Google's new Books Ngram Viewer is a cool new site that allows you to search for words and view a graph of how the usage of that word has fluctuated over time. A quick search of the word "photography" in books published between 1835 and 2008 provides a pretty interesting look at the history of photography.
A couple days ago we covered the winning image of the British Journal of Photography's international photo contest and how many readers disagreed with the photo's merits. The prize for that contest was a one week exhibition and a Sigma digital compact camera. Now compare that to the above photograph, which won AU $80,000 in the 2010 Moran Contemporary Photographic Prize, one of the richest prizes in the world. Like the BJP photo, this photograph became the subject of debate.
The British Journal of Photography announced recently that South African photographer Michelle Sank's image "Man asleep on the Golden Mile, Durban, South Africa." had won the single image category of its International Photography Award.
The image, which shows a man asleep in a park just off the Golden Mile in Durban, was described by judges Nick Galvin, Bruno Ceschel and Diane Smyth as both surreal and disturbing, and was picked out from 338 other entries because of its quiet, enduring intensity. "The more I look at it, the more powerful it becomes," commented Galvin, who manages the archive at Magnum London.
If you have 20 minutes to spare, here's an interesting video in which winning photographers of the 66th Pictures of the Year International contest discuss the power of photojournalism and some of their work. This is similar to the "What Makes a Great Picture?" by National Geographic that we shared back in September.
Nikon’s President Makoto Kimura did an interview with Reuters a couple days ago …
There’s an interesting discussion going on over …
Photography and electronics enthusiast Michal Zalewski recently built …
Speaking on the explosive improvement of camerephone technology in Helsinki yesterday, Nokia Executive Vice President Anssi Vanjoki …
Last week when Reuters released photographs of the volcanic activity at Eyjafjallajökull in …
The Zero Angle Digital Camera is a conceptual design by Sun ho Sin and Jeong eun Park that protects …
Google Groups hosts an archive of Usenet discussions from as far back as 1981. These discussions often provide an interesting glimpse at the state of the world and what was considered "state of the art".
ViaU is a new photography service by …
Danish-Norwegian artist Nina Maria Kleivan has come under fire for a series of photographs in which she dresses up her year-old daughter Faustina as some of history's most evil figures. The series, titled "Potency", has been shown in exhibitions around Europe, and is meant to explore the nature of evil.
Last year the Veolia Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition dealt with controversy when …
Back at the beginning of the year, Wired stirred up some fierce debate …
In 2007, Washington Post writer Gene Weingarten conducted a social experiment in which he recruited one of the world's great violinists, Joshua Bell, to play in a Washington D.C. subway station. Just two days prior to the experiment, Bell had played in a sold-out Boston theater in which ordinary tickets sold for $100 apiece.