Saturday, November 24, 2007

Website reviews

I like bikes and I like photography. Luckily there are some great websites out there for people like me. If I were only allowed two sites, these would be them.

Bike Snob New York City.
This site has a 100% success rate with me. The cinicism shown by this guy towards everthing bike related, is truthful, accurate and downright hilarious. We share a wavelength or two; although he does give quite a bit of stick to 'hipsters', of which, by his definition, I am (but in a town like the 'ville, if you do anything different you are labelled a 'hipster/yuppie'). If this guy ran a country I would move there, enough said.

JPG Magazine.
The magazine of brave new photography. This site doesn't do what a normal photography site does. There is no banter about which is better; Nikon or Canon. There are no 50 something old men ranting about the virtues of film and how it's no longer about the photographer and computers do all the work. This is the official site for JPG magazine, a high quality print magazine made up of articles and photographs submitted to the site. This is where it gets interesting. Anyone can enter an article about anything (from a lady who is obsessed with taking photos of herself in lavoratories, to cheap and easy ways to bodge up a macro lens from a 50mm prime). Photographs and articles are voted on by us the readers and then printed and published to the world.

My favourite section of this site is the Stories section, which is really just all of the genres of articles listed so that you can browse and read whatever you may find interesting. Before each print issue is raised three topics are chosen and readers can submit photos in that theme for voting and possible inclusion. The photography is of varrying standard, from professional DSLR to polaroid, Brownie or Lens Baby; anything goes and that is what makes it so fantastic. It's 2% camera, 98% photographer.