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behind the image
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Monday, 04 May 2009 00:00 |
In my twenties I lived vicariously through Climbing magazine, a glossy publication that granted me access to the world of mountaineering and sport climbing through images like these. The September 94 issue had stunning images of the granite walls of the Lofoten Islands that I dreamed of visiting and climbing. A decade later we had the opportunity to visit Norway and finally see (but not climb) these walls.
We flew to Oslo and took the train to Bergen, a pleasant but uneventful town. Then we boarded a Hurtigruten ferry, a coastal service that provides mail, vital supplies and transport to those who live in isolated coastal townships.
As we approa ched Bodo, we crossed the Arctic Circle - this image was taken at around 2am:
From Bodo, we took the ferry to Svolvaer Harbour in the Lofoten Island of Austvagsoya, where a statue of a fisherman's wife greets returning fishermen and climbers jump across the horns of the Svolvaer Goat. The lattice work in the background are racks where fish are dried to make a delicacy called stockfish.
We hired an old Corolla from a no-frills car rental business and drove toward the tip of the islands, using the bridges that connect the major islands:
And visited lakes where angry Norweigan seagulls made a painful and sustained attack after I walked on their mud flats to take this photo:
The next day we drove to Reine Harbour where we stayed in a Rorbu, a fisherman's hut. You could even fish from a hole in the kitchen floor.
And this was taken at around 1am from the southernmost point on the island of Moskenesoya:
We then drove back to Svolvaer, took the ferry back to the mainland and boarded a train back to Oslo. As a holiday it was painfully expensive but exceeded my expectations, even those built up over a decade.
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catalyst blog
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Friday, 01 May 2009 11:30 |
Here's proof that there's room for significant innovation in almost any product:
The standard pizza box design considers only one half of the problem space - pizza vendors and their need to transport pizza away from their premises. With the Green Box, eco incorporated looked at the needs of the end user - plates to eat from and storage for leftovers - and created environmental benefits as well. Brilliant.
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catalyst blog
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Thursday, 30 April 2009 12:44 |
If you made this tap for use in a public bathroom, you failed. You chose to be different in a way that prevents instantaneous access to water for novice users. It's not enough to be different - as Marty Neumeier says, you need to different and good.
If you put up the sign, you failed. You heard the complaints from the public but decided that they were wrong and the tap wasn't broken. Instead of spending your time providing a tap that they could use instantly, you decided to spend five seconds of their time learning to use a tap that's not fit for the purpose. |
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behind the image
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Monday, 27 April 2009 00:00 |
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In my first year of as a commercial photographer, I wanted to make a dedicated image to put on my client christmas cards, something that spoke to creativity and technical proficiency. Somehow I came up with 'Rub a dub dub, three men in a pub' and convinced a pub and five people to help me make it. The butcher really was the local butcher, the baker is my uncle and the suitably mad candlestick maker a friend from church. Makeup was done by a student artist and another friend helped me move all the gear.
The only natural light in the scene is the light globe at the very top right. The foreground was lit with three studio strobes, including a (then) brand new type of light reflector that provided a large, directional light source to simulate sunlight (through the windows of the bar). The background (the bottles in the bar) were lit with a typical camera flash unit on a slave trigger and a sparkler was lit to create a welding spark.
I still don't know what I think of this image - as I made it completely from scratch it's one of the images I feel most naked showing to other people. It took a long time to make and used more of the models' time than I had hoped, particularly the butcher who needed to get back to his shop (and he couldn't even drink his beer because I'd put salt in it to keep its head). Plus there are a number of technical flaws that I won't point out but personally can't ignore. Fortunately, however, my clients loved it. |
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catalyst blog
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Friday, 24 April 2009 12:49 |
This 4 minute Cool Hunting video looks at Sao Paulo's prolific graffiti artists:
A summary of filmmaker / journalist Jaoa Wainer's points (with my comments in parenthesis) is: - tags made without the risk of climbing are not valued (this tribe demands commitment from its participants),
- the tag is made up of a personal symbol, a gang symbol and the date (the artist is claiming current membership in their gang, and presumably ownership of a neighbourhood),
- the artists are the invisible poor who say 'I'd prefer you to hate me than ignore me' (to me the most significant point here),
- the tags are in a common style that dates back to the 1980s (the artists are aligning themselves with each other even over gang boundaries and the tags only understandable only by those in the culture),
- the symbols are based on the logos of heavy metal bands (the artists belong to a wider tribe - youths around the world who have an affinity with heavy metal presumably because it expresses their feelings), and
- the artists don't know why they do it (self-awareness is a not a prerequisite to action against deeply held values).
