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“The Polling Place Photo Project is a nationwide experiment in citizen journalism that seeks to empower citizens to capture, post and share photographs of democracy in action. By documenting their local voting experience on November 7, voters can contribute to an archive of photographs that captures the richness and complexity of voting in America.”
Opening tonight at Jen Bekman’s gallery: James Deavin’s Photographs from the New World, a selection of photos he took in the online game, Second Life.
Great photos of the Space Shuttle launch taken from the International Space Station. (via cyn-c)
Update: The photos weren’t taken from the ISS but from a chase plane. (thx, greg)
Time’s White House photographers have a daily photoblog. A good look at the stuff that doesn’t make it into the newspapers or magazines. (thx, pablo)
Artist Liz Cohen fixes up old cars and then photographs herself with them as a bikini model. Here’s a recent article on Cohen’s work in the Phoenix New Times and an older article from Wired. (via art fag city)
Photographer Clifford Ross shared his list of the necessary ingredients for invention and art at PopTech:
1. curiousity
2. persistence
3. ready to embrace the unexpected
4. ability and willingness to collaborate
Ross showed some rough results from his new pano-camera. I love Ross’ Hurricane series:
Photographer Philippe Halsman took portraits of people while jumping (the people, not Halsman), as a way to loosen up. Subjects include Marilyn Monroe, Richard Nixon, and the Dule and Duchess of Windsor. (viabb)
Slideshow of photographs from the last show (+ archival photos) at CBGB, a beloved New York music venue. Several photos of the club’s final days are available on Flickr as well.
The future of science: celebrity photography. While in Venice for the World Conference on the Future of Science, prominent philosopher Daniel Dennett squeezed off a shot of Paris Hilton arriving at the hotel for, one would assume, activities unrelated to the scientific proceedings.
Photographer Francois Brunelle is looking for people and their doppelgangers to photograph for a project. Whaddya say, Sweeney? (via bb)
Pruned takes us on a short tour of grain elevators. Wonderful old industrial buildings…the small town I grew up in had a huge grain elevator rising from the center of town, like a skyscraper in a cornfield.
Stephen Berkman makes 1860s-style photographs (more specifically, ambrotypes) with a contemporary eye. (via enthusiasm)
Photographs from Kevin Tiell of pinballs, up close and personal. This one’s my favorite. (via bb)
Youngna Park has a short wrap-up of going to see Annie Leibovitz speak about her new book, A Photographer’s Life: 1990-2005. “And, so it goes, said Leibovitz, that some of us use words in order to take good pictures, and some of us take pictures, in order that we can be heard.”
Portrait photographer Platon shares some remembrances of shooting famous people. “Bono told Platon that ‘a friend’ had made the rosary he wears. Which friend? Oh, the Pope, of course.” Here’s another interview with Platon. (via conscientious)
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter recently snapped a picture of the Opportunity rover perched on the rim of Victoria Crater. Opportunity drove more than 5 miles from its landing site to get there. High resolution photo here. Here’s where Opportunity is located on Mars.
Instead of megapixels-worth of light sensors, a new experimental camera uses a series of mirrors to focus all the light on just one sensor. Somewhat related question that I’ve been wondering about for awhile: why do digital cameras need shutters? Why can’t you just turn the sensors on and off electronically? Seems like you could then use many more arbitrary “shutter” speeds, like 5 seconds or 1/50000 of a second.
Museum camouflage photographs by Harvey Opgenorth. (via nick baum)
Some nice photography from Corey Arnold, specifically the fishing portfolios. (via thih)
Nikon recently sent a bunch of new D80s to some Flickr photographers and are now using some of the shots those photographers took in an ad campaign. “Nikon did what every major brand should be doing…it got out of its own way and let the real people that counted do the talking: their own consumers.” PDF of the ad spread.
LifePixel will modify your digital camera (Nikons or Canons, mostly) to shoot in infrared. “Camera manufacturers stop infrared light from contaminating the images by placing a hot mirror filter in front of the sensor which effectively blocks the infrared part of the spectrum while still allowing the visible light to pass. We remove this hot mirror filter and replace it with a custom manufactured infrared filter.”
Huge gallery of unusual cloud formation photos. Personal weirdest cloud story: late afternoon in the Wisconsin fall, clouds covered perfectly one half of the sky while the other half was completely clear blue.
Space tourist Anousheh Ansari is Flickring photos from the International Space Station. NASA reportedly spent 250,000 man-hours building a module to upload snapshots from space via the Flickr API.
Update: That NASA man-hours stat is a joke, sorry. NASA is not that absurdly wasteful. I have no idea how she’s getting the photos on Flickr. Do they have web access on the ISS?
Update: Ansari called Larry Page today and reported that there’s no internet access on the ISS. Email is delivered in batches…so she’s either emailing them to Flickr or someone’s uploading them for her. BTW, the first kottke.org reader in space…could you give me a call when you get there? (thx, terrell)
Update: According to Ansari’s blog (from space!), email is sent from the ISS three times per day.
A collection of snapshots by Andy Warhol of his friends from a recently published book, Warhol’s World.
If you asked me today to choose a medium in which to focus my future artistic energies, I’d have to go with the photo can. After finding this great Photojojo tutorial yesterday on using tin cans and glass jars as photo frames, I selected three recent pictures I’d taken and made this can triptych:
So cool! And simple too. I didn’t follow Photojojo’s directions exactly and I have a few observations to offer for those looking to play around with this:
Good luck!
Nice symmetry to this photo taken by Jake Dobkin of some people walking in front of graffiti.
According to Joerg Colberg, Thomas Weinberger makes his photos with two long exposures, once in daylight and once at night. The result is these spooky washed-out photos, a kind of analog HDR effect.
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