Tag Archives: photography

A Hidden World Revealed Through Nine Eyes

Since mid-2007 the restless nine-eyed cameras of Google Street View have been snapping millions, if not billions, of images of the world’s streets.

The mobile cameras with 360 degree views, perched atop Google’s fleet of specially adapted vehicles, have already covered most of North America, Brazil, South Africa, Australia and large swathes of Europe. In roaming many of the world roadways Google’s cameras have also snapped numerous accidental images: people caught unaware, car accidents, odd views into nearby buildings, eerie landscapes.

Regardless of the privacy issues here, the photographs make for some fascinating in-the-moment art. A number of enterprising artists and photographers have included some of these esoteric Google Street View “out-takes” into their work. A selection from Jon Rafman below. See more of his and Google’s work here.

 

 

Travel Photo Clean-up

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We’ve all experienced this phenomenon when on vacation: you’re at a beautiful location with a significant other, friends or kids; the backdrop is idyllic, the subjects are exquisitely posed, you need to preserve and share this perfect moment with a photograph, you get ready to snap the shutter. Then, at that very moment an oblivious tourist, unperturbed locals or a stray goat wander into the picture, too late, the picture is ruined, and it’s getting dark, so there’s no time to reinvent that perfect scene! Oh well, you’ll still be able to talk about the scene’s unspoiled perfection when you get home.

But now, there’s an app for that.

[div class=attrib]From New Scientist:[end-div]

 

It’s the same scene played out at tourist sites the world over: You’re trying to take a picture of a partner or friend in front of some monument, statue or building and other tourists keep striding unwittingly – or so they say – into the frame.

Now a new smartphone app promises to let you edit out these unwelcome intruders, leaving just leave your loved one and a beautiful view intact.

Remove, developed by Swedish photography firm Scalada, takes a burst of shots of your scene. It then identifies the objects which are moving – based on their relative position in each frame. These objects are then highlighted and you can delete the ones you don’t want and keep the ones you do, leaving you with a nice, clean composite shot.

Loud party of schoolchildren stepping in front of the Trevi Fountain? Select and delete. Unwanted, drunken stag party making the Charles Bridge in Prague look untidy? See you later.

Remove uses similar technology to the firm’s Rewind app, launched last year, which merges composite group shots to create the best single image.

The app is just a prototype at the moment – as is the video above – but Scalado will demonstrate a full version at the 2012 Mobile World Conference in Barcelona later this month.

Shrink-Wrapped Couples

Once in a while a photographer comes along with a simple yet thoroughly new perspective. Japanese artist Photographer Hal fits this description. His images of young Japanese in a variety of contorted and enclosed situations are sometimes funny and disturbing, but certainly different and provocative.

[div class=attrib]From flavorwire:[end-div]

Japanese artist Photographer Hal has stuffed club kids into bathtubs and other cramped spaces in his work before, but this time he’s chosen to shrink-wrap them like living dolls squirming under plastic. With some nude, and some dressed in candy-colored attire, Hal covers his models with a plastic sheeting that he vacuums the air from in order to distort their features and bond them together. It only takes a few seconds for him to snap several images before releasing them, and the results are humorous and somewhat grotesque.

[div class=attrib]See more of Photographer Hal’s work here.[end-div]

Woman and Man, and Fish?

A widely held aphorism states that owners often look like their pets, or visa versa. So, might it apply to humans and fish? Well, Ted Sabarese a photographer based in New York provides an answer in a series of fascinating portraits.

[div class=attrib]From Kalliopi Monoyios over at Scientific American:[end-div]

I can’t say for certain whether New York based photographer Ted Sabarese had science or evolution in mind when he conceived of this series. But I’m almost glad he never responded to my follow-up questions about his inspiration behind these. Part of the fun of art is its mirror-like quality: everyone sees something different when faced with it because everyone brings a different set of experiences and expectations to the table. When I look at these I see equal parts “you are what you eat,” “your inner fish,” and “United Colors of Benetton.”

[div class=attrib]Read more of this article here.[end-div]

[div class=attrib]Discover more of Ted Sabarese’s work here.[end-div]

Viewfinder Replaces the Eye

The ubiquity of point-and-click digital cameras and camera-equipped smartphones seems to be leading us towards an era where it is more common to snap and share a picture of the present via a camera lens than it is to experience the present individually and through one’s own eyes.

Roberta Smith over at the New York Times laments this growing trend, which we label “digitally-assisted Killroy-was-here” syndrome, particularly evident at art exhibits. Ruth Fremson, New York Times’ photographer, chronicled some of the leading offenders.

[div class=attrib]From the New York Times:[end-div]

SCIENTISTS have yet to determine what percentage of art-viewing these days is done through the viewfinder of a camera or a cellphone, but clearly the figure is on the rise. That’s why Ruth Fremson, the intrepid photographer for The New York Times who covered the Venice Biennale this summer, returned with so many images of people doing more or less what she was doing: taking pictures of works of art or people looking at works of art. More or less.

