Why people travel PART II

From the Middle Ages to Romanticism, studying in another country was very popular.
Most of the students where men, whose goal was to obtain knowledge, which could not be obtained in their own country.



They were also expanding their language skills and learning to understand different cultures and customs. Maybe you did so as well ? What are your favorite places, cultures and countries? Why ?



In the end, those men were much better educated and different from those who never traveled and had no idea about what was happening in other places. King Henry Walezy saw a fork for the first time during his stay in Cracow. There he also saw a disposal the first time, which he ordered to mount in the Louvre after his return to France. Travels were also a great inspiration for writers.



Telling stories to simple people about distant lands, incredible creatures or strange rituals, gave the story-tellers a high position on the ladder of social hierarchy. It did not even matter if they spoke the truth. There were not too many people who could travel and check if the story was true. Do you think it works the same way in present times ?



Examples of such unusual journeys can be seen almost in every literature. Starting from the ancient journey of Odysseus to the Baroque Martin Borzymowski travel to Lubeck, and to the contemporary literature, which also has such motifs.



A specific case of travel is vagrancy. Admittedly, it is difficult to treat vagabonds as travelers, because such a lifestyle is often imposed by external circumstances. However, one can not underestimate the enormous number of places and situations in which these people had the opportunity to find themselves and things they had the opportunity to see.



Similar is the case of displaced persons, refugees and exiles, who typically, not of their free will, travel and shape their knowledge about the world. There have been many nostalgic books written on this topic. For example, the Polish Siberians’ book, written in the nineteenth century, dealing with the everyday life in the Far East of Russia, is still quite popular among young people. Hitchhiking may look a little like vagrancy.



But in this case we are dealing with tourism. With a desire for adventure and acquiring knowledge about the world at low cost. Such people decide to do it voluntarily, and are not compelled by their individual situation. By the way have you ever hitchhiked ? What were you purposes ?

Why people travel PART I

What is it about travel that makes people tend to pack the most necessary things, say goodbye to family and friends, and go to the place where they have never been before, without being sure that they will safely return? Fate, the desire to know the world, the irresistible temptation for adventure, or willingness to make a profit? Reasons may be different and are always individual, depending on the situation of each of the travelers.

What is the purpose of traveling for you ? However, the fact is that traveling accompanies the man in almost every aspect of life and has done so throughout the entire history of mankind.



What's more, along with the technological development of the world, people travel more and more. We do not even notice in everyday life that we do so. When we get used to this state, we must feel the difference again - so we organize trips to more and more uncommon and unusual places, offering special experiences.



People always were moving from place to place, constantly searching for optimal conditions for living and housing. Already in prehistoric times there were great migrations of nations which led to the spread of people, almost all over the continents.



Those migrations lasted for thousands of years because the divided groups could not find their place on Earth. Some of them still have not found it, and continue to travel through the world, as the nomadic tribes living in the Asian part of Russia. It is difficult to describe the nomadic tribes as "travelers" because the word "travel" refers to modern tourism or holidays. And this is a mistake.



Once distant travel was reserved for those who were affluent and well educated. It required the skills to cope with extraordinary situations or to speak in a foreign language. The organization of a journey used to be very expensive, everything took a lot of time, so traveling was reserved for state dignitaries, and only when it was really needed.



In addition, people with religious missions or criminals expelled from cities moved over the world. It was definitely harder to survive in the harsh conditions for them, but surprisingly they coped with this perfectly. You can read about such cases in some parts of the Bible. In the Middle Ages a custom of making pilgrimages to religious sites, tombs, wonderful paintings and sculptures developed rapidly. The faithful traveled long distances to pray for the intercession of the saints in matters of particular importance.



These events greatly contributed to the development of the infrastructure in the vicinity of places like inns, where travelers could obtain shelter. Travel is also tied with trade. Have you ever been abroad only to bring something for further sale ? Or maybe you visited US in order to purchase a lot cheaper laptop or other electronics ?



