WWW
by Don Brice
Review...

Don Brice takes a quick surf through some photographic web pages and reports back that there is certainly more to photography on the net than dirty pictures and corporate advertising. Here are a few sites that you may like to visit.

"Now then, just what was the formulae for Farmers Reducer???" Certainly no one would claim that a successful photographer also needs to be a scientist, but there does seem to be a lot of annoying little technical things that get in the way of creating the perfect image. How can you be expected to remember all these things? If you don't still have your college notes or high-school physics books lying around, help is at hand. There is a wealth of useful stuff for photographers waiting for you on the world wide web. But where to start? The web is big. Some say too big for it's own good. Type in a few photographic key words on your search engine and you get a bewildering array of responses.

Unfortunately most of them aren't worth looking at. Camera Club's seem to abound. Ughh. "Fine Art" has become a euphemism for "soft porn" and there is always someone trying to sell you something you don't want or need. But through all the dross there are actually some clever, useful or interesting web sites worthy of storing on the Bookmarks of your browser.

Because photography is in itself such a large and diverse field of interest, it is obvious that what toasts my crumpets, may at the same time leave you cold. Some sites are amazingly eclectic. Others, operate a bit like search engines and are simply lists of links to other photographic sites. These are often a good first stop.

VISIT CLASSY FOLIOS
As you may expect, a large number of sites are the on-line folio of photographers world-wide. Looking through these folio's is an interesting experience, for a while. The main thing that I learned is that there seem to be a hell of a lot of photographers in the world and that most of them seem to offer a lot of pretty average quality work. It's a good way of overcoming cultural cringe. As you trawl through site after site you may find that lots of the work is no better than your own and there is no reason to feellike a country cousin to the "big boys". Amongst the dross, the diamonds leap out. Familiar names beckon. Mary Ellen Mark, Eric Meola, Pete Turner and Joyce Tenneson. The superstars of international photography have their sites nestled in, shoulder to shoulder, with sites like, well, like yours and mine.

The other useful thing about visiting lots of these sites is to gain idea's for building your own web page. Some pages look good and load quickly. Others go for the more ornate approach. Multi coloured, textured backgrounds can be distracting. A bit like hanging a subtle B/W print on a '70s garish floral wallpaper. They may have large picture files that take forever to appear or feature animated Nikons that bounce around the screen. Now place yourself in a client's position. It's all very cute, but a pain if you just want to see if the shooter is any good.

The American "Photo District News" magazine, hold annual awards for self promotion and that includes web sites. PDN is the world's premier magazine for professional photographers. (what? even better than acmpnews??? -ed.) Even if you don't subscribe, they publish large amounts of the magazine at www.pdnonline.com. If you register your e-mail address with them, they will automatically notify you when each new edition comes out. It is free and a good way to keep up with the world of photography.

All of the PDN winners featured strong site design that complemented an excellent folio of images. This years award for best photographic web site was the New York based R.Jerome Ferraro. Jerome's site at www.jeromepix.com is as contemporary as her cool pictures. She has on display a selection of different folio's, all featuring the same distinctive style of editorial portraiture.

www.seankernan.com , a runner up in the competition, offers high quality commercial images in a clean, well designed page. A good feature is the ability to nominate either large or small monitor size on the home page. This avoids the annoying situation of having to scroll from left to right to read the whole page if you are on a small screen. Sean offers free screensaver downloads of some of his images. A nice marketing touch. He also provides a links page to other photo related sites.

A feature of some photographers web pages is an absence of any physical address. We can guess from their host address that they may live in the US, but these photographers choose to simply exist in cyberspace. All contact with them is through e-mail or via telephone. The message they promote is that distance is no barrier. That they are photographers of the world. Matthew Garrett's www.imagerealm.com is one such site. Garrett offers both photography and web design services. He let's his photos do the talking. Strong, colourful and graphic pictures open up "full bleed" on your screen. The problem of differing sized screens has been solved by stitching multiples of each shot together to create a montage effect at the bottom and right of your screen. Menu and caption buttons sit discreetly on the image itself.

THE LIST LISTS
Now for the "links" sites. A bit like having a search engine that just finds all the other search engines, here is a list of sites that provide lists of sites.are you still with me?

www.digitaltruth.com takes you to the "Photo Source". This is based in the UK and run by Jon Mided. The home page loads almost instantly and doesn't bother with background colours. It features a small logo and a straightforward list of the various sections in the site. Straightforward and un-adorned. The links take you to a dazzling array of photographic subjects. There is a detailed film development chart for the photographer who likes to get their fingers wet.

The on-line photographic book store is where you may find titles hard to get in Australia. Pages of data and chemical formulae (including your Farmers Reducer recipe!). Subscription offers for photo magazines, on-line camera shopping, free photo-related software and guide-books (including lots of photo-shop help) and a "Web Forum" where you can discuss photo issues on a bulletin board. That is all before you even open up the "Meta-Index". This is your list of links. It is one of the most comprehensive I have seen. Here is just a taste. The subjects range from Polaroid transfers to Bromoil printing. From chemical suppliers to tips for scanning. From Minox collectors to infra-red techniques, it's all there. There are papers on photographic theory and lists of on-line art galleries and magazines. Well over a hundred different sites are listed and many of these may be worth a more detailed review in future articles.

The "Fotografia" site is another I have used as a resource. It is hosted by the audiovisual school of a Spanish university called the Pompeu Fabra University. The trail to finding the list is long, convoluted and written in Spanish, but the final address is as follows: www.iua.upf.es/~ctomas/ctp67.htm

Don't worry, when you get there the links themselves are written in English. This site has an extensive list of photo resources including most manufacturers sites and a good selection of on-line galleries and museums. On the more unusual side you may check out the pages devoted to obsolete film formats or pinhole photography. Naturally there are also links to yet more lists and so the cycle does on.

Of course, in an ideal world we will all be much too busy to spend all this unproductive time in front of our beige (or strawberry) coloured box. But if you are planning a web site of your own or perhaps you do want to make your own Farmers Reducer, then the truth is www.outthere.

Milton Wordley, Collection 6

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