John Nack on Adobe

July 05, 2008

Weekend Photography: HDR to RFK

• Is Full-Frame the Coming Thing, or is it just a way for uninformed gearheads to show off?  Longtime photography observer Mike Johnston posts some interesting thoughts on the subject.
• High dynamic range:
  • Our friend Ben Willmore has been traveling the country in his bus, and he's collected the best of his work at The Best of Ben.
  • Reaktor 1 is a cool, interactive, HDR panorama from Jann Lipka.
  • Norwegian photog Klaus Nordby captured a beautiful fjord sunrise, then posted the high-res image via Photoshop CS3's Zoomify export feature.
• History:
  • On June 8, 1968, Look photographer Paul Fusco rode inside the funeral train that carried Robert Kennedy's body from New York to Washington to be buried beside his brother at Arlington.  On the NY Times site he narrates a slideshow of the work, capturing the Americans who lined the route.  The NYT carries remembrances from that time, and more shots (albeit smaller) are here.  [Via]
  • The Commons, Flickr's project to host public-domain images, is getting beefed up with the help of The Smithsonian.  The institution added 800 photographs from its collection of 13 million images, and 1,200 more will be added in coming months, according to CNET.  Images shared on the Commons can be tagged by anyone.
  • The Smithsonian posts a small set of turn-of-the-20th-century color autochromes.  Kottke has more info & links to more early color photography.
• Moving in Stereo:
  • Yosemite in 3D:The Smithsonian hosts a story & slideshow of 19th-century stereoscopic images from Carleton Watkins. [Via]
  • Cursive Buildings hosts a collection of vintage stereoscopic photos made into weirdly undulating GIFs.
• DIY:
  • Grab these downloadable PDF plans to create a stylish paper pinhole camera.
  • MAKE shows how to turn a video camera into a lensless microscope. [Via]
  • Build your own LEGO color scanner. [Via Trevor Morris]  This seems far more benign than LEGO fruit snacks.  ("I would love to know what sick bastard at Kellogg's came up with this genius idea..." [Via]

July 03, 2008

JNack: Public Enemy

This is your PM...

This is your PM after being busted following an all-night meth bender...

Lightroom team member Kelly Castro has been continuing his "Exteriors" project (see the whole collection), photographing people at Adobe & elsewhere.  On Monday he got me into the team's on-site photo studio for a shoot*.  If you're into this style, check out the info that Kelly & Bryan O'Neil Hughes put together on generating killer B&W using Photoshop + Lightroom.  (Kelly also created a color version of my portrait, in which I have the healthy glow of a Barbecue Pringle.)

In other photo news:

• Peep Eddie Murphy's giant head on the interstate.  (I'd like to see versions for Barry Bonds & Ted Kennedy, but I guess it would be redundant.) [Via]
• Don't I know you from the cinematographer's party?  No Country for Raising Arizona juxtaposes scenes from two very different Coen Bros. films. [Via]
• Not just a weird Photoshop job: Chinese cops on Segways (with very tiny guns). [Via] [Update: Engadget is having a caption contest for the photo. ("Don't make me lean forward and come over there...")]

*These little photo projects tend to turn funky, ranging from foolish to beatific to vainglorious. (Take that, Eddie Murphy.)

June 30, 2008

Punking tourist pix

Here's a bit of brilliance for your Monday: "The Image Fulgurator is a device for physically manipulating photographs. It intervenes when a photo is being taken, without the photographer being able to detect anything. The manipulation is only visible on the photo afterwards."  In other words, it watches for the flash of someone else's camera & projects an image onto what they're photographing.  Check it out in action. [Via]

On a related note, Wired surveys cameras shaped like guns, cameras on guns, and more. [Via Ellis Vener] For other projected guerilla fun, see previous about Applied Autonomy's "Streetwriter."

