A daily miasma of frivolity by two wanna-be cultural critics. Or: just, like, some good links, dude.

Tag Archives: photography

Jul 22 2011
Mark Twain, probably

The flood photo that isn’t

The flood photo that isn’t

Interesting piece by Myo-ja Ser for the Korea JoongAng Daily that covers photo manipulation, North Korea, and wire service operations:

The Associated Press has withdrawn a photo depicting flooding in North Korea, released recently by the reclusive communist country’s news service, claiming that signs of digital manipulation were detected.

The American news wire agency transmitted the photo to its members and customers on Saturday. “In this photo taken Friday, July 15, 2011, and released Saturday July 16, 2011, by the Korean Central News Agency via Korea News Service, residents wade through a flooded street in Pyongyang, North Korea. North Korea said heavy rains flooded farmland, destroyed homes and caused some deaths,” the AP said in the caption. 

The Korean Central News Agency is a state-run mouthpiece of the North. 

The day after the photo’s release, the AP issued a “kill notice” to tell subscribers that AP decided to withdraw the photo and no longer stood by it. 

“The content of this image has been digitally altered and does not accurately reflect the scene,” AP said in the kill notice. “No other version of the photo is available.” 

I love the idea of the AP giving a KILL NOTICE. I’m imagining someone at a control panel hitting a giant red button that causes the lights to dim and klaxons to go off.

The linked piece includes the photo with the questionable parts highlighted. Do check it out.

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Jul 21 2011
Mark Twain, probably

Charles Williamson was the father of John Ernest Williamson (1881-1966), an important cinematographer who made the first underwater films. Captain Charles Williamson was the inventor of a flexible arm with a coupled mitten. This flexible arm led to the development of a tube that could be lowered from a boat to the sea bottom.

…

In 1912 John Ernest Williamson (J.E.) had the epiphany that the tube his father had invented could be put to use to film underwater. He constructed a special chamber where the cameras were installed. This chamber is still today called “Williamson Photosphere”.

I love this photo. It and the text come from The Rebreather Site, which you should check out for more pictures and information on the device. There are a couple of shots of a controllable, underwater octopus suit. Yes.

(Via Sunday Magazine / The New York Times, which published article on the original use of the device to find sunken treasure.)

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Jul 08 2011
Mark Twain, probably

Here’s the space shuttle Atlantis launching on the final mission of NASA’s space shuttle program, as shot by Scott Audette of Reuters. Ladies and gentlemen, please rise and remove your caps.

(Via MSNBC’s PhotoBlog)

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Jul 03 2011
Mark Twain, probably

In Hours, Online Readers Identify Nazi Photographer

In Hours, Online Readers Identify Nazi Photographer

On June 21, The New York Times’s Lens blog and Der Spiegel’s EinesTages site posted photos taken during World War II from an unnamed album by an unknown photographer. In less than three hours, the internet had collaborated to identify the photographer.

This week the photographer was identified in less than three hours, thanks to the collective expertise of online readers. He was Franz Krieger, who joined — and then quit — a Wehrmacht propaganda unit known as the Propagandakompanie. Seventy years ago this August, when he was in his mid-20s, the unit sent him on a tour of the Eastern Front.

…

There was little to go on in the album itself. No name was scribbled inside the front cover.

The first clue came from Harriet Scharnberg of Hamburg, Germany, who spotted the photographs online, identified them as Krieger’s and said they were taken during his trip to Minsk, in what is now Belarus, in 1941. On the way back to Berlin, she said, he took the pictures of Hitler meeting with Adm. Miklos Horthy, the regent of Hungary, in Marienburg (now Malbork, Poland).

Ms. Scharnberg said that in her research for a Ph.D. dissertation on German propaganda photographs depicting Jews, she had come across Peter F. Kramml’s 2008 book, “The Salzburg Press Photographer Franz Krieger (1914-1993): Photojournalism in the Shadow of Nazi Propaganda and War.”

Dr. Kramml all but confirmed that the photographs were Krieger’s when he sent The Times a copy of a Krieger self-portrait taken in a rear-view mirror. It was identical to one in the album.

There’s a lot to love about this story. The pictures are fantastic. Krieger’s story is compelling. The power of the internet is awe-inspiring. It’s just a great piece that ties the past and the present together.

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Jun 22 2011
Mark Twain, probably

See those two pictures above with different focusing? Those are not two pictures. That is one picture taken with the in-development Lytro light field camera. You can refocus photos taken with it after you’ve taken them. On the fly. Whenever you want.

How is this light field camera different from my current camera?

Great question. Unlike regular digital or film cameras, which can only record a scene in two-dimensions, light field cameras captures all of the light rays traveling in every direction through a scene. This means that some aspects of a picture can be manipulated after the fact. To acquire this additional data, Lytro cameras include an innovative new light field sensor that captures the color, intensity and vector direction of light rays.

…

What are some of the features of a light field camera?

Shoot now, focus later: Because the camera captures the entire light field, there is no need to focus ahead of time. You can simply capture the moment, and adjust the focus later. This means you can concentrate on what’s happening in the scene, not fiddle with your camera. Lytro pictures can be focused to your liking days, weeks, even years after they’re taken.

hladhghglsahgsahglhsag THIS CLICK THIS LOOK AT THIS

THIS IS THE POWER OF SCIENCE

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Jun 21 2011
Mark Twain, probably

Check out these emotive photographs from Howard Schatz. Above:

Chloë Sevigny
Left: You’re a hyperkinetic eight-year-old drama queen at her birthday party, hearing that the clown has just arrived. Center: You’re a mom at your seven-year-old daughter’s ballet recital, watching her execute an adorably imperfect pirouette and an almost flawless curtsy. Right: You’re a high-school senior whose parents are at work, just about to have sex with your boyfriend for the first time, when your kid sister bursts into the room.

Awesome.

Apparently these are all from Schatz’s new book, In Character: Actors Acting. Looks super good. There’s so much photography out there — especially now that we have Photoshop — that’s merely sizzle. These photos are the real deal; they’re all steak.

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Jun 20 2011
Mark Twain, probably

MSNBC’s PhotoBlog posted this shot of a bullfight in Alicates, Spain today. And I don’t want to minimize the amount of hurt inflicted upon that guy, because it’s probably a lot.

But the timing of this shot.

His head is totally coming out of the bull’s side, right?

I mean, it’s not.

But it is.

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Jun 13 2011
Mark Twain, probably

I considered posting something about the Dallas Mavericks winning the NBA championship, but I decided against it. I’m not invested in the NBA at all any more, and any post from me would’ve just ended up snarking about LeBron again failing to win a title.

But this photo of Mavericks owner Mark Cuban (second from the left in the front row, solid blue T-shirt) taken by David J. Phillip of the AP ran in today’s paper. And…

This photo, man. This photo.

(image source)

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Jun 11 2011
Mark Twain, probably

A new series of unpublished images has been unveiled in London. The photos are headed for auction in New York on July 20.

Photographer Mike Mitchell shot the images when he was 18 years old, and have been sitting in his basement collecting dust for 40 years. The collection is comprised of 50 lots of unpublished and never-before-seen photographs of the Beatles’ first visits to the US in 1964.

HOW DARE YOU SIT ON THESE, SIR

Click the pic for a few more shots from the collection.

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Jun 11 2011
Mark Twain, probably

I want one of those turtlenecks.

(Via mikeysan.)

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