Here’s another nail in the fail coffin for the much-hyped but not-very-popular photo-sharing app Color: TechCrunch reports that Color received a staggering $200 million acquisition offer before it had even launched, but the company turned it down and raised $41 million in venture funding instead. Things haven’t been going so hot for Color since then, while Google saved itself $200 million and has a couple photo-sharing apps in development that are generating some buzz.
Los Angeles-based photographer Dave Hill created this video showing all 11 photographs in his Adventure series deconstructed, giving us a glimpse of how they were put together. Hill lights and shoots different portions of his photographs separately, then combines them all into a single image using crazy Photoshop skills. Reminds me of Disney’s amazing multi-plane camera.
If you look at the Top 100 Movies chart in the iTunes Store, you might not notice anything out of the ordinary, but one of the movies (#43) is actually a no budget film shot using a single Canon 5D Mark II. For Lovers Only” is a romance filmed by Mark Polish and Michael Polish — known as the Polish brothers — over the course of just 12 days with a single actress (Mark himself played the male lead). The film has already generated over $200,000 in profits after being spread through word of mouth via social networks.
The brothers said that their hotels and some meals were comped; they shot and edited with equipment they already owned; and they don’t consider the few grand worth of meals, taxis and the like to be part of an actual budget. “There was not one dime that came out of our pocket specifically for this movie — besides the food we ate, but we had to eat, anyway,” Michael said.
In the end, Michael and Mark even had to make up some names for the film’s title sequence, which they wanted to stretch out to a reasonable length in order to fit the score that had been written by their friend Kubilay Uner. [#]
This is a great example of how the landscape for movie making, distribution and viewing is rapidly changing, allowing anyone armed with a prosumer DSLR and a whole lot of talent to potentially strike it big.
Having a hard time getting a kid to smile? Children’s photographer Jennifer Tonetti-Spellman suggests botching children’s songs on purpose to draw out natural smiles and laughs:
I always warn parents that I can be a little kooky during shoots. And to brace themselves for bad singing. Just take a song every child knows like Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. Now, change a word in it. “Twinkle, Twinkle little COW.” What? COW??!!” Seriously. This. Works. Every. Time.
The child cracks up and you can get some mileage out of the joke a few more times. You will start to get the smile before you even ‘fill in the blank’ after you do it once, because they anticipate the silliness. I usually do it one more time and say “Oh I am so sorry, let me try again. Twinkle Twinkle, little DUCK.” You get the picture. This works best for children who actually understand what the words are in the song, and aren’t too old yet to give you the ‘this woman is not smart’ look.
NASA created this beautiful time-lapse video with photos taken from Space Shuttle Discovery and the International Space Station. It’s a neat look at the size of the Earth, and includes a glimpse of the Aurora Borealis from space!
You know you’re ballin’ as a photographer when you can use your lens collection to play a giant game of chess.
The complete 32 piece set includes 70-200 f/2.8 pawns, 600mm f/4 Kings and 500mm f4 Queens, 400mm f/2.8 Bishops, 300mm f/2.8 Knights, and 200mm f/2.0 Rooks in black (Nikon) and white (Canon). [#]
If you don’t have a complete set of lenses to make your own set, you can rent a set for a week from LensRentals for $9,221 (not including shipping, which will cost you between $1,100 and $2,400).
“Vector Portraits” is a series of candid portraits of passing motorists shot by photographer Andrew Bush between 1989 and 1997 in the Los Angeles area. After making 66 of these portraits, he published a photo book with them titled “Drive“. Read more…
The North Korean government is the latest to get caught trying to feed a poorly Photoshopped photo to the media. This past weekend the Korean Central News Agency — a state-run organization — released a photo of citizens trying to wade through floodwaters in Pyongyang, saying that heavy rains flooded farmlands, destroyed homes, and caused deaths. After initially passing the image onto its members, the AP decided to issue a “kill notice” (yup, that’s what it’s called) a day later to withdraw the photo, stating,
The content of this image has been digitally altered and does not accurately reflect the scene [...] No other version of the photo is available.
The problem was the fact that the clothing worn by the people in the photo don’t appear to be wet at all — even where the water meets the pants! It appears the water level was much lower, and the government tried to exaggerate the image, perhaps in an attempt to appeal for international aid.
The WVIL concept camera that made the rounds on the Internet featured a lens that could operate separately from the camera body, but Or Leviteh‘s MMI camera is even simpler: it’s a small screen-less camera that uses a smartphone as its “camera body”.
MMI enables you to see what the camera sees on your [smartphone] screen, to adjust the settings as needed, and to see the results without getting up and even to upload the pictures online. From the application you can control all settings: white balance, focus, picture burst, timer and even tilt the camera lens, all without having to reach the camera.
Separating the lens and sensor components of a camera from its LCD screen and controls seems to be a pretty popular idea as of late (Nikon even showed off a similar concept camera recently).
