kottke.org posts about photography
This happened while Choire was minding the store so apologies if you’ve seen it already, but Flickr’s new Commons program is quite interesting. For a start, the Library of Congress has put 1500 photos with “no known copyright restrictions” up on Flickr for people to tag and annotate. The LoC’s extensive online image repository has always been exceedingly difficult to use so making images available on the easy-to-use Flickr is a great step forward. The response so far has been pretty good.
Recent Pacific storms have resulted in some epic big wave surfing at Cortes Bank, a seamount located 105 miles off the California coast.
The NY Times has a nice overview:
With a second major storm bearing down, four of the most experienced big-wave surfers in the world launched a boat and two Jet Skis toward Cortes Bank, an underwater mountain range whose tallest peak rises 4,000 feet from the ocean floor to within about four feet of the surface. The perilous spot, about 100 miles off the coast of Southern California, had been surfed only a handful of times in the past decade. With just the right conditions, its shallow waters turn huge ocean swells into giant, perfect breaking waves.
On a big wave site set up by Billabong, one of the riders said that 100-foot waves will be ridden out there:
Cortes Bank veteran Mike Parsons returned from the voyage absolutely certain that larger sea monsters are awaiting around the spooky open-ocean shoal. “It’s getting closer and closer now…I guarantee you there will be a 100-foot-wave ridden out there,” said Parsons. “For sure. There were several big peaks that jumped up at the top of the reef outside of us that could not have been too far off that size. If you put yourself in the right place at the right time, it will happen. It’s only a matter of time now.”
For photos and a nice audio feature with the crew that took the trip out there, head on over to Surfline.
Graffiti Research Lab built their own camera rig to capture bullet time photography (a la The Matrix) for $5000-$8000. Here are the instructions to build your own and the music video they made using the rig.
Living in Three Centuries, Mark Story’s photos of centenarians and other aged people. (via clusterflock)
Arresting images of Benazir Bhutto’s last moments, including some shots of the suicide bomb going off nearby shortly after she was shot.
I love the way she leans every so slightly to the side as the train passes.
Rankin’s Eyescapes photos are great. One of my favorite things to do with Ollie is stare into his eyes and see all the wonderful whirls of color. I also like his One Dress project. (Rankin’s project, not Ollie’s.)
Advice from a photo editor at a national magazine on how to talk about photography, particularly to those who know little about it.
I have a sweet technique I use for finding the great images from a shoot that really tends to piss-off the editors: I edit the film without reading the story. This helps me tune into which images have the most impact on me and which ones transcend subject matter and become forces in their own right.
His description of defending good photography applies to design as well.
A list of the top 10 astronomy images of 2007, including entwined galaxies and a dying star.
Diane Arbus’ archives were recently gifted to the Met in NYC.
Unlike the belongings of artists who fade gradually from view, which are sometimes scattered, pilfered or lost, Arbus’s effects were in some ways frozen in time when she committed suicide at 48. Quickly her life began to acquire a cult status paralleling that of her photography.
(via sippey)
Wow, The Simpsons did a parody of Noah Kalina’s Everyday video. Noah, you just graduated summa cum laude from Pop Culture University.
Update: But apparently the background music was used without permission.
A few months back a producer from the Simpsons contacted Carly about using her song ‘everyday’ for an upcoming episode in which they were going to parody my video. She was negotiating a rate for the song, until they never got back to her. No fee was agreed on, no contracts signed.
Maybe they decided since it was parody they didn’t need permission? I don’t find that likely since what little I know about Hollywood/TV is that they’re really concerned about clearing rights. (thx, slava)
Update: The song rights mixup was an accidental oversight and is currently being corrected.
This photo of lower Manhattan taken from the Statue of Liberty in 1901 is plenty interesting, especially what I believe is the beginnings of the Manhattan Bridge under construction behind the Brooklyn Bridge.
Update: The bridge under construction is most likely the Williamsburg Bridge, not the Manhattan Bridge. (thx, jake)
Photo of Steve Jobs at his home in 1982.
This was a very typical time. I was single. All you needed was a cup of tea, a light, and your stereo, you know, and that’s what I had.
This was right in the thick of Lisa/Macintosh development; I bet Jobs didn’t spend a whole lot of time at home. Note: there’s some bad Exif data that prevents the display of this photo in Safari (ironic, eh?)…try Firefox instead. (thx, mark)
Update: Exif data fixed, Safari away.