Only two of the people in these pictures is using a traditional full-service camera (similar to the ones Ms. Fremson carried with her) and actually holding it to the eye. Everyone else is wielding either a cellphone or a mini-camera and looking at a small screen, which tends to make the framing process much more casual. It is changing the look of photography.

The ubiquity of cameras in exhibitions can be dismaying, especially when read as proof that most art has become just another photo op for evidence of Kilroy-was-here passing through. More generously, the camera is a way of connecting, participating and collecting fleeting experiences.

For better and for worse, it has become intrinsic to many people’s aesthetic responses. (Judging by the number of pictures Ms. Fremson took of people photographing Urs Fischer’s life-size statue of the artist Rudolf Stingel as a lighted candle, it is one of the more popular pieces at the Biennale, which runs through Nov. 27.) And the camera’s presence in an image can seem part of its strangeness, as with Ms. Fremson’s shot of the gentleman photographing a photo-mural by Cindy Sherman that makes Ms. Sherman, costumed as a circus juggler, appear to be posing just for him. She looks more real than she did in the actual installation.

Of course a photograph of a person photographing an artist’s photograph of herself playing a role is a few layers of an onion, maybe the kind to be found only among picture-takers at an exhibition.

[div class=attrib]Read the entire article here.[end-div]

[div class=attrib]Image: Visitors at the Venice Biennale capture Urs Fisher’s statue. Courtesy of Ruth Fremson / The New York Times.[end-div]

Cool Images of a Hot Star

Astronomers and planetary photographers, both amateur and professional, have been having an inspiring time recently in watching the Sun. Some of the most gorgeous images of our nearest star come courtesy of photographer Alan Friedman. One such spectacular image shows several huge, 50,000 mile high, solar flares, and groups of active sunspots larger than our planet. See more of Freidman’s captivating images at his personal website.

According to MSNBC:

For the past couple of weeks, astronomers have been tracking groups of sunspots as they move across the sun’s disk. Those active regions have been shooting off flares and outbursts of electrically charged particles into space — signaling that the sun is ramping up toward the peak of its 11-year activity cycle. Physicists expect that peak, also known as “Solar Max,” to come in 2013.

A full frontal view from New York photographer Alan Friedman shows the current activity in detail, as seen in a particular wavelength known as hydrogen-alpha. The colors have been tweaked to turn the sun look like a warm, fuzzy ball, with lacy prominences licking up from the edge of the disk.

Friedman focused on one flare in particular over the weekend: In the picture you see at right, the colors have been reversed to produce a dark sun and dusky prominence against the light background of space.

[div class=attirb]Read more of this article here.[end-div]

[div class=attrib]Image: Powerful sunspots and gauzy-looking prominences can be seen in Alan Friedman’s photo of the sun, shown in hydrogen-alpha wavelengths. Courtesy of MSNBC / Copyright Alan Friedman, avertedimagination.com.[end-div]

Kodak: The Final Picture?

If you’re over 30 years old, then you may still recall having used roll film with your analog, chemically-based camera. If you did then it’s likely you would have used a product, such as Kodachrome, manufactured by Eastman Kodak. The company was founded by George Eastman in 1892. Eastman invented roll film and helped make photography a mainstream pursuit.

Kodak had been synonymous with photography for around a 100 years. However, in recent years it failed to change gears during the shift to digital media. Indeed it finally ceased production and processing of Kodachrome in 2009. While other companies, such as Nikon and Canon, managed the transition to a digital world, Kodak failed to anticipate and capitalize. Now, the company is struggling for survival.

[div class=attrib]From Wired:[end-div]

Eastman Kodak Co. is hemorrhaging money, the latest Polaroid to be wounded by the sweeping collapse of the market for analog film.

In a statement to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Kodak reported that it needs to make more money out of its patent portfolio or to raise money by selling debt.

Kodak has tried to recalibrate operations around printing, as the sale of film and cameras steadily decline, but it appears as though its efforts have been fruitless: in Q3 of last year, Kodak reported it had $1.4 billion in cash, ending the same quarter this year with just $862 million — 10 percent less than the quarter before.

Recently, the patent suits have been a crutch for the crumbling company, adding a reliable revenue to the shrinking pot. But this year the proceeds from this sadly demeaning revenue stream just didn’t pan out. With sales down 17 percent, this money is critical, given the amount of cash being spent on restructuring lawyers and continued production.

Though the company has no plans to seek bankruptcy, one thing is clear: Kodak’s future depends on its ability to make its Intellectual Property into a profit, no matter the method.

[div class=attrib]Read the entire article here.[end-div]

[div class=attrib]Image courtesy of Wired.[end-div]

The Prospect of Immortality

A recently opened solo art show takes an fascinating inside peek at the cryonics industry. Entitled “The Prospect of Immortality” the show features photography by Murray Ballard. Ballard’s collection of images follows a 5-year investigation of cryonics in England, the United States and Russia. Cryonics is the practice of freezing the human body just after death in the hope that future science will one day have the capability of restoring it to life.

