Everyday Photography Research Articles

An Implicit Neural Representation for the Image Stack: Depth, All in Focus, and High Dynamic Range

In everyday photography, physical limitations of camera sensors and lenses frequently lead to a variety of degradations in captured images such as saturation or defocus blur. A common approach to overcome these limitations is to resort to image stack fusion, which involves capturing multiple images with different focal distances or exposures. For instance, to obtain an all-in-focus image, a set of multi-focus images is captured. Similarly, capturing multiple exposures allows for the reconstruction of high dynamic range. In this paper, we present a novel approach that combines neural fields with an expressive camera model to achieve a unified reconstruction of an all-in-focus high-dynamic-range image from an image stack. Our approach is composed of a set of specialized implicit neural representations tailored to address specific sub-problems along our pipeline: We use neural implicits to predict flow to overcome misalignments arising from lens breathing, depth, and all-in-focus images to account for depth of field, as well as tonemapping to deal with sensor responses and saturation - all trained using a physically inspired supervision structure with a differentiable thin lens model at its core. An important benefit of our approach is its ability to handle these tasks simultaneously or independently, providing flexible post-editing capabilities such as refocusing and exposure adjustment. By sampling the three primary factors in photography within our framework (focal distance, aperture, and exposure time), we conduct a thorough exploration to gain valuable insights into their significance and impact on overall reconstruction quality. Through extensive validation, we demonstrate that our method outperforms existing approaches in both depth-from-defocus and all-in-focus image reconstruction tasks. Moreover, our approach exhibits promising results in each of these three dimensions, showcasing its potential to enhance captured image quality and provide greater control in post-processing.

Deep camera obscura: an image restoration pipeline for pinhole photography.

Modern machine learning has enhanced the image quality for consumer and mobile photography through low-light denoising, high dynamic range (HDR) imaging, and improved demosaicing among other applications. While most of these advances have been made for normal lens-based cameras, there has been an emerging body of research for improved photography for lensless cameras using thin optics such as amplitude or phase masks, diffraction gratings, or diffusion layers. These lensless cameras are suited for size and cost-constrained applications such as tiny robotics and microscopy that prohibit the use of a large lens. However, the earliest and simplest camera design, the camera obscura or pinhole camera, has been relatively overlooked for machine learning pipelines with minimal research on enhancing pinhole camera images for everyday photography applications. In this paper, we develop an image restoration pipeline of the pinhole system to enhance the pinhole image quality through joint denoising and deblurring. Our pipeline integrates optics-based filtering and reblur losses for reconstructing high resolution still images (2600 × 1952) as well as temporal consistency for video reconstruction to enable practical exposure times (30 FPS) for high resolution video (1920 × 1080). We demonstrate high 2D image quality on real pinhole images that is on-par or slightly improved compared to other lensless cameras. This work opens up the potential of pinhole cameras to be used for photography in size-limited devices such as smartphones in the future.

‘All the News That’s Fit to Print’: Analysing everyday photography in The New York Times, 2000 to 2020

Over the past two decades, <em>The New York Times</em> have increasingly incorporated visual experimentation in their use of photography, employing art and design strategies for what were once more conventional editorial subjects. The long-held hierarchy between text and image has been disrupted, with images taking the lead. Employing quantitative and qualitative methods, my study examines the <em>Times</em>’ ‘front page’—an archaic artefact that remains an intense source of scrutiny for editors despite the digital transition—with a dataset related to 240 front pages from January 2000 to January 2020. This ‘image-first’ approach, however, is not reflected in its digital archive, and obstructions to ‘reading’ the image reflect a wider, unstable financialisation of culture that has equally intensified over the last two decades.

Storytelling beyond body text in popular science books: a multimodal analysis

AbstractThis article examines multimodal storytelling performed outside the main body text in book-length popular science. By employing a case study approach, the study examines three kinds of visually detached stories: i) fragmentary case stories of lay experience, ii) fictional stories of prehistorical lifeworld and iii) scientists’ personal stories with everyday photography. The article shows that detached stories are digressions from the locally, or also globally, dominant ways of making meaning. These digressions can be modality shifts (from verbal to multimodal) but also more complex shifts that engage with cultural boundaries of (popular) science. Furthermore, the article complements prior studies of photographic storytelling by discussing the affordances of everyday photography in public occasions. The analytic framework combines Systemic-Functional genre studies, Social Semiotic and related models of visual design as well as approaches to factuality and fictionality in Narrative Studies. The data consists of contemporary Finnish popular science books representing the natural sciences.

