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Archive for the ‘off-topic’ Category

I’m Alive!

Tuesday, April 9th, 2013

Why did I stop posting over a year ago? Quite honestly, I burned out on this project. I’m an extremely busy person and the amount of work involved with this site simply became overwhelming. I couldn’t find the time nor the energy to maintain it.

I’ve come up for air, but I’m not sure how I want to proceed. In the meantime, please follow me on Instagram – I find that it is a great way to explore photo ideas.

While I won’t be documenting windows as intensely as before, I will be posting ones that astound. Such as this on on Madison Avenue: Rock & Roll Kids. I will also be posting anything art worthy in general.

I apologize for not explaining sooner.

Rudy

Posted in new york, off-topic, window displays | Comments Off

New & Improved? You Tell Me. Looking for Feedback…

Monday, December 19th, 2011

Hello. I need your feedback.

I am working on some new functionality for the site. If you look at the post below (Macy’s), you will notice that I have encapsulated all of the gallery thumbnails and their associated hero images into a single container that doesn’t require popping up into a separate frame (as I have had structured since the beginning), and the thumbnails are in a scrollable pane. I always felt that there was a disconnect with how I have been doing it. I prefer the idea that the user never need leave the page, and that the thumbnails and heroes stay together. The user can either click on the large image, which advances to the next image, or click on a thumbnail which will load in its parent. To browse through the thumbnails, hover over either end of the thumbnail pane (which will trigger an auto scroll), or use the scroll bar below the thumbnail pane to manually scroll through them (my preferred method).

Please let me know if you like this or not. You can either comment on the post itself, or shoot me an email via the feedback form in the sidebar located at the top right of this page. And feel free to be anonymous. Simply enter in a pseudo email address to bypass the validation check.

I am also toying with a new feature that I call “One Up Close”. If you look directly below the Macy’s gallery, you will see a image that I have singled out. Mousing over it will trigger a magnifying function, allowing the user to view parts of the image at a much greater scale. My thought is that, with each post, I will have a gallery along with one window singled out that the user can view in detail. A bonus, as it were. A lot of these windows are dense, which isn’t readily apparent when viewed at 700px, so the user misses out on their true worth. “One Up Close” will load in a super high-resolution picture that can be studied in detail. It isn’t the same as being there in person, but it’s a closer step, no? Let me know your opinions regarding this also.

My intent is to provide a better user experience, both in terms of functionality and in enjoyment. For those of you who frequent this site, and are familiar with it, please, please, please, give me your feedback. And if you have other suggestions, I am all ears. Again, a super simple feedback form is located at the top right of this page.

Cheers.

Rudy

Posted in off-topic, other, © rudy pospisil | Comments Off

About Me…

Tuesday, December 13th, 2011

There have been a couple of stories written in the past couple of weeks for work that I have been doing and I wanted to share them. (I had to toot my horn)

One is a business profile on Apple’s website. I have done quite a bit of work developing sales tools for the iPad, and Apple has recognized our company for its use of the iPad. There are a few mentions of me.
Apple: Scott Kay & iPad (developed by Rudy Pospisil)

The other is a profile piece, written by Kate Racovolis. The title is “A Preview of Holiday Windows Through a Photographer’s Lens” and concerns itself with my shooting of windows, with the Bergdorf Goodman windows as a main contributor to the narrative thread.
Midtown Gazette: Another Normal/Rudy Pospisil’s Windows Photography

Thanks for letting me toot my horn.

Cheers.
Rudy

Posted in apple, off-topic, other, photography, window displays | 2 Comments »

WordPress Update Has Broken The Galleries

Thursday, June 9th, 2011

Unfortunately, with the latest WordPress update, several things seem to have broken across this site, the big one being the image galleries’ ability to pop up. This functionality is not working. Until I can track down exactly what broke, you will need to click the images and view them in their own page, then hit the back button to return. Sorry about this. Hopefully, I can figure this out fairly quickly.

UPDATE: Okay. The NextGen gallery plugin is back up and running.
Rudy

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My First Window

Saturday, August 14th, 2010

I was going through my archives and stumbled across this… my first window.

When I lost my window virginity.

I shot this back in 1995, in San Francisco, at Macy’s. With a Hassie, FP4, Rodinal, Oriental Seagull 3. Back when photography was much more of a hand-crafted art. I miss those days.

Oh well… on to digital… (and honestly, I could not do this site if I were shooting film).

