Tim Lehmacher
Friday, February 6th, 2009 by Bohoe
via Cooney Fine Art
Posts Tagged ‘interesting’
Focal-plane Shutter
Wednesday, January 28th, 2009 by BohoeWhat do these two images have in common?
‘Car Trip, Papa at 80 kilometers an hour’, Jacques-Henri Lartigue, 1913.
‘Missing Person Search & Recovery’, by Robin Blandford.
Ok, the title of the post is a bit of a giveaway, but the answer is the shutter. Well, this is technically incorrect, as the photo of the helicopter was taken with a mobile phone, a Blackberry Bold, and such cameras do not have a shutter – at least not that I know. So then, how is it possible to get such an effect?
Most european helicopters main rotors rotate clockwise, but the one in Robin’s photo rotate anti-clockwise, as you could guess by the shape of the blade. If it rotated clockwise, the blades would be ‘C’ shapped. Thanks to this you can tell how does his mobile’s camera records, line by line, from top to bottom, left to right. Interesting.
Lartigue used a Ica Reflex for 3 1/2 x 4 3/4 inch glass negatives, with a Zeiss Tessar 1:4.5 150mm objective. This camera had a top mounted focusing screen, and the peculiarity of sporting a horizontal focal-plane shutter, which would explain the elliptical form of the wheels. Lartigue followed the motion with the camera, thus the sharp figure of the car and the drivers against the blurred background.
“Cameras with this type of focal-plane shutters also produce image distortion when photographing fast moving objects or panning rapidly. Depending on the direction of travel, the recorded image can be seen to be elongated if motion is in the direction of the shutter blades, or compressed if travelling in the opposite direction to the shutter blades”, says Wikipedia
As in the case of Lartigue’s image, the distortion on the Blackberry’s image creates a fascinating effect. So we can see that the digital world can still yield some beautiful analog-like aberrations. Would be an interesting test to shot a speeding sports car with the Blackberry…
Demotix: a virtual agent for citizen journalists
Sunday, January 25th, 2009 by BohoeDemotix is a citizen-journalism website and photo agency.
Imagine a community driven news agency that allows you to share your story, in photos or videos, and market it to the mainstream media. That is Demotix.
“Demotix was founded with two principles at its heart – the freedom of speech and the freedom to know. Its objective is nothing if not ambitious – to rescue journalism and promote free expression by connecting independent journalists with the traditional media.”
Basic, non-exclusive rights to your photos will sell for anything between $150 and $3,000 USD. Non-exclusive rights to your video: $500-1,000/minute. Exclusive rights: whatever we can get. And some photos and videos can go for $100,000s. In all cases, you get exactly 50% and you retain the copyright.
STOP SELLING STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY AND START SELLING YOUR TRUTH
Have a look at their showcase:
via Demotix
The Holographic Principle
Sunday, January 18th, 2009 by Bohoe
We are all living in a giant cosmic hologram. I told you. And it is not digital, it is analog. I recommend you to read this article if you have a minute or two. Otherwise, see if this excerpts motivate you to do so.
Our world may be a giant hologram
“Our everyday experience might itself be a holographic projection of physical processes that take place on a distant, 2D surface”
“If space-time is a grainy hologram, then you can think of the universe as a sphere whose outer surface is papered in Planck length-sized squares, each containing one bit of information. The holographic principle says that the amount of information papering the outside must match the number of bits contained inside the volume of the universe.”
“Since the volume of the spherical universe is much bigger than its outer surface, how could this be true? Hogan realised that in order to have the same number of bits inside the universe as on the boundary, the world inside must be made up of grains bigger than the Planck length. Or, to put it another way, a holographic universe is blurry.”
“If you lived inside a hologram, you could tell by measuring the blurring,”
“Confirming the holographic principle would be a big help to researchers trying to unite quantum mechanics and Einstein’s theory of gravity. Today the most popular approach to quantum gravity is string theory, which researchers hope could describe happenings in the universe at the most fundamental level. But it is not the only show in town. “Holographic space-time is used in certain approaches to quantising gravity that have a strong connection to string theory,” says Cramer. “Consequently, some quantum gravity theories might be falsified and others reinforced.”
“Hogan agrees that if the holographic principle is confirmed, it rules out all approaches to quantum gravity that do not incorporate the holographic principle. Conversely, it would be a boost for those that do – including some derived from string theory and something called matrix theory. “Ultimately, we may have our first indication of how space-time emerges out of quantum theory.” As serendipitous discoveries go, it’s hard to get more ground-breaking than that.”
via NewScientist
Twitter got there first
Friday, January 16th, 2009 by Bohoe“There’s a plane in the Hudson. I’m on the ferry going to pick up the people. Crazy.”
Janis Krums was the first person to offer an image and a commentary of the incident, through TwitPic.
