A dashboard of your life

When it comes to uploading photos, there are numerous sites for hosting - flikr, picasa, photobucket, shutterfly, just to name a few. Their specialty are photo edit, organization, display sharing and printing. Some of them require a fee to provide advanced service. On the other hand, all the social network such as facebook, myspace, tweeter offer their users to upload photos in the photo album for sharing and commenting.

Amidst of the abundance of these online photo sharing tools, here comes Momentile.

Momentile s a new photo sharing service that combines photo sharing and lifestreaming with the social networking services such as Facebook and Twitter.

The basic idea behind momentile is that you can upload one picture per day (you can upload pictures as many times as you can but the last photo you decide to upload of that day will be the picture of that day). The idea is after a year, you will have a collection of 365 pictures that represent that year.

The unique feature (or could be limitation depends on how one sees it) is you cannot add caption to the picture you upload. When one uploads a new photo, h/she can add a short message that will then be sent out to their followers (momentile calls them 'stalkers') by SMS, Twitter, or email. Other people can add caption to your picture (one caption per photo per viewer only). However, if you attempt to add caption to your own photo - a message will pop up stating "Sorry, but you can’t caption your own Momentiles.? Because you were there, you lived it. Give someone else a chance to give their narrative to it."

Without the text, it is only the picture left there for viewer to interpret what are on the picture, how it was taken, what was the photographer intended to communicate, and what did this picture mean to the photographer. With the rule of one caption only for each photo from each viewer, it forces people to think twice before they give any comments, and it prevents the site become another photo sharing site that comment become a exchange of dialog. In fact, it seems the creator of this service want people to dialog, share, communicate through the images of their life, not extensive texts that describe it.

Does it say something about the culture we live in today?

The Power of Image (Brand)

Lately I have been contemplating buying an advanced point and shoot camera, and deciding between Leica D-Lux4 and Panasonic Lumix LX3.

These two cameras have identical technical specifications except the external design, but Leica costs double of the Lumix. One would assume it is an obvious choice between the two. Quite the contrary, there are many people willingly give the extra $400 for Leica thinking they are buying the better camera.

There are many reviews online and even postings of comparison of photos taken by these two cameras, if you take away the caption, it is impossible to tell the difference. But why do people pay double of the price for an almost identical camera? The magic is the image (the camera's appearence).

Leica has a cleaner look than Lumix. It has it's lengendary red leica icon on the camera case. One reviewer said, knowing the same specifications of these two cameras, he still went for Leica. He felt when he was using Lumix, he was taking pictures, but when he was using Leica, he was creating images. This pretty much sums up the reason why people still fall for Leica when it is so much more expensive.

I have to confest that I have a fair share of the struggle of deciding between the two. It is not only the image of Leica that is appealing, but also the image of being seen using Leica - a lengendary camera brand, is appealing.

The power of brand is the power of image.

Portraits of Power

Photographer Platon embarked this project of taking portraits of Head of States at one of the UN Assembly in September last year. In 5 days, he photographed total of 110 world leaders by surviving on power bars while working 15 hours a day. The results is beyond amazing.

He wanted to show these world leaders in a communal way, and he wanted to create a sense of intimacy in his picture. He wanted to show them as a human being, of the strength of their character. And it definitely has come through in the pictures.
I love the option on the top of the portfolio that allows your to sort the profiles by age, gender, country, name, and tenure. It is interesting to see the wide range of age from age 35 to 86. Yet, they all stand together as leader of their country.

We probably all have an impression of a country based on the news and general knowledge we have about the country, and based on that, often have an expectation of how the Head of State would be. This portfolio brings a complete different side of these leaders one often may not expect.
As I went through the pictures while listening to Platon's audio commentary, it changes my impression of the profile, as well as the leader that is being photographed. The close-up shots made you feel like you are standing right in front of these leaders and look into their eyes.

The interesting thing to point out is the photographer is portraying the "Powerful", but in a up-close intimate way, sometimes "powerful", sometimes other traits of human one may even be surprised.

Introduction and Expectation

Chloe (Sum) Tseung

Background:

I am a part time Master student in the Social-Organization Psychology program and working full time in the talent and development division in a financial service firm. I will be graduating in May.

My interest is in organizational development, particularly in the area of cross-culture communication and team dynamics. I am also very passionate about facilitation.

I grew up in Hong Kong, worked in Singapore for two and half years before coming to New York in November 2007.

Expectation of this class:

1. Coming from a literacy heavy education background, I would like to understand what visual art is, and to know how to appreciate it from a more "educated" (for a lack of a better word) perspective.

2. I am very interested in how the media use image to influence our thinking, and how we can be more discerned about them, and make our own decisions about how we want to interpret the story ourselves.

3. I have always been very interested in photography and images, but never had a chance to explore deeper into them. I am looking forward to the experience of creating the visual archive and explore my way of understanding and thinking in a visual way.