Фотография как часть медиакультуры

The relevance of the study is associated with the active spread of photography in modern culture. Photography becomes a tool for social construction of reality and a form of communication. Any user of the social network has a set of tools that allow you to create author profiles with photos, each has the opportunity to share impressions with others. There is a blurring of the boundaries between traditional photography, the hallmarks of which have developed throughout the century, and that which is now forming and becoming part of the everyday culture available to everyone. The purpose of this study is to analyze the forms of modern photography on the example of the social network Instagram and propose the principles of their systematization. The study was carried out in line with the constructivist methodology using the principles of comparative and aesthetic analysis, as well as the theory of mediality. The study highlighted three main forms of modern digital photography. 1) Art photography. It is characterized by the paramount artistic image, the position of the author can be considered as creative, creating art. 2) Commercial photography. This form is common in the field of blogging. Here it is important to trace the connection with art photography, since many rules and principles of shooting are adopted from it. The main difference is the desire for profit and the broadcast of copyright interests. 3) Everyday photography broadcasting people's daily lives. The authors do not pursue a specific goal when creating posts on social networks. This form contributes to the creation of a database of modern culture based on photographs of modern life. Photography contributes to the formation of a worldview in accordance with the interests and needs of people. Photography is part of the media culture, it broadcasts and transmits information thanks to modern methods of communication.

Everyday Photography? Politicizing a ‘vernacular’ photo album of the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906

The San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906, defined as the most-photographed event of the early twentieth century, overlaps with the beginnings of vernacular photography. Drawing on the vast output of the disaster, this article politicizes the notion of the vernacular. As art institutions have championed an aestheticized vernacular, many anonymous photographs have been stripped off their sociopolitical context. A host of related practices, such as amateur or club photography, have thus become marginalized. This perspective has reinforced a narrative of American photography ca. 1900 as either “vernacular” or “high art.” The heterogeneity of sources produced in San Francisco runs counter to this binary reading. They require a historiographical revision and a politicization of photo-collections. Exploring a personal photo album, this article retraces the visual, discursive, and material uses of “everyday” photography in extraordinary conditions. It points out how photo-practices were marked by extreme seismic events and domestic politics. The aim is two-fold: drawing attention to the complexity of archival materials and proposing a counter-narrative to the aestheticized vernacular.

Seeing and communicating: photography and young male adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Digital photography is deeply embedded in people’s daily lives, as camera phones and digital compact cameras are widely used in social and cultural settings. People have an increased agency and choice over what they want to photograph, where and when; many people carry their smartphones everywhere and share their images instantly via social media platforms. Within the recent scholarship on everyday photography, however, little attention has been paid to the photographic practices of people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), one of many marginalized groups whose photography has not been explored. This article addresses this shortfall. Drawing on a qualitative, image-based investigation, the author turns to phenomenology to examine four young male ASD adults’ unique ways of seeing and being-in-the-world as expressed through the use of their camera. Their involvement indicates that ASD people have the potential to have a powerful voice in how society conceives of what autism is and what it means to live with ASD. A case study discussion of key research findings presents examples of the pictures taken in the sphere of participants’ everyday lives, revealing that the camera acts as an extension of experience and perception, a mediator and filter. Photography enables the four male ASD individuals’ being-in-the-world and exposes the social life of this marginalized group. The article offers a significant contribution to the field of visual communication and sensory experience.

Minor gestures: slow writing and everyday photography

Perhaps minor gestures are telling us to slow down and#SlowWriting is a daily #MinorGesture.

Unpredictability in everyday photography: A case study

Abstract Modern technology is pervading all aspects of our everyday lives. With its focus on optimization, and through the growing adoption of content personalization, these technologies – in their attempts for relevancy and efficiency – are decreasing the role of chance and luck in our interactions with the Digital Medium, leading to a reduced potential for serendipitous experiences. This is exemplified in the post-smartphone photography. With the growing popularity of camera-enabled devices, photography has become commonplace: a trivial, routinely and mindlessly engaged practice. The photography act, due to the ever-increasing capacity of these devices to accurately record an image of the real, has become a series of brief, predictable actions, without much thought or consideration on the whole interaction. Through the exploration of the concept of defamiliarization, we intend to restore a sense on uncertainty and randomness to the quotidian photographic moment. To this end, we created an experimental smartphone application that randomly, and without the interactor’s control, transforms and manipulates a given photograph – thus making it unfamiliar – and allowing for surprise to be once more part of the process while increasing the engagement between photographer, subject and created image. We have also begun preliminary evaluations which have showed a positive impact of the concepts of this experimental application in the creative process.

