A Few of My Favorite Things

One of my bad habits (is it actually bad? I'm not sure) is having an excessive number of browser tabs open. Since I now have a 24in monitor, the problem has only increased. Right now I have 24 tabs open, for example. The thing is is that most of these are links I've found on other blogs that I want to show people and always forget. So, I'm going to share them with you so that I can clean up my clutter and only feel moderately guilty about passing it on.

One of the best things I've seen lately is this series of photographs from Irina Werning. She takes old photographs and has the subjects reenact the scene. They're just too good. Here're some favorites:

Swiss photographer Corrine Vionnet realized that most tourists take photographs of famous sites from the same spot, so she layered hundreds of photos on top of each other to demonstrate this. The results are uncanny. Why the consistency? Do we take photos from angles based on photographs we have seen before such that we are already conditioned to see things in a certain way? Do we intuitively know which angles are optimal? I'm less inclined to agree with the latter. What you might notice in these photos is that they are all good shots, but none especially interesting (Actually, almost all place the image precisely in the center, which is one thing a photography class teaches you not to do at the beginning). They capture the landmarks, but in a sort of matter of fact sort of way. I don't mean this an an elitist way as if tourists ought to be better photographers, but I'm mesmerized by fundamental sameness. I think, too, there's a fundamental sameness in how people travel. Why do we photograph the landmarks anyway? I have my own photos of the Eiffel Tower and the Colosseum, too, but I think I'm ambivalent about those.

More later, I guess.