A look inside the B&H conveyor system, the efficient NYC system that takes items you pick up in one part of the store directly to the checkout for you.
Archive for the ‘Photographics’ Category
Stereotype Packaging & Tissue Series
February 3, 2012
Stereotype Packaging via Daizi Zheng
Tissue, via Lisa Nilsson. Anatomical cross sections of the human body using rolled pieces of Japanese mulberry paper.
Fluid Fishbones: Viscous Liquid Sheet Atomisation
February 2, 2012
Two liquid jets of sugar syrup at a low rate of flow (left) and high rate of flow (right).
Technical specifications:
Camera: Sony Alpha 700
Lens: 100mm Macro
Flash Duration: 125micro seconds
The Archive of Modern Conflict
January 31, 2012
The Archive of Modern Conflict is a collection of oddities (mostly photographic) pulled together from diverse sources by a very clever group of quirky collectors in the UK. As the subject areas of the collection expand, they intertwine to reveal unexpected stories about the nature of our world.
Amc2 is a brand new journal that digs into the collection to present a not-quite-random confluence of bizarre artifacts.
For example, Issue 1 features time travel, cranio-restorative surgery, Belgian dog carts, hand-painted Indian portraits, cake recipes, masked wrestling, early French pornography, illustrated promotional cards for cigarettes, and much more.
What’s so great about the people behind this ever-growing eclectic collection, is that they allow the reader to discover threads of connections between, say, hand-tinted Indian portraits from the early 1900s and the garish colors of Bollywood movie posters and something as esoteric as a Rock Hudson paper doll kit with a variety of kitschy hand-colored outfits for that movie star from the 1950s and 1960s.
If you like to celebrate odd and beautiful relics of the recent past, we heartily recommend this new journal, as well as almost every other book title they publish.
Written by Jim Casper. Via Lensculture
Silver gelatin print with hand-tinting and overpainting, India, c1940.
Six Million Pilgrims, The Road to Tepeyac
January 27, 2012
Alinka Echeverría: “Six Million Pilgrims (2009) is a photographic typology of the backs of three hundred Mexican Catholic pilgrims on their journey to the
Basilica de Guadalupe in Mexico City. This yearly pilgrimage, undertaken by approximately six million people every year takes place on the anniversary of the five apparitions of the Virgin of Guadalupe between the 9th and 12th December 1531 to the indigenous man Juan Diego in Tepeyac, the sacred place of the Aztec goddess Tonantzin. The myth of the apparitions marks a turning point in the spiritual conquest of native Mexicans by the Spanish and lead to the amalgamation of Tonantzin and the Virgin Mary. This is the origin of the devotion of Mexicans to the Virgin of Guadalupe. Since the spiritual conquest of Mexico (arguably one of the most important legacies of the colonial period), the image of the Virgin has been of central importance in the history of Mexico. Her image was used by political leaders as a symbol of faith and freedom during the Independence movement in 1810, and again during the Revolution a century later.
In 2010 the Virgen de Guadalupe continues to be the center piece of our cosmology as Mexicans. This work is an observation of her role in contemporary visual culture and the vast layers of symbolism transmitted through her iconic image. I am also interested in the pilgrimage as a socio-political and cultural phenomenon and in the psychological and emotional relationship that each individual has with the Virgin. The work is inspired by the Becher tradition of systematic documentation. I chose to photograph the pilgrims that are carrying their virgin, which is usually hanging in their home. They take their paintings, sculptures, posters or cloaks of the Virgen to the Basicila to be blessed and to give thanks. Each portrait was taken separately, then ‘cut out’ and mounted onto a plain background. This decontextualization is intended to focus our attention on the individual. It also functions as a means to be able to then recombine it with the other hundreds of pilgrims. When placed back into the series the image has a direct relationship to the other portraits
rather than with the rest of the elements originally in the image. The large number of portraits creates a visual maze of similarity and difference, perhaps metaphoric of Mexican identity and makes us imagine the millions of pilgrims that visit the Basilica every year.”