Merchants traveled the whole of Europe, Asia, and Africa, where they purchased and sold their goods for a profit. If it wasn’t for travels, Western Europe would never know eastern materials and spices.



This subject is widely discussed in reports from travels to China by Marco Polo. It is also worth mentioning that frequent travels created the foundation for early mail delivery systems. The more people traveled, the more essential it became for people to maintain communication with their own country.



And travel made the distribution of mail possible. Nowadays a parcel can ship to you from any distant part of the world within 48 hours. Have you ever availed from such delivery service ?

SKINHEADS

What is the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about ‘skinhead’ ? Racism? Nazism? Fascism? Hatred and violence ? Unfortunately, these seems to be quite natural nowadays for most of us. Due to so powerful today’s media, people have been already familiarized with such a view.  A fake one.

Writing this entry I’d like to present the real image of a ‘traditional’ skinhead. I’ll describe the origins of the subculture and why it has been so badly understood.

HISTORY

A traditional skinhead finds his origins in so-called mods and rude boys. Mods was the name of a youth subculture in the United Kingdom during late 50s. After the Second World War, the Britain’s economic boom led to an increase of money possessed by young Brits. Some of them spent it mostly on fashionable clothes popularized by American soul groups, British R&B bands and some movie actors. These young people were so noticeable that they started to create a subculture among British society - a subculture called Mods. They were mostly associated with their devotion to fashion, music (ska,  rocksteady) and scooters (mainly Vespa). Mods could be divided into two groups: smooth mods (also known as peacock mods) who were less violent and usually wore the most expensive clothes and hard mods (also known as gang mods) that could be identified by their shorter hair and more British working-class image. Hard mods, because of their short hair, started to be called skinheads about 1968. Another influence on the British youth came from Jamaica. During 60’s many young people who emigrated to the United Kingdom represented another subculture, called rude boys. These were Jamaican hooligans who copied the style of gangsters from 50’s by wearing suits and hats to be more elegant. Both these groups, British mods and Jamaican rude boys, influencing each other formed a new subculture called skinheads  (remember, both white and black races contributed).

THE FUSION

Traditional skinheads inherited from mods a tradition of driving Vespa scooters and elegant, minimalistic way of clothing (Levi’s trousers, polo shirts, checked shirts, Harrington-type jackets). They were also more into ska music and interested in Jamaican reggae further known as skinhead reggae (2 Tone). 

Skinhead reggae:

The most intensive evolution of this subculture is dated for 1969. However, it didn’t last for long as with the hippie youth movement propagated by The Beatles it almost disappeared after two years.

REBIRTH OF SUBCULTURE (SECOND WAVE)

In the mid 70’s the skinhead subculture started to be visible again. It was a natural reaction for a punk subculture which was associated with putridity, dirt and stinkpots. Opposite to that, skinheads represented cleanness, discipline and strong characters. The only thing that 70’s skinheads inherited from the punk subculture was the strong negation of the surrounding reality in the social meaning. They also totally resigned from Jamaican elements replacing them with those from punk rock. The new subculture, named by the British press as punk skins, started to grow mostly among the aggressive pseudo football fans. Many of those who represented the new subculture supported the far right National Front political party which propagated anti-migration racism. National Front members formed groups which were to attack many representatives of ethnic minorities in Great Britain in the late 70’s. These members, having nothing in common with traditional skinheads, started to copy their style (minimalistic clothing, short hair) which soon led to unfair and wrong identification of both as one and the same by the British press. The second wave of a skinhead subculture was not a pure British phenomenon. It has been associated mainly with nazi-racist ideologies and was propagated by neo-fascist political parties in America, Germany and France.

Sadly, neo-nazists do not have so simple lives:

THE THIRD WAVE

'IF YOU ARE A RACIST YOU CAN’T BE A SKINHEAD!'

