Instagram is launching a real-world test of hiding Like counts on photos and videos, an idea that was leaked earlier this month. Within the next several days, users in Canada will no longer be able to see the numbers of likes on posts by people they follow.
At its F8 developer conference yesterday, Facebook confirmed that the removal of public Likes is more than an internal idea or mockup and is something Instagram is considering rolling out to its community. Starting next week, Instagram users in Canada will no longer see the total number of likes on photos and videos in their feed and in profiles.
“We want your followers to focus on what you share, not how many likes your posts get,” Instagram states in a message displayed to users in the test. “During this test, only you will be able to see the total number of likes on your posts.”
This change only applies to viewing other people’s posts, though, so Instagram users will still be able to see the Like counts on their own content.
The goal of this potential change is to make Instagram less of a post popularity contest and more about the content itself. The Like count on posts has become such an important metric in the exploding influencer industry that many people are finding ways to cheat and game the system, even going so far as to pay hefty amounts of money for fake Likes by bot accounts.
Whether or not Instagram does remove Likes for all users will presumably depend on how Canadian users respond to the change.
The large Asian country of Kazakhstan was just caught “Photoshopping” official photos of its new leader, using beauty retouching techniques to dramatically alter his appearance.
RFE/RL made the discovery after comparing government-released photos with alternate versions captured at the same time by photojournalists in attendance.
Kazakhstan interim president, Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev took over as leader after longtime President Nursultan Nazarbaev unexpectedly resigned back in March. Since then, Toqaev’s government has been releasing photos that aren’t exactly true to reality.
“The aim, it appears, is to digitally nip, tuck, and smooth the 65-year-old ex-diplomat and former prime minister’s appearance — and possibly ease his path to a five-year term as the Central Asian powerhouse prepares for its snap presidential election in June,” Amos Chapple of RFE/RL writes.
Here are two photos showing Togaev and US Ambassador William H. Moser in March, one shot by Kazakh photojournalist Mukhtar Kholdorbekov and the other an official photo released through the Kazinform international news agency.
Photo by Mukhtar Kholdorbekov.Official photo.
Here’s a closer look at Togaev’s face in the two photos, side-by-side — notice anything?
RFE/RL also uncovered a number of other examples in which Togaev’s face was retouched.
Photo by Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP (left) and an official photo (right).Crops of the above photos, side-by-side. Photo by Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP (left) and an official photo (right).Photo by Alexel Druzhinin/Tass (left) and official photo (right).Crops of the above photos, side-by-side. Photo by Alexel Druzhinin/Tass (left) and official photo (right).Photo by Yonhap/EPA-EFE (left) and official photo (right).Crops of the above photos, side-by-side. Photo by Yonhap/EPA-EFE (left) and official photo (right).Photo by Reuters (left) and official photo (right).Crops of the above photos, side-by-side. Photo by Reuters (left) and official photo (right).Official photo by Hungary (left) and official photo by Kazakhstan (right).Crops of the above photos, side-by-side. Official photo by Hungary (left) and official photo by Kazakhstan (right).
A Photoshop expert contacted by RFE/RL stated that he was “almost 100 percent” certain that the official photos of Togaev were retouched to alter his appearance — changes like skin smoothing and reducing the size of the chin. In every case of doctoring discovered by RFE/RL, only Toqaev’s face and neck have been noticeably altered while other people in the frame remain untouched.
Official photos released by the Kazakhstani government have been widely published by international media outlets — publications that presumably had no idea the photos were “Photoshopped” and untruthful.
Can you shoot Milky Way photos using an entry-level crop-sensor DSLR and a basic kit lens? Yes, you can, but there are some tips, tricks, and techniques you can use to improve your results. Photographer Michael Ver Sprill (AKA Milky Way Mike) made this 16-minute video tutorial as a basic guide to doing this.
Ver Sprill used a Nikon D7100 and 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens. Since the DX camera features a smaller sensor compared to a 35mm full-frame camera, you’ll need to shoot relatively shorter exposures at higher ISOs in order to prevent the stars from turning into light trails in your photos.
Here’s Ver Sprill’s method for crop-sensor Milky Way photos in his own words:
First, obtain focus by using a flashlight or headlamp and stand far enough away from your subject that your lens will be focusing at infinite to capture a sharp foreground and sky.
