Mechanical Parts Pics

Brittnybadger's mechanical parts pictures appeal to the industrial designer in me. Great photos of meticulously laid out parts from disassembled home appliances. I imagine that she had second thoughts about this photo project when she went to make toast the next morning. (Found through Swissmiss).

Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony

I watched the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics this weekend. If you missed it, be sure to check out some of the many photos that documented the visually stunning event.

Days with My Father

Phillip Toledano has done some wonderful photographic collections. I think his recent series, entitled Days with My Father, is my favorite. It is a very candid collection of photographs and commentary about life with his 98 year old father. It is a very heartfelt and touching collection.

Flee Digital Camera

Flee is a digital camera with an areal twist. The camera is built into a badminton birdie style housing with a Bluetooth transmitter. When Flee is thrown, it starts taking pictures and transmitting them to your mobile phone. Designed by Hakan Bogazpinar. (Found through Cool Hunting).

People Collector

I'm a fan of wacky photography projects and collections, so People Collector is right up my alley. It's a gallery of themed sets of photos that show off "humanity in all its splendor". Some of the collections are super fabulous because you know you have a picture of yourself that would fit right in. Collections include: Blind In A Car (shown above), Air Guitar, Blue Face, Falling Off A Bike, Green Sweater... amongst others. The photos themselves are very regular, but put together in a group, the regularity is what makes them special. Photo Collector is the idea of Julien Pacaud and Mathilde Aubier.

DIY Google Images

Fun with photos. Create you own low tech Google Images sheet. Just print out a Google Images results page (with appropriate titles), cut out the images, and take a photo (of the appropriate subject) though the paper. (Found through Fubiz).

UnPhotographable

Unphotoghaphable is my favorite new photography blog. It doesn't have any photos. Instead, it is a collection missed photos. Descriptions of photos that should have been. There is something even more lovely in the description of the photos than the photos themselves would have been. UnPhotographable is written by Michael David Murphy. (Found through Digital Crushes).

Little Zoo

I get great joy out of seeing little things photographed as if they were big. I'm not sure why. I think I like the thought that had to go in. Do you just carry miniatures around in your pockets in case you come across just the right setting for their next adventure? Or do you plan out your subject's story in advance, carefully constructing their adventures over time? My latest little obsession is with Elisa Dudnikova's Little Zoo. The photographic series tracks a deer, a sheep, a giraffe and some polar bears on their trek through the big world.

Greenpoint Backyards and other Night Shots

My friend Katy Portier is a wonderful photographer. I check her photoblog on a regular basis. I really enjoyed her recent Night Shots series. It features some photos of my old stomping ground, Greenpoint, amongst other Brooklyn night scenes that made me smile. I love the lighting effect of this Night Trash shot (cropped) above.

Star Wars In Town - Cedric Delsaux

Today is my favorite day in May because it's the only day all year where you can get away with saying 'May the fourth be with you'. Which reminded me of these great photos by Cedric Delsaux. They feature Star Wars characters in everyday settings. I like the Stormtroopers in the parting lot and this wonderful C-3PO shot.

Vita

I enjoyed looking through this newly posted Flickr photo set called Vita, by user Zeissizm. It is a series of gorgeous black and white animal photos. This polar bear shot is one of my favorites.

Interview with Chris Jordan

I had the pleasure of interviewing the fabulous Chris Jordan today for The Greener Grass. You can find the full interview here.

Souvenirs

I enjoyed this File Magazine gallery of Souvenir photos by Michael Hughes. It features small souvenir products being held in front of the real thing. The varying sense of scale and color is nice. There is something really charming about capturing the souvenir in the memory, instead of the other way around.

Citizen Image

If you are a photographer (amateur or professional) you should check out Citizen Image. They specialize in marketing and selling the rights to photographs. Photographers can upload images they wish to sell and Citizen Image will help find a buyer. There is no fee to post photographs and photographers receive 50% of the gross proceeds from the sale of their photo. Buyers can search through the unique content online. If there are no appropriate images, buyers can set an Assignment for photographers, outlining the image(s) that they are looking for. This is a really well thought out system that benefits everyone involved.

William Hundley Photographs Ghosts

William Hundley photographs ghosts... or something. The 'or something' apparently being his friends jumping in bed sheets. This looks like a fun photography/Photoshop project to try out. I doubt it is quite as easy as it sounds (unless your friends are professional canonballers, cheerleaders, or just plain fabulous jumpers). I just like the idea that ghosts where bedsheets, especially in broad daylight. Check out the rest of William Hundley's Entoptic Phenomena series here. (Found through Photojojo).

