Ingrid Spangler is a freelance social media consultant living in New York. She’s been snapping pictures since she was a child and involved with social media since before it was called social media. Before going out on her own, she handled the social media for AdoramaPix, the photo lab division of Adorama Camera, for four years. You can find her on Facebook, Twitter, flickr, 500px, Google+ and Pinterest. In this post, Ingrid shares her experience at the first day of PhotoShelter’s Luminance 2012 photography conference in NYC.
Astronaut Donald Pettit shares one of his amazing images fom the International Space Station
One of the themes that wound its way through some of yesterday’s talks at Luminance was perfection. A few speakers took aim squarely at our ideas of perfection, whether it’s our ideas of perfection in the human face or form (Amy Dresser, master retoucher) or in the photographic artifacts themselves. Kevin Connor, the President and Co-Founder of Fourandsix presented his systemic approach to determining the authenticity of a photograph (File, Footprints, and Flaws), and Lucas Buick (co-founder of Hipstamatic) urged us to “forget about perfection” and “bring back the fun.” Another theme was authenticity. David Burnett, veteran photojournalist, earned the name “coolest photographer at the Olympics” for his large film camera set up. Allen Murabayashi, co-founder of PhotoShelter, asked him about his use of film in the digital age, “Is film a gimmick?” to which Burnett replied, “Everything’s a gimmick!”
The standout speaker (for me and many other attendees I spoke with) was astronaut Donald Pettit. He revealed that his favorite lens is an 8mm fisheye, the better to capture the cramped (and very shiny!) spaces on board the space ship (space ship! How cool is that?!). He demonstrated how culture, technology and geography combine different kinds of light and the way the light is distributed to paint pictures of our cities from space. At the break I spoke to him about Neil Armstrong’s photography skills and the kind of insane pressure that was on him to get accurate and in-focus images from the moon. Using a Hasselblad, the only photos of Armstrong on the moon are in the reflection of Buzz Aldrin’s helmet.
Really looking forward to today, (Jen Bekman! Tyler Shields! Taylor Jones!) if you see me there, be sure and say hello!
