August 2011

Large Objects Shot as Miniatures Using a Giant Coin and Tilt-Shift Effects

Norwegian design studio Skrekkøgle -- the one that printed a photo with a cremated dog -- has a creative project called "Big Money" in which they made a giant 20:1 replica of a 50 cent Euro coin. They then placed the coin next to large objects and photographed them together, making the objects look like tiny toy replicas.

8 Ways to Title an Online Photograph

I love what the Internet has done for the sharing of photography. Social websites such as Flickr make it so easy to get our work in front of the faces of people on the other side of the Earth so easily that it boggles my mind sometimes. This incredible ability of technology has one horrible side effect however. I'm talking about title fields.

That Explains It: Canon vs. Nikon Debate Linked to Self-Esteem

Ever wonder why certain people always seem to engage in meaningless Canon vs Nikon vs et al. camera brand debates at every opportunity? A recent study conducted at the University of Illinois has found that the more knowledge and experience you have with a particular brand, the stronger your self-esteem is tied to it.

Cremation Portrait: Owner Has Photo Printed with Dead Dog’s Ashes

There's all kinds of things people do to remember their beloved pets after they pass away, but here's a pretty creepy one: a dog owner in Norway had a photo of their Gordon Setter named Susie printed with her ashes. Norwegian design studio Skrekkøgle figured out a way to rebuild a printer to accept dog ashes as "ink", allowing them to print a vintage-looking black-and-white photograph of Susie.

Amazing Optical Illusion Shows That Our Eyes Are Horrible Light Meters

Here's a mind-bending video in which someone created the famous checker shadow illusion in real life. The optical illusion takes advantage of the way our brains process lighting and shadows.

As with many so-called illusions, this effect really demonstrates the success rather than the failure of the visual system. The visual system is not very good at being a physical light meter, but that is not its purpose. The important task is to break the image information down into meaningful components, and thereby perceive the nature of the objects in view. [#]

Interesting huh? Our eyes aren't very good as a light meters, since they're easily deceived by context.

‘Genetic Portraits’ Comparing the Faces of Family Members

"Genetic Portraits" is a series by Canadian photographer Ulric Collette in which he blends the portraits of two members of the same family into a single face. It's interesting to see the similarities and differences among people who share DNA -- especially when there's identical twins.

Interview with Ryan McGinnis of The Big Storm Picture

Ryan McGinnis is a photographer and storm chaser. You can visit his website here.

PetaPixel: Can you tell us a little about yourself and your background?

Ryan McGinnis: I am a storm chaser and photographer who lives in Nebraska; I have no formal training in photography outside of all the books I've read and the thousands of rolls of film I've blown through (and terabytes of drives I've filled up) over the years. I've had a life-long love affair with the weather; from as young as I can remember, I've been fascinated with storms and for most of my childhood I dreamed of one day chasing tornadoes. Living in this part of the country makes storm chasing less of a chore than if I had to drive here from, say, Virginia, but storm chasing here still requires lots of driving -- on average around 600 miles per chase. These days I tend to storm chase around 15,000 miles a year, mostly in May and June. In 2008 and 2009 I was fortunate enough to get to tag along with and photographically document Project Vortex 2, a $12M science mission to learn how tornadoes tick, which was probably one of the best freelance investments of time and money I've ever made.

When I'm not shooting storms, my favorite subjects are candids and urban panoramas.

How to Photograph a Super Happy Dog

Wanna know how to capture a wide-eyed and wide-mouthed photo of your dog? It's easy! First, set up your camera on a tripod and point it at your dog. Then, simply throw it some tasty treats with one hand while snapping photographs with the other. There are all kind of expressions you might capture using this technique, but this one by Andrea Sillem is pretty priceless.

Field of Views of Different Focal Lengths

Here's a neat image showing the different field of views offered by focal lengths ranging from 16mm to 200mm. It's not simply lines overlaid on a single photo -- the different focal lengths were actually used to capture what the scenes looks like through the lenses.

Make a DIY Lens Cap Using a Soda Can

mr-korn over at Lomography recently snagged a cheap Olympus Zuiko 50mm lens on eBay, but the lens didn't come with a lens cap. Rather than try and find a replacement cap for that particular lens, he decided to craft his own DIY cap using a can of Coke.

Perseid Meteor Photographed from Space

One amazing perk that comes with being a NASA astronaut is that you can watch meteor showers up close and from above. Astronaut Ron Garan captured this awesome photograph from the International Space Station of a Perseid meteor burning up in our atmosphere.

M-Disc: A New Disc That Lasts “Forever”

There's a good chance the digital photos you've stored on hard drives and DVDs won't outlive you, but what if there was a disc that could last forever? M-Disc, short for Millenial Disc, is a new type of disc that doesn't suffer from natural decay and degradation like existing disc technologies, allowing you to store data safely for somewhere between "1000 years" and "forever".

The World Shot Through a Light Bulb

Flickr user Henrique Feliciano Silva made this neat photograph by hollowing out a light bulb, filling it with water, hanging it upside down on his balcony, and shooting his neighborhood through it with a shallow depth of field.

The Impermanence of Digital Photographs

It seems like everyone has access to some kind of camera these days, but will the digital images captured survive long enough to become part of the historical record of our time for future generations?

Incredible Photos that Capture Day Turning into Night

For his project "Day Into Night", photographer Stephen Wilkes set up a 4x5 camera with a 39-megapixel digital back 40-50 feet off the ground in a cherry picker, and photographed the scene throughout the course of one day. Keeping a constant aperture, he adjusted his shutter speed to compensate for the position of the sun. Afterward, the hundreds of images captured were edited to roughly 30-50 photos, and then seamlessly Photoshopped together to show a gradual transition from day to night.

Do People Always See the Same Things When They Look At Colors?

Update: It looks like the video was taken down by the uploader. Sorry guys.

Color is simply how our brains respond to different wavelengths of light, and wavelengths outside the spectrum of visible light are invisible and colorless to us simply because our eyes can't detect them. Since colors are created in our brains, what if we all see colors differently from one another? BBC created a fascinating program called "Do You See What I See?" that explores this question, and the findings are pretty startling.

“Horsemaning” is the Latest Photo Fad

Another week, another strange photo fad. The latest one is "horsemaning", and involves photographing two people to look like one decapitated person (like the headless horseman). Apparently it started in the early 1920s with the photo seen above, and is making a comeback as of late.