The Economist is in hot water after running an extremely edited photograph of President Obama on a Louisiana beach. The cover photo shows Obama alone on the beach. But the original photo, taken by Reuters photographer Larry Downing, shows that Obama was, in fact, not alone at all.
The altered image crops out Admiral Thad W. Allen of the Coast Guard, but also goes an extra step to completely omit the presence of Charlotte Randolph, a Louisiana parish president (perhaps with Photoshop CS5′s content-aware fill).
This is a huge problem because The Economist’s omissions entirely change the tone of the image in order to make Obama appear alone, hanging his head, when in fact he is likely looking down at the beach while in conversation with the two people next to him. Additionally, according to journalism ethics, news photos should not be altered, especially to this extent.
Street artist BLU released a breathtaking new stop-motion graffiti video called “Big Bang Big Boom.” It’s a fascinating artistic piece on the beginning, and potential end to life on Earth. Blu also created MUTO, another wall animation in the same way, using public walls and street objects as an enormous canvas.
It’s pretty amazing how much work goes in to commercial food photography, even if it’s a delivery pizza. Domino’s Pizza has a short video showing the behind-the-scenes action during a pizza photo shoot, complete with food stylists, a pizza screwed to the table, and a hand model. But Domino’s new ad movement is all about ditching the food embellishments and promising “natural” photos from now on — photos of pizzas made by employees and untouched by food artists during the photo shoot. (Though we noticed they didn’t promise to go easy on post-processing!)
To promote their new photo style, the pizza chain is also running a photo contest for customers to submit photos of their own Domino’s pizza to be featured in upcoming ads. Winners get $500 — that could buy a lot of pizzas!
Most camera rain covers can be a bit cumbersome, but this Japanese rain cover concept might take the hassle to a whole new level. In fact, a freezer bag seems more practical.
While the cover is designed to be wallet-friendly, it’s probably much less kind to the user. It may be remarkably typhoon-proof, but forget long lenses, manual focus, zoom, and image sharpness, to name a few essential DSLR features lost to design flaws.
However, hailing from Japan, it’s possible that this accessory is simply a “chindogu” invention.
A few guys in Los Angeles recently convinced their friend to let them borrow his new iPhone 4 (that he waited 4.5 in line for), and got onto a rooftop with the help of another friend. Using some large helium balloons, they attached the iPhone and started recording 720p video of downtown LA as it rose up to 1000 feet into the air on the end of a kite string. They also made a fun behind-the-scenes video of their project.
This setup is definitely cheaper than an RC plane or helicopter, and somewhat safer and more stable than a kite.
Holga D is a concept camera by India-based industrial designer Saikat Biswas that brings the plastic, medium-format Holga camera into the digital age.
The cheap toy camera design retains the optical jankiness that lures hipsters to this type of camera (i.e. vignetting, blurring, and light leaks), but a DSLR-caliber sensor inside ensures that the anomalies are optical rather than digital. Read more…
We wrote about Snapsort at the beginning of this year, when it was still a newly-launched, bare-bones website for comparing digital cameras. Though it was spartan, the service was useful for comparing the specs of cameras and seeing how they stack up against each other.
The service has gotten even more useful in the past few days, with a massively updated website taking the place of the first version. In addition to the sweet new design, the service now offers much more than simple comparisons. New features include detailed camera pages, customized advice (i.e. by budget), and a learning section filled with bookmarkable material. You can even compare cameras that haven’t hit the market yet.
If you’re currently in the market for a digital camera, you’ll definitely want to give this page a peek.
Here’s a photograph titled, “The Inexplicable Occurrence” by Toronto-based photographer Scott McClellan:
What’s neat is that rather than use fancy “Photoshopping” to add the random objects flying around, McClellan captures each element in the scene individually and merges them together into a completed piece. The technique is the same as the one we wrote about in “7 Steps to Taking Clone Photographs“.
Here’s the neat behind-the-scenes video showing how the photograph was shot:
If you have someone who can help catch things you throw around, you can try this yourself at home!
In a post on the Facebook blog yesterday, Divvyshot founder Sam Odio announced that Facebook is adding the same face detection features found in many consumer cameras to its uber-popular Facebook Photos app.
Previously, users had to manually select each face found in a photograph to tag it with a friend’s name, but now the service will automatically select each face and prompt you for the name, streamlining the process and making it much easier for uploaders.
I’m guessing we’ll soon see features added that promote collaboration and pooling together photographs as a group to a shared pool, similar to what Divvyshot offered prior to the acquisition and shutdown.
It seems like every week there’s a new story of some photographer being hassled by law enforcement. Photojournalist Stretch Ledford and Carlos Miller of Photography is Not a Crime recently visited the the Miami-Dade Metrorail to ride through a few stations and see if anyone would stop them from doing non-commercial photography. They didn’t even make it to the first station.
Despite receiving assurance from Eric Muntan, Chief of Safety and Security of the metro, that non-commercial photography was perfectly fine, they still ran into a load of trouble with the private security and subsequently the Miami Police. Check out the video Miller recorded above to see what unfolded.
Looks like Facebook’s recent 
