Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Hydrology: Visions in Ice
Photographs and text by Douglas Capron:
I am inspired by transformations and transitions that occur within nature, people and music.
My photographic opportunities often arrive unexpectedly and I am always fascinated by how our perception of time alternates with various life experiences. I hope my work travels beyond graphic emotional impact and that it will provoke and sustain a subtle dialogue with the viewer.
With my current series, Hydrology: Visions in Ice, my goal was to share with viewers the ephemeral mystery that occurs when water transforms into ice in
a natural setting. The resulting formations are surprisingly dynamic, organically expressive and complex, and pose more questions than are revealed beyond an aesthetic perspective in our relationship with the most basic element that sustains us all.
I was fascinated by the elaborate, unpredictable and beautiful shapes. These formed and morphed on a small lake in a city park over a few days as winter temperatures started to descend and the crystallization process began and then further, gradually evolving into mysterious patterns of solid ice announcing the arrival of winter.
I photographed this project through the use of long exposure times at night to eliminate glare during the day which allowed me to retain detail and texture.
This series was submitted by Douglas Capron for the 2009 Lens Culture International Exposure Awards
Douglas Capron
Monday, March 29, 2010
Sunday, March 28, 2010
NASA: Shuttle Silhouette
In a very unique setting over Earth's colorful horizon, the silhouette of the space shuttle Endeavour is featured in this photo by an Expedition 22 crew member on board the International Space Station, as the shuttle approached for its docking on Feb. 9 during the STS-130 mission.
Image Credit: NASA
NASA - Shuttle Silhouette
Via Monoscope
Saturday, March 27, 2010
The World of Logotypes
Recently the Aqua-Velvet blog featured a series of highlights from a mid-seventies edition of The World of Logotypes... here's my pick of the bunch:
Art Gallery X | Designed by Paul Orvath
J. A. Wilson Display Ltd | Canada
Warsaw Agency | USA | Designed by Anita Soos
Leidschenhge | Holland | Designed by Benno Wissing
Check out the series here:
World of Logotypes – Part 1.
World of Logotypes – Part 2.
World of Logotypes – Part 3.
Eric Carl has also posted a large portion of his copy of this out-of-print book on flickr.
Art Gallery X | Designed by Paul Orvath
J. A. Wilson Display Ltd | Canada
Warsaw Agency | USA | Designed by Anita Soos
Leidschenhge | Holland | Designed by Benno Wissing
Check out the series here:
World of Logotypes – Part 1.
World of Logotypes – Part 2.
World of Logotypes – Part 3.
Eric Carl has also posted a large portion of his copy of this out-of-print book on flickr.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
The Impossible is now Possible
The Impossible Project launches new Polaroid film. From March 25 2010 they will begin shipping their new monochrome instant film to Polaroid lovers. Initially two versions of the film will be avaliable: PX100 for the SX-70 and PX600 for Polaroid One series of cameras, with two color films projected to be available in the summer.
British Journal of Photography - Impossible relaunches Polaroid's instant films
The Impossible Collection
Monday, March 22, 2010
I Met the Walrus
In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced him to do an interview. 38 years later, Levitan, director Josh Raskin and illustrators James Braithwaite and Alex Kurina have collaborated to create an animated short film using the original interview recording as the soundtrack. A spellbinding vessel for Lennon's boundless wit and timeless message, I Met the Walrus was nominated for the 2008 Academy Award for Animated Short and won the 2009 Emmy for 'New Approaches' (making it the first film to win an Emmy on behalf of the internet).
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Broken Bells
Liking Jacob Escobedo's work for Broken Bells...
On Amazon.com: Broken Bells (Deluxe Limited Edition)
On Amazon.com: Broken Bells (Deluxe Limited Edition)
Friday, March 19, 2010
Four Lions
This looks simply brilliant (and controversial)!
Four Lions tells the story of a group of British jihadists who push their abstract dreams of glory to the breaking point. As the wheels fly off, and their competing ideologies clash, what emerges is an emotionally engaging (and entirely plausible) farce. In a storm of razor-sharp verbal jousting and large-scale set pieces, Four Lions is a comic tour de force; it shows that—while terrorism is about ideology—it can also be about idiots.
