Here’s something that’ll blow your mind (sorry that it’s an ad): stare at the colored dots on this girl’s nose for 30 seconds, then quickly look at a white wall or ceiling (or anything pure white) and start blinking rapidly. Congratulations, you just processed a negative with your brain!
(via eject via Rob Sheridan)
P.S. Next time you’re in the photo lab, try doing this trick with your loupe and lightbox to save yourself some test prints.
Here’s an amazing time-lapse created using NASA’s Earth Observatory photographs of our planet. It spans an entire year, and shows how lands change with the passing of seasons. You can download a higher-res version here.
(via Reddit)
You probably won’t believe this, but this fly-by video of Saturn wasn’t created with 3D computer graphics. Instead, it was created using thousands of high-resolution still photographs captured by the Cassini orbiter.
(via kottke.org)
All of us can now experience what it’s like to accidentally fall off a giant cliff thanks to a GoPro helmet camera and one brave skier who miraculously escape unscathed. Warning: you might pee your pants while watching this.
(via f stoppers)
“Modern Times” is a short film that offers a glimpse of the future in both the story that it tells and the way it was made — it’s a low/no budget film created entirely against a green screen with friends as actors. Maybe in the future shooting at real locations (or with real people) will be less and less necessary as CGI continues to become more and more mind-boggling.
Read more…
When a NASA Space Shuttle lifts off, there’s always high definition cameras carefully placed around the launch site, documenting the launch in high-definition photographs and slow motion videos. Back in April we featured a slow motion video of the Apollo 11 launch in 1969, and now here’s another neat super slow-mo documentary of more recent launches (i.e. 2005). If you have 45 minutes to spare, this video is sure to amaze and educate you.
By the way… during the launch, the shuttle burns 1,000 gallons of liquid propellants and 20,000 pounds of solid fuel every second.
(via Engadget)
Update: Ben tells us that every single image in the video above was shot on film, not HD cameras.
Alex Roman, the genius behind the breathtaking “The Third & The Seventh“, recently created this short commercial spot for Grupo Cosentino. It’s certainly stunning, but here’s the kicker: it’s completely computer generated, created by two people over the course of two and a half months.
A recent fad in advertising is to use 3D projection mapping on buildings at night to create jaw-dropping effects. The above video shows an ad Samsung ran on a historic building in Amsterdam to promote the Samsung 3D LED TV. A perfect representation of the building is first projected onto the actual building, and then mind-blowing things begin to happen.
Have any of you seen one of these demonstrations in real life?
This is an amazing 1.5 hour exposure taken at the Gippsland Lakes in Australia by Phil Hart, showing both star trails and the crazy blue light given off by a bioluminescent algae called Noctiluca scintillans, commonly known as the Sea Sparkle.
The algae glows blue whenever there’s movement in the water, which there is where the waves break onto the shore. Sea Sparkles is going under Northern Lights on my list of things I’d like to see with my own eyes someday.
You can also check out some of the other photos he shot, and read about the story behind the photograph on Hart’s blog.
(via Photojojo)
Image credits: Photograph by Phil Hart
This amazing video shows what lightning looks like when slowed down to 9,000 frames per second. Even if you’ve seen lightning in slow motion before, this video might surprise you. Even at extremely slow speeds, many of the bursts and flashes that go on during a lightning strike happen in what appears to be real time, while the main bolts last for quite some time. It’s definitely an… illuminating video. Har har.