www.alinkaecheverria.com
Korongo Door
January 26, 2012
There is a circular hole in the wall, about 30-40 cm diameter and perforated at 1 meter above the ground. A man enters through the hole in the wall and a man (apparently the same individual) exits again through the same hole. His mate is standing right next to the hole and seems to be waiting for him. Yesterday I came across these pictures again. The enigmatic hole is the entrance to a room. It is a door that keeps you fit, elastic and flexible, if you want to discover what there is at the other side of the wall. Its dimension relies on the utmost reduction of a bending human body. And the erotic experience of penetrating it is intimately connected both to the materiality of the hole and the earthen texture of the wall. It is an intuitive understanding of a house as the shelter of a woman’s uterus. It requires thinking where to place first a leg, an arm, then a hand and a foot. But even if it looks like a perforation, as if material had been removed out of the massive surface, the hole was indeed already there before the wall was built all around it. It is incredibly mysterious when our iconic idea of a rectangular door mutates and becomes something else that defines a new type of threshold.
Below there is another door of Korongo houses that also fascinates me: the oversized threshold, shaped as a human-size keyhole. One discovers its meaningfulness after knowing that it lets villagers access the room while carrying two large jars with drinking water hanging from a stick over their shoulders.
George Rodger captured in his photographs the everyday lives of the Nuba people in Sudan in late 1940s, their houses, their wrestling combats with sharp-edge bracelets, and their aesthetic scars that adorn their bodies.
[photos by George Rodger in Village of the Nubas. Phaidon 1999]
The Invisible Mother
January 24, 2012
This was a practice where the mother, often disguised or hiding, often under a spread, holds her baby tightly for the photographer to insure a sharply focused image.’
- The Hidden Mother Via Retronaut
Famous Photographers Pose With Their Most Iconic Images by Tim Mantoani
January 23, 2012
Jeff Widener holds his photo of Tank Man in Tienanmen Square from 1989.
Steve McCurry holds his 1984 photo of a young woman from Peshawar, Pakistan. “I looked for this girl for 17 years and finally found her in 2002. Her name is Sharbat Gula.”
Neil Leifer holds his photo, Ali vs. Liston, which he took on May 25, 1965 in Lewiston, Maine.
The Tank Man of Tienanmen Square. Muhammad Ali standing over Sonny Liston in victory. The portrait of the Afghan Girl on the cover of National Geographic. Many of us can automatically recall these photos in our heads, but far fewer can name the photographers who took them. Even fewer know what those photographers look like.
Tim Mantoani hopes to change that by taking portraits of famous photographers holding their most iconic or favorite photos in his new book Behind Photographs: Archiving Photographic Legends. Mantoani has shot over 150 of these portraits in the last five years, most of which are contained in the book.
“I felt like there was kind of this void,” says Mantoani. “There were all these anonymous photographers out there who have not been given enough credit.”
At a time when everyone has a camera in their pocket and millions, if not billions of photos are flying around the internet each day, Mantoani wants to help people understand that iconic photos don’t just happen. They are the product of people who devote their entire lives to photography. Giving these people a face, he says, helps do that.
Text and Photos cia Wired. See +++ HERE
OrcaM is new kid on block for 3-D data capture
January 21, 2012
Call it automated photograph station, seven-camera system, 3-D model showcase, or digital reconstruction tool. OrcaM is being described as all these things. Whatever the tag, the “OrcaM” name stands for Orbital Camera System, according to its Germany-based developers NEK GmbH. A video demo was making the rounds of web gadget blogs and news sites this week as a camera system to watch.
The OrcaM system involves a large sphere, likened by one viewer as a giant maw, inside which one places the desired object for 3-D scanning. Once the object is placed inside, the sphere is sealed shut and the seven cameras and lights go to work. The cameras take simultaneous high-definition photos of the object at different angles. Serving to define the object’s geometry, various combinations of lights illuminate the object differently for every shot, capturing the finest details. After the photo processing, computer processing of the image creates the 3-D model. Observers say the end result is a highly impressive agreement of the real object.
