It’s likely Phil Carrizzi could make a broken tire iron look good, but his series of the iPhone with the Newton Message Pad and eMate is geek-sweet eye candy.

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A long time ago somebody started the Newtons Around The World gallery, and it came to symbolize the love we Newton users had for the little device as well as our geeky pride.

The trend seemed to continue with iPods Around The World, and now iLounge wants to start a gallery for the iPhone. I was about to submit when I noticed the legal fine print:

By submitting, you agree that all photographs, and private information you submit are entirely yours at the time of submission, become the property of iLounge upon submission, and that you have not submitted and will not submit such images to any other contests.

The thing is, I give my photos away to anybody who wants them under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike License, and I’ve granted commercial use to pretty much everybody who’s asked (the exception was somebody who appeared to be setting up a splog and wanted some of my food photos to illustrate it). But the idea of entirely giving up my photos to iLounge stopped me in my tracks. I would happily offer them a non-exclusive license, but willfully removing my work from the creative commons and even my own use isn’t something I’m about to do.

Fortunately, photosharing services have exploded since the Newton and iPod galleries were created, and tagging allows us to opt into the gallery without having to give up our works. Here’s my iPhone on the summit of Mt. Monadnock (yes, I had connectivity), and here’s a collection of iPhones around the world on Flickr.

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Atlanta was a bit of a lark. I hadn’t seen my friends for a while, and they were telling me that the weather was beautiful. So why not go?

Anyway, Chuck Close is on display at the High Museum. And the thing about Close’s work is that it frustrates my rule of “don’t do twice what you can automate once.” Many of his portraits are the result of carefully mapped and measured graph lines that allow him to create pixelated works. I want to use computers to do this, but he used a ruler and paper. Nonetheless, many of his works — like his early self portrait at the top this story — are truly stunning.

Rather more interesting to me was Roger Ballen’s “Shadow Chamber” show at the ACA Gallery. It’s not often that you can call a work of photography Surrealist, but, well, you might not have seen Ballen’s work. From the brochure:

Ballen uses the assumed objectivity of his camera to explore the subjective world of dreams, nightmares, and calculated chaos. He is at the height of his powers as a director, and each picture is architecturally rigorous, tonally stunning, and emotionally saturated.

Later, after some low-art/high-fun times at Whole World Theater, we stopped by Troy’s studio at Saltworks, where a collection of Iona Rozeal Brown’s provocative and fetishistic work was showing.

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Ben Apfelbaum died before having the chance to see it all come together, but his quirky idea seems to be a hit. Here’s how Jerry Cullum described it for the Atlanta Journal Constitution:

“The Ben Show” was the brainchild of beloved Spruill Gallery director Ben Apfelbaum, who asked one day, “What’s in a name?” and proceeded to track down a host of artists named “Ben.”

Well, actually, he asked, “Is the use of a given name as a thematic device as useful as any other thematic device to create an art exhibition of interest?”

Photographer and friend Troy Bennett stands among fellow artists Ben Boutin, Benita Carr, Ben Smith, Candice Bennett, Ben Wilson, Ben Fain, Marianne Weinberg-Benson, Lloyd Benjamin and Ben Apfelbaum (a different Ben Apfelbaum), and others. Jerry Cullum’s coverage of the opening mentioned Troy’s work — selections from his “Above and Below” series (image above):

His color photos look like bodies turning into flame, as in a mystical Bill Viola video. They’re actually unmanipulated images of a swimmer and an underwater pool light.

Find it at the Spruill Gallery, Atlanta.

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I wasn’t just surprised to find a gallery of velvet paintings, I was further surprised to learn they were hosting a show of Valentines velvet works by local artist Juanita and had cards advertising a show of LA artist Arnold Pander’s oil on velvet works at the local Vault Martini Lounge.

But the fact is, Carl Baldwin and Caren Anderson’s Velveteria is the place, if ever there was such a place, where such forces will collide.