You can use apps like PhotoPills to help figure out the minimum distance you need to stand back to achieve infinite focus. For the Nikon D7100 and 18mm kit lens combo, the software recommended 15 feet or farther away from the foreground subject. To play it safe I stood about 20 feet from the shack. Next, I implemented these photography steps…
Step 1: While nightscape stacking software like Starry Landscape Stacker and Sequator do a great job in stacking your Milky Way and foregrounds, sometimes the foreground comes out a little too noisy for my liking. I like to use a shutter release cable, set my camera to bulb mode and lower my ISO to take a long exposure for the foreground only. In the first shot, my camera settings were 18mm, f/4, ISO 1600, and 120s.
Step 2: You need to take 5 to 15 consecutive photos (1 right after the other), which will be used in Starry Landscape Stacker ($40 for macOS) or Sequator (free for PCs). These stacking programs separate the sky and foreground so the sky and track the stars and stack them. The foreground will also get stacked as well, which essentially averages the images together and in return reduces noise. You want to find a shutter that is short enough to capture sharp stars which means you may have to raise your ISO quite substantially (3200-25600). For this single exposure shot my settings were 18mm, f/4, ISO 25600, and 15s.
Step 3: Import your the photos into Starry Landscape Stacker or Sequator. For this test, I wanted to show how well only 5 photos at ISO 25600 would look stacked compared to a single photo. This photo is 18mm, f/4, ISO 25600, 15s, and a stack of 5 images.
Step 4: Whiles stacking looks good, the foreground can still be improved. I take the long exposure foreground and blend it over the stacked foreground creating an even cleaner nightscape image.
Blending can be done with any program that allows masking (Photoshop, Affinity, etc.)
Here’s an important reminder: you’ll never feel ready to start. But you’ve got to do it anyway. And the operative word there is “do.” Just start. This episode is the kick in the ass you need. Too often we get bogged down in the dreaming, the research, and the preparing – without the DOING. Feel me on this? It’s a common excuse that most of use…that we just need a little more planning… Wrong. This is not to say that planning isn’t necessary, just that it shouldn’t be the crutch that prevents you from executing. And for most it is. Let’s change that. If you’ve ever felt stuck – or heck – you’re feeling stuck now, this episode is for you. We talk about the right balance between the planning and executing in a way that will get the results you want. Take a quick listen, and then get back to work. 🙂 Enjoy! Listen to the Podcast Watch the Episode This podcast is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world’s largest hub for online creative education in photo/video, art/design, music/audio, craft/maker, money/life and the ability to make a living in any of those disciplines. They are high quality, highly curated […]
Carrie Mae Weems invites us to look; she does not tell us what to see. Regarded as one of the most influential American artists of our time, her work could have easily become didactic. And yet she continues to interrogate complex social and political issues in a manner that remains reflective. “I cannot lead you to anything but I hope that [my work] provokes critical enquiry,” she explains in an interview with BJP-online ahead of her headlining Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival, which will take place this May 2019 across Toronto, Canada. “If my work encourages you to ask ‘what is that and what does it mean?’ Then, I think I have done my job.”
Weems was 20 when she first experimented with a camera – a gift from her then-boyfriend, Raymond. The artist has since employed the medium, together with text, film and performance, to unravel entrenched ways of seeing and to encourage us to question widely-held ‘truths’. Weems’s work is shaped by her belief that to understand the present we must examine the past. She looks backwards and forwards, inwards and outwards, to investigate a long list of subjects including gender politics, class, family relationships and the consequences of power.
The work on show at CONTACT 2019 draws out central themes of Weems’s practice. Across two exhibitions and three public art installations, the photographer confronts issues connected to conceptions of race and gender, along with an investigation of the history of violence and its contemporary manifestations. The work is also a testament to the aesthetic strategies that underlie all of her practice; strategies that expand what an artwork can be and how it can make us see things. “I think about them as concentric circles,” she explains. “These things that are always overlapping with one another because their concerns are never really changing, they are just shifting focus.”
Weems’s use of colour emerges as a central strategy throughout the exhibited work. In Blending the Blues the photographer’s exhibition at CONTACT gallery in Downtown Toronto that comprises photographic works spanning three decades – seductive blocks of colour and the application of vivid hues serve to draw audiences in. But, they also function on a conceptual level. In diverging from the expected, the photographer collapses our understanding of race and encourages us to acknowledge how it affects the way we perceive things. “I am an artist first and foremost,” she says. “How to work with that, how to use that, is really important. How do you employ elements of beauty and lyricism and gentleness to bring an audience to a difficult subject?”