June 24, 2008

Photos: Smoke, fire, floods, & weirdoes

• People as smoke: the simple tricks of long exposure produce a ghostly presence.  [Via Marc Pawliger]
• The Big Picture showcases the wrath of nature:
  • I used to play soccer against the guys from Cedar Rapids, IA, and I hate seeing the city submerged.  Scroll down as the photography gets more and more striking.
  • Smoke from the northern California fires cast a bizarre light over the Bay Area last week.  Apparently the T1000 got caught in the flames.
• Vintage photo manipulation:
  • Wired New York features a wealth of early photos of the city. Among them you can find at least one example of rudimentary (yet surprisingly decent) photo manipulation.
  • Sam Haskins talks a bit about how composite photos were made in the time before Photoshop and shows an example. "At the time there was zero retouching after the event. Now of course I have the luxury of scanning the transparency to clean and refine the image in Photoshop - God bless its digital socks." [Via]
• Doing their own thing:
  • Phillip Toledano has created a photo essay of phone sex operators--a surprisingly articulate, diverse, and self-aware crew.  (Fair warning: The photos are tame, but some of the blurbs beneath them are fairly frank.) [Via]
  • Return of the ’70s Weirdos features 1978 & 2008 photos of a group of early Microsoft employees.  [Via]  Referring to aging dudes working for MSFT these days, a friend of mine calls the shuttle bus from Seattle to Redmond "The Ponytail Express."
  • You never know what you'll find via the American Gothic tag on Flickr. [Via]

June 21, 2008

Saturday Science: Great photos of Earth, Mars, & beyond

Boston.com's new feature The Big Picture dispenses with traditional peanut-sized Web photos and showcases great images in the news.  Site designer/developer/writer/photo editor Alan Taylor talks about his brainchild and how it came to be. [Via]  Lately they've been harvesting the best photos that billions of tax dollars can buy:

• The Sky, From Above features gorgeous shots of the Space Shuttle at liftoff, as well as of thunderstorms over the American Midwest and more.  [Via]
• In Martian Skies, you can view panoramas from Mars and watch dust devils skittering across the Martian landscape.
• The site also features a retrospective of some of the great images sent back home by the Cassini space probe over the past four years. [Via]

On related notes, apparently the Mars Phoenix rover is broadcasting via Twitter.  Also, NASA's new space suit design looks rather trim & buff.  I kind of miss the human Jiffy Pop bag look, though.

June 11, 2008

DestroyFlickr! (in a nice way)

The curiously named DestroyFlickr has nothing to do with destruction & everything to do with browsing your images via a desktop application.  Specifically, it's an Adobe AIR app (essentially a Flash SWF running on the desktop, outside the browser) that lets you navigate your photostream through an attractive, minimalist gray interface.  According to the developer,

With the support of both drag and drop uploading and downloading, posting and saving photos is done in one easy motion. Now you can download the highest resolution version of a photo without having to see it first—just drag a thumbnail to the download menu and the download begins. [Via]

Smoove.

May 30, 2008

Friday photos: Earthquakes, birds, war, & more

• Slate features an excellent photo essay from Magnum photographer Thomas Dworzak, Wars: Chechnya and Iraq.  The subject is heavy, but his sardonic narration is well worth a listen.
• Happening to have a camera on hand during a terrible interruption yielded this rather amazing earthquake wedding photo gallery. [Via]
• The NYT profiles photographer Nikola Tamindzic.  "He uses long exposures, then shakes the camera while the shutter is still open, causing colors to blur and lights to streak. 'I'm not recording what is really happening, but it's something like what the brain is seeing late at night, especially if maybe you're drunk or very excited,' he said." [Via]   On his own site he offers one of the more punishing self portaits I've ever seen.
• Ernesto Scott teaches photography near my old home town & offers lots of lovely bird shots.
• Raw in the raw: camera tech nerds (or just the curious) may enjoy Looking at a Real NEF Bayer Pattern. [Via Dave Polaschek]
• Photographer Jay Maisel is offering more intensive NYC-based photography workshops (July 14-18, Sept. 15-19, and Nov. 17-21).  Details are on his site.

May 26, 2008

Fire on the Mountain

As you may have heard, for the last few days large fires have been burning in the Santa Cruz mountains overlooking Adobe HQ.  Quite a few of our colleagues live in or over the hills, but fortunately no one on the Photoshop team has (as far as I know) had to evacuate.  Bryan Hughes didn't sleep well on Thursday night, I know, with the fire half a mile from his house (shoes on, cats in hand).

I mention it because on my way to an air show yesterday, I snaked through the mountains via some back roads and was surprised to see a very large and imposing Chinook helicopter barreling towards our car, on its way to reload water from the pond right behind me.  I pulled over and popped off a few frames that may be of interest to other aviation nerds.  Included in the set is the swift, violent, helicopter-borne death of a white Jeep Cherokee.  (Yeah, it blowed up real goood!)  Plumes of smoke from the mountains are visible in a few of the shots.