Sadly, my visit Saturday evening was at a time when the owners weren’t hosting, and the woman who was there wasn’t able to offer much to explain the works. Fortunately, artist Arnold Pander (whose works span a broad range of media, including oil on velvet) lays out this history of velvet painting in his personal gallery:

For hundreds of years velvet paintings have been created in various ways, dating back to the fourteenth century when Marco Polo discovered samples of velvet paintings in Kashmir, where velvet was first woven. During the Victorian era, painting on velvet became a popular hobby amongst the British upper class with floral and still life subjects. It later came to the U.S. during the post revolutionary period where biblical scenes and landscapes were the dominant themes of this romantic medium. Edward Leeteg revolutionized the velvet painting in the 20th century with his figurative “pin-up” style of Tahitian native culture in the 30s 40s and 50s. Leeteg transformed the way velvet painting was perceived, solidifying it as a part of American pop-culture.

(Pander’s works can also be seen at the Mark Woolley Galery.)

The Velveteria stands in northwest Portland and offers about 150 works in two rooms. My knowledge of the medium was limited to badly rendered paintings of Elvis sold along with bull skulls out of the trunks of big American cars from decades past.

Portland Picks tells me the genre is typically represented by a “Elvis/Jesus/Clowns trifecta,” but we both agree that the range represented in the museum is almost beyond words. I say “almost” not because I’m going to attempt to describe them, no. I say it that way because I have this further link to the Portland Mercury about the whole thing (though it’s worth noting that they apparently couldn’t begin to report the story without quoting Dave Hickey’s famous “good taste is the residue of someone else’s privilege”).

But the Mercury did also explain the Velveteria’s nude room, saying “buxom lasses” as are the dominant subject of the black velvet medium.

Painting on velvet (paint is applied either by brush or air gun, or frequently a combination of the two) results in a unique luminosity when done well, and skin tones highlight this quality best.

The owners are said to have over 1000 velvet works in their collection, so this is clearly a passion for them, I’m just sorry to have missed the opportunity to meet them. Admission is $3, and the bumper sticker is $2. Tee shirts, postcards, and keychain peepers are also available.

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For those people still using Gallery, here’s the last straw: Rasmus Lerdorf got to playing with the Flickr API and quickly wrote up a script to migrate his photos from Gallery to Flickr. He’s didn’t post a script or anything, he’s just saying it’s easy to do.

A lot of things are easy to do, of course, but that doesn’t mean they get done. So it’s probably a great relief to somebody that Paul Baron got on the job. Paul didn’t do any coding, but he posted a rewarding challenge to a Flickr forum, a Flickr member responded (and took home 200 bones for his trouble), and now Paul is sharing the solution with you.

So what’s the holdup now?

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My friend Troy keeps a studio at Saltworks, a combined gallery and studio space in Atlanta where Prema Murthy just opened her deStructures show. I was in Atlanta to see Troy and family, so the opening was added sugar, and quite a pleasure.

The image above comes from Troy’s Above and Below series.

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At least that’s the only thing a person can conclude from the stories at Copyfight earlier this week. This post reports on two stories where the photo services concluded that the photos to be printed were too good to have come from an average customer. Upon trying to order prints of her child, one Ofoto user found the following:

Your order has been cancelled because it appears your order contains one of the following… 1. Professional images.

And Wal Mart told another mother:

We can’t release the pictures to you without a copyright release form signed by the photographer.

At least Ofoto gave the mother the opportunity to sign an affidavit warranting that she was the photographer or had permission from the copyright owner. Wal Mart wouldn’t even accept that.

So, like I noted in the headline: Professionals apparently don’t use Ofoto or Wal Mart. I wonder if they promote that as a selling point…

Seltzer’s post notes the new copyright warning that Canon is putting in their camera manuals and the trouble that the developers of the open-source Gallery image management software project found themselves in recently.

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