Weems’s relationship to the notion of race is complex: “I have always tried to resist that term … I am aware of its dangers and limitations, and what it actually does – the way in which it divides us.” The small Portland community that Weems grew up in during the 1950s avoided the term ‘black’. “When you described someone you might call them that ‘caramel coloured girl, or that coffee coloured girl, or you know, he is like a blue-black boy,” she explains. In a piece called Untitled (Colored People Grid), 2009, colourised black-and-white portraits of African-American children visualise such descriptions. “You take it to the absurd, and the fun, and the effervescent – high yellow, lemon meringue, burnt orange, and violet,” continues Weems. “You start to become whimsical with the idea, not only to express the beauty of notions of colour but also the absurdity of notions of race in relationship to colour.”
In the series, All the Boys, (Blocked) and (Profile), 2016, Weems applies blue tints and, in some instances, blocks of red to what appear to be police mugshots. Here, colour serves to elicit pertinent questions about police brutality. The use of blue is also significant. “It has been a constant metaphor that I have come to again and again and again,” she says. The colour with its myriad connotations – melancholy, heaven and despair to name just a few – encourages us to reconsider the boys and men who it now obscures and the mechanisms of oppression that may have situated them in the original frames.
Systematic violence toward people of colour is also explored in the second exhibition, Heave, which is on show at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto. The installation comprises familiar spaces, such as the classroom or entertainment complex. Offering a momentary illusion of comfort, each room houses an in-depth investigation into the darker undercurrents of recent history – from the upheavals of the 1960s through to the present day. “I was coming of age during that time,” says Weems, “and I think that part of my outlook and ideas were really informed by it.”
In Heave: Part I – A Case Study (A Quiet Place?), 2018, a constructed domestic space is embellished with signs and found ephemera – revolutionary icons, popular music, magazines, games and icons. A set of bound books, neatly arranged within a mahogany desk, include titles such as The Prison Industrial Complex, The Battle for Representation, The Skin in the Game, The Corporate State, and Spies, Surveillance, and Cyber Attacks. Displayed alongside a video compilation that mixes historic newsreels and contemporary frames, Weems blends the past with the present, inviting us to consider the history of violence and its contemporary manifestations.
The themes explored, and strategies employed, throughout the two main exhibitions run through Weems’s three installations displayed in distinct locations across Toronto. “Together, they give you a sense and breadth of my work,” she says. Anointed (2018), a banner at 460 King Street, features a portrait of Mary J. Blige cast in red and overlaid with white text spelling out the piece’s title. Originally commissioned for W Magazine, the image celebrates the success and resilience of an artist who has faced myriad personal and societal challenges. A selection of images from her series Slow Fade to Black, 2010, are on show at Metro Hall. In these, Weems obscures images of historically significant black female singers from the last century through blurring and the application of tinted hues. In doing so, she alludes to these artists’ ‘slow fade to black’ – their disappearance from collective American memory, in part due to the colour of their skin.
Across the street, at the TIFF Bell Lightbox on King Street West, two works from Weems’s 2016 series Scenes and Takes stand at street level. Situating herself in the frame, back to the camera, Weems’ invites us into deserted television sets, encouraging us to consider the role of black women in popular culture. “So again, these are poetic and beautiful with this tongue-in-cheek narrative that is a kind of cultural examination,” she explains. “In that way, I think the work remains remarkably consistent even though it is spun out across a number of different platforms.”
Today, images of violence and discrimination are inescapable. They force us to confront difficult issues while simultaneously desensitising us to them. Weems has forgone this pictorial vocabulary. She continues to reinvent the photographic medium and in doing so offers a new vantage point on the themes explored. “Great literary figures are great literary figures because they bring us a powerful social narrative in a form that we all see ourselves,” she reflects. “I am hoping that might be the case, or can be the case, with the work that I make.”
Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival will run for the month of May 2019 across different locations in Toronto, Canada.
The Big Sandy is America’s largest machine-gun shooting range. It stretches a quarter of a mile across the western desert of Arizona, one of the most “gun-friendly” states in the country. Twice a year it is the venue for a three-day convention, where extreme gun enthusiasts sample their most sophisticated weapons. It is not uncommon to see dozens of canons lined up next to armoured tanks, or visitors flying in on a vintage Huey UH-1 helicopter, a model widely known to be a symbol for US involvement in the Vietnam War.
