I was looking at a BoingBoing item about a Web service called Tourist Remover — it lets you digitally excise stray tourists and other interlopers that are passing through your photos: All you have to do is take a few shots from the same spot, and the software will composite the images to form an idealized, intruder-free version of the view.

(A friend of mine on Facebook notes that similar functionality is available in recent versions of Photoshop and Photoshop Elements.)

I’m kind of conflicted about this, for a number of reasons (not the least of which being that maybe I think too much about these things):

* Of course, there’s the whole idea that this kind of photo optimization takes us awfully close to the edge of the memory hole, where we augment and edit reality so that it better matches our idealized version of it. Then, over time, our memories are informed and changed by the photos, so that eventually, our modified memory becomes our reality.

This is a largely philosophical argument that looks kind of silly when you apply it to crappy touristy snapshots, but it’s still out there.

* On the snapshot angle — previously, I’ve ranted about the phenomena that’s captured in this photo — namely, a sea of digital cameras, taking the exact same crappy photograph of a moment in time, where no one photo is any better than the others, and where the very existence of the sea of upraised cameras spoils the shot, in one of those applied “forest for the trees” moments.

(Maybe there needs to be a “media pool” app for the iPhone, that disables all the cameras in a confined area except a few, whose photos are uploaded to a shared library, accessible to all there. Socialist photography, I know.)

With a fixed landmark (like, say, the Leaning Tower of Pisa), this effect is magnified by every crappy touristy snapshot that’s been taken by every person over the years, though it really hasn’t been accessible until people started sharing them publicly online. If you or someone you know isn’t in the photo, the photo you’re taken is simply redundant. (You wouldn’t, of I’m assuming, use a Tourist Remover-type application for anything except a crappy touristy snapshot.)

* On the other hand, distributed memory is great and all, but even if you’re just taken a crappy touristy snapshot, it’s still yours. After all, the perfect picture of the landmark has already been taken — it’s being sold for 35 cents in the revolving rack out in front of the t-shirt stand. But there’s a reason why we send postcards to other people, and take pictures for ourselves. Your crappy touristy snapshot of the Leaning Tower, or the Statue of Liberty, or the Eiffel Tower is something you can take (or at least share) ownership of. It’s why we don’t (usually) just do an image search and say “I was there.” So in that sense, ownership will always trump perfection.

Anyway, like I said, I’m prone to overthink these things. And, I too will continue to take massively redundant, crappy touristy snapshots of things that I could just as easily find on Flickr. Though I will use the excuse that the stray shadows, intruding tourists, and things growing out of people’s heads are part of the imperfections that make my photos unique and apart from everyone else’s.

Feel free to leave a comment if you can find something in there to comment about.

Boomer Generation Meets Generation Y

First up was a session on Gen Y and Mark Bao is a 16 year old entrepreneur who has built a company and when Chris inquired that he already sold a Facebook app, he responded “actually, I have sold three”. The audience roared with laughter and applause. Interviewing him was Francine Hardaway who is a PhD with tons of industry experience and she was funny because she wore her old job business outfit (a suit) and stripped on stage into her new business suit (jeans and a t-shirt). She had an awesome slide because she started her first business when in 1980 and it had all the things she grew up without – Google, Internet, FedEx, Fax Machines, Cell Phones, Facebook.

They talked about education and he looks at it a good place to network where he perspective was that it was necessary to get any kind of white collar job. Things sure have changed. They are seeing that people are feeling entitled to the technology they have access at work that they should have at home. This was the best talk yet this year.

Social Media is For Good Causes Too

Next we had Beth Kanter talk about Using Social Media for Good Causes. She used Facebook to create the group “Causes” and raised thousands of dollars for a non-profit helping Cambodia. Her work was so good that she won an additional $50,000 prize for her non-profit. She posed an interesting question – Does personality scale? It is about the ladder of engagement of those that are happy bystander all the way through instigators that create the involvement in a cause. She used her birthday to get 135 people to pledge money to her cause by giving her a birthday present.

So what’s next? She was able to raise more money for other causes to send kids to college with the help of social media friends and tools like Twitter. She then asked everyone in the room (250 people) to donate $10 each to send three kids to college. Chris Pirillo came up and jumpstarted it with $100 and people ran up and started giving her $10 bills overwhelming her. By the end of the presentation $1800 was raised on the web site – IN LESS THAN 30 MINUTES. Amazing.

