Early last month we shared a creative viral video Google made to show off the fast rendering speed of their Chrome browser using super slow motion. Rival browser Opera has released a “super slow motion” video of their own to show that their browser is faster than a potato. Enjoy.
“Running on Empty” by Ross Ching is a neat time-lapse video inspired by Matt Logue’s empty L.A. project, which we featured last year. Rather than individual photographs in which ordinarily busy LA streets are artificially devoid of any cars and people, the video takes it a step further by stringing together such photographs to create an eerie (yet soothing and beautiful) glimpse into an LA in which streetlights blink above “I am Legend”-esque roads. I wonder how long post-processing took…
“NES Stop Motion” is an amazing stop motion video by YouTube user bornforthis43 that took over 120 hours to produce. Each scene was created using paper and ordinary household objects, and over 7,000 photographs went into making this 3 minute long stop-motion video. The result is a video that should deliver a healthy dose of nostalgia to people who enjoyed gaming on the NES back in the 80s and 90s.
Get up and go is a short 2 minute video by Stefan Werc that gives you a unique perspective of Tokyo at night. The time-lapse shots range from epic shots of the skyline, to creative shots from moving vehicles. The stills that went into this time-lapse were shot using the Canon 7D. Great work Stefan!
Update: The song is “Get Up and Go” by Broadcast 2000.
Here’s an oldie but goodie that I’m guessing many of you haven’t seen before. It’s an episode from Deke McClelland’s video podcast dekepod in which McClelland shares 101 simple Photoshop tips at a blazing fast pace. What’s interesting is that it’s probably not as difficult to follow along as you might think, even though it averages to a tip every three seconds. This might be one of the closest things to learning like Neo does in the Matrix.
(via Photojojo)
TED has some of the most interesting talks you’ll find on the web, with topics ranging from how diet can prevent cancer to demonstrations of amazing new photo technology. They also have a great collection of talks by photographers, and we’ve compiled a list of 14 of them here. These short talks are eye-opening, jaw-dropping, and often quite moving.
You might want to bookmark this page to take them in slowly when you have some free minutes here and there. If you know of any other talks that we didn’t include in this list, please share it with us in the comments!
The photo director for National Geographic, David Griffin knows the power of photography to connect us to our world. In a talk filled with glorious images, he talks about how we all use photos to tell our stories.
Photographs do more than document history — they make it. At TED University, Jonathan Klein of Getty Images shows some of the most iconic, and talks about what happens when a generation sees an image so powerful it can’t look away — or back.
Taryn Simon exhibits her startling take on photography — to reveal worlds and people we would never see otherwise. She shares two projects: one documents otherworldly locations typically kept secret from the public, the other involves haunting portraits of men convicted for crimes they did not commit.
In this stunning slideshow, celebrated nature photographer Frans Lanting presents The LIFE Project, a poetic collection of photographs that tell the story of our planet, from its eruptive beginnings to its present diversity.
In stunning large-format photographs, Edward Burtynsky follows the path of oil through modern society, from wellhead to pipeline to car engine — and then beyond to the projected peak-oil endgame.
Nick Veasey shows outsized X-ray images that reveal the otherworldly inner workings of familiar objects — from the geometry of a wildflower to the anatomy of a Boeing 747. Producing these photos is dangerous and painstaking, but the reward is a superpower: looking at what the human eye can’t see.
In this image-filled talk, Yann Arthus-Bertrand displays his three most recent projects on humanity and our habitat — stunning aerial photographs in his series “The Earth From Above,” personal interviews from around the globe featured in his web project “6 billion Others,” and his soon-to-be-released movie, “Home,” which documents human impact on the environment through breathtaking video.
In this moving talk, documentary photographer Kristen Ashburn shares unforgettable images of the human impact of AIDS in Africa.
Ryan Lobo has traveled the world, taking photographs that tell stories of unusual human lives. In this haunting talk, he reframes controversial subjects with empathy, so that we see the pain of a Liberian war criminal, the quiet strength of UN women peacekeepers and the perseverance of Delhi’s underappreciated firefighters.
Artist Chris Jordan shows us an arresting view of what Western culture looks like. His supersized images picture some almost unimaginable statistics — like the astonishing number of paper cups we use every single day.
Photographer Rick Smolan tells the unforgettable story of a young Amerasian girl, a fateful photograph, and an adoption saga with a twist.
With stunning photos and stories, National Geographic Explorer Wade Davis celebrates the extraordinary diversity of the world’s indigenous cultures, which are disappearing from the planet at an alarming rate.
Photographer Phil Borges shows rarely seen images of people from the mountains of Dharamsala, India, and the jungles of the Ecuadorean Amazon. In documenting these endangered cultures, he intends to help preserve them.
The embed code for this talk is broken, but you can click the image to watch this talk on the TED website:
Accepting his 2007 TED Prize, war photographer James Nachtwey shows his life’s work and asks TED to help him continue telling the story with innovative, exciting uses of news photography in the digital era.
When Sean Stiegemeier saw the photos and videos that were emerging on the web from the eruptions at Eyjafjallajökull last month, it prompted him to fly over and shoot his own footage:
So I saw all of these mediocre pictures of that volcano in Iceland nobody can pronounce the name of, so I figured I should go and do better. But the flights to get over took forever as expected (somewhat). 4 days after leaving I finally made it, but the weather was terrible for another 4. Just before leaving it got pretty good for about a day and a half and this is what I managed to get.
The resulting video is stunningly beautiful, especially with background music by Jónsi (lead singer of Icelandic band Sigur Rós). Oh, and by the way, it was filmed with a Canon 5D Mark II.
Thanks for the tip, @eugenephoto!
Peter Funch is a New York City-based photographer who we featured a while back in a post titled “4 Creative Projects that Bend the Reality of Street Scenes“. Funch photographs scenes for extended periods of time, and then combines people who share something in common. In the photograph above, he chose to include only people who were carrying manila envelopes. You can see more of his work over at his V1 gallery page.
I recently came across this interesting interview video that gives a neat look at how Funch works and how the images are assembled. The interview itself is in English even though the introduction is not:
We learn that Funch shoots at street corners for 10-15 days at a time, and sometimes plants his tripod in the middle of the street with cars behind him. Interesting.
Image credit: Photograph by Peter Funch
If you need a 2 minute dose of relaxation, check out this video by Jeff Scholl of GravityShots. It was filmed with a Canon 550D/T2i-equipped helicam Whitefish, Montana Scholl used a 14mm lens, filmed at 720p, and rendered at 24fps. This kind of helicam footage reminds me a lot of dreams in which I’m flying, since the helicopter glides so slowly while everything on the ground moves at normal speed.
When asked how he stabilized the video, Scholl responds,
For stabilization I have a KS2 gyro on the mount plus I’m using Mercalli on PPro CS4, but the default settings on Smooth (FCP) should do a better job.
When I go out the door I’m probably carrying $25,000 worth of gear, but I’ve spent way more than that just figuring out these machines the last 9 years.
Man. Someone needs to come out with a cheap remote controlled helicopter designed for compact cameras and DSLRs. Think we’ll see an affordable one anytime soon?
P.S. In case you’re wondering, the music in the background is an instrumental version of “Mad World“.
Olympus’ new commercial for the Olympus PEN E-PL1 is pretty typical, except that it has an interesting twist at the end. It’ll probably make you want to watch the commercial twice.
