The invisible mother
Camera shutters used to be verrrry slow so to help young kids stay still during the long exposure, the photographer would have the mother be in the frame but typically covered by a blanket or cloth. Like so:
(via cup of jo)
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kottke.org posts about photography
Photographers pose with their famous photographs
For his new book, Tim Mantoani took hundreds of portraits of photographers posing with prints of their most well-known work. Here’s Neil Leifer holding his photo of Ali standing over Liston.
(via sly oyster)
Photos of 1980s New York City
From photographer Steven Siegel, a reminder of what a magical shithole NYC was in the 1980s. Oh hey, here’s a hole in the Manhattan Bridge walkway:
See also kids digging up graves in Greenwood Cemetary, the abandoned West Side Highway, and what looks like a bombed-out Bushwick. (via gothamist)
Fotoshop, the world’s best beauty product
Fotoshop is a new beauty product from Adobé (say aah-DOE-bay) that slims, gets rid of wrinkles, and can even lighten your skin color.
(via stellar)
Smoking kids
Inspired by a video of a chain-smoking two-year-old from Indonesia, photographer Frieke Janssens took a series of portraits of kids smoking.
A video shows how Janssens made the photos…the cigarettes were made of cheese.
Great camera buying guide
From The Verge, a new-ish tech site, a mega-guide on everything you need to know about buying a camera. It starts at the beginning with the basics of photography, goes over ISO, aperture, shutter speed, megapixels, white balance, and the major types of camera.
If you’re new to digital photography, the three things you should acquaint yourself with first are the ISO, aperture, and shutter speed. The three work in concert, and if you can manipulate and control them all, you’ll take fabulous photos without even touching the rest of your camera. Together, they’re known as the Exposure Triangle, because they control how much light you’re exposing the camera to (aperture), how sensitive the camera is to that light (ISO), and how long your exposure lasts (shutter speed).
Photo Remakes of Famous Art
I love everything about this…I scrolled through the entire list. This one was my favorite:
(via waxy)
Bruce Davidson, Subway
In an excerpt from the introduction to Subway, his collection of photographs of the NYC subway, Bruce Davidson recalls how he came to start taking photos on the subway in the 1980s.
As I went down the subway stairs, through the turnstile, and onto the darkened station platform, a sinking sense of fear gripped me. I grew alert, and looked around to see who might be standing by, waiting to attack. The subway was dangerous at any time of the day or night, and everyone who rode it knew this and was on guard at all times; a day didn’t go by without the newspapers reporting yet another hideous subway crime. Passengers on the platform looked at me, with my expensive camera around my neck, in a way that made me feel like a tourist-or a deranged person.
Camera shooting at a trillion frames/sec can see photons move
At the beginning of this video, Ramesh Raskar, associate professor at the MIT Media Lab, announces calmly:
We have built a virtual slow-motion camera where we can see photons, or light particles, moving through space.
Yeah, no biggie.
Nerd girlfriend
Dress like your favorite nerdy folk: Nerd Girlfriend is a companion site to the excellent Nerd Boyfriend.
Apple Store in Grand Central
Gothamist has some photos of the new Apple Store in NYC’s Grand Central Terminal.
The company was obviously under tight constraints as to what they could do with the store (they would have loved to encase the whole thing in plexiglass probably), but from the looks of things, they did a marvelous job. There’s so little styling — the whole store is just tables and screens mostly — that it looks like the Apple Store not only belongs there, but that it’s been there forever, like Grand Central was designed with the Apple Store in mind. If you walk around Grand Central, not a lot of the other retail locations can say that, if any. (photo by katie sokoler)
The year in photos
In Focus delivers part one of an eventual three-part look at 2011 in photography. 2011 was a remarkably eventful year.
Here’s part two. See also Buzzfeed’s list of the 45 most powerful images of 2011.
Stanley Kubrick shoots New York
Before he made movies, Stanley Kubrick was a photographer for Look magazine. Here are a selection of Kubrick’s photos of New York City life in the 1940s, even then displaying his keen cinematic eye.
Prints are available. (thx, mark)
People and their fish twins
Ted Sabarese shot a photo series of people and the fish they look like.
(via ★swissmiss)
Crime scene panoramas
Over the past two years, the NYPD has been taking panoramic images of crime scenes in an attempt to better record the evidence.
Each panorama takes between 3 to 30 minutes to produce, depending on the available light, and is added to a database where detectives can access it. Before the switch to the Panoscan, crime scene images sometimes took days to process. Now, soon after the photos are posted, investigators can point and click over evidence from a scene that they might have missed in the hectic hours after the crime.
Send in the Republican clowns
I wish these were bipartisan, but this suprisingly large collection of prominent Republicans made up with clown paint is still pretty amazing. Here’s Texas governor Rick Perry:
2011 National Geographic photo contest submissions
Over at In Focus, Alan Taylor has a selection of submissions from the upcoming National Geographic photo contest. Some really beauties in ther…whoa, UFO!