If you want to donate to a great cause, check out her blog, find her on twitter and Facebook to connect with the charity and do some good. This was an amazing use of social media to do amazing small things to do one great big thing collectively.
UPDATE: At the end of the conference $3700!!! was raised online and passing the hat around. Pretty powerful show of social media used to do good.

Salaam Garage and Telling a Story with Photography

Amanda Koster is a professional photographer and she recently put together a site called Salaam Garage. She started her career as an anthropologist but took some photography classes and was hooked. She was backpacking East Africa with a friend and the only two words she understood were “Salaam Garage” and the word stuck with her.

She started her presentation by saying “Hi, my name is Amanda Koster, and I do not have an iPhone” which got everyone laughing. She likes taking pictures that tell a story. She calls her technique “drive by shooting” and over time has built a collection from all parts of the world.

Koster officially founded SalaamGarage in Jan. 2007 in response to years of countless requests, “Can I Come With You” regarding her international projects. As she saw people traveling, creating content, publishing and connecting through social media, she thought why not harness all this activity to cause positive change through sharing intentional content.

Salaam Garage connects media savvy travelers and enthusiasts with international Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs). Travelers commit to creating and sharing unique, independent social media that raises awareness and causes positive change. The rest of the adventure is spent touring around the region, experiencing and exploring the culture and environment with an entirely new context.

Amanda’s photography site: www.amandakoster.com

Learning about what a Serial Cyborg is with Nathan Wade

Maybe its just me but when I think of Cyborgs I think of the Borg from Star Trek or that really bad movie from Jean Claude Van Damme. Nathan Wade of Serial Cyborg which he defines as “Serial Cyborg is a DICOM Voxel Based MRI wood sculpture, cut by an industrial CNC mill. The sculpture explores persistent physical distortion through a simple gestural movement; a serialization of human interplay with particle reality as machine visualizable data and re-instantiation of these streams into physical space. This artwork also aims to explore the notion of the modern human as Cyborg, augmented and abstracted through technology while engaging hybrid human definition. The synthesis of digital revealing and informing the physical, irrevocably altering both as extension of the other.”

Yeah, that was a mouthful. It is really about how we evolved the term of what interfacing man with machine. Originally in the 1960’s a cyborg was thought to be an astronaut. In the 1980’s it was thought to be a destruction of race, sex, religion and the ambiguity to become whatever we wanted. Fast forward to the present and Nathan is studying how technology is an extension of human evolution.

Interestingly enough was an informal poll of the audience and 90% of the audience said they would take electronic implants if they were available. Take that for what you will but it is compelling considering how much we do use and interface with technology these days to communicate and do business.

Highlight of Ignite Seattle – Where the Hell is Matt?

The Ignite Session are a mix of two-minute how-to’s, performance art, and comedy. Ignite is from O’Reilly and has been in select cities and now rolling across the country.

All of the sessions were great but the one I thought was worth mentioning was the one done by Matt Harding on The Making of Where the Hell is Matt?

One time when Matt Harding was in Hanoi, Vietnam, his friend told him to stand over by the curb and do his stupid dance. Now he is famous on the internet for being that guy who does that stupid dance all over the world. It’s his job. When he’s not doing his job, he mostly just sits around the house reading comic books and playing videogames, so things worked out pretty well for Matt.

After he did his presentation, I along with a few others yelled “Dance for us!”, he started the music and told everyone to come up. Almost everyone did. Check out this video to see how much we all had.

Tomorrow we will cover sessions that include Sarah Lacy, Dave Mathews (not the singer), CEO of Boxee, Scott Maxwell who drives the Mars Rover (here on earth).

For now, we are getting ready for the big Gnomedex party at the ShowBox. It is a Seattle landmark and with free drink tickets and cameras to catch all the action, it should not disappoint.

Next up was Tara Hunt who is with Ma.gnolia and they announced that they are going completely open source which should take their product to the next level. They are going to be the wordpress of social bookmarking allowing people to download and start their own social bookmarking platform. It was a good presentation about why being open gives you more power with the community you are trying to work with.