Jessica Dimmock’s The Ninth Floor is a series of photos taken of heroin addicts living in a ninth floor Manhattan apartment. The NY Times and New York magazine have slideshows with a little more context. Also available in book form. NSFW. (via clusterflock)
Yasumasa Morimura takes photos of himself recreating iconic photos like Lee Harvey Oswald’s murder and Che Guevara. A bit of Cindy Sherman + these photos + maybe even a little Be Kind Rewind. At Luhring Augustine in NYC until Dec 22. (thx, tony)
New research suggests that doctored photos can easily influence a viewer’s memory of the events depicted.
For example, those participants shown the doctored photograph of the protest in Rome (top right), in which figures placed in the foreground give the impression of violence, rated the event as being significantly more violent and negative than it actually was. In their comments, they also provided false details, such as conflicts, damages, injuries and casualties that did not appear in the photos and were not documented at the event.
(via conscientious)
Top 50 photo series from the 2006 Critical Mass competition. Some good stuff in there if you poke around a bit…2005 and 2004 too. (via ffffound!)
A terrific post recapping the early years of photography. The oldest known color photograph was taken in 1872.
Update: Or was it? James Clerk Maxwell took this color photo of a purty ribbon in 1861. Maxwell also, and so but by the way, linked electromagnetism and light in a seminal paper from that same year, work that Albert Einstein called “the most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton”. (thx, chris)
Photographer Justin Guariglia spent eight years documenting the secretive warrior monks of the Shaolin Temple.
With the blessing of the main abbot, Shi Yong Xin, Guariglia has earned the full collaboration of the monks to create an astonishing, empathic record of the Shaolin art forms and the individuals who consider themselves the keepers of these traditions. It is the first time the monks have allowed such extensive documentation of these masters and their centuries-old art forms-from Buddhist mudras to classical kung fu-in their original setting, a 1,500-year-old Buddhist temple.
Photos and video here. Watching the videos, especially the one featuring Tong Jian Quan, I was reminded of hip hop dancing (Michael Jackson in particular) in a way that watching kung-fu and other martial arts in Hollywood movies does not.
Also, Shaolin monk Hai Deng was famous for performing a one-finger handstand. The video seems a little suspect but this performance brings the single finger handstand into the realm of possibility.
Scene: Two women on a smoke break outside in the rain, a white woman dressed all in black and a black woman dressed in all white. The woman in all black holds a giant golf umbrella with alternating black and white panels.
Excuse for missing it: Three stories up and babysitting.
See also: Unphotographable, a text account of pictures missed.
Eye-Fi is a wireless memory card for digital cameras. Once you get it set up, you take a photo with your camera and it’s automatically uploaded to your computer and to Flickr (or another photo sharing site of your choosing). The first thing you notice about the Eye-Fi is that it looks just like an ordinary 2-gig SD card…so tiny that when you use it for the first time, you almost can’t help but examine your camera from all angles to make certain that there are no wires involved. It’s magic.
But can an enchanted memory card make you a better photographer? That is, does it make you want to use your camera more and take better pictures? I’ve been testing an Eye-Fi for the past week, courtesy of my friends at Photojojo (where every order comes with a Blow Pop!). The setup and usage were pretty easy. Not having to fuss with an uploading cord was nice. I didn’t like the requirement of setting up each wireless connection you want the card to use; it should find open wireless access points when it can. But after a week of using the card, I finally figured out the optimal way to use the Eye-Fi:
1. Get a Flickr account.
2. Set the Eye-Fi to upload automatically to your Flickr account with the privacy set so that only you can see it.
3. Use Flickr’s online organization tools to publish, group, tag, or order prints of the keepers and discard/ignore the rest.
Instant online-only workflow…no intermediate “download then find the best ones then upload” steps required, everything happens right in Flickr. The lack of editing tools (brightness, levels, etc.) on Flickr might be a deal breaker for some, but for the rest, it certainly makes it easier to take a lot of photographs and get them up where family and friends can see them.
Advice for young photographers, including:
In college, take a year off and drive across the country, and camp along the way. Do it with good friends that are smart; not dumbasses that just want to get high. Bring some books. Bring some audio books if you can’t read.
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