As for other fire-related photography, I honestly can't compete with things like this.

May 25, 2008

Sunday photos: Tintypes, timelapses, and more

• The NYT showcases Tintype Buckaroos.  Robb Kendrick uses archaic gear to capture the enduring lifestyle of cowboys.  "When I’m doing tintypes, everything has to be driving, not flying — all the stuff for the developing is fairly flammable," he explains.  An interactive feature shows the work while providing narration from the photographer & the article's author.
• Pioneering photojournalist (and ICP founder) Cornell Capa passed away on Friday at age 90.  The NYT features a selection of his photos.  I particularly like this one of 7,000 white-shirted Ford engineers.
• Rob Galbraith points out some great photos in MSNBC's weekly photo gallery.  I love the frog-hopping image, though it took me a moment to notice the frog. [Via]
• Matteo Ferrari is doing an interesting little project showing before & after shots of people who drive the same car for a long time. [Via]
• How does one actually measure the temperature of light?  James Duncan Davidson explains.

• Timelapses:
  • The New Yorker features a hard-to-watch timelapse video of a man stuck in an elevator for 41 hours. [Via]
  • A new Canon TV spot is composed mostly of stills shot by EOS-1D Mark III cameras.  (Ironically, the ad is for the lower-end Canon Rebel.)
  • CHDK (the Canon Hacker's Development Kit) is a set of firmware enhancements for a wide range of Canon cameras.  Scripts "provide functionality like motion-sensing photography (which reportedly works for lightning strikes) and unlimited interval time-lapse photography." [Via Ashish Mukharji]

May 24, 2008

Miscellaneous interestingness

New fatherhood -> sleep deprivation (yeah, still) -> abandoning any pretense of categorization.  That said, here are a few interesting bits I've seen lately:

• The New Yorker reports on the world of high-end retouching in "Pixel Perfect -- Pascal Dangin’s virtual reality." (Hey, someone uses the Smudge tool!) [Via Ivan Cavero Belaunde, Clare McLean, Gary Cosimini, Claiborne Brown, and seemingly everyone else I know ;-)]
• The Times Online features "Billion-pixel panoramas — from your own camera" [Via Jeffrey Warnock]
• As I've said before, Logo design = Bullet magnetism.  Now "OGC unveils new logo to red faces," says the Telegraph.  Er, um, yes.  (But hey, it's no worse than the "Lisa Simpson" London Olympics logo.)   [Via Lori Grunin]
• "Oh man... two words: Photoshop Filter," says Adobe's Chris Arkenberg.  Behold Man Babies.

May 18, 2008

Take your camera to Tasmania--for free

Photographer Mikkel Aaland, organizer of the recent Lightroom Adventure down under, passed along some attractive info:

Follow in the footsteps of the Adobe Lightroom Adventure Photographers or create your own adventure on the beautiful island of Tasmania!  Here is your chance to win a trip for two to experience the natural beauty of Tasmania first hand.

 

Roundtrip economy airfare for two on Qantas Airways from one of their North American gateways - Los Angeles, San Francisco or New York City (JFK) - to the island of Tasmania. Two nights’ accommodation in Tasmania.

What do you have to do?  Just fill out a simple form & you're good to go.  Good luck & happy inverted shooting.

I've been meaning to blog about the Adventure for quite a while, but my draft full-o'-links was lost to my hard drive crash.  Therefore I'll keep it simple for now and just recommend checking out the beautiful galleries of images captured by the participants.  At the moment I'm grooving on some work from NatGeo photographer Bruce Dale.  (What is this thing?)

May 10, 2008

Photoshop Express now does Flickr

Woot, there it is!  The subject line pretty much says it all: you can now browse and edit your photos stored on Flickr right from within Photoshop Express.  I've just given the integration a whirl and, yep, it works like a charm.  Similar hooks are available for photos stored on Facebook, Photobucket, and Picasa.  (I've been uploading just to my own site since becoming, uh, photographically obsessed with one little subject, but maybe this will draw me back to using a service as well.)