Based on three years of research and meetings with everyone from imams to ex-mujahedeen—not to mention a wealth of surveillance material from major trials, Four Lions plunges beyond seeing these young men as unfathomably alien or evil. Instead, it portrays them as human beings, who, as we all know, are innately ridiculous.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
The Future is Space
Cool illustration from the very cool Josh Cochran, also available as a Desktop wallpaper from The Desktop Wallpaper Project on Kitsune Noir...
Notter + Vigne
I originally came across the work of Geneva based design duet Notter + Vigne after seeing their awesome Lovecraft Poster (I think on FFFFOUND!). Any ways, delving a little deeper they have some great work on their site.
Notter + Vigne
Notter + Vigne
Grafikcache Is No More
Not sure of the reasons why, but such a shame to lose one of the better design blogs out there. RIP Grafikcache.
The parting message from Dave Smith:
The parting message from Dave Smith:
The Grafikcache has indeed come to an end but a few have asked that I leave the Grafikcache up as an archive.
-
My Flickr account with all the archived images can be found here.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
16 Free Vector Panton Patterns
That's right "Panton" not "Pantone"
For your delectation may I present 16 (free) seamless vector pattern swatches (also as symbols) for Adobe Illustrator CS and higher. Inspired by the work of design legend Verner Panton and great for use as backgrounds, fill patterns, and optical illusions... all in glorious black and white.
Download Now - 16 Free Vector Panton Patterns
iStock Image Sizes
Took me a while to find this information and figure it out, so I though it was worth posting my findings here.
The Story
Basically I have a Nikon D40 which is a 6 megapixel digital camera with a sensor sensitivity of only 200 ISO - it's a great camera but I've recently become a contributer to iStockphoto and have had some files rejected because of artifacting and noise issues:
This file contains artifacting when viewed at full size. This technical issue is commonly created by the quality settings in-camera, in post-processing, in RAW settings or scanner settings. Artifacting can also be introduced into an image from the result of other factors such as excessive level adjustments.
Noise (pixels of varying color where there shouldn't be) is most commonly created by digital cameras, especially in darker shadows or under low-light conditions and exacerbates the compression issues mentioned above. You might want to double-check to make sure that your camera's ISO/ASA setting is at the lowest number (usually 100). In digital cameras, higher numbers (200 or 400) will always result in more noise (just as with film).
Hopefully you can make out the 'noise' in this sample - enlarged by 200% - from a rejected image
As I already shoot in RAW settings and use minimal post-processing in the latest version of Camera Raw I appear to be up against the limits of my camera (that's another story... currently saving for an upgrade). There are solutions to this e.g. blurring sky to remove noise - which tends to turn up in large blocks of colour - but this seems to be a lot of work fiddling in Photoshop for no guarantee of a decent return i.e. time spent vs earnings. Which leads me to another possible solution... resizing the image to decrease the appearance of artifacting and noise. BUT obviously, you want to upload an image with as large a pixel area as possible, so it is available at the most sizes and you don't miss out on money because you resized the image and it was too small.
So what are the iStockphoto size minimums?
• XSmall, 300×400 = 0.12 MP minimum, 1″x 1.5″ @ 72dpi
• Small, 600×800 = 0.48 MP minimum, 2″x 3″ @ 72dpi
• Medium, 1200×1600 = 1.92 MP minimum, prints 4″ x 5″ @ 300dpi
• Large, 1920×2560 = 4.92 MP minimum, prints 6″ x 8″ @ 300dpi
• XLarge, 2800×4200 = 11.7 MP minimum, prints 9″ x 14″ @ 300dpi
• XXLarge, 3300×4900 = 16.2 MP minimum, prints 11″ x 16″ @ 300dpi
• XXXLarge, 3700×5600 = 20.72 MP minimum, prints 12″ x 18″ @ 300dpi
What this means is if you wanted to upload your image at the lowest boundary of the "medium" size it would need to be 1600 pixels x 1200 pixels (BTW: this is also the smallest size accepted by iStockphoto) - what this actually means is that the image pixel area must exceed 1,920,000 pixels (or 1.92 MP) and technically, you could submit an image that was 1 pixel wide x 1,920,000 pixels high! As long as the total image pixel area (i.e. the pixel width multiplied by the pixel height) is 1,920,000 pixels then it meets the minimum size requirements for the "medium" image size.