For me it's another reminder that nothing is as simple as it looks. Even cultures that most do not value contain the same degree of structure, purpose and value for its participants as esteemed cultures. And that unless the powers that be get inside the skin of these cultures as Wainer has here, they'll never have an impact on curbing anti-social behaviour. Malcom Gladwell also speaks to this in The Tipping Point.
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catalyst blog
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Tuesday, 21 April 2009 17:08 |
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As the web has exploded, so has generosity. I think there's at least three kinds of generosity that we see today:
I can't use it so you have it.
This is where the giver can't benefit directly from what they own and therefore gives it freely, often to obtain an indirect or non-tangible benefit. Two examples might be the author who gives away part of a book to increase book sales, and the blogger who gives away small ideas in the hope of building a reputation or tribe.
I won't miss it.
This is where the giver could directly benefit from what they own but it represents only a marginal benefit to them (and therefore only a marginal cost to give it away). The patronage of the wealthy, tipping and a $25 loan on kiva.org might be good examples.
Your need is more important than mine.
This is the traditional view of generosity, where the giver gives in spite of incurring a significant personal cost to do so.
Proportionally speaking, the vast majority of generosity used to be either 'I won't miss it' by the very wealthy or 'your need is more important than mine' because prior to the web the costs of facilitating gift-giving were very high, making the smaller transactions inefficient. Sharing an idea with the public required buying media so only the most important ideas were shared. The end-to-end cost of completing a gift transaction meant that only large gifts were efficient. And the cost of near-perfect information (will my intended recipient receive my gift?) meant that certainty was available only for the large foundations or large-scale charities who could afford to chase this information down. These inefficiencies prevented the smaller scale and 'I can't use it so you have it' generosity that we see today.
Are all three kinds true generosity, however? I'm a traditionalist here - I think true generosity is 'your need is more important than mine', where the giver incurs a real cost in making their gift. Regardless, all three forms of generosity should be valued not as moral credit to the giver but as realised benefit to the recipient - even something useless to the giver can be another person's treasure. Whatever the giver's motivation or cost, we can all be thankful for the explosion in generosity that we enjoy today.
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behind the image
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Monday, 13 April 2009 00:00 |
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I had spent an hour or so wandering back and forth along the pedestrian walkway looking for the right element - I wanted something minimal and strong. Following 9/11, a security guard patrols the bridge at night and on his first pass I was greeted with suspicion and a bag search. By his second and third pass, he realised I was serious about getting an image and I became a welcome distraction.
At this time on a weeknight, few vehicles cross the bridge but each causes noticeable vibration - a problem for a one minute exposure on a relatively long lens (165mm on a 6x7). As I couldn't anticipate the arrival of vehicles, the first few were ruined by buses and trucks passing so I kept shooting until I had a vibration-free image. Then I wanted to bracket the exposure and use two film backs for redundancy so all told it took perhaps an hour to capture all of these frames. The long exposure also allowed capture of faint bird trails in the background - in summer birds feast on moths attracted to the lights.
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behind the image
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Monday, 30 March 2009 00:00 |
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Yes, I cut much of Sonja's head off intentionally. Many people really don't like this photo - we really do consider the eyes to be the 'window to the soul'. I think it's sultry, although her clothes are sadly dated and we could have done more with her hair - perhaps we could have taken it all up to show just Sonja's neck. But I still like it.
This was a simple set up - on the way to another location, I noticed the sun setting through the trees. We parked the car quickly, picked a jacket that would shimmer in the light and my assistant / make up artist held a large white reflector to light the jacket but not Sonja's face.
The aperture was wide open to throw the background out of focus, her body aligned to the rule of thirds and I balanced her hands vertically against the bottom of her face. The tripod height and camera angle were chosen to be level with the jacket but also to have an out-of-focus and overexposed area behind Sonja's unlit face for contrast. Total setup and shot time was probably fifteen minutes. |
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catalyst blog
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Friday, 27 March 2009 09:02 |
My eldest son is in the 1st grade and his world is full of incentives. Every hundred books he reads, he gets a certificate from his teacher. If he's helpful to his teacher he receives a 10 cent voucher to spend at the school canteen. If he's often and conspicuously helpful, he's presented with a certificate and an 'Aussie of the Month' badge in front of the whole school. And teachers control large groups of children with arbitrary races - 'Who's the first to be quiet with their hands on their head?'. The kids love it.