“It almost feels like a private army,” says Jean-François Bouchard, whose project, In Guns We Trust, presents portraits of these military enthusiasts, and eerie images of the shells of trucks and shipping containers blasted by days of recreational target practice. The book, and now exhibition at Arsenal Contemporary in New York, is an attempt to understand and undercover the chilling world of extreme gun culture in the US.
As well as being a visual artist, Bouchard is the co-founder of Sid Lee, a creative advertising agency based in Montreal, Canada, where he is from. Bouchard studied Law at university, but his passion was documentary photography. Now, he is returning to his first love full time, but with a more conceptual approach.
The debate surrounding American gun control has been raging for many years, but it has recently heightened. The number of public mass shootings in the US is increasing, with five of the deadliest ever occurring in the past 10 years. According to the New York Times, in 2018 more people died from firearm injuries in the US than any other year since 1968.
Bouchard visited gun ranges across the country for seven years, but did not take any photographs until two or three years ago. “It took a while to get acquainted enough with the subject to feel comfortable exploring it to the extent that I did,” he says.
Describing himself as a liberal Canadian, Bouchard found it difficult to align himself with this far-right extreme culture. “My work is very much fed by empathy, and trying to see the humanity and commonality that we all have, but trying to do this project with empathy was a challenge,” he says.
Over several visits to the Big Sandy, Bouchard found that many of its regulars had either served in the army themselves, or had family who did, and saw gun culture as not just a legal right, but a civic duty. “They believe that a healthy democracy is dependent on a counter-balance of power to the government, says Bouchard.
This is an unsettling thought, especially for those of us who are not from a country or state like Arizona where anyone over the age of 18 can carry a loaded firearm without a license. But, for those who visit the Big Sandy, guns are necessary to ensure their safety, and moreover, they provide access into a community of like-minded individuals.
“I didn’t change my opinions on the matter at all, but I better understand where these people come from,” says Bouchard, adding that the people he met were “more articulate” than the way the liberal media may portray gun enthusiasts.
Inspired by cinematic photographers such as Alex Prager and Gregory Crewdson, Bouchard approached the topic conceptually, but with journalistic intentions. Using a flashlight bought at a dollar store to light up the targets, Bouchard shot mostly at night. “My goal is to enrich storytelling and immerse viewers into the world that I was walking into,” he says, “the aftermath was more interesting to me than the action of what was going on during the day”.
In Guns We Trust is part of an extended project on extreme American subcultures – Bouchard’s latest series, Escape From Babylon, investigates libertarians who reject modern society and live off the grid in squats and communes.
What attracts Bouchard to these extreme subcultures is the idea that humans are more alike than they are different. In the foreword to the book, artist and novelist Douglas Coupland explores this idea, titling his essay That One Little Thing. “Possibly the largest conversation happening in the US today is, ‘What are we now supposed to think about all of these people who are pretty much like me in almost every way — except for one little thing?’,” he writes.
Bouchard’s goal is to better understand American culture through delving into parts of its subculture. “Subcultures have been documented a lot, but I’m interested in exploring the very extreme, because I believe the extreme can say a lot about the mainstream.”
In Guns We Trust by Jean-François Bouchard is published by the Magenta Foundation, available to purchase for £35. The exhibition is on display at Arsenal Contemporary in New York between 30 April and 23 June 2019.
This month we introduce our annual Ones To Watch. Selected out of 750 nominations made by our global network of experts, our June issue features 19 emerging talents drawn from across Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas.
This year’s selected photographers are: Aishwarya Arumbakkam, Raphaël Barontini, Uma Bista, Nydia Blass, Alessandro Bo, Valentine Bo, Olgaç Bozalp, Alejandro Cegarra, Gabriella Demczuk, Seunggu Kim, Mous Lamrabat, Shuwei Liu, Molly Matalon, Jerome Ming, Luis Alberto Rodriguez, Charlotte Schmitz, Dustin Thierry, Kyle Weeks, and Karolina Wojta.
Seoul-based photographer Seunggu Kim portrays South Koreans at leisure, capturing the capital as a packed urban playground, its people in search for a patch of rural space to take some precious downtime. “There’s a strong nostalgia for the natural environment we used to live in – a side-effect of growth, overcrowding and urbanisation,” says Kim. The idea of nature as an escape underpins the photographer’s work, making it more than just another whimsical project on the spectacle of the urban leisure complex.
