Gothamist interview with my friend Lisa Whiteman
Gothamist interview with my friend Lisa Whiteman about her photography. Lisa is one of the most thoughtful people I know and it shows in this interview.
Advertise here with Carbon Ads
This site is made possible by member support. ❤️
Big thanks to Arcustech for hosting the site and offering amazing tech support.
When you buy through links on kottke.org, I may earn an affiliate commission. Thanks for supporting the site!
kottke.org. home of fine hypertext products since 1998.
kottke.org posts about photography
Slideshow of photographs by Annie Leibovitz documenting
Slideshow of photographs by Annie Leibovitz documenting the building of The New York Times Building in NYC. (thx, michael)
Scientists have created photo prints from bacteria. “
Scientists have created photo prints from bacteria. “The results are not only much sharper than what can be produced with a photo printer, but also point the way to a new industry — building useful objects from living organisms.”
The Burtynsky exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum
The Burtynsky exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art sounds good. I hope to get over there before it closes on January 15. Here’s his site with lots of photographs. “He often will shoot an image on three or four different brands of film, then print each image on three or four different brands of paper…then chooses the combination that produces the richest and most vivid look.”
Hong Kong photos
A small selection of photos from Hong Kong. Photos from Bangkok and Saigon coming soon.
Zach Klein: “Then, just now, I remembered
Zach Klein: “Then, just now, I remembered that I live in the future.” (Related but unrelated, now that we’re living in the future, what do we expect to happen in the actual future? This is actually a serious question…society has a collective vision of the future and now that we’re there — ubiquitous huge flat panel tvs, real-time recording/documenting of everything, Segways, personally targetted advertising, etc. — what’s our new collective vision of the future like?)
New feature from Slate: Today’s Pictures in
New feature from Slate: Today’s Pictures in collaboration with Magnum Photos.
Thumbnails of images that look like porn
Thumbnails of images that look like porn but aren’t really porn. May be NSFW, but not really.
Photoshop contest results: unretouched celebrity photos. Love the Botox-less Madonna.
Photoshop contest results: unretouched celebrity photos. Love the Botox-less Madonna.
Gallery of turn-of-the-century postcards from when Kodak
Gallery of turn-of-the-century postcards from when Kodak enabled people to make postcards from any photo they took. From a new book called Real Photo Postcards.
Nikon has issued a recall for certain
Nikon has issued a recall for certain batteries used in the D100, D70, and D50…the battery has a flaw that may cause it to overheat and melt. Check the site for your battery’s lot number to see if you’re affected.
Photos of some difficult runways on which
Photos of some difficult runways on which to land a plane. (via tmn)
Update: Oops, looks like that link has some NSFW ads on it. Sorry about that and thanks to everyone who wrote in. I totally didn’t see the ads when I looked at the photos before…my ad blindness is now complete if I’m missing pr0n.
Sports Illustrated’s photo gallery of the top 10
Sports Illustrated’s photo gallery of the top 10 point guards of all time.
Vietnam wrap-up
We’re back in the US, but here’s one more post about our time in Vietnam.
1. On our way out to the Mekong Delta, we went through an industrial area, with machine shops, brick-making facilities, and the like. As we drove, we passed a three-wheeled bicycle that you see all over in Vietnam, with a cart in the front over two wheels and the driver over the rear wheel in the back. Lashed to the cart were several steel beams, probably 8-10 of them, each about 2 inches tall and 10 feet long, weight of the whole thing unknown, probably several hundred pounds on three bicycle wheels and a non-existant suspension system. And if that’s not odd enough to imagine, the whole thing was moving at around 30 mph, pushed along by a motorcycle whose driver had his left foot on the bolt of the right front wheel, while the respective drivers of the combined conveyance chatted away with little attention to their Rube Goldberg machine. Wish I’d have gotten a photo of it…it’s one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen.
2. Even though the streets of Saigon were packed with motorbikes, you saw very few people wearing helmets, and when they did, they tended to be construction helmets that weren’t even strapped to their heads.
3. I got an email from a reader a few days ago wondering why I was referring to Saigon as Saigon rather than its official name of Ho Chi Minh City, the name given to the city 24 hours after it fell to the North Vietnamese. Most of the city’s inhabitants still call it Saigon, so I was following suit. It’s also quicker to say and to type.
4. Cao Dai is a homegrown Vietnamese religion (established in the 1920s) that is an amalgamation of several other religions. On our trip to the Mekong Delta, we visited a Cao Dai temple, which looked like it was designed by Liberace’s interior decorator. Over the altar was a sculpture depicting Buddha, Confucious, Jesus, and Victor Hugo (!!), and I think they were all holding hands or something.