Posted in off-topic, photography, © rudy pospisil | Comments Off

In Moderation

Sunday, August 8th, 2010

Sorry to have to do this but I have gone ahead and turned on moderation of comments. Even with a spam filter installed (having removed THOUSANDS of spams), over 20 spam comments a day get through and I have to manually remove them. I have also turned off commenting on posts older than 60 days. This alone has greatly reduced the amount of spam comments. It seems that spammers target older postings as their spam comments will more likely go unnoticed and their goal is to get their links out there for the search engine page rankings. I have always wondered why certain sites turned off commenting on older posts. Now I know why.

I hate having to moderate and I hate having to turn off commenting on older posts but until the spamming stops, I do not have a better solution. If you would like to comment on an older post, email it to me and I will be glad to post it. Having said that (thanks Larry David), I hate spammers and they know that we hate them and yet they keep on doing it. Moral compass askew.

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Se acabó. Ha ganado España.

Monday, July 12th, 2010

It is a sad day. Not because Spain won but because the World Cup is over. I love World Cup!
Jasper JuinenGetty Images2 500x326 Se acabó. Ha ganado España. © Jasper Juinen/Getty Images. Original image found here.

Congratulations to Spain. They beat The Netherlands 1-0 by scoring in the 116th minute of the 120 minute game (2 halves plus 2×15 minutes of overtime). Honestly, it was not a very pretty game and, in fact, got quite ugly at times. 13 yellow cards were thrown and the Dutch lost a man to a red card. And that was lenient. There were probably a couple of other red cards that should have been thrown.

Spain was a good team. Even though they lost to Switzerland, I was impressed with their play in that game. And they shut down hard the offense of my favourite team, Germany.

Okay. Back to our regular scheduled programming.

Posted in off-topic, other | Comments Off

And you thought that iPhone people were crazy…

Sunday, June 20th, 2010

Footaction, 7th Ave, Manhattan, NY
June 16, 2010

People queued up for the new Air Jordan VI Infrared Pack (sneakers, for those who don’t know).

Posted in lines, new york, new york candids, off-topic, © rudy pospisil | Comments Off

Sir Winston Churchill’s cigar airbrushed from museum’s photograph?

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

(update 06.15.2010)
Oops. Call it a case of misplaced rage. It appears that this was completely unintentional. Full story here. Quite the well researched article.

===================
Okay. Off topic this morning…

The photo of Winston Churchill that hangs over the entrance of The Winston Churchill’s Britain at War Experience, a museum in London, has had the cigar removed from his mouth. Bad move. Not only does this serve to discredit photography in the public’s eye, it also condones the rampant overuse of retouching (are you listening SJP?).

And seriously, why? Come on! This was a photo of Churchill, in 1948, smoking a cigar; something that was basically his trademark, his look. (Arnold Schwarzenegger was on the cover of Cigar Aficionado smoking a fat one. That obviously didn’t harm his image as he went on to become the Governator.) Who was the imbecile that thought that the public needed to be protected from an image of Churchill toking on a cigar? (Of course, the museum has said that they never would have requested the change but have declined revealing who & why).

Okay. Back to your regular scheduled programming.

Full story from the UK Telegraph here.

Here’s a bit of trivia for you. Christie’s just auctioned off one of Churchill’s cigars (a Cuban Camacho) for $3126.

Posted in off-topic, photoshop/air brushing | Comments Off

Happy Mother’s Day

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

Happy Mother’s Day Mom. (she passed away a few years ago)

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Google Buzz – Is It Really Disabled?

Saturday, May 8th, 2010

Okay. This is COMPLETELY off topic for this blog but I wanted to post it because I’m pretty uptight with all of the privacy issues going on with certain websites (*cough* *cough* zuckerberg *cough*).

I had immediately opted out of Google Buzz when it first appeared due to it’s lack of regard to privacy (thanks to Buzz Out Loud for the heads’ up).

Well… I just installed the Google App on my iPad and guess what? It looks like the Buzz is back.

When using Gmail on the desktop, I find no Buzz and in the footer is a link to “turn on buzz” which infers that Buzz is off. Makes sense. After all, I had disabled it.

Or did I?

On the iPad, Buzz seems to be alive and kicking. It shows that people are following me and it shows Buzzes of people in my area. THIS IS NOT SHOWING UP ON MY DESKTOP. Worst of all, there seems to be absolutely no way to turn it off on the iPad or any way to tell what exactly is going on. And exactly what IS going on? Did google, through technical incompetence, give us a light switch that SAYS “on/off” but didn’t bother to connect it to a circuit? Or… dare I say… conspiracy??? Some back door being held open whose visibility was overlooked in the iPad google app?

I’d love to hear if anyone else has seen this. Did I simply do something wrong in disabling Buzz? Let me know.

Okay. Back to our regular programming… (no pun intended, though that was pretty good.)

Posted in off-topic | 3 Comments »