As long as we're on the subject, what's your take on the importance of integrating services like Flickr into Photoshop?  There's an obvious appeal in being able to upload right from Lightroom, but should we make it possible to browse & open images on Photoshop.com & co. right from within Photoshop?  (Let's imagine we could drop in an optional little Flash widget as a browser palette/panel, or maybe enable browsing via Adobe Bridge.)  What about being able to save edits back to the service?  Just curious.

May 07, 2008

All Ansel, all the time

A number of interesting Ansel Adams-related bits have popped up recently:

• The NYT features an interactive gallery in which Adams's former assistant Andrea Stillman discusses the back story on nine of his images.  The story of the naming of "Mt. Ansel Adams" is particularly cool.
• In what he calls "The most amazing 24 hours of my photo career," photographer Marc Silber trekked around Yosemite with Robert Scoble & Adams's son Michael.  Afterward they visited the photographer's darkroom.
• Frederick Johnson from the Lightroom team joined these guys on the visit.  "Michael is amazing," he writes.  "Turns out we were both in the Air Force! Though he was a General, and I was an enlisted man. It was hard to fight the impulse to call him 'sir...'"  Frederick posted some photos and short video clips in his Flickr stream.  And oh yeah: if you've ever wondered why Photoshop has a lollypop-shaped Dodge Tool (you know, this thing), here's why.
  

May 03, 2008

DNG submitted to the ISO

"The DNG format was supposed to be the future, an open standard for RAW files that every manufacturer could use," writes Digital Photo Pro's Dave Willis.  "Here’s a look at how the revolution has panned out."  Dave talks with my boss Kevin Connor about the problem that gave rise to DNG:

"Our philosophy on this from the beginning, sort of my personal belief," continues Connor, "is that eventually the proprietary system is just going to break. When we came out with the first camera RAW plug-in, we were supporting around 25 cameras. We’re now supporting more than 175 cameras—in other words, more than 175 different file formats. And when you’re talking about images, people don’t want to keep those images for just five or 10 years. Professional photographers want to know those images will be fine for 50 years—100 years—from now. If you think about the rate of new-camera introductions, how many new file formats will there be? A hundred thousand? It just seems that it’s going to reach a point when it becomes unmanageable."

It's true that we haven't yet seen big camera vendors like Canon and Nikon adopt DNG, though maybe we'll see more progress now that DNG has been submitted to the ISO as a vendor-independent standard.  In any case, the format is providing real-world benefits today:

• Converting to DNG saves disk space and eliminates the need to use separate sidecar files for raw settings.  (I knocked 1.5GB off the 7GB of photos from our wedding photographer.)
• Because of these benefits, customer feedback indicates that 40% of Lightroom users are converting to DNG on import.  (It's a one-click set-and-forget option that's also available in Adobe Bridge CS3.)
• DNG lets Adobe support new cameras in older versions of Camera Raw without having to constantly revise and test those versions.  Photographers and use the free DNG Converter (Win | Mac) to process their proprietary raw images to DNG.  The upshot is that we can spend our time building good new functionality instead of updating old software.

[Via]

April 30, 2008

Earth from on high

Photographer Michael Poliza* has produced a stunning collection of aerial photos, Eyes Over Africa.  He says, "The images came mostly from an 8-week helicopter expedition from Hamburg to Cape Town.  Lots of zickzacking over this amazing continent.  The Lightroom beta & LR 1.0 was the tool to work my way thru the 30,000 images."  You can browse more than 200 of the images on his site via Flash (also available in smaller HTML form, both uploaded from LR).  Beautiful zickzacking indeed.

A few months ago Michael dropped by Adobe to visit with Tom Hogarty and me.  He brought with him his "newest baby," Eyes Over Africa XXL.  He's not kidding about that suffix:  "It will be the largest coffee table book ever that was purely shot digitally. Almost 50 (!) lbs and definitely huge."  Just for fun, he used his iPhone to call up a satellite image of the same coordinates displayed on one of the pages, then laid the phone on the book.  For further weirdness points, I then snapped a couple of shots of the layout using my iPhone.  (At this point there was a great disturbance in the Force.)

For more Earth from above:

• National Geographic rounds up some great stuff in Through the Eyes of the Condor.
• In honor of Earth Day, NASA offered their Top 10 Views of Earth.

