Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Hydrology: Visions in Ice

Hydrology: Visions in Ice - by Douglas Capron

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.


Hydrology: Visions in Ice - by Douglas Capron
Hydrology: Visions in Ice - by Douglas Capron
Hydrology: Visions in Ice - by Douglas Capron

This series was submitted by Douglas Capron for the 2009 Lens Culture International Exposure Awards

Douglas Capron

INF006 - Early Morning 12"

Gorgeous cover for Fontän by INF

Fontän - INF006 - Early Morning 12

| Fontän |

Winterhwila [Vinyl]

Sunday, March 28, 2010

NASA: Shuttle Silhouette

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:

The World of Logotypes

Art Gallery X | Designed by Paul Orvath

The World of Logotypes

J. A. Wilson Display Ltd | Canada

The World of Logotypes

Warsaw Agency | USA | Designed by Anita Soos

The World of Logotypes

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.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Felix's Machines

The Impossible is now Possible

The Impossible Project

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.

The Impossible Project - PX100 Silver Shade / First Flush

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).

Chips Ahoy!

And I thought they were just tasty cookies...



Chips Ahoy!

Friday, March 19, 2010

T[amarind] L[ithograph] #6

T[amarind] L[ithograph] #6 by Jack Tworkov

T[amarind] L[ithograph] #6 by Jack Tworkov

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.


Four Lions

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...

The Future is Space from Josh Cochran

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 + VigneNotter + Vigne
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.

Grafikcache

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.

Amateur



by Alvaro Posadas -- music: Black To Comm 'Amateur' Alphabet 1968 2009

Amateur by Alvaro Posadas
Amateur by Alvaro Posadas
Amateur by Alvaro Posadas

Amateur Flickr Set

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

16 Free Vector Panton Patterns

16 Free Monochrome Panton Patterns by Martin Isaac

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

Monochrome Panton Pattern

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).


blue noise
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 »

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.

Ugly Bug - Sphynx Moth

You're some sort of big, fat, smart-bug, aren't you?

Ugly Bug - Boll Weevil
Ugly Bug - Scarab Beetle

Sunday, March 14, 2010

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