This video demonstrates the OrcaM 3D reconstruction system, developed in the context of a project of the department Augmented Vision of DFKI (http://av.dfki.de)
For OrcaM Reconstruction Sequences (“Female Torso” Wilhelm Lembruck) see:
http://youtu.be/h320lM5DYlY
In this video it is shown how the hardware is opened to insert an object to be reconstructed. Currently the maximum size of objects is limited to 80cm diameter and a weight of approximately 100kg.
After closing the sphere again the acquisition process is fully automatic, though tuneable to account for complicated object geometries. Please note that the acquisition process has been extremely condensed and only drafts some steps necessary to acquire the respective information for a single camera position. I.e. horizontal and vertical fringe projection, directed illumination with light(patches), rotation of the carrier, etc. After the acquisition process the reconstruction of the object is computed fully automatic. A rendered result of the vase can be found at the end of the video. Note first that the rendering has been performed using a real world high-resolution HDR environment, which is reflecting in the vase and which introduces a pretty high amount of blue sky color to the rendering. Secondly note that the reconstructed vase is NOT symmetric, which is in perfect agreement with the original.
Text and Images Via Physorg
The Flesh Love series: Couples vacuum-packed together
January 17, 2012
Introducing Cowbird
January 11, 2012
According to Cowbird:
Cowbird is a small community of storytellers, focused on a deeper, longer-lasting, more personal kind of storytelling than you’re likely to find anywhere else on the Web.
Cowbird allows you to keep a beautiful audio-visual diary of your life, and to collaborate with others in documenting the overarching “sagas” that shape our world today. Sagas are themes and events that touch millions of live and shape the human story.
Our short-term goal is to pioneer a new form of participatory journalism, grounded in the simple human stories behind major news events. Our long-term goal is to build a public library of human experience, so the knowledge and wisdom we accumulate as individuals may live on as part of the the commons, available for this and future generations to look to for guidance.
Know more at Cowbird
Adou
January 9, 2012
“Adou’s photographs of the Yi ethnic minority go beyond documenting the realities of life on Sichuan’s Da Liang Mountain. The landscapes and portraits in the series “Samalada” are more like self-portraits, reflections of the self and meditations on life and death, past and present. Adou’s use of expired rolls of film creates mottled textures and anomalies, which evoke a melancholic nostalgia for the past. These works do not speak for, or explain the situation of the people depicted, but rather become part of the artist’s visual language for self-expression.
Adou was born in Mianyang, Sichuan Province and graduated from the Fine Arts Department of Sichuan Aba Normal College. He has worked as a Design and Creative Director in advertising, and currently lives and works in Chengdu, Sichuan Province.” (Text by Three Shadows Centre)
Via The F Blog
The chronicles of a commercial fisherman called Corey Arnold
January 9, 2012
Corey is a photographer and Alaskan commercial fisherman. From 2003-2010 he worked as a deckhand on the Bering Sea crabber f/v Rollo and more recently, runs a wild salmon gillnetting operation in Bristol Bay, Alaska. The off season is filled with travel, gallery exhibitions, magazine and ad photography assignments mixed with a bit of backyard gardening, cat maintenance, and skateboarding in Portland, Oregon.
He is currently working on a life long project entitled FISH-WORK which chronicles the commercial fishing lifestyle throughout the world. In 2010, a PEW foundation commission led to the Fish-Work Europe series, photographing aboard fishing vessels in eight European countries. in 2005, he received an American Scandinavian Foundation grant to photograph the fishermen and whalers of Northern Norway. Corey was recently nominated for the Aperture West Book Prize and the Santa Fe Prize for Photography, and named one of PDNs 30 for 2009. His pictures have been featured in The Paris Review, Esquire, Whitewall, Artweek, Outside, American Photo, Juxtapoz and many others
Text from his website. http://www.coreyfishes.com/
Grassroots Cartography with Ballons and Kites
January 5, 2012
Purpose
This tool is being developed to provide a low cost, easy to use, and a safe method for making aerial image maps. Over the last two years, we’ve build a global community of mappers who are engaged in discussion around the development and use of these tools. Normally aerial image maps are made from satellites and airplanes. This activity introduces easy methods for making on-demand image maps. Our community is particularly interested in applying this to civic and environmental issues.