After a little coffee break we were entertained by Ben Huh of icanhazceezburger.com which talked about the evolution of memes and the humor that can be funnier with the use of social media and the power of community. If you haven’t ever checked out that site or the original LOLCats.com with captions under funny pictures you are missing out on a core part of the funny side of the Internet. I love good presentations and his slides used the eras of grow for the site in one word formats like the site, for example “icantgetanysleep” or “programmatica” eras. He used lots of pictures and few words which made his talk funny and impactful. These are good lessons for any business person that has to present a topic that is left of center and needs to be recieved by everyone.

Last before lunch was Danny Sullivan on how using search can meet real life. He touched upon a couple of important points:

“It’s easy to underestimate the importance of search in our everyday lives. Only a few years after search engines arrived, they had replaced friends, books and libraries as the top resource people used to answer questions. Today, the frequencies of daily search use continues to rise — as does what you can find in search engines.

If you look at how the real world – rather than just the “web world” – is increasingly becoming searchable, and at the impact this has. Is Google StreetView cool until it’s your house that’s showing up? Should people be able to pull material even if it’s “public” in other ways? Do we need to better understand how revealing search can be about ourselves, in particular when so many are now Twittering and Flickring their private lives?

And what happens as search continues to jump off our web browser and into our televisions, iPhones and GPS units. These bring us a world of new search opportunities, such as location-specific restaurant search — but they also open new concerns about the search records and profiles left behind. After exploring some of the issues, plenty of time for audience discussion.”

Great session and now it’s time for a great lunch, networking and video interviews of some of the attendees.

Next is going to be coverage of the afternoon sessions. Stay Tuned.

For those of you who don’t know Kris, he is a fashion and editorial photographer based in Vancouver, British Columbia, and founder of photography studio Static Photography.

He is an author, having co-written BitTorrent for Dummies with Susannah Gardner, and a technologist. He was also the president of Bryght (a Drupal development company) and founder of early web community spark-online.com. Now he is president of Raincity Studios who acquired bryght some months ago. Raincity studios is the A-Z supplier of web services from planning to development to implementation to hosting.

Krug is the organizer and founder of PhotoCamp, a photography unconference with BarCamp origins, and has organized 5 of them including Northern Voice 2006, BarCamp Shanghai, Barcamp Vancouver, Northern Voice 2007 and Northern Voice 2008.

Krug is a well known contributor to the Flickr photo sharing community website. His photographs have appeared in JPG Magazine, ION Magazine, Business Week, Wired Magazine, and others. He has published interviews with technology personalities in Digital Web Magazine, and he has covered events as diverse as SXSW, the 2006 Winter Olympics, and the Consumer Electronics Show. He has been a regular guest on The Lab with Leo, a talk show devoted to technology and its effects on the G4Tech channel talking about topics like Facebook apps to the growing Chinese market. As a speaker, he has been invited to a number of media and technology events, such as SXSW.

He just got back from Beijing and taking photos at the Olympics. His big piece of advice that was non-technical was to find a theme of your pictures (faces, reflections) to find a style that people will recognize your work. Plus, and most of all, take photos every day if you want to get good.

Here is a great summary of his tips for everyone with any kind of camera:

Tips:
1. Light in someone’s eyes (that little twinkle in person’s eye)
2. Evaluate the light
- Sun? Shade? Incandescent. Halogen?
- Look around – highlights, shadows, spotlights
- Put your subject in good light

- Work with Whatcha Got
3. Shoot in Low Light/Available Light
- Sometimes don’t use flash
- Increase your ISO (ASA)
- Increase your aperture (F-stop) make it lower 1.2, 1.4, 2.8
- Decrease your shutter speed
- Focus manually if autofocus fails you
- Tinker with manual setting/metering
- Brace on things (tripod, gear bag)
4. Reflections are Yummy!
- Puddles
- Glass
- etc.
5. Pick a theme
- ex: Gnomedex Wall of Love
- Poloroids
- Portraits
- Black & White/Sepia/Over-exposed
- Laptop Stickers/Geeks & Gear
- Funny Faces
6. Learn your camera
- Isolate the variables – depth of field, shutter speed, aperture, ISO, etc.
- Tinker, tweek, shoot lots, share your photos, get feedback, change it up
- Share your gear – find someone you can test out lenses, flashes, etc. with
- SET THE WHITE BALANCE!!!

To check out his work, head on over to his Flickr site and start drooling.