Ewen Bell 📸

Should come as no surprise that the July photo zine is a monochrome affair. It's just my mood this winter. Most cities look better in B+W, and Melbourne comes up a treat. All that winter light making long shadows. ewenbell.com/zine New edition of the zine is on the website now, ready to download. No trackers or signup etc. If you like it, share it :) Have a great weekend everyone. #Photography #PhotoZine #Melbourne #Monochrome #Zine #CameraNotIncluded

A lot of people really want to believe that some fancy computer code can solve all their problems. I get it. I really want to believe I will be skinny one day too. Neither of these things are going to happen. There are things that make sense for AI. Screening for potential antibody epitopes in vaccine production is clever use of the tech. Matching patterns, identifying candidates and turning years of lab work into a one week analysis. Great. Using AI to spam actual humans with fake words and wasting their time will simply make your customers resent you and your brand for the rest of their lives. Not so clever. And the entire history of mankind is littered with examples of "not so clever".

There's a simplistic view that anyone creative is going to be broke because of AI. I'm actually really sick of this lazy trope, for lots of reasons. The person who uses ChatGPT to make a dreadful poster for their restaurant was never going to hire me anyway. They also are choosing to make their business look the same as lots of other businesses, which is not smart. It does however make it easy for me to spot which restaurants don't want my money. AI is a ponzi scheme for billionaires and eventually that will cost the rest of us money. AI is not an effective tool to replace people or talent. In some instances it can extend capabilities but only under adult supervision. Regardless, it's being pushed very hard and no manager wants to be seen as anti-AI in case they don't get promoted. A lot of budgets that would have gone towards hiring actual staff in a company are being spent on AI tokens that achieve little to nothing, or worse just make the company look incompetent to their customers. The net results is creative people have fewer customers because they went broke on AI tokens and the REAL economy is crashing.

A quick thanks to everyone who shared their thoughts on the challenges facing people when they first start out on a path to learn about photography. I hope this video will touch on a good number of the ideas you folks shared. And here's a blog post as my bookmark for the video :) https://ewenbell.com/blog/Photography_Is_Not_About_Cameras #photography

Quick question for analogue and manual focus fans out there... What do you think AF schmuckos like me fail to understand when it comes to the joy of shooting manual? I'm road testing a little 50mm lens this week, and observing in real-time how AF vs MF changes the way my brain thinks about photography. I bet there's a few folks around here who have been shooting MF for a long time and are wondering why I have been soooo slow to figure this out :) #Photography #EwenTube

When I quit medical research I got lucky and landed a job as the IT Manager for a medical research institute back in Australia. At least I understood what folks were doing at the lab bench, and hence how a little IT could lighten their load for more useful tasks. Hence, building a little server to crunch RNA/DNA folding predictions. I did a three day Java course once just to write a tool to sync the folding data against spreadsheets of other data. Alignments that used to take the researchers a week at a pop could be finished in an hour with a java app. It was a nice job while it lasted. I felt I was useful and could be creative. I had done my time running gels in the lab, and even worked on early research to build PCR tests (where you amplify very small amounts of nucleic acid to make it easier to detect). We never had a fraction if the computing power we have today. hence, unix was a key part of my IT skills. My android phone today has more power than most servers I ever ran. Cannot even imagine the wasted processing power being thrown at AI slop now. Anyway, every instance of community involvement in science is a win. Doesn't actually take much to be humbled by the natural world and our endeavours to understand it. There's a beauty to science that I wish everyone could have a chance to experience. Apologies for the waffle :)

Maximilien Lamy https://mastodon.world/users/davidho/statuses/116979258505111309

It's telling that in both instances, a capable woman was only given a shot because the ego of a few men sent their party into chaos.

@bluejay@ohai.social Very very cool though :)

@mandelbroccoli@cupoftea.social @StevenLawsonPhotography@mastoart.social Yes, I feel this too. I think it's important that you mention shooting with shallow depth of field, that's the second ingredient that makes MF change your brain. Often that's where the real character of a lens pops out as well.