Applications and example uses
Residents of the Gulf Coast are using balloons and kites to produce their own aerial imagery of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill… documentation that will be essential for environmental and legal use in coming years. We believe in complete open access to spill imagery and are releasing all imagery from the oil spill mapping project into the public domain. Browse maps and data from the Gulf Coast in the Public Laboratory Archive
How to make your own
at least 1000 ft of string on a spool
a cheap digital camera with “continuous mode”
a balloon or kite
a rubber band
tape & scissors
leather or cloth gloves
How to use it
The illustrated guide includes lots of tips for a successful flight; print it and bring it with you!
Be sure to review the Balloon Mapping Regulations for the US, or the equivalent wherever you are planning to map.
Try to launch your balloon to at least 1000 ft for a good compromise of high resolution vs. large area.
Stay away from power lines, airports, and traffic.
Source: Public Laboratory. More info and download material HERE
An example without the mapping: iPad Survives 100,000+ Foot Fall From Space Near Area 51.
Busy Bees Use Flower Petals For Nest Wallpaper
January 5, 2012When we think of bee nests, we often think of a giant hive, buzzing with social activity, worker bees and honey. But scientists recently discovered a rare, solitary type of bee that makes tiny nests by plastering together flower petals.
The O. avoseta bee builds a tiny nest about a half-inch long using petals from the flower Onobrychis viciifolia. Each nest usually houses a single egg.
One mother bee may make around 10 nests, often nestling the single-cell berths near each other.
A bee closely related to O. avoseta bites off a flower petal with its mandibles.
Peeling back the outer layer of flower petals reveals the paper-thin mud layer.
The mother bee lays a single egg in the flowery bower, right on top of a nutritious deposit of nectar and pollen.
Via NPR. Images Jerome Rozen/American Museum of Natural History.
Woolyscapes by Eszter Burghardt
January 2, 2012
Eszter Burghardt is a Canadian-Hungarian artist based in Vancouver BC, Canada. She has been taking part in international artist residencies in Iceland since graduating with a BFA from Emily Carr University in 2001. As an interdisciplinary artist her paintings have been exhibited across Canada and in the USA. Her photographic and sculptural work began to grow in 2009 after completing an artist’s residency in Iceland. Her work has been published and exhibited across Canada and she was selected as a winner for the Magenta Foundation’s Flash Forward Festival in 2010. She is represented by the Bau-Xi Gallery and the Herringer Kiss Gallery.
Waterscapes by Ákos Major
January 2, 2012
Originally from Hungary, Ákos Major currently lives in Vienna. There he works as a freelance photographer and graphic designer. The series ‘Waterscapes’ was taken during his travels in Iceland, Austria, Germany, France, and Scotland,
Martian sunrise
January 1, 2012
A Martian sunrise was captured in this Viking 2 Lander picture taken June 14, 1978, at the spacecraft’s Utopia Planitia landing site. The data composing this image were acquired just as the Sun peaked over the horizon on the Lander’s 631st sol (Martian solar day). Pictures taken at dawn (or dusk) are quite dark except where the sky is brightened above the Sun’s position. The glow in the sky results as light from the Sun is scattered and preferentially absorbed by tiny particles of dust and ice in the atmosphere. When the Viking cameras are calibrated for darker scenes, the “sky glow” tends to saturate their sensitivity and produce the bright regions seen here. The “banding” and color separation effects are also artifacts, rather than real features, and are introduced because the cameras are not able to record continuous gradations of light. The cameras must represent such gradations in steps (bands) of brightness and color, and the process sometimes produces some “false” colors within the bands. The scattering of light closest to the Sun’s position tends to enhance blue wavelengths. The narrowing sky glow nearer the horizon above the Sun’s position occurs as a result of light extinction. At that elevation, the optical path of sunlight through the atmosphere is at its longest penetration angle, and a substantial portion of the light is simply prevented from reaching the cameras by the dust, ice particles and other material in its way.
NASA’s Langley Research Center was the primary and extended mission manager; JPL assumed management for continued mission operations.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL
Should artists be activists? Art & Activism in the Age of Globalization
December 30, 2011
Art & Activism in the Age of Globalization: Reflect No. 8, edited by Lieven de Cauter, Ruben de Roo and Karel Vanhaesebrouck (on amazon USA and UK.)