Along with the existing racist form of skinheads in 80’s and 90’s the new, third wave (known also as third wave ska) started to appear. Fortunately, most of the third wave groups referred to origins of the primary skinhead subculture. We can observe many new variants of this subculture, making an opposition to neo-nazists, for example such groups like SHARP (Skinheads Against Racist Prejudice) in New York, Anti-Racist Action in England or Red and Anarchist Skinheads (RASH). All of them wanted to change the image and general opinion on the whole subculture.

SUMMARY

Skinhead subculture exists almost in every European country (mainly in Russia and Germany) as well as in Japan, Brazil, USA and Canada. Nowadays the skinhead subculture takes all possible forms, from nationalist, neo-nazi-fascist, totally apolitical (Oi!), those referring to the origins of the ska music, to far left.

We have to remember that talking about real skinheads we should also take Afro-Americans into consideration. Let’s just take a look at one of the most famous and influential ska bands in the history – The Specials or Mr. Symarip:

The Specilas – Gangsters

The Specials – Skinhead Moonstomp

Mr Symarip – Skinheads Dem a Come

At the end, I’d like to recommend two movies for those who were interested by the subject:

‘This is England’ - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Is_England

‘Skinhead attitude’ – a documentary available on youtube in 9 parts starting here (it is in polish but the best quality version on YT)

 

What do you think about this subculture ? Has your opinion changed ? Do you find any sense in creating any subculture ?

Extra points

Recommend a film/book/play/show you have seen/read recently. Give a link to it.
Even if you have seen something and you have not too good opinion of it, present it here please:)

By the way, there is a very interesting presentation on blog2:)

If you want to take photos...

This time I’ll write about something more practical ;) What do you need if you want to make photos by yourself?

First of all you have to choose the camera that will best suit your needs. It’s important to define your needs before buying anything. It’s important not only because of costs, but also because of comfort of usage.
Like I wrote in my previous post, there are two main types of cameras: smart(compact) and SLR.

Smart camera is usually called point and shot (P&S). That means you have only to point the camera and trip the shutter. All necessary calculations are made automatically. Once this type cameras had fixed lens, fixed aperture and fixed shutter speed, and they of course used a film. Today’s P&S cameras can do a lot more- they have variable aperture and shutter speed and sometimes simple zoom lens (optical zoom, don’t mix up with digital zoom). They have also automatic focus and preset controls for taking pictures of landscapes or at night. They’re usually digital, but some still are film cameras (for example one time use cameras). Notice that in this type of camera if it doesn’t have ttl (through the lens) viewfinder, you don’t see exactly what you capture on film – it’s because of the parallax phenomenon and the construction of a viewfinder.




P&S cameras are usually small and fit into a pocket. They are best used for casual picture taking where capturing the memory is most important.

But P&S cameras can be also a good choice for more demanding photographers. If you don’t have a lot of money and you are a beginner, you can choose advanced p&s camera model. Also if you are a professional, it’s sometimes necessary to have a smaller camera which you can take everywhere.



SLR, as you already know, stands for single lens reflex. DSLR stands for digital single lens reflex. This types of camera use a semi-automatic moving mirror system which permits the photographer to see exactly what will be captured on the photo (in ttl mode or with pentaprism located over the mirror and in front of the viewfinder) . The most important feature is that they have interchangeable lenses and provide full control of shutter speed, aperture, focus and focus point. However most of these cameras can act in a fully automatic mode just like a P&S. They also support add-on flashes.



These cameras allow for great control over the photography process and allow the photographer to take images not always possible with a P&S. They usually differ from each other with matrix size and type, speed of mirror rising mechanism, software and processor.

When buying an SLR or DSLR camera you always get body and lenses separately. Lenses are more important than body, so if you have limited budget, it’s better to spend more on lenses. Note that if you change the body, you won’t have to buy new lenses.



Like you already know, lenses differ from each other with focal length and with aperture values. The lower bottom aperture value lens has, the more it’s expensive. They can also have additional features, like stabilizer. Most photographers carry at least two lenses. A good range of lenses to carry for general-purpose photography is a 28-80mm lens and a 70-300mm lens.

