My news and opinion articles.
Sounds like JPG has been saved after all. I’m updating via the WordPress app for iPhone so I can’t copy and paste in the email that I just received, but the gist is that they’ve got some sort of buyer and will be able to keep the site up after all. Not sure about the magazine itself though at this stage.
Good news then!
Just a quick post to say that while I do have plans to post some more “how to…” articles, we’re in the middle of moving house at the moment so when I haven’t been celebrating the festive period or working I’ve been packing box after box with all our stuff. It’s quite incredible how many boxes we’ve filled – looking at them stack up in our front room, behind the sofa and out into the hall I can’t quite work out how we managed to accomodate it all in the first place! So stick with me folks, I haven’t given up on this little project!
In other news, I’m doing stills on a film called Vivid later on this month and at the start of February, so I might post a few iPhone shots from the set if there’s anything exciting to share.
In the meantime, thanks for swinging by!
Looks like the looming closure of JPG magazine may be postponed a little longer. Here’s an excerpt from their recent blog update:
…we are hopeful that something can be worked out with a number of potential last minute acquirers who want to help the JPG community live on. There is a lot to sort through in any case, so please be a little bit patient with us. We will do our best to keep you all informed in the mean time.
Seems the news spread round the interweb a lot quicker than they’d imagined. At least one website has sprung up to drum up support. Fingers crossed and if it manages to keep going I’ll definitely make a bigger effort to contribute!
If you’re a member of the JPG Magazine website you’ll have got an email today announcing that they’re closing their doors, sadly. The same email is posted on their blog.
Today is a particularly sad day for all of us at JPG and 8020 Media. We’ve spent the last few months trying to make the business behind JPG sustain itself, and we’ve reached the end of the line. We all deeply believe in everything JPG represents, but we just weren’t able to raise the money needed to keep JPG alive in these extraordinary economic times. We sought out buyers, spoke with numerous potential investors, and pitched several last-ditch creative efforts, all without success. As a result, jpgmag.com will shut down on Monday, January 5, 2009.
I only really started paying attention to JPG properly in the last few months and uploaded a handful of images to various themes. My profile, underused as it was, is here, but I don’t know how much longer it’ll be online! So I wasn’t that active but it seemed like a great place for photographers to share their work and read about other photographers. It had the added benefit of avoiding ranking mechanisms, meaning everyone had a chance to be seen. They published an actual physical magazine as well as the digital version.
There’s a Flickr group but personally I’ll just miss flicking through the digital issues of the mags and being amazed by some inspirational photographs. Download the archives while you still can!
I’ve been playing around a lot with the iPhone camera since I got my 3G iPhone a few months ago. I got Camerabag (£1.79 at time of writing) pretty early on, as it processes images from your Photo Library or can even capture directly from the camera itself. The selection of filters it can then apply range from imitation plastic lens types (Helga and Lolo) to a couple of mono filters and various retro effects. There’s a fisheye but it’s not really worth using. You can have the app crop and border your conversions, or either, or neither.
The filters can take a decent iPhone photo and give it a really appealing tone, and predictably I’m a big fan of the Helga look – heavy vignette, contrasty colours, slightly desaturated.
I also use Pano quite a lot, a panorama app. Does a really impressive job of stitching up to 6 images together, either panoramic or portrait orientation. It’s £1.79 as well. You can even create a panorama and then run it through Camerabag, but you do lose most of the resolution when you do that as Camerabag has an upper limit of 1200 pixels on the longest side. A 6-frame panorama straight out of Pano is a lot bigger!
So it’s not like having my D200 in my pocket, of course, but it does mean I can keep an eye out for new photo opportunities even when I don’t have my big toys with me, and that makes life more interesting. 🙂
Oh, and Happy New Year!