The Story
Basically I have a Nikon D40 which is a 6 megapixel digital camera with a sensor sensitivity of only 200 ISO - it's a great camera but I've recently become a contributer to iStockphoto and have had some files rejected because of artifacting and noise issues:
This file contains artifacting when viewed at full size. This technical issue is commonly created by the quality settings in-camera, in post-processing, in RAW settings or scanner settings. Artifacting can also be introduced into an image from the result of other factors such as excessive level adjustments.
Noise (pixels of varying color where there shouldn't be) is most commonly created by digital cameras, especially in darker shadows or under low-light conditions and exacerbates the compression issues mentioned above. You might want to double-check to make sure that your camera's ISO/ASA setting is at the lowest number (usually 100). In digital cameras, higher numbers (200 or 400) will always result in more noise (just as with film).
Hopefully you can make out the 'noise' in this sample - enlarged by 200% - from a rejected image
As I already shoot in RAW settings and use minimal post-processing in the latest version of Camera Raw I appear to be up against the limits of my camera (that's another story... currently saving for an upgrade). There are solutions to this e.g. blurring sky to remove noise - which tends to turn up in large blocks of colour - but this seems to be a lot of work fiddling in Photoshop for no guarantee of a decent return i.e. time spent vs earnings. Which leads me to another possible solution... resizing the image to decrease the appearance of artifacting and noise. BUT obviously, you want to upload an image with as large a pixel area as possible, so it is available at the most sizes and you don't miss out on money because you resized the image and it was too small.
So what are the iStockphoto size minimums?
• XSmall, 300×400 = 0.12 MP minimum, 1″x 1.5″ @ 72dpi
• Small, 600×800 = 0.48 MP minimum, 2″x 3″ @ 72dpi
• Medium, 1200×1600 = 1.92 MP minimum, prints 4″ x 5″ @ 300dpi
• Large, 1920×2560 = 4.92 MP minimum, prints 6″ x 8″ @ 300dpi
• XLarge, 2800×4200 = 11.7 MP minimum, prints 9″ x 14″ @ 300dpi
• XXLarge, 3300×4900 = 16.2 MP minimum, prints 11″ x 16″ @ 300dpi
• XXXLarge, 3700×5600 = 20.72 MP minimum, prints 12″ x 18″ @ 300dpi
What this means is if you wanted to upload your image at the lowest boundary of the "medium" size it would need to be 1600 pixels x 1200 pixels (BTW: this is also the smallest size accepted by iStockphoto) - what this actually means is that the image pixel area must exceed 1,920,000 pixels (or 1.92 MP) and technically, you could submit an image that was 1 pixel wide x 1,920,000 pixels high! As long as the total image pixel area (i.e. the pixel width multiplied by the pixel height) is 1,920,000 pixels then it meets the minimum size requirements for the "medium" image size.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
For All Mankind
From 1968 to 1972, those onboard Apollo lunar missions were given 16mm cameras and told to film everything they could, in space, in orbit, and on the surface of the moon. Two decades later, filmmaker Al Reinert was given access to the NASA vaults to create this incredible film set to a Brian Eno soundtrack.
Why Brands are Becoming Media
Brands Must Become Media to Earn Relevance: Article by Brian Solis
March 15 2010
"One of the greatest challenges I encounter today is not the willingness of a brand to engage, but its ability to create. When blueprinting social architecture and the engineering that connects people to other people strategically, enthusiasm and support typically derail when examining the resources and the commitment required to rhythmically produce, distribute, and support content."
Read the full article here »
March 15 2010
"One of the greatest challenges I encounter today is not the willingness of a brand to engage, but its ability to create. When blueprinting social architecture and the engineering that connects people to other people strategically, enthusiasm and support typically derail when examining the resources and the commitment required to rhythmically produce, distribute, and support content."
Read the full article here »
Monday, March 15, 2010
Invertebrata Enigmatica
Ten years worth of entries for the Oklahoma Microscopy Society’s Ugly Bug Contest, which are essentially micrograph mug-shots of bugs.
You're some sort of big, fat, smart-bug, aren't you?
You're some sort of big, fat, smart-bug, aren't you?
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Geometry is Everything
"We want angles, arcs and intervals; we want pattern.
Structure is content, geometry is everything."
Tom McCarthy
Structure is content, geometry is everything."
Tom McCarthy
Friday, March 5, 2010
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