3,287 research outputs found

    Photography and Social Life: An Ethnography of Chinese Amateur Photography Online

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    This dissertation explores the ‘middle-brow’ (Bourdieu, 1990) photography practices of contemporary Chinese people in the digital era and how they produce, circulate, and consume photographic images on and off the Internet. Through participant observation and interviews with Chinese photo hobbyists and professionals working in the visual-Internet industry based in London, Beijing, or in the virtual world, it asks how the marriage between photography and the Internet in China has been similar to, or distinct from, its counterparts in the rest of the world, consolidating a vernacular photo-scape that has emerged alongside China’s booming Internet economy and socio-economic transformation over the past forty years. The research further addresses the agencies of both individuals and images, which determine what people want from photography in today’s China and what photography wants from this new networked, mediated society. The dissertation moves across persons, communities, organisations, and real and virtual sites, making it a multi-sited ethnography that traces social relations and ‘the circulation of cultural meanings, objects, and identities in diffuse time-space’ (Marcus, 1995: 96). The thesis presents a panoramic picture of the everyday practices carried out by Chinese amateur photographers, who are often imagined and categorised as the country’s middle class. The study focuses on two main aspects. The first is the activity of amateur photography, including the conspicuous consumption of photographic equipment and participation in relevant events, as well as social behaviours on and off of Internet photography platforms. The second involves the judgement and appreciation of photographic images on sites such as Tuchong, focusing on various kinds of aesthetic strategies around and within photographic images. The combination of the two has helped photo hobbyists in China to shape their values, career paths, and new identities in the context of digitalisation and the rise of social media

    Fourteenth Biennial Status Report: MĂ€rz 2017 - February 2019

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    Taking Experience to a Whole New Level

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    Wide-Area Surveillance System using a UAV Helicopter Interceptor and Sensor Placement Planning Techniques

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    This project proposes and describes the implementation of a wide-area surveillance system comprised of a sensor/interceptor placement planning and an interceptor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) helicopter. Given the 2-D layout of an area, the planning system optimally places perimeter cameras based on maximum coverage and minimal cost. Part of this planning system includes the MATLAB implementation of Erdem and Sclaroff’s Radial Sweep algorithm for visibility polygon generation. Additionally, 2-D camera modeling is proposed for both fixed and PTZ cases. Finally, the interceptor is also placed to minimize shortest-path flight time to any point on the perimeter during a detection event. Secondly, a basic flight control system for the UAV helicopter is designed and implemented. The flight control system’s primary goal is to hover the helicopter in place when a human operator holds an automatic-flight switch. This system represents the first step in a complete waypoint-navigation flight control system. The flight control system is based on an inertial measurement unit (IMU) and a proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller. This system is implemented using a general-purpose personal computer (GPPC) running Windows XP and other commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware. This setup differs from other helicopter control systems which typically use custom embedded solutions or micro-controllers. Experiments demonstrate the sensor placement planning achieving \u3e90% coverage at optimized-cost for several typical areas given multiple camera types and parameters. Furthermore, the helicopter flight control system experiments achieve hovering success over short flight periods. However, the final conclusion is that the COTS IMU is insufficient for high-speed, high-frequency applications such as a helicopter control system

    The use of technical metadata in still digital imaging by the newspaper industry

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    Newspapers are increasingly capturing images digitally. Included with these digital files is technical information about the conditions of the image and the conditions surrounding image capture. Technical metadata has the potential to be a valuable resource in image reproduction, management, and archiving. Nevertheless, even though digital devices capture a large amount of technical metadata, the use of such data in the digital imaging workflow is not widespread. The use of technical metadata requires a uniform set of technical metadata standards and an open encoding scheme to embed data. From their inception, image file formats, such as TIFF and JPEG, have allowed the inclusion of technical metadata tags. The Exif schema has extended the metadata inclusion capabilities of both of these formats. Additionally, XML has emerged as a standard for users to add metadata to image files. Consequently, organizations such as the World Wide Web Consortium and Adobe Systems all support XML. Moreover, organizations such as the Digital Imaging Group (DIG35) and the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) are defining standards for technical metadata inclusion. The purpose of this study was to answer two fundamental questions about technical metadata in the newspaper industry. First, it assessed the ability of technical metadata to improve the newspaper digital imaging workflow; and second, it determined how technical metadata could be used to preserve the integrity of newspaper digital images. This study examined five large newspaper organizations: The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, The Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, USA Today, and The Washington Post. Based on interviews and questionnaire responses, each organization?s use of technical metadata in the digital imaging workflow was examined through case studies. Interviews were conducted with those individuals responsible for image capture, adjustment, database management, and output. Furthermore, participants were asked to rank the importance of selected fields of technical metadata through a questionnaire. It was found that the use of technical metadata classified by NISO as Basic Image Parameters, which includes file size, type, and compression, was universal in newspaper organizations. The use of Image Creation metadata was not widespread with the exception of two fields that established date and time of capture and assigned each image a unique identifier. Image Performance Assessment metadata, such as test targets, was not widely used except by The Rochester Democrat & Chronicle. Change History fell victim to the short cycle time in the newspaper industry, and for the most part, a history of change was kept at various handoffs in the digital workflow through versioning. The use of technical metadata to improve the digital workflow, to an extent, was at cross-purposes with newspapers? need to visually examine each image to determine its usefulness. However, software designed to visually present technical metadata through a well designed graphic user interface was popular. It appeared that technical metadata had the potential to benefit newspapers when repurposing images for other media. Additionally, large newspaper organizations were creating their own image databases; while the use of technical metadata in these archives was unclear, it would be prudent to include too much technical metadata, rather than too little. The foremost concern of all organizations was preservation of the editorial integrity of the image. Newspapers defined editorial integrity as the ability to capture as much detail of an event as possible, and then present that information to their readers in a truthful, unambiguous way. Research pointed out that image reproduction quality was only one of a series of variables that determined newspaper image quality. With the advent of digital photography, photographers are editing more in the field, and as a result they are making decisions regarding image content. The use of technical metadata has the potential to provide greater tractability of these outtakes. Additionally, the industry is moving toward the Camera Raw file format to acquire image data that is unprocessed by camera software. The adjustment of Camera Raw files through a GUI, and their subsequent conversion to another file format, represented a de facto use of technical metadata to preserve editorial integrity

    Examining Police Officer Resistance to Change and Body-Worn Cameras

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    Police departments are adopting the body-worn camera as an important tool in the restoration of trust and accountability for police officers. Although body-worn cameras can be beneficial to their work, police officers might resist the use of cameras. The purpose of the current study was to examine whether experiences with technology or the perceived usefulness of body-worn cameras predict resistance to the cameras in order to determine where resistance to body-worn cameras possibly exists. The current study employed a quantitative design that examined 48 (n = 48) police officers’ responses about resistance to body-worn cameras in relationship to the following variables: experiences with technology, perceived usefulness (PU), and perceived ease of use of body-worn cameras (PEOU). A survey was delivered to participant police officers through a countywide email system. Data analysis included one-sample t-tests, correlational analyses, and multiple regressions. A statistically significant difference was found between officers’ levels of resistance to change and body-worn cameras in comparison to the scale midpoint. In relationship to resistance to body-worn cameras, statistically significant correlations existed between the variables of experiences with technology, PU, and PEOU. Additionally, the regression analyses showed experiences with technology, PU, and PEOU were statistically significant predictors of resistance to body-worn cameras. Police departments that invest in body-worn cameras should be aware that officers might resist cameras should deficiencies with technology experience, perceived usefulness, and perceived ease of use of the body-worn cameras exist
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