15 seconds to 15 minutes for a page to load on my iPhone. I just tested a load page on my iPhone in order write this post and it took 63 seconds for my iPhone to load my Flickr Recent Activity page in downtown San Francisco.

So best I can tell, assuming I use the iPhone internet stuff the same way I am now, in the last week I would have saved about 9 minutes of waiting time with the new iPhone. 9 minutes per week is about 468 minutes per year or about 8 hours per year in internet browsing savings time.

So in order to save 8 hours of internet load time per year I’m going to have to pay $455.92 more than I’m paying now over the next 2 years. As much as I love my iPhone and Apple products, I’m just not so sure that this is a good deal.

Of course with a faster internet connection I might use my iPhone’s browser a lot more often and the deal might be better because of that, but what if the 3G really is only 2x faster than edge? Or what if, even worse, it’s barely faster at all? And what if free public wi-fi gets easier to hop onto over the course of the next 2 years and so the extra speed boost from 3G doesn’t get used as much as I think it might. Already lots of places like Starbucks are talking about free wifi.

A lot of people say the new iPhone is cheap, but I’m not sure it’s so cheap for people looking to upgrade who already shelled out $600 to buy an iPhone the first time. I know, Apple gave us $100 rebate back, but even after I activated my $100 rebate when I tried to use it at the Emeryville Apple store to buy Photoshop CS3 they refused to honor it so I still feel like I paid $600.

I’m still up in the air on whether or not I’m going to upgrade. Maybe I’ll just do it anyways just for the excitement of the new phone and all, but then again maybe I won’t. I would have thought that Apple would have treated it’s existing early adopters better than that.

Update: Apparently GPS is included in the new iPhones. That might make things more interesting. Still not sure it’s worth it though.

Just got back from Subway where I ordered one of their new $5 foot long Subway sandwiches that they’ve been pushing hard here in San Francisco. $5 for a foot long sub is not a bad deal, plus it would be nice to lose all that weight like that Jared fella did by eating at Subway every day. The only thing is, somehow I doubt Jared was ordering footlong Double Meat Italian BMTs every day though. I had no idea you could even get 70 grams of fat in a footlong.

But here’s a tip. If you’re a cheap bastard, when the kid at the Subway counter asks you if you want your bread toasted or not, be sure and say no, at least in California.

Why?

Well with a sandwich on toasted bread at Subway they charge you sales tax. But with a sandwich on untoasted bread they don’t charge you sales tax. Check it out yourself if you don’t believe me. I just went there with my brother and another friend. My sandwich was not toasted and was $5. His sandwich was toasted and was $5.43 or so.

Another tip is when you order your coffee in California always order it to go. Even if you are going to consume it there. Why? Similar tax rules apply. Coffee to go is sales tax free in some cases, coffee ordered to drink there has sales tax.

Welcome to the wacky world of the California State sales tax.

Of course if you really wanted to save sales tax all of the time you could always just leave California entirely and head up to Oregon where they don’t charge sales tax on anything at all… and equally cool, it’s illegal to pump your own gas there.

Photo by Doug Brenizer.

I spent a great weekend with my wife in Las Vegas this past weekend mostly shooting and hanging out with friends from the DMU group on Flickr. That photo of me shooting above above was taken by Surf Daddy, Doug Brenizer, at Margaritaville on the strip.

It’s always interesting to meet people from Flickr online for the first time. Participants in this weekend meetup included names as diverse as Dshalock the Libertarian Emperor of DMU, Chiapetta Minister of Ravishing, jakerome, TrEjAcK., sbaracchina, and of course Surf Daddy and his posse (including the Assistant City Attorney of Las Vegas and a few others). Surf Daddy, by the way, is the polar opposite of his brother Ryan Brenizer, who is also very active on Flickr and writes a photography blog for Amazon.com.

Note that of the three photos above, the one of the pretty girl in the middle has triple the view count on Flickr as the other two thugs. Go figure. She is every bit as sweet as she is beautiful in real life by the way — and also taken.

I spent most of the time shooting Vegas in addition to hanging out with the DMU crowd. All in, from Friday to Sunday, I fired 3,407 frames. I’ll probably end up processing 300-400 of these and then filter them into my photostreams over time.

I stayed at the Venetian on this trip and would highly recommend that hotel. You pay slightly more than some of the other hotels on the strip, but the suites are outstanding and the internet service there was perfect. They also have a great club level lounge.

