Giant jellyfish invade Japan STOP Creatures 2 meters
Giant jellyfish invade Japan STOP Creatures 2 meters wide and 450 pounds STOP Killing fish, fishing industry, and even humans STOP Run for your lives STOP
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kottke.org posts about photography
Photos of pool hustlers in NYC. (via
Photos of pool hustlers in NYC. (via coolfer by way of the actual janelle)
A pair of photoessays from Time magazine:
A pair of photoessays from Time magazine: Martin Luther King in His Own Words and The Last Days of Martin Luther King.
In 1998, six newspapers profiled the streets named
In 1998, six newspapers profiled the streets named after Martin Luther King in their respective cities. Along Martin Luther King is a collection of essays and photographs documenting life along the nearly 500 streets named for MLK. In 2003, Rob Walker took some photos along MLK Blvd in New Orleans).
“no sampling, please”, a photoset depicting binge-sampling
“no sampling, please”, a photoset depicting binge-sampling of nearly everything in sight, contrary to posted signage.
Pareidolia: “The erroneous or fanciful perception of
Pareidolia: “The erroneous or fanciful perception of a pattern or meaning in something that is actually ambiguous or random.” Here are hundreds of examples on Flickr…light sockets that look like faces, etc.
Some fans of The Matrix films went
Some fans of The Matrix films went to Sydney and photographed various locations that were in the first film. Photoset on Flickr.
Edward Burtynsky at the Brooklyn Museum of Art
I can’t remember where I first ran across Edward Burtynsky’s photography, but I’ve been developing into a full-fledged fan of work over the past few months. From a Washington Post article on Burtynsky:
Burtynsky calls his images “a second look at the scale of what we call progress,” and hopes that at minimum, the images acquaint viewers with the ramifications — he avoids the word price — of our lifestyle. But what if viewers just see, you know, some dudes and a ship?
“Another photographer might focus on the loss of life or pollution,” acknowledges Kennel of the National Gallery. “He uses beauty as a way to draw attention to something. It’s a very particular strategy.”
The Brooklyn Museum of Art is displaying an exhibition of Burtynsky’s photos until January 15. Well worth the effort to try and check it out. The scale of modernity, particularly in his recent photos of China, is astounding. In Three Gorges Dam Project, Dam #4, this huge dam seems to stretch on forever and you don’t know whether to goggle in wonder or shrink in horror from looking at it.
Adobe has released the beta version of
Adobe has released the beta version of a program called Lightroom (OS X only), a competitor to Apple’s Aperture. Both are pro-level apps for manipulating and organizing digital photos. Here’s the story of Lightroom’s development from one of its developers. (via df)
Skiing at Mad River
Over the holidays, Meg and I went up to Vermont skiing. I skied quite a bit when I was in middle/high school (on the small hills of northwestern WI and east central MN), but I’d only strapped on the boards a couple times since graduating from college. Meg’s family has skied at Mad River Glen for years, so that’s where we went. After three straight days of hitting the slopes, my back got a little wonky, so on the 4th day I brought the camera along to document a run down the mountain:
There are a few photos of Waitsfield (the town closest to Mad River) and the surrouding area at the beginning of the set, but most are from the mountain, including some of the best winter views I’ve ever witnessed. The snow covering the trees, the fog at the top of the hill…it looked almost magical. At one point, I was alone on the mountain with my camera, engulfed in fog, no one within 200 yards. With no wind and all the snow & fog muffling the sound, when I stopped breathing, I couldn’t hear anything at all.
Saigon photos
A selection of photos from our week in Saigon:
Here are my posts from the rest of the Asia trip, my photos from Hong Kong, and my photos from Bangkok.
Satugo is a fun little camera that
Satugo is a fun little camera that you can throw in the air or bounce to get some unusual photos. Love the pull-string for the quick but steady shots.
Bangkok photos
Where does the time go? It’s been more than a month since we got back from Asia, but I haven’t posted my photos from Bangkok or Saigon yet. Time for amends, so with my apologies, here are a collection of photos I took in Bangkok.
Here’s my posts from the rest of the Asia trip and my photos from Hong Kong. Saigon photos tomorrow (hopefully).
Retrievr is a simple, amazing use of
Retrievr is a simple, amazing use of the Flickr API. You draw a little drawing and Retrievr fetches similar photos from Flickr. Photodisc, the stock photo site, used to have a feature like this back in 1997-98, but then they discontinued it (I have no idea why…it was insanely useful). One feature request…instead of a drawing, let me pick a starting Flickr photo and find me similar ones. (via mh)
Pictures of the Year 2005 from Reuters and
Pictures of the Year 2005 from Reuters and best photos of the year 2005 from Time. (thx, indrek)
USASODA.com has tons of images of
USASODA.com has tons of images of old soda cans. They’re a little hard to find, but there’s good stuff if you dig around a little bit.
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.
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.
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