* Coincidentally the elder brother of GoLive founder Andreas Poliza

April 25, 2008

Old Glory, pourable meat, & more

• Dewbacks in the car park; I think it's serious...  Cedric Delsaux makes extremely nice images of Star Wars characters in the real world.  (Click the "Series" link in the top navigation bar.) [Via]
• Slate features an interesting history on Stanley Forman's The Soiling of Old Glory, a wrenching and iconic image from the civil rights struggle in Boston. (Why they use a blurry low-res JPEG, I don't know, but here's a somewhat crisper version.)
• "It should never, ever be possible to pour meat..."  This sage wisdom came to me from a fellow high schooler who'd gone to work at the Dubuque meat packing plant for the summer.  I thought of it upon seeing this photo series of food that takes the shape of its container. [Via]
• Andri Pol makes contrails erupt from a man's head.  (Can't buy into it being more fun than Photoshop, though.)
• Peep Wayne Levin's underwater B&W. [Via]
  

April 24, 2008

Tips on using the Lightroom 2 beta

• Image sharpness is a good thing... except when it isn't.  Martin Evening shows how to achieve a "'pseudo' diffusion printing technique" using the Lightroom 2.0 beta's ability to go negative on the Clarity slider.
• To even out exposures across multiple images, Lightroom features a "Match Total Exposures" command. Sean McCormack explains it in this brief video. (I'd listen just for the soothing brogue. ;-))
• Lightroom lets you create virtual copies of a single image, applying different settings to each.  New in the LR2 beta is the ability to stack virtual copies as layers of a PSD file, letting you composite and blend them in Photoshop. Mucho groovio!
• Lightroom marketing manager Frederick V. Johnson toted his camera to the Golden Gate Bridge in order to demonstrate handing off a panorama from Lightroom to Photoshop.
• Ken Milburn touches on the improved Auto adjustment algorithms in LR2.
  

April 19, 2008

Shocking photography (literally) & more

• Adobe TV went live last week.  It features a profile of Adobe's Angela Drury, an accomplished photographer who moonlights as a product manager.  Look for the Photographer channel on Adobe TV for tons more.
• I'm shocked, shocked to report on The Stunning Camera.  Bryan O'Neil Hughes, Photoshop PM and camera store veteran, reports "experimenting" with this kind of thing in his past life: "We even rigged one up to the door knob of the men’s room.  Then someone had the bright idea of running the capacitors in parallel and well, it worked but it 'snake-bit' him....essentially the current arced right through his thumb leaving two seared holes.  Seriously." [Via Joe Ault]
• That chintzy look: “When I looked at the wallpaper and the wallpaper looked at me, we instantly fell in love."
• On an occasionally related note, Thierry Bouët chronicles people in their beds (click "au lit" in the top nav bar). [Via]
• Jan Sochor is a Czech-born freelance photographer who splits his time between Europe and South America.[Via]
• You might not guess it from the title, but this NYT photo essay on how manhole covers are made in India is really interesting.

April 07, 2008

Remembering photographer Dith Pran

Photojournalist and humanitarian Dith Pran, survivor of and witness to Cambodia's "Killing Fields" period, passed away last week.  The NY Times, for which Mr. Dith reported with his friend and colleague Sid Schanberg, features a remembrance of his life, along with a selection of his photos.  Perhaps most interesting, though, is the "Last Word" video feature in which Dith speaks about his life and the need to remain vigilant lest the horrors he witnessed be repeated.  I found the feature to be six minutes very well spent.

[Update: On a related note, see the NPPA's story Four Photojournalists Killed During Vietnam War Come Home For Burial.  [Via]]

March 30, 2008

A great digital imaging project honors the fallen

Photographer Peter Krogh (author of the excellent The DAM Book, the Rapid Fixer extension for Bridge, and more) recently completed an ambitious & enormous digital imaging project: photographing all 58,256 names listed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, enabling the creation of an interactive online version of the wall.  By stitching together some 1,494 digital images into a 400,000 pixel by 12,500 pixel monster, Peter & colleague Darren Higgins were able to help create a Flash-based presentation that enables you to search for names, read servicemen's details, and add notes and photos to the wall.

The presentation site features some behind-the-scenes production info, but figuring there was more to the story, I asked Peter for details.  He kindly provided them in this article's extended entry.  Read on for more.

More…

March 20, 2008

Photoshop + Lightroom = Killer B&W

One of my favorite things about working on the Photoshop team is that we get to build a product people actually want to use when they leave work.  That means that lots of the engineers, QE folks, marketroids, and others are avid photographers, and the halls of the floor are lined with their work.