@StevenLawsonPhotography@mastoart.social Yes the focus peaking and sweeping through the focus distance is very effective. I expect a lot of people are drawn to the character of older lenses, but I wonder in what ways it changes your brain, and changes how you think about composition?

Is that like SETI but for alien DNA in human genomes?

Marvellous

There's this dude on YouTube who lives in the same city as me and at one point I wanted to reach out and invite him for coffee and a chat... but he keeps posting videos with dreadful AI generated thumbnails and now I just cannot imagine.

Just spent a week travelling with someone who is convinced that their life would have been different and better if only yadda yadda yadda. It's illuminating for me because I can see the ways I too have slipped into that way of thinking at various times in my life. Illuminating also because often we forget that our troubles are not the only troubles. We look at other folks and see their good fortune, and maybe don't see the bad fortune they endured. But in this case, I just felt very sad for them. They have enjoyed immense privilege and opportunity and yet they still choose to focus on an identity that dooms them to suffering. It seems self-inflicted at this point. They are choosing to be small, instead of celebrating being alive. At one point they lamented having wasted their life. Then slipped back into "because of yadda yadda yadda". I almost got a chance to step into that gap and talk, but this person always talks over the top of me and after a week of that I feel less inclined to share. So I sat back and listened to another pity party. I have wasted too much of my life looking backwards. The good things in my life have only come from looking to the future. I do find it valuable to look back and remember how bad things once were, and think about how lucky I am today. There is wisdom in looking back, but the answers we seek are usually found by looking forward. So once again I remind myself to keep looking forward.

I always forget how badly people can do their job and still succeed. It's only us weirdos who obsess over doing our best and learning to do better who didn't get the memo.

My greatest contribution to medical research, having quit my PhD and headed in a different direction, was to compile a library for predicting 3D folding structures for DNA and RNA. I had a "spare" SPARC station that got turned into an mfold server with a web front end. It was way slower than the SGI machines the code was written for, but it had a lot less people queuing up to use it too. Would save weeks of work for the researchers using it. I miss living in a world where I could be a useful human just by scraping together code and hardware for the other folks who knew how the science worked. I felt useful being part of a team, and being part of something bigger. Being self-employed is just very transactional most of the time.

What a treat :)

The problem with the world right now, for me at least, is that everything comes down to numbers instead of people. And for me, nothing about numbers ever really makes sense. There's is no "correct" number. But when you can sit with a person and share experiences and inhabit a little of the same world for a moment, that makes life worth while. And the great appeal of YouTube for me, was the idea that maybe you can share something nice with lots of people. But most of the feedback is just more numbers. 4/

@nicd@masto.ahlcode.fi There are plenty of F-mount primes out there now too, not just mirrorless. Increasingly though, new models are being released purely for E/Z/L mounts. We had a lady on a workshop recently shooting with a Nikon Zfc. It's mirrorless, but APS-C sized sensor like yours. Been around for maybe 4 years I think. Lots of second hand ones on the market now. Anyway, it did a great job on the workshop with a $100 35mm F1.8 lens. Was impressed with it.

That moment of disappointment every morning, when you wake up enough to realise you're still in the same body.

That would be great. I have never been to Germany. I am hoping to get to Europe a little more in 2027 :)

The golden light was coming through the windows and I resented having to share my attention with someone else instead of just wander about taking photos! Anyhoo, my second colour photo in 24 hours. I'm out of control this week. #Melbourne #Naarm #Photography #Coffee #NotMono https://social.ewenbell.com/objects/8832ca80-d37b-4db9-b508-a595caf5aa52

Lime is the worst product we've ever seen in Melbourne

I can see the watch time is flat lining already. It's long and earnest and doesn't have a hook. Likely will struggle to get past 500 views, but I'll share it on my website and hopefully the right people who appreciate such things still enjoy it in years to come. Meanwhile... A video I made last year, with no script and about 10mins long, is getting more than 500 views every day. Not just this week, but just every single day. I spent a total of maybe 2 hours making that video. https://social.ewenbell.com/notice/B0PzYbMxM1Ex3Agmu0 The topic is quitting subscription pricing. I made it before Affinity became free. I was in a mood. The numbers are 2 hours to make. Just now hitting 18,000 watch hours. 2/

Doesn't really feel like we're "living in the future". Feels more like the future blew up on the launch pad.