5. On one of the entry forms you need to fill out before arriving in Vietnam, it lists some things that are illegal to import into the country, including:
weapons, ammunition, explosives, military equipment and tools, narcotics, drugs, toxic chemicals, pornographic and subversive materials, firecrackers, children’s toys that have “negative effects on personality development, social order and security,” or cigarettes in excess of the stipulated allowance.
Children’s toys? Negative effects on personality development, social order and security? Bwa?
6. I can’t find too much about it online, but one of the more interesting things we saw in Saigon was the photography exhibit at The War Remnants Museum. The exhibit consists of hundreds of photographs of the Vietnam War (the Vietnamese call it the American War) taken by some of the best photojournalists who were working at the time, including Larry Burrows, Henri Huet, Horst Faas, Huynh Thanh My, Robert Capa, and Kyochi Sawada. A powerful and moving record of a tumultuous period in history.
7. Speaking of The War Remnants Museum (which was formerly called The War Crimes Museum and was a little more one-sided in the past), it wasn’t until a couple days after I’d gone that I realized that remnants referred to all of the stuff that the US had left in Vietnam after the long conflict, literally the leftovers of war. Tanks, planes, cars, helicopters, guns, photography, children deformed from the effects of Agent Orange, a population depleted of young men, horrific memories, and, finally, a united Vietnam.
Deadprogrammer is taking 100 different photos of the
Deadprogrammer is taking 100 different photos of the Empire State Building; he’s up to 30 or so.
Mirroring the progression of diaries and graphic
Mirroring the progression of diaries and graphic design, scrapbooking, the practice of arranging and decorating photos in albums, has gone digital. Personal desktop publishing anyone?
Khoi Vinh from Subtraction is currently in
Khoi Vinh from Subtraction is currently in Vietnam as well, blogging and taking pictures.
A huge trove of Hong Kong photos,
A huge trove of Hong Kong photos, many from the present day, but some dating back to as early as 1840.
Panoramic photo of suburban sprawl near San
Panoramic photo of suburban sprawl near San Ramon, CA. Beautiful and terrifying.
Photos from Robbie Cooper’s Alter Ego project,
Photos from Robbie Cooper’s Alter Ego project, in which he takes photos of gamers and compares them with their in-game avatars. More photos and an article about Cooper and his photography.
Photo gallery of an urban model railroad
Photo gallery of an urban model railroad with scenes modeled after the streets and tracks of Philly, NJ, and NYC. The modeler even painted some tiny graffiti on some of the buildings and walls. (thx, malatron)
Several companies who manufacture digital cameras have
Several companies who manufacture digital cameras have issued “silent recalls” due to a faulty chip distorts photos when it fails. Sony, Canon, Nikon, Olympus, and others are affected. Digital Photography Review has more; here’s the Nikon D2H & D70 advisory. (A “silent recall” isn’t an official recall…the companies are only repairing items in which the faulty chips fail.)
Update: Eliot sez: That’s the wrong service advisory for Nikon…it’s an unrelated problem. Here’s the related advisory…doesn’t affect any of their dSLRs.
You can now get prints of your
You can now get prints of your photos from Flickr (in the US, more locations coming soon). You can also do a bunch of other things, like get books printed, back up your photos to DVD, and get stamps printed.
Tim Gasperak was recently in Iceland and
Tim Gasperak was recently in Iceland and took some gorgeous photos. More at his site, Big Empty.
This is what it looked like outside
This is what it looked like outside our window this morning. Snow!
A short interview and some photography by
A short interview and some photography by Douglas Levere from his book, New York Changing, in which he rephotographs NYC scenes captured by Berenice Abbott in the 1930s. “I realize to stand still is to move backwards, but architecture today in NYC today too often feels like it is only creating wealth and almost nothing to do with creating community.”
Great post about Florent, a restaurant in
Great post about Florent, a restaurant in the Meatpacking District, on the occasion of its 20th anniversary. I love the NYC/SF map mash-up and the photo of James Earl Jones enjoying a cup of coffee and a newspaper at the restaurant. (via eater)
Apple announces Aperture, professional-grade software for managing
Apple announces Aperture, professional-grade software for managing and manipulating photos. A little bit o’ iPhoto mixed with Photoshop, it looks like. (Also, new Powerbooks…higher res, better battery life.)
Instead of emphasizing the animal, nature photographer
Instead of emphasizing the animal, nature photographer Art Wolfe takes photos that show how animals have evolved to blend into their surroundings. Copies of Wolfe’s book featuring these photos can be purchased on his site. (Also, what a perfect name for a photographer who takes artistic photos of animals.)
Ah, summer
Well, summer is definitely over in the eastern United States. The leaves on the trees are going or gone, sweaters and light jackets have started making their appearance, and everyone is sick of tomatoes but drinking apple cider by the gallon. As a goodbye to a great summer, here are a few photos I took over the last few months:
The above photo was taken near the end of the summer on Nantucket, just before sunset.
Stay Connected