Some of my favorite places to shoot from this trip: Fremont Street (this is where some of the older vintage neon signs in Vegas live, including some signs that have been restored by the neon museum in Vegas), the West Wing Bar at the MGM Grand (great red glass for silhouette shooting), the Coach store at the Wynn (great abstract glass wall), the mannequins in Ceaser’s Forum shopping mall (Escada had the best mannequins there), and the amazing light fixtures in almost every hotel/casino in Vegas. Harrahs had some interesting ones especially that I’ll make some abstract photos out of later.

Vintage restored neon on Fremont Street

There is an interesting underbelly to Vegas that would be worth exploring photographically at a later date. There is a dark side yet to the most known Las Vegas slogan “what happens in Las Vegas, stays in Las Vegas.” I’m sure other photographers have already done some of this work. You’d need a car and need to drive around outside of the tourist centered areas.

The blight, crime, prostitution, drug, gambling, alcohol addiction, etc. are fierce and a stark juxtaposition to what you find in the more aesthetically beautiful side of Vegas. A tiny bit of it creeps into the Vegas experience here and there. Just enough to know that if you dug deeper you’d find more. Mexicans handing out cards for “strippers” on the strip, drunk homeless teenage kids sleeping in doorways just off the strip, tiny glimpses here and there of what runs much deeper, I’m sure, outside of the beautiful places and the beautiful people.

I didn’t gamble even one nickle in Vegas myself, I’ve always been good at math that way. For me though, even without the gambling, Vegas is a place that I will come back to many times over the course of the rest of my life. If for no other reason than to continue to document the place on the planet that seems to entirely reinvent itself every 20 years or so. The multi-million dollar design work that seems to go into each new restaurant and club are some of the most aesthetically interesting places to make abstract photographs in the world. Lights, color, shapes, lines, patterns, all are presented in vivid ways — they have to be in order to pull you out of the casino in order to eat, even if for only 5 minutes before they steal the rest of your money and sometimes part your soul away from you.

One of the other nice things in Vegas is that as a photographer you are largely left alone. Because everyone there is deemed a tourist, having a camera walking around a casino or shopping mall is accepted in ways that you’d find yourself run off by security guards in other cities around the country. Other than a brief questioning incident while I was shooting macro toy shots in FAO Schwartz all of Las Vegas was pretty much at my disposal and hassle free.

I’ve shot Vegas a few times in the past as well. You can check out my older Vegas shots (and my new ones as I filter them in ) in my Viva Las Vegas set. And definitely looking forward to DMU Las Vegas 2009 next year.

Update: Dshalock’s Vegas photo set here. Trejack’s photoset here. Surf Daddy’s photoset here. sbracchina’s set here.

TWIP ? TWIP Podcast Episode #31 – The War on Photography I’ve really been getting into the TWIP photography podcast lately. I listen to it underwater while I swim. It’s a great roundtable discussion podcast about all things photography. Scott Bourne, Alex Lindsy, Fred Johnson (from Adobe), Ron Brinkman and Steve Simon all work on the show.

This week I was asked to come on the TWIP podcast to do an interview about my photography and what I’ve been up to.

You can download and listen to the podcast here.

In addition to the interview with me, much of the podcast this week centers around a lot of the recent stories on photographer’s rights.

Thief steals Eye-Fi-equipped camera, proceeds to give himself away – Engadget

From Engadget:

“…one particular vacationer had her entire stash of camera gear (over $1,000 worth) stolen while taking a load off in Florida. Upon returning home and checking things out, she noticed that all of the snapshots taken prior to the theft were uploaded, and upon closer inspection, she even noticed a clear shot of the remarkably idiotic crook. After syncing up with the boys in blue, all of the gal’s equipment was eventually returned, and some semblance of normalcy was finally returned.”

I’m heading up to Seattle in July for the Microsoft Pro Photography Summit and am setting up a photowalk for Friday night, July 11th at 6pm in Seattle. We’ll start out at Pike Place Market and the plan is to shoot Pioneer Square, Sculpture Park, the waterfront and anything else interesting that people want to shoot.

Would love to hang out with local Seattle photographers and spend some time shooting one of the great West Coast cities. Skill level is unimportant. Doesn’t matter if you shoot a digital SLR, point and shoot, film camera, camera phone, whatever. Come on out and join us and spend some time hanging out with other photographers and having a good time.

We’ll probably break at some point in the evening for a quick bite to eat, a few beers, etc. and then maybe shoot a bit more later into the night.

If you think you can make it check out the upcoming.org page here.

I spent some time shooting up in Seattle a few years back. Here’s my Sleepless in Seattle set from that shoot then.