A few hours ago, the official Facebook page of the First Army Division East posted the above photograph with the caption:
Soldiers of the 3rd Inf Reg continue to stand guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, despite the worsening weather conditions surrounding Hurricane Sandy. The tomb has been guarded continuously since 1948.
The powerful photograph instantly attracted tens of thousands of Likes and Shares, and began going viral online. Read more…
Freelance photojournalist Tracey Shelton captured the striking image above showing the instant a tank shell exploded in a Syrian rebel outpost earlier this week. She was filming the group of four rebels using her Canon 7D and 28mm, and had just set her camera on a tripod before the explosion occurred. The blast claimed three casualties, while one of the four men, the rebel standing directly in front of Shelton, escaped with minor injuries. Afterward, Shelton selected a number of stills from the 30fps footage and published them to Global Post (the news company she’s freelancing for), along with a vivid account of what had taken place.
Needless to say, the images elicited a strong reaction from the Internet community, with people calling them stunning, heartbreaking, and the most powerful war photographs they had ever seen. Check out the article on the Global Post for the full sequence of images.
Scott Lamb of BuzzFeed created this exceptionally moving video that asks the question, “what makes a great photograph great?” Lamb’s voice narrates a slideshow of some of the most powerful photographs captured throughout history — photographs that capture life, love, death, sacrifice, joy, and suffering. Captions accompany the images, so we recommend watching the video twice and pausing on each photo to make sure you catch all of them (otherwise it may be hard to know what’s actually happening).
Based in New York, 46-year-old Chris Arnade is a banker by trade and a passionate photographer in his free time. While those attributes may seem pretty commonplace, it’s Arnade’s subjects that make his work stand out: Arnade focuses his “hobby” on sharing the faces and stories of drug addicts in the Bronx. He writes,
I post people’s stories as they tell them to me. I am not a journalist, I don’t verify, just listen.
It’s very easy to simply run with your crowd, to not explore the amazing diversity and perspectives that are offered. It’s also very easy to ignore others. By not looking, by not talking to them, we can often fall into constructing our own narrative that affirms our limited world view. What I am hoping to do, by allowing my subjects to share their dreams and burdens with the viewer and by photographing them with respect, is to show that everyone, regardless of their station in life, is as valid as anyone else. [#]
Buzzfeed has published a gallery showing every winning photo from the World Press Photo contest from 1955 to the present. It’s a powerful set of photos that paints a pretty grim picture of humanity.
This powerful photograph by photographer Samuel Aranda was introduced today as the World Press Photo of the Year 2012. The description reads,
A woman holds a wounded relative in her arms, inside a mosque used as a field hospital by demonstrators against the rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, during clashes in Sanaa, Yemen on 15 October 2011.
17-year-old filmmaking student Sacha Powell shot this powerful slow motion film using a $500 Canon 550D/T2i, 50mm f/1.8, 18-55mm kit lens, and Sigma 70-300mm. On the software side he utilized Premiere Pro CS5, After Effects CS5.5, and Twixtor for faux slow motion. Impressive.
Similar to the centenarian portraits we shared earlier today, here’s a beautiful video with moving portraits (both literally and figuratively) of elderly people by photographer Simon Biswas. The piece is titled “The Light of Day”.
Earlier this week, photographer Jeanine Thurston shared a letter that she received from a client that powerfully illustrates the value of photography. Thurston writes,
This letter wasn’t mailed – it was at my doorstep when I got home a couple months ago. I read it, I cried, and read it again – probably a hundred times by now. It wasn’t easy to read – and honestly, as much as it validates what I do for a living – I wasn’t sure I was going to share it either. If you choose to read through the letter, you will know why I’ve finally chosen to share it.
The post quickly went viral and has amassed hundreds of comments from fellow photographers who were impacted by the letter. Read more…
Demos at graphics conferences are often interesting to watch because they offer a sneak peek at technologies that may soon become available to the general public. The video above is a demo for “PatchMatch“, an algorithm developed by researchers at Princeton and Adobe. Although you might be unfamiliar with PatchMatch, you’ve probably heard of its most famous feature: Content Aware Fill. Only a small piece of this amazing technology was introduced in Photoshop CS5, so the amazing image manipulations seen in this demo are likely a sneak peek into what we’ll be seeing in Photoshop CS6.
