Want: A 220 Degree View.

It weighs over 11 pounds, is considerably larger than your average DSLR camera, and (as PetaPixel pointed out) can see behind itself.  This rare Nikon lens was recently available on eBay, and sold for US$34,020.  it’s fish-eye, 220 degree view was specifically built for scientific and industrial work to shoot constricted areas.  More information here.

Another find from the excellent PetaPixel site is The Geotaggers World Atlas by Eric Fischer.  Using statistics from Flickr and Picasa, maps can be viewed with the number of photos taken and tagged in various areas.  The top 100 locations are ranked from #1 New York, Tokyo, London, through to the Grand Canyon (#100).

P365: A photo a day.

Starting today, I am embarking on a new challenge: One photo every day for an entire year.

Self-imposed rules:
1) A new photo must be taken every day (ie: no photo’s from previous days allowed).
2) Photos can be manipulated/enhanced.
3) Photos do not have to be uploaded each day, but there must be an update to the collection at least once per week, filling in all missing days.
4) If a day is missed, the counter resets.

I’ll be storing the photos here (click Project 365).

Weekly Wrap: Fire & Smoke.

Short and sweet (unlike the actual week)… new photos added to various galleries, available for viewing here. ¶ Long live vinyl! Record store day took place on April 17th; see the official site. ¶ The world’s first street art disaster movie: Banksy’s movie starts screening over the next few weeks in a small number of theatres in the USA, hopefully a wider (worldwide?) release soon. ¶ Is anyone else worried about the increased number of natural disasters lately? Numerous earthquakes, Iceland’s volcanic eruptions cripple air travel across the UK (currently in it’s 4th consecutive day), and massive fireballs in the sky. Is the end near?

Musically: re-visiting Sven Weisemann’s Xine project.  Xine Rising is modern classical / ambient / house music to zone out to. ¶ Hollie Smith at Sale Street on Wednesday was an interesting event; read more here ¶ Looking forward to The Black Dog album “Music For Real Airports”.  Interactive artist Human have created the following teaser: (more…)

Photo lesson three.

Depth of Field: The area in front of and behind a focused subject in which the photographed image appears sharp.  Photo lesson 3 on March 1st went through some of the details on the ways to use DOF to enhance photos – either by ensuring all objects are clear, or focusing the clarity on one specific area while using the rest of the photo as atmosphere.
With that, I head into Ponsonby to play.

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Bricked.

Savage Arrow has created some excellent Lego interpretations of iconic album covers, including Grace Jones, De La Soul, Dizzee Rascal, Madness, Michael Jackson and Pet Shop Boys.  View them here.

The original Grace Jones cover for “Island Life” is an impressive piece of work by Jean Paul Goude who “photoshopped” before Photoshop even existed – stitching together several photos together to create the arabesque pose that you see below. (more…)

Photo lesson two.

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Photo Lesson One.

I’m going back to school to learn about apertures, shutter speeds and exposure.

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