June 2010

Michael Zhang

“End Love” by OK Go Blends Stop and Slow Motion in Awesome Ways

OK Go, an LA-based rock band, makes some of the most creative music videos you'll ever see, from the treadmill video that amassed over 50 million views on YouTube to their gigantic Rube Goldberg machine one that dropped jaws around the world. Their latest video for the song "End Love" is yet another display of pure creativity, as they blend stop motion and slow motion techniques in strange and awesome new ways.

Steph Goralnick

How to Make Your Own Photographic Negative Business Cards

Editor's note: The creative photographic negative business card idea that we shared recently was pretty popular with our readers. Here we've asked Steph Goralnick to share how exactly it was made in case you want to make your own.

The realization that I had run out of my regular business cards the night before I was scheduled to attend a weekend-long special event inspired me to create a small edition of extra special cards on the fly. I was aiming for a simple design with a unique construction that would showcase my skills as both a photographer and a graphic designer. Due to the fact that time was an issue, traditional vendors out of the question; and since I didn’t need more than a couple dozen cards, I decided to make them myself at home using an inkjet printer and some negatives.

Michael Zhang

Samsung 20mm f/2 Pancake Lens Picture Leaked? Not Quite

A rumor making its rounds today is that a photograph of an upcoming Samsung NX 20mm f/2 pancake lens was leaked. The photo (shown above) looks pretty legit, and does not seem to be obviously fake or "photoshopped".

Well, in the thread on PentaxForums where the image was posted yesterday, someone pointed out that the "leaked photo" looks suspiciously like the Samsung 30mm.

Michael Zhang

Neat Polaroid-Themed Birthday Card

Here's a neat birthday card idea for the Polaroid or photography lovers in your life: make a hand-drawn Polaroid camera spit out a real instant photo! Kayla Davis received this card from her friend Chrissie for her 19th birthday.

Michael Zhang

Shooting Space with Two Hacked Cameras and a Homemade Balloon

Pacific Star is a photography project by Colin Rich in which he sends programmed cameras up to epic heights using homemade weather balloons. This is an interesting step-by-step look into what went into the second launch. After purchasing two Canon compact cameras on eBay, Rich programmed them to take 3 photos every 3 minutes, and shoot a minute of video every fourth minute. The cameras were then insulated in styrofoam, and sent up to 125,000 feet before the balloon burst. With the help of a parachute, the cameras descended for 35 minutes and landed about 15-20 miles away.

Michael Zhang

Interview with Thom Hogan

Thom Hogan is the writer and photographer behind bythom.com, a website that provides extensive information about Nikon gear. He has written over 30 books on computers and photography.

PetaPixel: Can you tell us a little about yourself and your background?

Thom Hogan: I’ve always had a weird half-and-half personality: half science/technology, half art. To some degree, that may have been what led me into an undergraduate degree in telecommunications (filmmaking and television production). It let me play with technology and art simultaneously ;~). But I’ve always taken a circuitous route to where I’m going. I went from architecture to music to filmmaking to television to statistics to management to Silicon Valley, with stops at many magazines along the way. The only thing that was constant was that I wrote about what I was doing and what I knew, I taught it to others, and I often photographed alongside that writing. When I dumped my high tech career in the 90’s to run Backpacker magazine, it was the start of emphasizing just those two constants: writing and photography. When I decided to leave Backpacker and Rodale, it happened to coincide with the mass migration from film to digital in photography, and my long tech career, which included designing some early digital cameras, suddenly came back into play.

Michael Zhang

Yahoo Finally Takes Control of Flicker.com Domain Name

Five years after acquiring the photo sharing service Flickr, Yahoo has finally obtained ownership of the domain name Flicker.com.

One of the common characteristics of Web 2.0 companies is the use of misspelled words in their name, since the correctly spelled words are typically too pricey for a bootstrapped web startup to purchase early on.

Flickr was one such company, settling for the now ubiquitous name after being unable to purchase Flicker.com.

As you might expect, the enormous popularity of Flickr has led to an absurd amount of traffic for Flicker.com, as people often type in the domain name either as a typo or being ignorant of the "correct" spelling".

Michael Zhang

Nikon Camera Lost at Sea Found 1,100 Miles Away

On May 16, Coast Guard investigator Paul Shultz was walking along a Key West, Florida marina when he came across a red Nikon L18. Although the underwater housing surrounding the camera was battered from what appeared to be a long period at sea, the camera was in tip top shape.

Michael Zhang

Base Jumping at Dean’s Blue Hole with the 5D Mark II

This beautiful video shows world champion freediver Guillaume Néry plunging into Dean's Blue Hole, the world's second deepest underwater sinkhole. It was filmed by Julie Gautier, a French freediving champion, using a Canon 5D Mark II. Gautier filmed the video while freediving herself, and the stunts were filmed over four afternoons.

Michael Zhang

Unboxing the Canon Lens Thermos and Coffee Mug

I've been dying to take a look at the Canon lens coffee thermos and mug since I first wrote about it back in the beginning of March, but didn't want to buy a set just to take a look. Luckily for me, the nice people over at canonmugs.com sent me some samples to check out and play around with. In this post I'll be sharing some photographs and thoughts about these unique items.

Duncan McNicholl

Exploring Different Perspectives of Poverty Through Photography

Editor's note: We came across Duncan McNicholl's work a while back and found it interesting, so we invited him to write a guest post regarding his project. His work has been featured by quite a few publications and websites in recent times.

Many people only experience sub-Saharan Africa through photographs. The teary-eyed child in rags is familiar to all of us as the portrait of poverty charities use to communicate a hopelessness in need of our pity and charity. I reacted very strongly to these images when I returned from Africa in 2008 after a 4 month volunteer placement in Malawi, working with Engineers Without Borders Canada. I compared the images I saw to my Malawian friends – people who embodied intelligence, resilience, and compassion – and I felt lied to.

Michael Zhang

Big City Heat Maps of Local and Tourist Photo Spots

Two weeks ago we posted on the Geotaggers' World Atlas, a project by Eric Fischer that shows heat maps of where photographs are taken in big cities, created using geolocation data from Flickr and Picasa photos.

Fischer now has a new set of maps called Locals and Tourists that distinguish between photos taken by inhabitants of the city and others who are simply passing through.

Some people interpreted the Geotaggers' World Atlas maps to be maps of tourism. This set is an attempt to figure out if that is really true. Some cities (for example Las Vegas and Venice) do seem to be photographed almost entirely by tourists. Others seem to have many pictures taken in piaces that tourists don't visit.

Blue points are locals (determined by whether the person has a history of photographing in that city), red points are tourists, and yellow points indicate photos for which it cannot be determined.

San Francisco