The 35mm film movie camera
New from Lomography: the Lomokino, a movie camera that can shoot a 144-frame movie on any 35mm film. And you hand-crank it! Here’s a sample:
The secret train platform beneath the Waldorf=Astoria
Gothamist has a collection of photos of the abandoned train platform underneath the Waldorf=Astoria.
Over the weekend we had a chance to visit the long-abandoned Waldorf-Astoria train platform, which allowed VIPs to enter the hotel in a more private manner — most famously it was used by Franklin D. Roosevelt, possibly to hide the fact that he was in a wheelchair suffering from polio. The mysterious track, known as Track 61, still houses the train car and private elevator, which were both large enough for FDR’s armor-plated Pierce Arrow car. Legend has it that the car would drive off the train, onto the platform and straight into the elevator, which would lead to the hotel’s garage.
Photos by Sam Horine.
Watch Bill Cunningham New York on Hulu for free
Bill Cunningham New York, the documentary on street fashion photographer Bill Cunningham, is available to watch on Hulu for free. (US-only probably.)
If the Nazis conquered America
Matthew Porter’s photo composite Empire on the Platte is arresting.
Pairs nicely with Melissa Gould’s Neu-York, “an obsessively detailed alternate-history map, imagining how Manhattan might have looked had the Nazis conquered it in World War II”.
In 1942, Life magazine speculated about what an Axis invasion of North America might look like.
Thailand flood photos
The worst floods in 50 years have hit Thailand Bangkok…the Big Picture has photos of the flooding in Bangkok while In Focus has a collection from all over Thailand.
Vintage food
James Kendall’s wife’s 90-year-old grandmother recently cleaned out her pantry and Kendall documented some of the ancient foodstuffs lurking within.
(via @lomokev)
Frying Panoramas
What’s this then? Jovian moon? Instagrammed photo of Earth taken from the ISS? Head of a nail?
Nope, it’s actually a well-worn frying pan from a project by Christopher Jonassen.
North Korea tourist photos
Sam Gellman visited North Korea as a tourist earlier this month and returned with some nice photos. This shot is from the Mass Games but there are also many street scenes depicted.
Earth orbit time lapse
Time lapse movie composed of photographs taken from the International Space Station as it orbits the Earth at night.
This movie begins over the Pacific Ocean and continues over North and South America before entering daylight near Antarctica. Visible cities, countries and landmarks include (in order) Vancouver Island, Victoria, Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Fransisco, Los Angeles. Phoenix. Multiple cities in Texas, New Mexico and Mexico. Mexico City, the Gulf of Mexico, the Yucatan Peninsula, Lightning in the Pacific Ocean, Guatemala, Panama, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, and the Amazon. Also visible is the earths ionosphere (thin yellow line) and the stars of our galaxy.
(via stellar)
Sending children through the post
This is one of my favorite Flickr photos:
This city letter carrier posed for a humorous photograph with a young boy in his mailbag. After parcel post service was introduced in 1913, at least two children were sent by the service. With stamps attached to their clothing, the children rode with railway and city carriers to their destination. The Postmaster General quickly issued a regulation forbidding the sending of children in the mail after hearing of those examples.
What are young Chinese thinking?
Adrian Fisk recently traveled through China asking the young people there to write anything they wanted down on a piece of paper. The results are interesting.
“After watching television I have many ideas, but am unable to realize them.” Yunnan, Luo Zheng Chui, 30 years old, farmer.
“I’d like to see any supernatural thing such as alien, UFO, mysterious thing.” Chan Jie Fang, 28 years old, supervisor in bag making company in Guangdong province but learning English in Guangxi province.
“We are the lost generation. I’m confused about the world.” Guangxi, Avril Lui, 22-years-old, post-grad student.
More are available on Fisk’s site (click on New Stories and then Ispeak China). (via @bryce)
Vladimir Putin, man of action
Watch as Vladimir Putin rides a horse, drives a race car, tags a tiger, does judo, goes on archeological dives, looks at leopards, stands on a boat, arm wrestles, attempts to bend a frying pan, rides a snowmobile, flies a plane, hugs a dog, rides a motorcycle, looks at a bear, swims the butterfly, signs autographs, shoots a whale with a crossbow, plays the piano, feeds a moose, talks with a biker gang, steers a boat, walks through brush with a gun, sits in a tank, blacksmiths, plays hockey, hugs a horse, dives almost a mile in a submersible, and adjusts sunglasses.
He has made many more important posts on In Focus and Big Picture over the years, but Alan Taylor has really outdone himself with this one…each photo is somehow more wonderfully unlikely than the previous one. See also Kim Jong-il Looking at Things.
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