Curating Everyday Life: Approaches to Documenting Everyday Soundscapes

Curating Everyday Life: Approaches to Documenting Everyday Soundscapes

Imperfect strangers: Picturing place, family, and migrant identity on Facebook

Places have meanings and significances beyond mere location or functionality. This assertion becomes especially salient for migrants, whose status is defined by a physical move from one place to another. The aim of this paper is to discuss the practice of place-making by migrants, with specific focus on the role of Facebook in this endeavour. We present the particular case of Amy, a Filipina immigrant to New Zealand, and her Facebook activities. Central to the discussion is a four-minute audio-visual piece that she produced herself and posted online to commemorate her family’s second year as New Zealanders. Guided by the framework of multimodality, the concept of place, and the practice of everyday photography, and with invaluable insights from a semi-structured interview of the participant, we illustrate how semiotic resources afforded by social media sites such as Facebook foster the construction of the discourse of the good life and a claim to national belonging. Our analysis shows that everyday family photography, in interaction with social media, potentially signifies migrants’ becoming a natural part of the national landscape. By interrogating the boundaries of private and public spaces, and reproducing the “migrant gaze” in everyday family photography, Amy transforms images into unified strands of the ideal immigrant narrative.

Picturing Nature and Childhood at the American Museum of Natural History and the Brooklyn Children's Museum, 1899-1930

yearly visit to a science museum is an iconic feature of the childhoods of twenty-first-century American schoolchildren; however, in the early twentieth century, such visits were novelties. The American Museum of Natural History (founded 1869) and the Brooklyn Children's Museum (founded 1899) both began serious educational efforts with children in the New York City public schools in the first decade of the twentieth century. In this article, I will show how museum personnel represented child patrons' museum experiences to their donors, supporters, and the public, investigating links between the way each museum pictured the intersections of science, pedagogy, and childhood in the museum setting, and larger understandings about the way that modern knowledge advanced according to social class. Science, perceived as a powerful force, was understood as an integral part of the Progressive Era's ideology of cultural advancement; the adults teaching science to children in museum con- texts were mediating knowledge and teaching habits of mind that they viewed as profoundly important. In the magazines, films, and publicity that each museum produced for its networks of supporters and for the public, child patrons appeared in photo- graphs, offering proof of the museum's good works. Historians agree that the widespread interest in childhood during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era coincided with the growing popularity of everyday photography in a mutually reinforcing way, resulting in a plethora of representations of children in photo- graphs around the turn of the twentieth century. 1

Studio Cameroon The Everyday Photography of Jacques Touselle. November 9, 2007–June 29, 2008, Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, England

<b>Studio Cameroon</b> The Everyday Photography of Jacques Touselle. November 9, 2007–June 29, 2008, Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, England

Photographic visions and narrative inquiry

This paper examines the ways in which photographic images can be used in narrative inquiry. After introducing the renewed interest in visual methodology the first section examines the ways in which researchers have utilised the camera or photographic images in research studies that are broadly similar to forms of narrative inquiry such as auto/biography, photographic journals, video diaries and photo-voice. It then draws on the published literature in relation to the author’s own empirical research into everyday photography. Here the extent to which the practices which are part of everyday photography can be seen as forms of story-telling and provide access to both narratives and counter-narratives, are explored. Ideas about memory and identity construction are considered. A critical area of argument centres on the relationship of images to other texts, and asks whether it is possible for photographs to narrate independent of written or oral word. It concludes with some remarks about how photographs can be used in research and as a resource for narrative inquiry. This necessitates a understanding of what it is people do with photographs in everyday life.

THE INSTANTANEOUS DIAGNOSIS OF ALKAPTONURIA ON A SINGLE DROP OF URINE

Alkaptonuria is a rare metabolic anomaly characterized by the tendency of the urine to turn dark on exposure to air, owing to the fact that the urine contains homogentisic acid. The constitution of this compound, which is chemically 1-4 dihydroxyphenylacetic acidshows that it may be regarded as a derivative of hydroquinone and points the way to its instant detection in urine. The urine is made strongly alkaline with sodium or potassium hydroxide and dropped on regulation sensitized photographic paper. Wherever a drop of the urine touches the paper the latter turns coal black instantly, a process exactly similar to that used in everyday photography. This may be done in full daylight. We have found no other substance present in urine, either normally or pathologically, which is capable of reducing the photographic paper in this manner. Diabetic urine, no matter how high the concentration of reducing sugar, remains without effect.