This is a revision of the original. I tried to bring out the shadows well enough to make everything more visible and compelling. I think it is more iconic and compelling, especially at small sizes.
Blog
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You’ve Been Served
For some, this is an eviction notice.
One thing I’m beginning to realize I need to work on is taking photos with iconicity, photos that are clearly pictures of something. I think if people can’t tell what a photo is of from a one-inch-square thumbnail (as shown on Flickr in a person’s photostream ribbon or in the “Photos from your Contacts” and/or “Everyone’s Photos” strips on the Flickr home page), then they won’t click and view the image.
And yet there are photos worth looking at that don’t look like anything in a 72×72 pixel thumbnail. Or are there? Perhaps the test of a good photo is its iconicity, or its ability to convey a compelling message even in a one-inch-square icon. If that is true, then my challenge is to tell stories like this one is a more photogenic way. Perhaps if I had squatted down and taken the photo from an angle looking across the Official Notice from the bottom-right corner to the Tickle Me Elmo doll in the upper-left corner? Maybe that would have been a more visually compelling and easy-to-read ironic juxtaposition. To borrow a stage term, this image just doesn’t “read” from the “back of the house.” Just as one wants a “stage picture” to be dramatic even when seen from the last row of the audience, a photo should be compelling even when viewed in a one-inch-square thumbnail.
Am I wrong? What do you think?
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Where was ASL, Deaf Presence in Super Bowl XLII?
I was hoping that my colleague A Dreamer (yes, that’s his name) would be televised as he interpreted the National Anthem into ASL at the beginning of the big game. Unfortunately, this year’s coverage of the signing of the Star Spangled Banner was even less satisfying than last year’s. Last year, we at least got to watch Marlee Matlin signing “bombs bursting in air” on the big screen. This year, I was only able to see — by watching very carefully — the interpreter signing “flag was still there” (all in one nicely inflected ASL sign, by the way) on the Jumbo Tron behind Jordin Sparks’ head.
And what about that Deaf Pepsi ad that was supposed to air? I never saw it. Did you?
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iTunes Movies and TV Shows — Captioned?
While Apple has announced a new Apple TV and movie rentals on iTunes, now more than ever it’s high time they made sure that all their video content is closed captioned. With the writers’ strike affecting television programming and more people switching to downloadable content, let’s not take a huge step backward by delivering a huge mess of inaccessible content over the Internet! The ADA does not require Internet deliverables to be closed-captioned because the ADA was drafted before the Internet, but the spirit of the law is to ensure that people have access to media, and since most movies and television shows have already been captioned for legacy media, it shouldn’t be difficult to deliver those captions along with new media. Apple has put the technology in place for the viewing of closed captions in iTunes, QuickTime, and iPods. The next step is actually selling and renting closed-captioned videos!
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Introducing Lady
We have a new family member: Lady. We’ve already known her for more than a year now. She’s our neighbor lady’s dog, and our neighbor decided she just can’t keep up with her anymore. Buxley already fell in love with her when they first met. Adopting her feels like the most natural thing to do since J.J. died and our neighbor wants to put Lady in a new home!
Daniel Greene 