Ballard presents the topic in a fair an balanced way, leaving viewers to question and weigh the process of cryonics for themselves.

[div class=attrib]From Impressions Gallery:[end-div]

The result of five year’s unprecedented access and international investigation, Murray Ballard offers an amazing photographic insight into the practice of : the process of freezing a human body after death in the hope that scientific advances may one day bring it back to life. Premiering at Impressions Gallery, this is Murray Ballard’s first major solo show.

Ballard’s images take the viewer on a journey through the tiny but dedicated international cryonics community, from the English seaside retirement town of Peacehaven; to the high-tech laboratories of Arizona; to the rudimentary facilities of Kriorus, just outside Moscow.  Worldwide there are approximately 200 ‘patients’ stored permanently in liquid nitrogen, with a further thousand people signed up for cryonics after death.

[div class=attrib]More from theSource here.[end-div]

[div class=attrib]Images courtesy of Impressions Gallery / Murray Ballard.[end-div]

If Televisions Could See Us

A fascinating and disturbing series of still photographs from Andris Feldmanis shows us what the television “sees” as its viewers glare seemingly mindlessly at the box. As Feldmanis describes,

An average person in Estonia spends several hours a day watching the television. This is the situation reversed, the people portrayed here are posing for their television sets. It is not a critique of mass media and its influence, it is a fictional document of what the TV sees.

Makes one wonder what the viewers were watching. Or does it even matter? More of the series courtesy of Art Fag City, here. All the images show the one-sidedness of the human-television relationship.

[div class=attrib]Image courtesy of Andris Feldmanis.[end-div]

The Arrow of Time

No, not a cosmologist’s convoluted hypothesis as to why time moves in only (so far discovered) one direction. The arrow of time here is a thoroughly personal look at the linearity of the 4th dimension and an homage to the family portrait in the process.

The family takes a “snapshot” of each member at the same time each year; we’ve just glimpsed the latest for 2011. And, in so doing they give us much to ponder on the nature of change and the nature of stasis.

[div class=attrib]From Diego Goldberg and family:[end-div]

Catch all the intervening years between 1976 and 2011 at theSource here.

Life of a Facebook Photo

Before photo-sharing, photo blogs, photo friending, “PhotoShopping” and countless other photo-enabled apps and services, there was compose, point, focus, click, develop, print. The process seemed a lot simpler way back then. Perhaps, this was due to lack of options for both input and output. Input? Simple. Go buy a real camera. Output? Simple. Slide or prints. The end.

The options for input and output have exploded by orders of magnitude over the last couple of decades. Nowadays, even my toaster can take pictures and I can output them on my digital refrigerator, sans, of course, real photographs with that limp, bendable magnetic backing. The entire end-to-end process of taking a photograph and sharing it with someone else is now replete with so many choices and options that today it seems to have become inordinately more complex.

So, to help all prehistoric photographers like me, here’s an interesting process flow for your digital images in the age of Facebook.

[div class=attrib]From Pixable:[end-div]

Nick Risinger’s Photopic Sky Survey

Big science covering scales from the microscopic to the vastness of the universe continues to deliver stunning new insights, now on a daily basis. I takes huge machines such as the Tevatron at Fermilab, CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, NASA’s Hubble Telescope and the myriad other detectors, arrays, spectrometers, particle smashers to probe some of our ultimate questions. The results from these machines bring us fantastic new perspectives and often show us remarkable pictures of the very small and very large.

Then there is Nick Risinger’s Photopic Sky Survey. No big science, no vast machines — just Nick Risinger, accompanied by retired father, camera equipment and 45,000 miles of travels capturing our beautiful night sky as never before.

[div class=attrib]From Nick Risinger:[end-div]

The Photopic Sky Survey is a 5,000 megapixel photograph of the entire night sky stitched together from 37,440 exposures. Large in size and scope, it portrays a world far beyond the one beneath our feet and reveals our familiar Milky Way with unfamiliar clarity.

It was clear that such a survey would be quite difficult visually hopping from one area of the sky to the next—not to mention possible lapses in coverage—so this called for a more systematic approach. I divided the sky into 624 uniformly spaced areas and entered their coordinates into the computer which gave me assurance that I was on target and would finish without any gaps. Each frame received a total of 60 exposures: 4 short, 4 medium, and 4 long shots for each camera which would help to reduce the amount of noise, overhead satellite trails and other unwanted artifacts.

And so it was with this blueprint that I worked my way through the sky, frame by frame, night after night. The click-clack of the shutters opening and closing became a staccato soundtrack for the many nights spent under the stars. Occasionally, the routine would be pierced by a bright meteor or the cry of a jackal, each compelling a feeling of eerie beauty that seemed to hang in the air. It was an experience that will stay with me a lifetime.

A truly remarkable and beautiful achievement. This is what focus and passion can achieve.

[div class=attrib]More from theSource here.[end-div]