NAI Publishers says: Should artists be activists? Is activist art one of an artist’s primary responsibilities or a pointless sideshow on the fringes of serious politics? The philosopher, writer and art historian Lieven de Cauter, Ruben de Roo and Karel Vanhaesebrouck explore this theme in collaboration with other thinkers and doers in his new book Art and Activism in the Age of Globalization.
In a time of globalization, populism, hypercapitalism, migration, War on Terror, and global warming, artistic engagement is vital. Art and Activism in the Age of Globalization takes the measure of contemporary activist art. What is the role of art and activism in the polarized, populist society of the spectacle? Art & Activism examines both the criticism of engagement as a mere pose and the need for cultural activism in today’s society. Urban activism and activism by anonymous networks are also investigated. Special attention is devoted to the effects of the War on Terror on activism in practice. The book concludes with a theoretical framework for contemporary activism and an impassioned plea for genuinely political art.
Lieven de Cauter, Ruben De Roo and Karel Vanhaesebrouck co-edited Art and Activism in the Age of Globalization. Contributors include BAVO, Rosi Braidotti, Pippo Delbono, Pascal Gielen, Brian Holmes André Gattolin & Thierry Lefebvre, Rudi Laermans, Dieter Lesage and Jennifer Flores Sternad.
Via NAI Publishers
Time Lapse Photographs of Gold Fireflies in Japan
December 30, 2011
Gold Fireflies time lapse photographs taken in various locations around Maniwa and Okayama Prefecture in Japan between 2008-2011. HERE
Industrial Microscopy by The New Honey Shade
December 27, 2011
Another gem by The New Honey Shade that will send you into a world where micro-explorers follow the chemical trails of rusty nano-creatures that slide on magnetic tapes. Here you will oscillate from the ocular to the auditory, and from extrospection to introspection. By producing this collection of ambrosial sounds, Mark Kuykendall respectfully rescues a forgotten document and turns it into a widely available experience for you to listen. In doing so, he remind us of the sometimes foolishly disregarded work of independent researchers around the world who remain hidden as treasures ready to be found.
The New Honey Shade: ‘This album is based on and dedicated to the work of E.D Anderson and his hand-bound book “Industrial Microscopy.” The book was found at his estate sale in Tulsa, OK. The book contains over 200 photographs. E. D. had photographed everything from fibers & fabrics, textiles & weaves, rocks & plants, animal hair & animal flesh all under a microscope at 400X with an old 35mm camera. Each musical piece is a dedication to a particular image he shot.
Download the album and receive a free hidden track entitled, “Skyward Sea Stains.” Also receive 13 hi res scanned photographs shot by Mr Anderson on his 35mm through his microscope in 1959. Each song is titled accordingly after a specific image.’
Bioluminescence and Weather Phenomena
December 26, 2011
Bioluminescent algae Noctiluca Scintillans at Camp Cooinda on the Gippsland Lakes. See +++ HERE
Winners of the National Geographic Photo Contest 2011
December 24, 2011After receiving more than 20,000 photo submissions from over 130 countries, the National Geographic Photo Contest 2011 concluded last month and the judging began.
“Cyber Monsoon”, honorable mention in Places category. A torrential monsoon rain in Bhaktapur, Nepal. (© Anuar Patjane)
Beluga whales in the arctic having fun. Viewers’ Choice winner in the Nature category. (© Dafna Ben Nun)
See +++ HERE
New Magnetic Bacteria
December 23, 2011
Magnetotactic bacterium from the Chiemsee, Bavaria, Germany (Biomagnetism Group, University of Munich). Dark blobs are sulfur granules.
S.E. Gould: I’ve mentioned magnetic bacteria a couple of times now, so I got quite excited when Lucas Brouwers alerted me to a recent paper in Science (ref below) that explored a whole new group of magnetic bacteria. As I’ve covered before, these magnetotactic bacteria contain small nanoparticles of magnetic material which allow them to swim along magnetic field lines.
