Los Angeles Times Jay L. Clendenin spent four weeks leading up to the Olympics traveling around Souther California, making portraits of athletes on the US Olympic Team. While he certainly wasn’t the only one shooting the athletes, Clendenin chose an interesting way of capturing them: in addition to using Canon 5D Mark IIs for digital photos, he also used a 4×5-inch field camera and a 100+-year-old Petzval lens. When displayed side-by-side, the photos show an interesting contrast between “old” and “new”. Read more…
Nokia’s 808 PureView phone packs a hefty 41-megapixel sensor, but how do its megapixels compare to a “real” 40+ megapixel camera photo? Spanish website Quesabesde decided to find out by putting the phone head-to-head with the 40MP Pentax 645D medium format DSLR. They shot the same scenes with both cameras, and blew them up to examine the quality. The article is in Spanish, but a little Google Translate magic does the trick.
Ian Ruhter is a Los Angeles-based photographer that creates massive wet plate photographs using a giant camera van. We featured a popular short film about his work back in April, and now here’s another short behind-the-scenes look by Laura Austin. Austin followed Ruhter around for a day to see how he creates the images in his project, titled “Silver & Light“. One interesting thing we find out is that some police officers aren’t too friendly towards giant mobile cameras.
Ever since Google+ was launched in June 2011, users have gushed over the beautiful mosaic view for photos uploaded to the service. Earlier this year Flickr redesigned its photo pages with a similar design, and today Facebook has followed suit. Photo pages on Facebook are being upgraded with larger photos and the same mosaic view that’s becoming so popular around the web. Users can also click specific photos to “highlight” them, or give them a larger piece of real estate on the page. The redesign is just starting to roll out, so you should see it live on your page soon.
Diving is one of the most popular Olympic sports among spectators, and arguably one of the most graceful. The faces of the divers as they perform their acrobatics? Not so graceful.
ShortList Magazine took Getty photographs of divers and then cropped out their distorted faces. G-forces have quite a negative effect on beauty… Read more…
More and more superstar athletes are using instant photo sharing services like Instagram, giving the general public a fascinating look into what their daily lives are like. Basketball player Kevin Love is one such player, and for the past few weeks he has been broadcasting behind-the-scenes images of the US mens national basketball team’s journey to the London Olympics. The New York Times writes,
The American team took its Instagram cues from Paul, who said his Los Angeles Clippers engaged in a similar practice throughout last season. Their photographs, Paul said, often ended up on “SportsCenter,” fueling the number taken.
Love saw the photo wars as another route to camaraderie, another way to bond. His favorite picture captured seven sleepers: Paul gripping a pillow in a bear hug, James Harden with that unsightly beard tucked into his chest, Russell Westbrook wearing sunglasses inside and even Coach Mike Krzyzewski in the background in what looks like the coach section of the plane.
“They got me yesterday,” Anthony said, his smile stretched as wide as a basketball court. “There will definitely be payback. It’s going to be trouble for Kevin.”
New photographs of the moon by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera reveal that flags planted by Apollo astronauts are still “flying” after more than four decades. Each of the six manned Apollo missions planted flags at their landing sites, and it now appears that all but one — the flag planted by Neil Armstrong was blown over upon their departure — are still standing. The photographs were taken at different times of the day, and show small shadows rotating around the locations where the flags were planted.
What the flags look like, however, is a different question: they’ve probably experienced a good deal of deterioration due to the ultraviolet light and temperatures found on the surface of the moon.
If you’re interested in the subject of lighting, check out Guess The Lighting. It’s a website by professional portrait photographer Ted Sabarese through which he shares photos he finds — including iconic images, advertisements, magazine covers — along with his guesses and sketches regarding how the images were lit.
422 days without an accident at the chocolate quarry.
Big Appetites is a project by photographer Christopher Boffoli that features miniature people living in a world of giant food. The subjects are seen mining for strawberry seeds, chopping up giant blocks of chocolate, and lobster wrangling. Each of the figures (meant for miniature train models) are hand-painted with meticulous detail. Read more…
Want to see what it was like to be a participant in the opening ceremony of the London Olympics? One 26-year-old participant decided to build a hidden camera into his/her costume, capturing this awesome footage showing a performer’s perspective of the show.
