Geek Post: My blog looks like mold

Yep, that's my blog pictured above! While searching for images tagged "blog" on flickr (don't ask me why), I came across the following flickr group (websites_as_graphs). This led me to a program/little piece of code that will visually render any web site. (I know you are going to love this DK!) Neato says the inner and outer geek in me! I LOVE information translated into the visual (see my previous Geek post) and vice versa.

I quote the explanation/key of the graphic rendering from the author below. If you go to the link directly, you can see the graphs of dozens of other web sites (google, boing boing, and mac) for comparison. They are quite beautiful, no?

You can try it out here. Try typing in any url - www.aharef.info/static/htmlgraph - and watch it grow!

The above image is my blog and at the very bottom of this post is the PRC web site (dreamweaver) and the PRC blog (wordpress). As you can see, the PRC web site uses tables and is fairly simple - a good thing! On the other hand, the blogs use lots of links. Enjoy!

Websites as graphs

Everyday, we look at dozens of websites. The structure of these websites is defined in HTML, the lingua franca for publishing information on the web. Your browser's job is to render the HTML according to the specs (most of the time, at least). You can look at the code behind any website by selecting the "View source" tab somewhere in your browser's menu.

HTML consists of so-called tags, like the A tag for links, IMG tag for images and so on. Since tags are nested in other tags, they are arranged in a hierarchical manner, and that hierarchy can be represented as a graph. I've written a little app that visualizes such a graph, and here are some screenshots of websites that I often look at.

I've used some color to indicate the most used tags in the following way:

blue: for links (the A tag)
red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
green: for the DIV tag
violet: for images (the IMG tag)
yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
black: the HTML tag, the root node
gray: all other tags

www.prcboston.org


www.bostonphotographyfocus.org

Off to Rachacha - 15 miles on the Erie Canal...

Bruce and I are off to Rochester, NY for my parent's 40th wedding anniversary and my father's 70th birthday. On Sunday, my parents have rented a boat on the Erie Canal for a couple of hours (departing from Spencerport). Ought to be fun! We'll see lots of friends and family.

I'll try to post while I am there, but in the meantime, here are some great maps and postcards of the Erie Canal. According to wikipedia, construction lasted from 1817-1825 and the original canal was 363 miles long (today the whole system is 524 miles).

The above image is a 1906 postcard from Vintage Views (which has great vintage postcards and timelines too) of the Upper Genesee falls in downtown Rochester. Bruce has always remarked that we don't see enough images of Rochester's wonderful waterfalls. They are really gorgeous!

Below is a map from ShipsBlog, a site about exploring the NY State canal system by boat. Click for a larger view.

Several photo quotes to ponder

From www.photoquotes.com

"If you are not willing to see more than is visible, you won't see anything."
- Ruth Bernhard

"You can't depend on your eyes if your imagination is out of focus."
- Mark Twain

"Everyone has a photographic memory. Some don't have film."
- Stephen Wright

When asked how he felt about missing photographs while he reloaded his camera with film, Winogrand replied "There are no photographs while I'm reloading"
- Garry Winogrand

"I dislike landscapes. I only like people, and plastic flowers."
- Elliott Erwitt

"One thing I would never photograph is a dog lying in the mud."
- Diane Arbus

"No place is boring, if you've had a good night's sleep and have a pocket full of unexposed film."
- Robert Adams

PRC on Flak Photo!

Beginning this Monday, May 19th, the PRC has teamed up with the kind folks at Flak Photo to feature 10 images from the PRC's Annual Juried Exhibition, a “web photo happening” if you will. The series kicks off today, Monday, and runs weekdays, May 19 - 23 & May 26 - 30 (and you can even sign up for their daily email). Thank you Andy!! If you are in town, stop by on Thursday night for the opening.

Flak Photo / Features showcases images from “group show” photography projects - the section highlights work from new series, book projects and gallery exhibitions. In recent months, Flak Photo has published work from jen bekman gallery’s A New American Portrait, the Minnesota Center for Photography’s PhotoBravo, the Magenta Foundation’s Flash Forward / Emerging Photographers 2007, 3030 Press’ New Photography in China, Humble Arts Foundation’s 31 Under 31: Young Women in Art Photography and Hamburger Eyes Photo Magazine’s Inside Burgerworld.

Add to the above impressive list the 12th and 13th PRC Annual Juried Exhibitions, and we’re in some really good company! Check it out at www.flakphoto.com.

Photoshop Phunniness from The Onion

Well, I might not add the others, but I would add the Fonz.

Found on The Onion, "Statshot," August 8, 2007 | Issue 43•32

A few of our favorite things...

PDN (Photo District News) just released their eagerly-anticipated Photo Annual. Besides announcing their Annual winners and giving the amazing advice they usually do, they had a great feature titled "46 Reasons to Love Photography Now." The PRC, specifically our annual juried show, is one of their favorite things!

PDN wrote in part: "The economy got you down? PDN's editors and writers have compiled a list of the innovations, inspiring people, innovations, and idiosyncrasies that make photography as rewarding and exciting as ever." PDN- we heart you too!

A special thanks goes out to Jeanine Fijol, PDN Photo Editor, who was the juror for the PRC's 1th Annual PRC Juried Exhibition in 2006, who first contacted me. The PRC joins a whole of people, places, and things, reminiscent of our unique 30th anniversary exhibition, PRC/POV (the venerable Dashwood Books made both of our lists!). Below is a montage from the magazine and a few of the other favorite things.

* Lee Friedlander * National Geographic * ICP Infinity Awards
* on demand printing * Wired magazine * Taschen Books
* Columbia College, Chicago * 20x200 * The Eddie Adams workshop

ABOVE: From PDN magazine

The birth of the PRC Blog

The PRC officially launched a blog on May 1st! We've been posting for a while, so please check out our back posts too. We are especially thankful to DK for all of his help.

(What would happen if I posted about the PRC blog launch on the PRC blog - would it be like when John Malkovich entered his own portal and himself in the movie Being John Malkovich?)

So without further ado, check out www.bostonphotographyfocus.org!

In praise of Frank

You know how there are certain people that just simply make you happy? Well, my next couple of posts will be devoted to a few of my favorite people.

Frank Gohlke was just in town last week for the opening of his exhibition Accommodating Nature: The Photographs of Frank Gohlke at the Addison Gallery of American Art. I've done crits with Frank at MassArt and AIB, and know him from around town and Bruce. Bruce helped him build one of his darkrooms and like many others, assisted with a variety of things and got to know him well. To me, it's always a delight to see Frank and even a greater delight to hear him. Frank, as many know, is a slow talker (a Texas thing?). Oh - but what journeys he takes you on! You can see some more work at Gallery Kayafas through June 7th.

Frank moved to Arizona last year to oversee the photography program at the University of Arizona. There is a lot of energy & photo there - a friend from the BU PhD program just got hired there as the new photohistorian. Frank too qualifies as an academic. Holding a MA in English from Yale, he is as brilliant a writer as he is a photographer. You can see this to great effect in his current book, which functions as the show's catalogue, published by the equally amazing Center for American Places.

In celebration of Frankness (ha!), I present 2 videos. In the embedded one below, Frank talks about his photograph of a Hillsboro, Texas home and in the other, he is interviewed on a Dallas tv program. In the latter, unless you want to hear from the mayor of Dallas, you have to skip ahead about 60% through it, so I will let you access that clip via this link. I hope you enjoy Frank!