“His images, with their vibrant colours, playful and powerful, extremely personal aesthetic, are the most tangible proof that when cultures interact and cross-pollinate, something unique happens,” comments Chiara Bardelli Nonino, photo editor at Vogue Italia, speaking about one of her nominations. Born in Morocco and raised in Belgium, the intersection of African and European identities certainly provides fertile ground for Mous Lamrabat.
Kiev-based photographer Valentine Bo creates an imagined fictional narrative, fuelled by his interest in Raëlism – a cult-like religion founded in 1974, which believes that humans were put on this Earth by extraterrestrials. “I’m taken by the ability of people, faced with estrangement in modern society, to find some kind of transcendence in such cults.”
“Karolina Wojtas’ works are hypnotising,” says Magnum photographer Rafal Milach, talking about his Polish compatriot, who he nominated for this year’s Ones To Watch. “It’s like diving into a cloud of ideas, humorous and disturbing at the same time.”
Across the Atlantic, Washington-based Lebanese-American photographer Gabriella Demczuk takes an obtuse look at US politics. “Going beyond the theatrics and finding moments of reality is the real challenge,” she says. “I find that people will always show their cards if you watch carefully.”
The world of Nydia Blas is one imbued with a belief in magic. Not the trickery kind performed by an illusionist, but rather the many subtle yet vital manifestations of love and beauty that enable hope. “In order to make it through hard times, or to face a struggle, you need to have some sort of magical outlook,” says the African-American artist. “Otherwise the circumstances weigh you down.”
Luis Alberto Rodriguez’s photographs are informed by his past life as a professional dancer, and saturated with vivacity. The body is used sculpturally, often draped in layered fabric and items of clothing employed unconventionally, or decorated with objects. There is movement and tension throughout, accentuating sinewy muscles or framing an invisible shape.
Uma Bista’s work confronts a range of issues and traditions – from familial rape and spousal abuse to menstrual taboos, sex- selective abortion and the neglect of female children, to name just a few of the problems facing her homeland, Nepal, and the wider region of South Asia. And through her studies at Pathshala in Bangladesh, and subsequent workshops with mentors such as Sohrab Hura, Antoine d’Agata, Mads Nissen and Katrin Koenning, she has developed a range of experimental visual approaches.
Elsewhere in the issue we preview Photo London and Peckham 24, which both return to London this month.
The diverse culture of Myanmar is part of the country’s unique identity. I was honored to visit different tribes that amazed me by the variety of their traditions, beliefs, and practices. What I witnessed in Myanmar exceeded my expectations even though I had done my research before I traveled.
In the central region, I visited the Kayan tribe, whose women wear heavy ring coiled necklaces around their necks. According to their belief, these rings make them more beautiful. However, there are many stories told about the origin of how people started wearing these rings. It is believed that it started as being a protective shield from tigers who would attack their prey by biting their neck. With time, this shield transformed into a sign of beauty and fashion.
The rings can weigh around 10 kilograms (~22 pounds). The ladies informed me that this process is done through three phases in life, during their childhood and teenage years specifically. The extra weight of the rings is not painful on the neck but rather on the knees. Unfortunately, with time these rings deform the shoulders, and the neck muscles become too weak to support the head.
In the eastern region, I met various Hill tribes including the Enn tribe, whose members are known for their black teeth. They believe that it makes them more beautiful.
The Akha tribe’s women are proud of wearing the silver head cap since it reflects wealth and beauty.
Last but not least, the Akhu tribe’s women wear black and they are masters of smoking the pipe.
In the western region, I was able to meet various tribes who are known from having a facial tattoo as a sign of beauty as well. The Oppru tribe women get a full face one.
The Mon tribe has a rounded pattern one. The Dai and Ta Yindhu tribes have the dots one but in different sizes.
Besides having tattoos, the Magan are also known for the big earrings that are a unique fashion decoration.
Visiting these tribes was an unforgettable experience that I added to my growing list of my acquaintances with tribes from different areas around the world. Witnessing the last people who practice these unusual traditions in our modernizing world has blown my mind in a way that exceeds all the world’s wonders.
About the author: Omar Reda is a travel photographer based in Saudi Arabia. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. Reda’s work has been featured in publications including National Geographic, CNN, Daily Mail, The Sun, and more. You can find more of Reda’s work on his website and Instagram.
Brandon Low Photos 