Body with lens or camera with built-in lens is all you need to make photo. But there is a lot of additional equipment available. Are these things really useful? Yes, sometimes they’re essential. Which of them should you have? The short answer is it depends on where you are going and what pictures you want to take. However, there are some basic items you can take to cover most situations.

Filters – first of all they protect your lens from scratches (it’s always cheaper to change a filter than a lens), but they can also reduce bad effects from uv light, filter out polarized light, correct colors, add some special effects to the image, and more.



Tripod- it’s used for both still and motion photography to prevent camera movement. It is necessary when shutter speed is slow, or when telephoto lens is used. It is also helpful in achieving precise framing of the image, or when more than one image is being made of the same scene.



Flash- most cameras have a built in flash but those flashes are limited in power. A major purpose of a flash is to illuminate a dark scene. Other uses are capturing quickly moving objects or changing the quality of light.



Additional battery pack- very useful when you don’t have the opportunity to charge batteries for a longer time.

Camera bag- it holds camera, lenses, flash, memory cards, and other accessories. The bag helps protect the equipment from breakage, rain, and even quickly fluctuating temperatures.




Last important matter to think of is choosing between SLR and DSLR. DSLR is surely more comfortable, but SLR is...hmm... more sophisticated? ;) Digital images can be processed in computer programs (most popular is Photoshop), but still it will be only a simulation of effects that you can get when developing the film.

Well, that’s all for this week :)

What camera and what equipment do you have, if any? Do you put your photos in internet galleries? Do you think it’s necessary to know a lot about photography to make good photos?

Brief history of photography

As you know from my previous post, it all started with camera obscura, which was firstly used for observing the solar eclipse. Even with lens constructed by Girolamo Cardano, this device didn’t record the image, only projected it. Photography as we know it today began in the late 1830s in France when Joseph Nicéphore Niépce first recorded image that did not fade quickly. As a light-sensitive material he used a pewter plate coated with bitumen. After this experiment Niépce with Louis Daguerre constructed the Daguerrotype. Not delving into technical aspects, let’s say that Daguerrotype used something else as a light-sensitive material, which had to be exposed to light for up to 15 minutes.

This famous portrait of Abraham Lincoln is a Daguerrotype

In late 1850s it was replaced by emulsion plates(or wet plates), which were less expensive and took only two or three seconds of exposure time.

At that time the most common photography was portrait photography.

Then, in 1870s, Richard Maddox invented the dry plate, which could be stored and which enabled cameras to be smaller. This gave photographers much more freedom.

But still photography was only for the professionals.

Another huge leap forward was taken in 1880s, when George Eastman started a company called Kodak and created a camera with a flexible roll film. This camera had a small single lens with no focusing adjustment and allowed to make 100 photos. Much like in present-day cameras, after use, the film was send back to the factory to be developed (notice that it wasn’t today’s 35mm film, but larger , which was cheaper). Eastman didn’t invented a flexible roll film himself, he only popularized it (the inventor of it is Hannibal Goodwin), but his camera was the first one affordable for the average person.



Around 1930s the 35mm film was becoming more and more popular, and photographers began to shot something more than portraits.

During the WWII the 35mm film was used by most of photojournalists. Their shots, showing the war reality, changed the face of photography forever.




At the same time Polaroid introduced the Model 95- first instant camera, a type of camera with self-developing film. Initially it was very expensive, but by the mid 1960s more models had appeard on the market and the price had dropped.

In 1950s there has been a breakthrough – Asashi (later Pentax) introduced the Asahiflex, and Nikon introduced its Nikon F camera, first SLR-type (Single Lens Reflex) cameras. They provided easy control of the images, and soon most of them allowed interchangeable lenses and other accessories.

The next step, taken in late 1970s, was creating the smart cameras, which calculated shutter speed, aperture, and focus on their own. These cameras became popular with casual photographers, but professionals to use SLR cameras with more image control.