Recently, every time I've walked by the office of Kelly Castro from the Lightroom team, I've noticed really striking black & white portraits on his monitors.  Knowing that my friend & fellow Photoshop PM Bryan O'Neil Hughes had recently co-authored a great book covering B&W in Photoshop and Lightroom, I suggested he touch base with Kelly to learn more about the way he combines the two products.  Here's his report. --J.

More…

March 17, 2008

Photographic coolness: Miniature worlds & more

• New camera technology can detect the amount of blood and water in a vehicle, enabling the fuzz to bust carpool lane violators. [Via]
• Scott Kelby shows how to get a cool, gritty look in Camera Raw/Lightroom + Photoshop.
• The world of the small:
  • Lori Nix builds incredibly detailed tabletop worlds and photographs them.  Love this little Zeppelin.  She gives a behind-the-scenes tour on Cool Hunting. [Via]
  • Martin Amm's captured an amazing shot of a dew-covered bug. [Via]
  • Kodak says they've shrunk CMOS sensors, squeezing 5 megapixels onto a 1.4 micron device.  Meanwhile Sony's new DSC-W300 brings 13.6 megapixels to point-and-shoots.
• Digital SLRs seem to have an inferiority complex, adding features found on compact cameras.  First they got going with live preview (e.g. Sony's autofocus-friendly version), and now they're considering movie mode.
• "My pencil is very big and hard."  Ahem.  Photojojo has a cool idea for making your own photo pencils.
• Robert Rezabek's Blackr JavaScript bookmarklet hides everything on a Flickr photo page except for the pictures. [Via]
• Leica has launched a rich, immersive Flash experience on their site.
• Can the iPhone be a pro photo accessory?  Yep; Ben Long shows how, using iLevel software.
  

March 09, 2008

Tips for HDR in Photoshop & Lightroom

• Colin Smith of PhotoshopCafe.com has posted a tutorial on creating high dynamic range images using Photoshop, then tone mapping them using Photoshop's built-in tools as well as HDRSoft's Photomatix plug-in for Photoshop.  Scroll all the way down for a cool theater shot Colin created using these techniques.
• Over on LightroomNews, Sean McCormack covers LR/Enfuse, Timothy Armes' project to integrate the open-source Enfuse blending program right into Lightroom.  LR/Enfuse is available from Timothy's site & is supported by user donations.

On a slightly related note, if the topic of digital dynamic range is up your alley, you might want to check out Stu Maschwitz's detailed experiments with video gear.

March 07, 2008

Friday Photos: Slam dunks to Zeppelin

• Slate features a Magnum collection of photos from Afghanistan. I find this one especially weirdly compelling.
• Photography via Flash:
  • Phi Slamma Jamma: USA Today uses Flash + burst photography to give a better look at the latest NBA slam dunk contest. [Via]
  • Randy Bacon showcases his work using some interesting Flash transitions.
• The MacGyver chronicles:
  • Found Photography shows how to build your own tilt-shift lens using, among other things, an old bike innertube. [Via]
  • In a similar vein, you can build a homemade bellows kit for $25.
  • You can build your own Nikon geotagger for under $100.  Side effects may include lower back pain and loss of dignity. (Hopefully cams with built-in geotagging are truly right around the corner).
• Photographers who script:
  • I'm super late in mentioning it, but Ben Long has posted v3.6 of his handy--and free--set of Photoshop Automator Actions.
  • Joe Lencioni has posted Smart Image Resizer, "a ridiculously easy-to-use PHP script for resizing images the smart way."
• Vintage:
  • Blast from the past: Giant ear trumpets, no Photoshop required.
  • Photographer Ted Harvey shot Led Zeppelin in '72, but his photos never saw the light of day.  Now, some 35 years later, he's taking them on tour to raise money at Rock Photo Aid.  [Via Max Ferguson]

February 23, 2008

Of Eyeballs & iHoles

Apparently Canon is developing an Iris Registration Mode that will enable photographers to use their eyeballs to form a kind of digital fingerprint for their images.  Hmm... the tech sounds cool (well, provided it works better than the fingerprint scanner on my ThinkPad), but I'm not sure how it helps secure photographers' rights.

