Andreas Haugstrup Pedersen | solitude.dk

Two short lumiere videos from last weekend's tour to the harbour. The lumiere video project has been going on for a little over a year and tonight we reached 800 wonderfully silent moments on the site. It may be time to look at other ways to organize the videos now.

We have gotten to meet some interesting personalities through the lumiere project. The project started with active work to get people to try out the concept. Lately activity has decreased with a smaller group of people making regular contributions and new people dropping in every now and again. Just the way we like it.

Brittany og jeg har fundet en dejlig 2-værelses i Charlottenlund. Tak til alle dem som kom med gode råd og forhørte sig hos venner og familie.

Brittany og jeg leder efter et sted at bo i Storkøbenhavn. Sagen er at jeg står uden bolig i Aalborg den 1. august og da jeg arbejder for Hoist i København ønsker vi at flytte til hovedstaden. Det har dog vist sig at være besværligt og derfor aktiverer jeg nu internettet i håb om at der er nogen derude som kender nogen der kan hjælpe.

Vi leder efter:

• Lejebolig i Storkøbenhavn eller Rødovre/Hvidovre/Gentofte/Herlev men alt har interesse.
• 2 værelser
• Husleje under 8000,- inkl. forbrug
• Vi er begge ikke-rygere og vi har ingen husdyr

Hvis du står med et sådant lejemål eller kender nogen som kender nogen vil Brittany og jeg være evigt taknemmelige. Jeg kan kontaktes på andreas@solitude.dk eller på telefon 2320 1988. Jeg svarer dag og nat.

Click for the large image. As usual I'm about 4 months late to a meme. It either makes me hip in the really chill way or a moron. More here.

Last night we took a walk along the Charles River. The shore line on both sides of the river is one of my favourite things about Boston and I think the couple on the pier in the foreground were enjoying it too.

Tomorrow it's time to say goodbye to Boston for this round. The always friendly German flight attendants will make up for the sorry entertainment systems in Lufthansa planes as I make my way back to Denmark via Munich.

I don't have anything profound to say. I'm going to miss the city and I cetainly wouldn't mind living here again, but it's time for Brittany and I to make a life in Copenhagen for a while.

If you know of any affordable 1 1/2-2 room apartments in the greater Copenhagen area, let me know.

I'll readily admit that I have a camera disease. The newest and exciting member of the family is a Konica Auto S2. I bought it from a very nice young man on Craigslist for $20. The Konica Auto S2 is a rangefinder camera from the mid 1960s. It has a 45mm/f1.8 lens. As you may have guessed the "Auto" in the name refers to the built-in lightmeter that allows for shutter priority photography. Unfortunately the lightmeter in mine is broken and I have to guess at what the correct exposure would be before each shot. I've been through one roll of film with the camera and it's shown to not be much of a problem. The 1-hour photo place can compensate for most errors in the development process.

Shooting with a rangefinder is a different experience than I'm used to. First of all the camera itself is much lighter than the very heavy Topcon Unirex SLR that I've been hauling around lately. As a result it's easier to keep steady.

Focusing a rangefinder involves matching two superimposed images in the viewfinder. This operation takes a bit of practice, but is neither easier or harder than focusing an SLR. It can however be hard to see what's going on in very bright light. In those cases the SLR is faster to handle. In low light the rangefinder wins by a large margin. Indoors it can be hard to see what's going on as the SLR's viewfinder becomes very dark very quickly because of all the light lost in the mirrors. The rangefinder doesn't have a mirror box and the viewfinder is much much brighter and the two superimposed images are pretty easy to match up in low light.

Finally, the Topcon Unirex is very loud as the mirror slaps up and while that's fun to listen to it can be very disruptive in certain situations. On the other hand I can use the Konica to take pictures during presentations without annoying the other participants. There is no mirror that needs to move up, only a quiet leaf shutter to open and close.

