A few nice photo upload images I found:
Nikon D700 + MB-D10 + 50mm f/1.4G AF-S
Image by christianyves
And old photo uploaded per request.
Now that I'm shooting crop cameras (Fuji XE-1, Leica M8, Sony NEX-6) I've almost forgotten how much I used to love the images coming out of the D700. Almost all the photos I've printed and hung on my wall are from the D700 with a couple from the Fuji X100. But what I didn't love was the weight of the whole thing. Even if all I brought was the D700 and the 50mm f/1.4G and a handful of items like an umbrella and my iPad the whole thing would weight me down so much that I didn't feel like going out to shoot at all.
With all the popularity of mirrorless cameras these days I wish Nikon would go back to the drawing board and make their cameras smaller. Small like Nikon FM2 small. If Leica can cram their internals into the new M and still provide full-frame image quality then I'm sure Nikon can do it as well. Considering Leica puts out about as much cameras in a year as Nikon does in a few weeks I'm sure they [Nikon] have the financial resources to sink into R&D and make a compelling product.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not ranting against Nikon. In fact I love their products. I just feel like all they do nowadays is sell the same camera in different bodies to segment their product lines and prevent cannibalization of their more profitable cameras. Canon is in the same boat as well and don't even get me started about the whole EOS M and Nikon 1 series.
I have contemplated going back to an SLR setup for its versatility but after handling the monstrous D800 with the 24-70mm I was practically married to, I couldn't justify the purchase. Of course, I can't justify the cost of a new Leica M either but then again I rarely need full frame these days apart from shooting in the studio. My solution is to hire an SLR when I need it for a commercial shoot but I find more and more that I may as well go with a Phase ONE or Hasselblad when I do those.
I think I'll stick to my Leica M8 for a little while longer unless someone wants it. Perhaps film is the way to go for my full frame needs as far as shooting for myself goes...
Thoughts anyone?
favela da rocinha panorama, rio de janeiro, brazil 2006
Image by seier+seier
this photos was uploaded with a CC license and may be used free of charge and in any way you see fit.
if possible, please name photographer "SEIER+SEIER". if not, don't.
one more panorama from the archives: favela da rocinha, rio de janeiro, brazil 2006.
which cities represent 20th century urbanism best? the modernist planning of brasilia in the previous image, its rigidity and odd, empty poetry? the concrete sculptures and enormous distances of chandigarh? or is it simply endless suburbia, strangely related across the globe like some growth waiting to engulf us all?
I would nominate the favelas, slums and shanty towns of the world - the unplanned cities of all the people who do not fit official planning. homes of the homeless, the illegal, the unwanted, the unregistred, the refugees, the poor...they represent the untrammeled growth of our megacities, the issues our politicians refuse to face or can't handle. but they ought also represent to us human creativety and perseverance. the central street running, hairpin style, down through rocinha is a reused racetrack - see if you can come up with a better example of adaptive reuse on an urban scale.
but the rocinha favela is a spectacular example for its size alone. estimates say up to 150.000 people live there in a self-regulating, parallel society built inside rio de janeiro. the favelas of rio are exceptional for being very central, lodged between the well-off neighbourhoods their inhabitants helped build. copacabana and ipanema, both near rocinha, used the flat costal land for their speculative highrises while the migrant construction workers were left to fend for themselves on the surrounding mountainsides.
the problem they solved alone was that of social housing. the fundamental lesson that in complex societies, the market forces cannot provide decent homes for all, is at least as old as ship building industry in venice where the cost of living even in the middle ages was at odds with the need for cheap, reliable labour. social housing near the arsenale was a component in the city defenses. social housing, to my mind, remains a part of any city's defenses, yet societies, like individuals, forget...
in rio, the unplanned and unpoliced favelas came under the rule of drug lords and still are. there is a lesson here for anyone carrying romantic notions about anarchy: outside the rule of law lies the rule of the criminally insane, and there is no middle ground. the favelas are so closely connected with crime that the many people who live there for reasons of poverty have cover addresses with better-off friends or family simply to be able to find a job; the social stigma is massive but people work around it. when the local bus company refused to enter rocinha, the inhabitants set up their own bus route taking workers from the slums to the city.
today, the favalas command priceless views of rio and the atlantic, the land that was first deemed too expensive to develop is increasingly attractive, but the city is recognizing the importance of the favelas and its own dependence on the people who live there. the major slums are being added to official maps of the city, their streets named, and their status changed to that of neighbourhoods, hopefully drawing them out of political limbo and isolation.
the change is for a large part symbolic, criminals still being in charge, and the Brazilians we spoke to were sceptical. their disappointment over the years with the impotence and corruption of police and politicians dealing with the favelas is understandable: the power of the drug lords who control most of the slums is formidable and frankly unbelievable to a northerner. it could be argued that the municipality is acting in denial of reality, but by giving permanence to the temporary and rights to residents, they are also showing their faith in people who have long proven their exceptional resources under difficult conditions.
rocinha from satellite. don't miss it.
