March 2011

Preserve Your Privacy by Pixelating Photographs with PhotoHide

Hiding or censoring part of an image through obfuscation is as easy as selecting the area in Photoshop and applying the Pixelate->Mosaic filter, but what if you don't have an image editing program at your disposal? If you're seriously paranoid about your privacy on the Internet, there's a new service called PhotoHide that helps you quickly add these pixelated areas to any photo. Everything is done through the web browser, and you can download the final image once you're done.

Build Your Own Working Cardboard Hasselblad Pinhole Camera

You can now build you own version of the cardboard Hasselblad pinhole camera that we featured a couple days ago. Kelly Angood has released a PDF with the template and detailed instructions for putting the pieces together. The finished product is a working pinhole camera that takes 120 35mm film.

World’s Largest Indoor Photo Weighs in at 40 Gigapixels

Photographer Jeffrey Martin, founder of 360cities, recently use a Canon 550D and 200mm lens to shoot the largest indoor photograph ever made: a ginormous 40 gigapixel photograph of a 18th-century baroque library in the Strahov Monastery in Prague, Czech Republic. Over 5 days of shooting with his robot control camera, Martin collected 2,947 separate photos that went into the resulting panorama. The RAW photos then took a day to batch process, 111 hours to stitch, and 20 hours to Photoshop, finally ending as a single 283 gigabyte photograph.

Debate Over Fabienne Cherisma Photos Rekindled After Award Given

During the aftermath of the devastating earthquake in Haiti, a number of images that became widely discussed were of 15-year-old Fabienne Cherisma, who was shot and killed by police after looting two plastic chairs and three framed pictures. One of these photographs (shown above), captured by photographer Paul Hansen, was recently chosen as the best International News Image at the Swedish Picture of the Year Awards. There was soon a good deal of discussion in the Swedish media over the ethics of such an image.

Pinhole Cameras Made with Photo Paper

Photographer Thomas Hudson Reeve shoots pinhole photographs in a pretty interesting way -- rather than using photo-sensitive paper or film inside a separate camera, he creates the camera using photo paper itself. The resulting photograph is exposed onto the inside of the photo-sensitive camera (which he calls the "PaperCam"), and creates a pretty surreal look when opened up and developed.

Line Up Some DSLRs for Matrix-style Bullet Time Video

Here's an idea: find a bunch of photography-lovin' friends, borrow their DSLR cameras, and shoot your own Matrix-style bullet time videos from home! The above video shows a workshop where they were able to bring together 24 cameras for this awesome purpose.

Use a Field Notebook to Jot Down “EXIF Data” for Your Film Photos

One of the big advantages of digital photography is that EXIF data is embedded into your images, allowing you to easily learn when and how (and more recently where) a particular photograph was captured. If you still enjoy shooting film, then a solution is to jot down notes about your photography while you're shooting.

Make a Point with This Vintage Camera Pencil Sharpener

This cute little vintage twin-lens reflex camera by Chinese stationary company deli is actually a pencil sharpener in disguise. Instead of loading it with film, simply stick a pencil into the top "lens" and turn the handle on the back to sharpen it. It has an adjustable sharpness knob, and the top half pulls out when you need to dump the pencil shavings.

New Photo Sharing App Color Raises a Whopping $41 Million in Funding

The mobile photo sharing space is hot right now, with services like Instagram, Picplz, and Path growing like weeds. A new contender called Color is causing some buzz after successfully raising a whopping $41 million... before even launching. The company has seven notable founders who have either started successful companies in the past (e.g. Lala and BillShrink) or have held executive positions at them (LinkedIn). Among the investors is Sequoia Capital, one of the most influential and successful firms in Silicon Valley and the firm that funded Google. They gave Color more than they gave Google.

Shooting Creative Long Exposure Photos with Light Stencils

I imagine, almost everyone interested in photography has seen the stunning pictures created with a technique called light painting. You set your camera to long exposure, 20 to 30 seconds or even longer, and use a light source, a flashlight or LED light, to "paint" with it. Most pictures have some kind of magic touch to it because you see only the track of light afterwards and not the actual light source. Light stencils are somewhat related to light painting. It uses the long exposure as well but uses a flash to illuminate a stencil to stamp the motive into the picture.

Old Navy Follows in Gap’s Footsteps and Uses Photo without Permission

Last month we reported that a Flickr photographer had found his photograph of a car being used as a Gap clothing design without his permission. It now appears that appropriating images from the web wasn't limited to that design, nor just the Gap brand -- Old Navy, another brand owned by Gap, is now being accused of stealing a car photograph as well. A photographer was strolling around in an Old Navy store in El Centro, California when he came across a shirt that he just couldn't stop staring at. It featured a Land Cruiser that look remarkably similar to one he had photographed before.