@nicd@masto.ahlcode.fi It's such a different world for photographers now. The gear is better, and lighter and faster and whatever, but also there's so much more resources online (youtube) to learn. We can learn anything we want now, limited only by our own time. The other thing that has changed are the lenses. Loads of really lovely small primes on the market. I find that exciting :)

A few more from the reject pile. I have no idea what I'm gonna shoot when summer arrives here, not gonna be as much fun as winter light. #Melbourne #Naarm #Photography https://social.ewenbell.com/notice/B8QEHKYaQR7v9UleM4

No jury of my peers would convict me.

@itgrrl@infosec.exchange There's always extras, some less perfect than the others!

I tried a few things last year to find a groove with this YouTube stuff. To find what made sense to me. What am I sharing? What do I actually have to say? What is useful to other people? Most of those attempts didn't go far. Then one did. Then nothing else did. Mostly you spend a day making something that never gets seen. It becomes invisible very quickly. Most of what I do is invisible. This is the opposite of how photography made me feel. When I was younger, you might take a camera to a protest and capture a few shots and weeks later when you finally processed the film, that moment would return to you. And that photo was one of a dozen in the entire year that you held onto. A handful of photos defined my experience of learning and sharing photography. It felt real. There were no numbers. 3/

If you cannot do it for love, then do it for spite. Spite is totally valid.

@plzupgrademe@fedi.txw.ca Beautiful

Started readin a few posts in Scottish en nooow me wee brain canne stop usin that accent and tis proper crowded inside me heaaaaad tnight.

I used to be friends with a woman who gave me a lecture about relationships once. When she heard I was getting married and I said we don't want children, she went off at me. Her reasoning is that no woman actually means those words when they say it, and it was unfair of me to hold my future wife to this contract. I don't know why it's only women who apparently are subject to this rule of law. She never explained that bit.

I decided not to be so cranky this afternoon so I've eaten a whole bag of candy and will soon fall into a half-coma which should take the edge off things nicely.

More conventional views of the city. Taken with the same 50mm lens. #Melbourne #Photography

@josbuurmans@mastodon.social That is just amazingly lovely.

Living the dream. Getting paid to photograph chocolate eclairs. I will not be taking questions at this time.

You can't put a number on everything. That's part of what makes AI such a hot mess, it's trying to reduce humans to 1s and 0s. That's why the "economy" is such a false idol, because we live in a society and the economy is intended to serve society, not the other way around. I always think of that meme about swapping the word "economy" with "rich peoples yacht money"... Oh no we can't possibly afford dental care for everyone, what would happen to "rich peoples yacht money"? I live in a world ruled by numbers, while trying to make a living as a creative. That's what I feel today. n/N

Am also old enough to remember Vax VMS but managed to mostly avoid actually compiling code for it.

It's possible that I'm on a better path to future things, and just haven't climbed out of the valley yet. I can't see the big view yet. But it's possible I'm still climbing out instead of just lost. We shall see. I am on a different path at least. That much I know. I've got better skills now than I had a year ago. I'm better at keeping my stutter under control than ever before in my life. I have tried and failed at a lot of things, so that narrows down the list of future failures, having already been there. I can't recall a time in my life when I felt less certain about the future. Which is strange. I've been through so much chaos and uncertainty in my life, and yet the year 2026 is the definition of uncertainty. When I was younger I didn't realise how chaotic the world really is. But I do now. I'm very aware of the forces at play, but still unable to do much about them. 5/