Lytro has been pushing to make their living pictures — interactive, clickable photos that have a variable focus point — easier to share. Lytro is a camera that has a very specific, proprietary way of saving and viewing photographs, so sharing these photos can be tricky. Nevertheless, Lytro has been able to quickly expand living photos across the web through social media, most recently to Google+ and Pinterest through Google Chrome extensions. Read more…
To celebrate Google+’s one year anniversary, photographer Alex Koloskov and retoucher Genia Larionova teamed up on a photo project to recreate the Google logo using photographs of paint. They tossed paint matching the colors of each letter into the air multiple times and picked out the best shapes, which were then combined in Photoshop. Read more…
Minority owner of the recently-crowned national champion Miami Heat, Raanan Katz, has been making waves all over the Internet the past few days over a controversial lawsuit regarding a photo of himself that he has deemed unflattering (seen above). The lawsuit is directed at both the originating blogger and Google (who refused to take down the photo), and according to paidContent, Katz is requesting that damages be paid him by both parties. Read more…
Portrait photographer Peter Hurley gave this talk at the recent Google+ Photography Conference in SF. His training on headshots have made quite a splash in the photo world in the past year, and this free hour-long lecture is a great way to glean some tips for your work.
Besides sharing some impressive specs at that Google Maps presentation we mentioned yesterday, Google also unveiled a new street view tool that should go a long way in further mapping out our world. The Street View Trekker, as they call it, is a backpack-mounted street view camera that allows the wearer to photograph and document places that can only be reached using the good ol’ shoelace express. According to Engadget, the 40lbd Android powered backpack packs 15-megapixel cameras, an on-board hard drive, and enough battery to run for an entire day. Read more…
Earlier today Google gave a sort of “state of Google Maps” address to many of the biggest names in tech, and one of the most impressive statistics to arise out of the presentation was that so far, Google Street View cars have driven over 5 million miles and collected over 20 petabytes of imagery. To put that in perspective, that means that the street view cars have travelled enough miles to complete 10 round trips to the moon (and then some) and have stored more than 80 times more information than is contained in the US Library of Congress. You think they have a few extra external hard drives lying around?
Contrary to popular belief, Google can’t be everywhere at once (they’re working on it), and one of the most obvious examples of this limitation is the extent of Street View functionality in Google Maps. Of course, tons of roads and even some obscure neighborhoods have been mapped out with street view, but all too often your own front yard is left un-street-viewable. And while that may not be much of a tragedy for most people, those that would rather change that now have the option to with DIY Street View’s new Street View Camera System. Read more…
General consensus seems to be that a picture is worth a thousand words, in which case Ben West and Felix Heyes‘ unique take on the dictionary, complete with 21,000 entries, metaphorically contains closer to 21,000,000 words worth of content. That’s because their dictionary doesn’t hold a single word, only the first Google image search result for every word you might find in your regular Webster’s. 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…
Over the last couple of days Google has been hosting the “Hangout In Real Life” Google+ Photographers Conference in San Francisco, and if anything has come out of the conference at all, it’s that Google is intent on making Google+ the photo sharing service of the future. Read more…