What people want--and can't have, as I've noted previously--is the ability to embed copyright data in images that are both easily readable and secure.  Iris scanning doesn't address the fact that if you can edit the pixels of an image, you can get around copyright data in the image (through copy and paste to a new file, if nothing else).  And for all the talk of wanting secure metadata, I don't see much use of the Digimarc technology that's been bundled in Photoshop for ~10 years (allowing copyright to be subtly encoded into the pixels themselves), nor do I hear of many photographers passing around their images as secure PDFs (which offer 128-bit encryption, among other things).  So, unless I'm missing something (and please shout out some enlightenment if so), iris scanning doesn't seem to change the game too much, at least as regards downstream image protection.  [Via Steve Weiss]

On a lighter eye-related note, check out Scot Hampton's iHole--the camera made from an iPhone box.

February 21, 2008

Mama don't take my Polaroids away

News about the demise of Polaroid film production has pulled a number of interesting items out of the woodwork:

• Eames + Cramps + Cams: Check out this demo film of the Polaroid SX-70 made by famous furniture designers Charles and Ray Eames, but inexplicably set the music of The Cramps.  Weirder still, it all kind of works. [Via]
• "The late cinematographer Jamie Livingston, who died at age 41 in 1997," writes Mike Johnston, "left an archive of almost 6,000 Polaroid SX-70 shots, taken one per day (with only minor lapses) for 18 years."  You can browse the archive here.
• David Friedman would like to see a Polaroid-style digital picture frame, complete with dry-erase area for jotting notes.  [Via]
• "Polaroid made me the photographer I am today": Photographer Ctein reminisces about the format's importance in his artistic development.
• We recently met with some photogs doing a great project using large-format Polaroids.  Once they post images publicly I'll pass along the news.

One more photo-nostagia tip--this time for Kodak--this clip from Mad Men shows a pitch for the original slide carousel.

February 17, 2008

Digital imaging in, and of, space

• Is there a sculpture of a Man on Mars?  Not really, but the illusion is cool.  Of course, anthropomorphic stone formations are also found closer to home.
• Virgin Galactic has unveiled the brilliant Burt Rutan's elegant SpaceShipTwo.  Here's more info on the efforts. [Via]
• Bring on the nuclear tricycles! Air&Space Mag features alternative lunar vehicles that didn't quite make the cut. [Via]
• CNET talks about lightning strikes on Venus, as well as how the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has helped explain bizarre Mars textures using stereoscopic imaging.  The also point out the dusty Mars rover finding evidence of water.
• The Hubble recently captured a double Einstein ring.  An Einstein ring occurs when light from one body is deflected into a ring by another body, such as a black hole.  In this case, the effect required three galaxies to be perfectly aligned. [Via]
• Scientists have now turned up a smaller version of our solar system using "a trick of Einsteinian gravity called microlensing."
• On a level I can understand more directly, dig this Solar System typography from Christopher David Ryan. [Via]
• The NYT reports on amateur "satellite spotters" who track the motion of satellites & share their findings on the Net. [Via]
• MSNBC's has posted their top space photos of the year, while National Geographic has shared their top science images of the year.
  

February 13, 2008

Helmut Newton, the death of Polaroid, and more

• Mike Johnston shares a number of interesting thoughts on recent photographic news.  Talking about those huge zoom lenses, he says, "[W]hat people are really interested in is who can buy the biggest, baddest, most expensive status symbol in the form of massive glass. Plus, the narrowed field of view of the smaller sensor has now come into direct conflict with the preferred status symbol in sensors, so-called "full-frame" (i.e., 35mm size). We're back to the best of both worlds in terms of one-upsmanship: the people with the biggest sensors also need the biggest lenses. Perfect."
• James Danziger has posted a short, funny, and salty interview with the late Helmut Newton:
  • Q: Your about to be published autobiography stops in 1982. What have the readers missed?
  • A: Nothing! People who reach their goals are very uninteresting. What could I have written about the last 20 years? I met a lot of awfully boring Hollywood bimbos. I earned a lot of money. I fly only first class. [Via]
• You've probably heard that Polaroid film production is reaching its end.  One can, however, convert a Polaroid cam to digital [Via], and while the film stocks last they lend themselves to painterly manipulation. [Via Ashish Mukharji]
• I'm sure my folks in Illinois can relate to this beautiful ice.  Certain things I'm happy to observe from afar. [Via]
• Storm chaser Jim Reed risks life, limb, and gear to get some amazing shots, cataloged in his book. [Via]
• Image database Covering Photography is billed as "a web-based archive and resource for the study of the relationship between the history of photography and book cover design." [Via]
• I'm late in posting it, but I enjoyed this unusual photo of Sen. John Edwards on the campaign trail. [Via]
• Dan Heller's blog covers the business of photography.