Finally, the last big invention in photography was made and developed in 1980s and 1990s – cameras that used digital media instead of film. First one of them was smart cameras, but in 1991 Kodak introduced the first one advanced enough to be used by professionals. Since then many innovations have been made, expecially in image sensors. Nowadays the CCD image sensor is the most advanced one.

Through all these years there had been a lot of great photographers. It’s impossible to write about all of them, even about all of those most influental, so I will present works of only few of them, and I encourage you to seek for more of their works :)

- Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904)


- Ansel Adams (1902-1984)


- Edward Curtis (1868-1952)


- Robert Capa (1913-1954)


- Richard Avedon (1923-2004)


- Irving Penn (1917-2009)


- Annie Leibovitz (1949 - )

Are you interested in photography as an art? Or maybe you’re interested in reportage photography? Do you have your favourite photographer? Do you visit photo exhibitions?

Camera - how does it work?

This week the main theme will be photography.

I’m sure all of you know the topic somehow – probably you make photos by yourself, maybe you’re interested in a photography as an art, or you just pose for photos ;) In any case, I hope this weeks posts will be interesting for you.

Let’s begin with the basics: how does camera work?

It all started about year 900, when device called camera obscura (latin for „dark room”) was invented. Look at the scheme below: camera obscura is a box with interior painted black and with a tiny hole in one side. Light passes through the hole and produces smaller and upturned image on the opposite surface.

If you put a light-sensitive material (it can be photographic film or electronic image sensor like CCD or CMOS) where the image is reproduced, you will construct a simple camera :) Of course it’s not that easy, there are few other things that make this device work properly, like correct distance from the hole to the light-sensitive material, mat and transparent plate in front of the light-sensitive material, proper size of the hole, etc.

The last one should be small enough to make the light rays intersect in one point. If it’s not, it will affect the sharpness of the image. But making a small hole means that not much light will get inside the box and the light-sensitive material won’t be exposured to it enough, or time of exposure will be very long. To become indepent from the size of the hole, in 1550 Girolamo Cardano installed the converging lens at the front of the box.

Converging lens works like this:

As you see, the light rays intersect in focal point. Distance from the center of the lens to its focal point is called a focal length (f). The longer focal length is, the larger magnification and a narrower angle of view the lens have.

But drawing nr2 is only the theory. In practice the light rays run like this:

This phenomenon is called spherical aberration and it occurs due to the increased refraction of light rays when they strike a lens near its edge, in comparison with those that strike nearer the centre. To avoid blurring of the image, the focus regulation mechanism was installed. It simply moves the lens, so we can be sure that its focal point is situated exactly at the light-sensitive material.

There are also many other aberrations (deformations) that occur in lenses, like for example chromatic aberration, coma, astigmatism, flare, vignetting, etc. To avoid them, constructors started to use more than one lens. Last two optical defects I mentioned are not always undesirable – even Photoshop has filter which enables adding flare or vignette to your image, apart from filters that remove them ;)

Using more lenses allowed to construct zoom – lens with the ability to vary its focal length.

Below you can see how it works:

I haven’t mentioned about one very important thing- aperture. It’s a mechanism used to control the amount of light reaching the film or image sensor.

Larger value of aperture means smaller hole, what gives us large depth of field.

What is depth of field? It is the portion of a scene that is sharp in the image. In some cases we want to have the entire image sharp, in other cases we want the depth of field to be smaller, to emphasize the subject and de-emphasize the background and foreground.

In combination with variation of shutter speed, the aperture size will regulate the film's degree of exposure to light. So, for example, a slow shutter speed will require a smaller aperture to avoid excessive exposure. It will make the subject blured if it’s moving and will give us a large depth of field.




If combinations of shutter speed and aperture size don't give us the expected effect, we can help ourselves with additional light, tripod or by changing the sensitivity of light-sensitive material we use.

That's all for today :)

Write in comments some basic information- what do you think about photography, are you interested in it? Did you know how camera works or was that something new for you?

All images are from wikipedia.