Yesterday we shared some new sample photos published by Google showing what its Project Glass prototype camera glasses are currently capable of. The video above is the first sample video captured using the glasses, and is a short 15-second clip showing a first person view of someone doing flips on a trampoline. With current cameras, the only way to achieve this kind of hands-free footage would be to use some kind of (relatively) unwieldy camera strapped to the head or body (e.g. a GoPro mounted on a helmet), but Google Glass would allow people to record this kind of thing by simply wearing a pair of glasses.
I try to stay involved as much as I can with students studying photography at different institutions in the area. Every year I go back to RIT and do a lecture on the business of photography and I feel it’s important that I do so.
Recently I got an email from a young photographer asking me about the career of being a still life/food photographer. Read more…
Caleb and Candra Pence had a couple unexpected guests crash their wedding in Kansas last Saturday: tornadoes! The two twisters touched down roughly 10 miles away during the ceremony but — luckily for everyone involved — were not moving. Wedding photographer Cate Eighmey took advantage of the rare situation by having the newlyweds pose with the twisters in the background. The resulting photographs have taken the Internet by storm (haha, get it?), and the Pences have spent their honeymoon in Wyoming handling calls from the media. Read more…
Google Glass team member Max Braun took to the stage at the Google+ Photography Conference yesterday to show off a prototype device, talk about the project’s potential impact in photography, and show off some new sample photographs. He states,
We see glass as an evolution of cell phone photography. It’s the next step of the camera that’s always with you. It’s not meant to replace your professional camera anytime soon [...] We think that photography in Glass is going to open up a whole range of pictures that would not have been possible otherwise.
The Google Glass portion of the talk begins at the 47 minute mark in the video above. Read more…
Using keyboard shortcuts while editing your photos can save you loads of time, and cheat sheets are a good way of learning them. If you’re too lazy to print one out or save one as an image on your computer, there’s an app called CheatSheet that’s designed just for you. It’s a free Mac App that runs silently in the background. Whenever you hold down the Command (⌘) key for ~3 seconds, it brings up a complete list of command shortcuts offered by whatever app you’re currently using. We’ve tested it and it works fine for Photoshop, though we wished that it also included non-Command key shortcuts as well.
Here’s an interesting video in which street photographer John Free shares a system he’s developed to take the confusion and guesswork out of practicing street photography, called “the five Fs”. He says that contrary to popular belief, it’s not about “seeing”:
It’s not the eyes. Anybody can see that has eyes to see. It’s what we feel and what we get out of the heart that matters. We have to convey a passion. We have to convey an understanding.
The five Fs are: finding, figuring, framing, focusing, and firing.
When it comes to photography agencies, Getty Images reigns supreme. Founded in 1995 by Mark Getty and Jonathan Klein, the Seattle-based behemoth in many ways took stock and editorial photography into the digital age, causing the slow decline of “former-rulers” like the AP. Between Getty’s editorial supremacy and the rise of an era where photojournalists find themselves replaced sometimes by average Joe’s with smartphones, the last few years have consisted mostly of the AP trying to staunch the bleeding. But now it seems they’re ready to fight back. Read more…
Feast your eyes on this amazing stop motion music video idea for the song “Rivers and Homes” by electronic music artist J.Views. After filming a traditional music video in upstate New York, the production team had 2000 of the individual frames printed out. The prints were then distributed during a recent tour in Israel to 300 fans, who held them up and posed for new photographs. The resulting photographs were then re-animated into a video showing the original music video running in stop motion in the hands of the fans. No computer fakery was involved in the production, and the final video is quite mind-blowing.
Many consider Robert Frank’s classic photobook “The Americans” (originally published in France as “Les Américains”) to be one of the greatest photobooks of all time. Knowing this, Mishka Henner should have probably thought twice before using it as the subject of one of his forays into digital appropriation and, in this case, erasure. Read more…
If you’ve never really understood conceptual art, the video above will only serve to confuse and frustrate you more. Purple eccentric dinosaur eating mayo. If you’ve never heard of John Baldessari, the video above will bring you up to speed. Baldessari is an internationally renowned conceptual artist who’s known for using found photography and appropriated images in his work. Photographer Cindy Sherman counts him as one of her biggest influences. The short documentary above gives a brief overview of Baldessari’s life and work in six bizarre minutes.