Update: Some great compilations of various reports from kottke.org ‘Hudson River plane crash’, including a terrifying video of a similar incident, and in Flickr. On other media:
On the press:
EL PAIS: A salvo los 153 ocupantes de un avión que cayó en el rio Hudson de Nueva York
LA TIMES: All safe after US Airways jet goes down in New York’s Hudson River
The Guardian: Plane crashes in Hudson river in New York
There is more in Google if you care to search.
And guess what, Once again, Twitter proves its worth as it happened with the Mumbai terror attacks
That is the real NEW in this event: Twitter is worth. It is an incredible tool for communicating as it happens.
You just can not be a photographer, a journalist, an academic, or just a citizen, and not know about Twitter.
Objectified
Friday, January 16th, 2009 by BohoeA peek at the upcoming design documentary “Objectified”, by Gary Hustwit, the director of “Helvetica”. The trailer features the voices of Jonathan Ive, Andrew Blauvelt, Marc Newson, and Karim Rashid. The song is “I Like Van Halen Because My Sister Says They Are Cool” by El Ten Eleven.
Objectified premieres at film festivals and events worldwide starting this March, more info here:http://www.objectifiedfilm.com
About the film
Objectified is a feature-length independent documentary about industrial design. It’s a look at the creativity at work behind everything from toothbrushes to tech gadgets. It’s about the people who re-examine, re-evaluate and re-invent our manufactured environment on a daily basis. It’s about personal expression, identity, consumerism, and sustainability. It’s about our relationship to mass-produced objects and, by extension, the people who design them.
Through vérité footage and in-depth conversations, the film documents the creative processes of some of the world’s most influential designers, and looks at how the things they make impact our lives. What can we learn about who we are, and who we want to be, from the objects with which we surround ourselves?
Read director Gary Hustwit’s post about the film.
For Which It Stands: Afghanistan, an accordion journey.
Friday, January 16th, 2009 by Bohoevia GlobalPost
A Cuban Timeline 1960 – 2008
Saturday, January 10th, 2009 by Bohoe
After an ill-fated insurgency against the Cuban government in 1953, in which he was nearly killed, Fidel Castro returned via the Cuban Revolution to become one of the most notable political figures of the 20th century. A vociferous opponent of the United States, a staunch critic of the capitalist model, and an oft-cited prophet of the Latin American Left, Mr. Castro’s legacy will likely inspire mixed feelings of admiration, fear, and disdain.
Other interesting galleries:
By Magnum Photographers, produced by Magnum in Motion
GPS Points of Interest
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008 by BohoeIf you, as a geek that I am, have a GPS device, you may find useful ‘The European Speed Camera Database’ SCDB.info – the most up-to-date speed camera database in Europe for your GPS. Better stay informed!
Jeff Bark
Tuesday, December 4th, 2007 by Bohoe
The much-anticipated new series of work by Jeff Bark, Woodpecker, is full of dark romanticism. Under the cover of a manufactured night, his young subjects indulge in moments of introspection and abandon, echoing Bark’s own memories of his near adulthood. A short film accompanies the photographs.
The subjects of Bark’s previous series, exhibited at Michael Hoppen Contemporary in 2006, were captured in moments of self-contained abandon in formally constructed urban interiors. In Woodpecker, his subjects are pictured in naturalistic outdoor tableaux, sometimes interacting in couples or groups but always with the suggestion an internal isolation. The rich detail, vivid self-contained illumination and the complexity of the constructed surroundings in these photographs draw the viewer into the dense pictorial allegory.
Occupying a space between the classical artistic categories of photography, painting and film – Bark moves against the lure of instantaneous photography. The collaborations, castings, set construction (the swamp took one month to sculpt in a Brooklyn studio) and illusionary narrative in the series bring the act of photo taking closer towards the highly considered processes of both the Old Master tableau and the younger art of cinema. Nothing is built by Bark beyond the edge of the frame and his subjects are snatched out of real time, so the audience is viewing an enactment, a constructed diorama rather than reality. Held together in a film, cinematically constructed, dissected and reassembled – the works can be looked at as individually structurally significant, and also as part of a larger extended narrative.
In these photographs, scenes of dream-like concoctions coexist with unembellished realism. The muted moonlit tones soften the human forms and the watery illumination lends them the appearance of otherworldly creatures indulging in their private fictions, desires and escape. The images are heavy with symbolism: the swamp, at the fringe of urban sprawl is a no mans land between civilization and the wilderness: the swan, recalling the erotic motif of ‘Leda and the swan’ but also signifying, light, self-transformation and the higher self. On first glance, the location is a rural idyll but on closer inspection urban debris is revealed – a pram, crates, tyres, mattresses, telephone wires, bed frames and a car are strewn amongst the rotting landscape. The corruption of the scenery is mirrored by the corruption of the youth – drugs, disillusionment, violence and sexual behavior, referencing Eric Fischl and his depictions of psychosexual malaise of American prosperity.
Jeff Bark (born 1963) lives and works in New York. Woodpecker is his second exhibition at Michael Hoppen Contemporary.