It isn’t just one clear species of bacteria that has magnetotactic ability, rather there are several different groups of bacteria of different shapes and sizes. Some of these are large multicellular bacterial groups, while others are single-celled large and rod-shaped. It is these large rod-shaped bacteria that the paper has been exploring, putting together a comprehensive description of them as a group. Continue HERE
Images of different species of magnetotactic bacteria HERE
Carved Biblio-Topographies by Guy Laramee
December 22, 2011
In his artist statement Guy Laramee says:
“The erosion of cultures – and of “culture” as a whole – is the theme that runs through the last 25 years of my artistic practice. Cultures arise, become obsolete, and are replaced by new ones. With the vanishing of cultures, some people are displaced and destroyed. We are currently told that the paper book is bound to die. The library, as a place, is finished. One might say: so what? Do we really believe that “new technologies” will change anything concerning our existential dilemma, our human condition? And even if we could change the content of all the books on earth, would this change anything in relation to the domination of analytical knowledge over intuitive knowledge? What is it in ourselves that insists on grabbing, on casting the flow of experience into concepts ?
When I was younger, I was very upset with the ideologies of progress. I wanted to destroy them by showing that we are still primitives. I had the profound intuition that as a species, we had not evolved that much. Now I see that our belief in progress stems from our fascination with the content of consciousness. Despite appearances, our current obsession for changing the forms in which we access culture is but a manifestation of this fascination.
My work, in 3D as well as in painting, originates from the very idea that ultimate knowledge could very well be an erosion instead of an accumulation. The title of one of my pieces is “ All Ideas Look Alike”. Contemporary art seems to have forgotten that there is an exterior to the intellect. I want to examine thinking, not only “What” we think, but “That” we think.
So I carve landscapes out of books and I paint Romantic landscapes. Mountains of disused knowledge return to what they really are: mountains. They erode a bit more and they become hills. Then they flatten and become fields where apparently nothing is happening. Piles of obsolete encyclopedias return to that which does not need to say anything, that which simply IS. Fogs and clouds erase everything we know, everything we think we are.
After 30 years of practice, the only thing I still wish my art to do is this: To project us into this thick Cloud of Unknowing.”
Photos of soldiers before, during and after Afghanistan
December 19, 2011
Jim Casper: “How do the faces of soldiers change — before, during, and then after, war? Can we detect profound or subtle psychological shifts just by looking at their portraits?
This is precisely the challenge that Claire Felicie presents with her series of triptych portraits of marines of the 13th infantry company of the Royal Netherlands Marine Corps. The series, Here are the Young Men (Marked), shows close-cropped portraits of the Dutch marines before, during and after they were deployed to Uruzgan, Afghanistan in 2009-2010.
Without doubt, every viewer will project a bit of himself or herself into the readings of these photographs. No matter what conclusions you draw, the images are compelling.”
Via Lens Culture
The vacuum of evidence for pre-4th century Christianity By John, on March 6th, 2011
December 19, 2011
History Hunters International: In the year since we began publishing our studies on divine men in Classical Antiquity, there have been developments in both our thinking and in both public and scholarly responses. New terms such as panhellenism and chrestic have appeared in order to describe the archaeology being examined. Numerous entries in Wikipedia have been revised (by others, always) to account for these developments and discussions initiated in other forums.
Perhaps the most surprising discovery is somewhat akin to the famous Holmesian episode in which the dog didn’t bark in the night.
Not a single artefact of any medium – including textual – and dated reliably before the fourth century can be unambiguously identified as Christian. This is the most notable result of our archaeological survey of sites, inscriptions, libraries, collections and so on from the Indus River to the Nile and north to Britain.
Taking into account the vast volume of scholarly works claiming expert opinion for the exact opposite point of view, let me clarify terms.
There is, of course, much archaeology interpreted commonly as Christian. This does not contradict the bald statement above. The difference lies between data that spells out Christian clearly and unambiguously, and that which expert opinion claims to look as though it is Christian.
There are very many texts claimed to be Christian and composed before the fourth century, though the documents themselves are not dated to that early period. We have found no text before the fourth century which mentions either Jesus Christ, or the term ‘Christian’. Continue HERE
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