This doesn't mean I'm jumping on the rangefinder bandwagon entirely. The unirex has a better design on the shutter speed and aperture rings making it better to handle and it can focus significantly closer to the lens (especially with an inexpensive diopter filter). Also, using a polarizer filter with a rangefinder is next to impossible so when I'm in that mood I'll grab the SLR.

If you stumble over a $20 rangefinder camera I highly recommend going for it. At the very least it's a fun experiment to try a different camera design than the ever-present SLR, and who knows maybe it's what you never knew you always needed.

When we went looking for a second smoke bomb today the old lady who runs the nearby toy shop replied You shouldn't do bad things to other people. If you know where to buy smoke bombs in the Greater Boston area, let me know.

This is a lumiere video. The video contains no audio. Feel free to leave your own music running.

This is a lumiere video. The video contains no audio. Feel free to leave your own music running.

This is a lumiere video. The video contains no audio. Feel free to leave your own music running.

This is a lumiere video. The video contains no audio. Feel free to leave your own music running.

The rights to photograph in public has been increasingly threatened in recent years, most often by ill-meaning security guards who are trying to prohibit photography of building facades. On Tuesday Andy Carvin was quote-unquote “almost arrested” as he was taking 20-minute panorama photographs inside the main hall of Union Station in Washington D.C. Despite Andy’s wish to play the victim and mentions at both BoingBoing and Thomas Hawk (who often post legitimate stories of photographers being harassed for no reason) I believe that he broke the first rule of photography: Don’t be an asshole.

I have experienced photographers who break this rule, and I’ve broken the rule myself unintentionally a couple of times. It’s the dude with the giant camera who kept pushing hard into my back at the Hot Chip concert because he felt he was entitled plow his way to the front of the stage to take pictures all night with no regard for the people who paid to dance. It’s also the moron who completely blocked the bike path on the freeway overpass with his tripod forcing me into a heavily trafficked road at night.

Andy was a mild version of those guys on Tuesday. Photography is generally okay for non-commercial purposes in train stations, but don’t obstruct the flow of traffic*. He was not just using a small travel tripod, but a giant motorized monster tripod for 20 minute recordings. The legal issues are irrelevant compared to the humbleness photographers with entitlement issues seem to lack sorely. Photographers need to be mindful of the environment they are trying to capture. If you are going to spend long amounts of time taking photograph with space shuttle equipment, just ask for permission. That’s called common courtesy.

Moreover, when the employees who manage a space ask you to leave, just leave. Don’t tie up the time of four employees and create an even bigger disruption of the traffic flow. I don’t care how entitled you think you are: Don’t be the asshole photographer with the giant tripod or the complex camera system. You’re calmly being asked to stop. Go somewhere else and take pictures there instead—or in Andy’s case, test your new equipment elsewhere.

To better illustrate my point you can replace “Union Station” with “local church during service” and “security guards” with “choir boys” in Andy’s post. The Church is most definitely a public space and you are within your legal rights to take pictures there. But when you do it with a motorized tripod during service you’re still an asshole and when the choir boys ask you to leave because you’re disrupting service you don’t insist on hearing it personally from the bishop. It’s not about what rights you have. It’s about respecting the people around you.

And what’s with the Twittering? Has it really come to this? Do we really need instant validation of our actions from people on a website? Is this about standing up for your rights or about acting out to impress your internet friends?

The picture at the top is from last month when Brittany and I were quote-unquote “almost arrested”. I tried to photograph some silos by the river. We were on a private road (we got lost) and the silos were most likely classified as Sensitive Security Information. The Everett police was keeping an eye on the place and they did not appreciate cameras—not even vintage cameras from the 1970s. The photo is taken from the Andrew P. McArdle bridge which connects Chelsea and East Boston. It’s from the same trip, but obviously I have no photos of the silos. When we were asked to leave, we got in the car and drove away.

* The MBTA here in Boston revised their photo policy last summer to allow any non-commercial photography as long as you don’t use a tripod, monopod or other equipment that impedes the flow of traffic.