Incentives are offered to children because they work. They work because the kids perceive them to be valuable, but they're used by teachers because they have a low cost. Incentives to children contain little intrinsic value.
In the corporate world there are also a great number of incentives - public praise, a higher position on the corporate ladder, social status, a glass office and a BMW for a company car. At Christmas time employers give hampers, throw big parties and give awards. And employees love it. You love it.
Incentives are offered to employees because they work. They work because you perceive them to be valuable, but they're used by your employer because they have a low cost. Your incentives contain little intrinsic value.
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catalyst blog
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Friday, 20 March 2009 06:54 |
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The Apple iPod was launched in 2001 and quickly became extraordinary - your entire music collection in your pocket. Then it just got better - along came photos and video. Increases in memory size all the way up to 160GB for the iPod Classic. Then came the iPod Touch - a much larger screen, incredible interface and wide range of applications - it's not an MP3 player, it's a computer running a stripped-down version of the Mac OS. And in 2005 Apple launched the iPod shuffle designed to be a small, inexpensive player for price conscious music lovers.
The first generation shuffle was reasonably small and it came with a neck cord for carrying it around. My niece has one and likes it but I think it's only so-so - the edges are sharp making it uncomfortable to hold, the plastic feels cheap and the USB cap falls off. The second generation shuffle was a big step forward - much smaller but with large controls, no parts to lose, constructed from anodised aluminium and - in true Apple style - it's a work of art. With a built in clip it was billed as 'the most wearable iPod ever' and Apple tapped into the active user market.
The third generation was released days ago. Where the 2nd gen shuffle was small, this is tiny - only 50% of the volume.
You're no doubt familiar with The Law of Diminishing Returns. Almost all product strategies are subject to it - as soon as you and your competitors take a particular aspect of your product over the point of diminishing returns, that particular value is all but commoditised. Near-pure water is pure enough. Mercedes and Volvo enjoyed a price premium for safety until the 90s - now even Kia can reach a 5 star NCAP rating. Mobile phones got smaller until our fingers and the distance between our ear and mouth made making them smaller impractical - now they've become larger again to accomodate compelling new features. The iPod classis used to come with either 80GB or 160GB - now it's only one model at 120GB. So too the iPod shuffle - I'd argue that the size of the 2nd gen iPod shuffle was just fine for almost everyone. Some reviewers even found the new size problematic, losing the device more than once. What particularly troubles me about the 3rd gen iPod shuffle is that while reviewers have been generally impressed with the size and construction, they're not with the user interface, saying it's difficult to use except when standing still. This is a step backward over the 2nd gen, particularly for the active users that Apple managed to attract. Apple is normally a company that creates outstanding design to deliver outstanding user experiences, but here it seems the design is at the expense of the user. This is more of a Bang & Olufsen approach than the Apple we know and love and I think it's a mistake.
So given the law of diminishing returns (and competitors who follow as closely as they can), what's a company to do?
Part of the solution is to know the point from which making your product harder, better, stronger, faster - whatever your current approach is - will no longer provide compelling benefits to your customers. Don't make a significant investment in your approach beyond that point, but look for a new paradigm to smash - whatever will provide a compelling new benefit to users and give you an edge over the competition. Clearly, Apple has done this time and time again with previous versions of the iPod.
If, however, you've genuinely run out of paradigms to smash in your current product set or industry, it's time to smash them somewhere else - in a related or different environment. Apple did this with the iPhone. Dyson's just done it with the air blade. Nokia did it when the rubber business wasn't crash hot, again when cables were commoditised, again when consumer electronics plateaued and yet again to become world's largest manufacturer of mobile phones.
Either way, until you're ready to smash another paradigm, don't make the mistake of pushing your existing trajectory too far. It's better to release a small and incremental improvement that customers will appreciate rather than deliver a technically impressive product that customers do not. Time will only tell whether the 3rd generation iPod shuffle falls into this category. |
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