City Shrinker

These City Shrinkers are created by Ben Thomas. They are photos of the real world altered to look like scale models. Ben says he tries to alter the familiar to cause people to second guess and question reality, even if it's only for a second.

I've seen a couple good Photoshop tutorials on how to achieve this effect, but I've yet to come across anyone who can do it better then Ben Thomas. (Found through Wooster Collective).

Martin Klimas' Temporary Sculpture

Martin Klimas' photography is meant to capture an image of an object in a state that it only exists temporarily. By photographing objects at their breaking point or at a point in motion, he is able to show them with new character and meaning. My favorite is this series of breaking porcelain statues. Captured just as they hit the ground, the formally still statues take on a sense of action.

Sharad Haksar

I was fabulously entertained by the portfolio of photographer Sharad Haksar. It is a witty collection of photography and advertising, including this Sorti ad. (Found through Computerlove).

Earth as Art

I came across the site Earth as Art today. It's from a couple of years ago, but I found it really inspiring. It celebrates the beauty of the Earth by featuring a collection of stunning high res satellite images of our planet. Above is a photos of China's Himalayas.

Deleted Images

Are you looking through your fireworks photos this morning and wondering 'What was I thinking trying to take photos in the dark without a tripod'? Well before you hit the Delete button on those blurry, out of focus and misdirected photos, check out this new blog called Deleted Images. It's a collection of to-be-deleted images which on their own are just examples of bad photography, but together as a collection become something very artistic.

Stuck in Customs

Check out this gorgeous Best Of collection from photographer Trey Ratcliff, (a.k.a. Stuck in Customs). He uses High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography to create images that border on illustrations. According to Trey, "a well-executed HDR image is evocative of the actual scene itself. When a human eye is actually on location, it is constantly moving, adjusting the pupil size, allowing in more light in some areas, less in others, and the visual cortex actually works to build a patch-like vision of the scene". For more info about HDR go to Trey's blog.

Photosynth

OoooOOo... I've just been playing with this demo of Photosynth. It's fun and amazing on so many different levels. The demo is a 3D reconstruction of St Mark's Square in Venice, made up of photos taken from Flikr. The photos are arranged based on their spacial relationships, creating a virtual model that can be rotated and zoomed. Graphics indicate where the picture was taken from and outline of other near by photos. This demo was released almost a year ago by Microsoft Live Labs and featured at this year's TED conference.

What is really amazing to me is how such large amounts of data can be so easily manipulated (accomplished partially by just focusing only on what is within the parameters of your screen). For more about the technology and it's uses check out this video. (Thanks Mike!)

Mr Toledano Will See You Now

I really enjoyed the online portfolio of photographer Philip Toledano. His photography is very compelling. Each of his photographs is like a story in itself. I particularly liked his series called People, which he describes as wanting to be "as though you'd accidentally picked up the phone and caught the middle of a conversation". The site itself, designed by Megaphone, complements the photos by being very simple yet pretty.

Dreams of Flying

I enjoyed this set of photos entitled Dreams of Flying taken by photographer Jan von Holleben. They capture the idea of imagination very well. It is also a nice simple Flash portfolio.

Lunar Eclipse

Check out these gorgeous pictures of last weekend's lunar eclipse. They were taken by Hugh Denholm from his balcony in Jomtien, Thailand.

Make your own Wee Planets

I've always really liked the little planet images that people have made out of panoramic photos. They are very Little Prince. I've seen this done by a few photographers now. For a couple of examples check out Alexandre Duret-Lutz's flickr collection of Wee Planets.

I found a tutorial on Photojojo about how to make your own little planets. You basically take a panoramic photo and stretch it into a square. Then you apply a polar filter. It sounds simple but I think it takes the right photo and some handy Photoshop clean-up work to make it look awesome. I'm totally going to try it.

Sunset Time Graphs

Jim Bumgardner (a.k.a. jbum) has put together some pretty intriguing time graphs using photos from Flicker. Over one year he collected 15000 photos posted to Flickr with the tag Sunset. He then used the image's EXIF data to tell when the photo was taken and graph the photos accordingly. The horizontal axis represents the days of the year and the vertical access shows the time of day. The photos are dimmed to reflect the number of images posted at that time. The overall effect is a graph that shows the sun's cycle over the seasons. He also calls attention to the echo of sunset photographs taken between 5-7am caused by all the people who have their cameras am and pm settings backwards.

Check out this and more fascinating graphs by Jim on his flickr account.