February 11, 2008

Moments in time: Frozen Grand Central & more

Playing with our sense of time:

• Improv Everywhere recently staged some captivating performance art in NYC's Grand Central Station, in which 207 people froze in place for five minutes.  I'd love to see a time lapse view of the happening.  [Via]
• IKEA makes superb use of slow-mo video in this new interactive catalog.  The Flash UI lets you drag the image to change angles or change rooms.  Motionographer offers some comments.
  
• oobject features time lapses of people playing with Wiis. [Via]
• Flickr use Apres makes intimate use of long exposure (more).

February 08, 2008

Friday photography: Old Hollywood & New Cams

• Norman Jean Roy, Mark Seliger, and other photographers reinterpret famous Hitchcock scenes using current actors in this month's Vanity Fair. (Here, at least, Renée Zellweger is on her way to looking like Henry Gibson.) [Via]
• Speaking of Hollywood, Alison Jackson creates fake paparazzi shots (not 100% work-safe, FYI). [Via]
• CNET's Stephen Shankland hosts an interesting interview with Canon's Chuck Westfall, talking about various camera tech developments--sensor dimensions, OLED displays, geotagging, and more.
• YouTube hosts a video demonstrating how camera lenses are made.  Not shown: my wallet imploding. [Via]
• On the big-glass front, Sigma has trotted out this $25,000 badboy, and yet that's got nothing on this Canon 1200mm cannon--selling for a cool $99,000, used.  Not satisfied yet?  How about a 5200mm Canon, good for photographing stuff 32 miles away? Even more examples are here.
• At the other end of the spectrum, 20 bucks gets you a 6x iPhone camera zoom. [Via]
• Toronto Star photographer Lucas Oleniuk illustrates the issue of global warming in a video created entirely by using still images.  The Thoreau quotation is chilling and well chosen. [Via]
• If M.C. Escher had a camera, you might see something like this cool effect.
  

February 04, 2008

Adobe Stock Photos to be discontinued

Adobe has announced Adobe Stock Photos, the service integrated into Adobe Bridge, will be discontinued as of April 1, 2008.  An FAQ is posted to address common questions (especially if you're an ASP user), and there are uninstallers for Mac and Windows that let you remove ASP from Bridge if you'd like.

The FAQ is very light on the rationale for the decision, but in an interview with StockAsylum's Ron Rovtar (subscription required for part of it), Adobe director James Alexander says, "We thought we went to market with a set of features and functionality that were going to improve workflow.  It was just not as compelling as we thought it was going to be."

I don't have a lot of additional context to offer, other than to say that we're working hard to make Photoshop, Bridge, and the other Creative Suite apps much more easily extensible so that they can support whatever services customers find useful--whether from Adobe or from third parties.

January 31, 2008

Made-up Japanese photography word o' the day

As I sit in the airport waiting for a flight to PMA in Las Vegas, I'm reminded of a word coined by Adobe market research (I believe) to describe enthusiast photographers in Japan: "Fotomaniaku."  Sure, it just means "photo maniacs," but doesn't it have kind of a fun mouth-feel?  Now I'm picturing a camera-wielding guy with Mr. Sparkle eyes ("I am disrespectful to shutter lag!!").  T-shirts to follow. :-)

January 27, 2008

Sunday Photography: From Mullets to MacGyver

• "We tend to scoff at the beliefs of the ancients. But we can't scoff at them personally, to their faces, and this is what annoys me."  In that spirit, enjoy this retro-horrific Olan Mills photo collection.  ¡Viva los mullets siempre!  [Via Reen Bodo (and of course Jack Handey)]
• Long before he masterminded the Lightroom iceland adventure, photog Mikkel Aaland (podcast) appeared on Letterman, discussing his County Fair Portraits project.  (Mucho más mullets.) [Via Frederick Johnson]
• Let there be more light:
  • Robert Benson shares his striking strobe photography on Flickr. [Via]
  • On the other end of the exposure spectrum, here's some really precise light painting. [Via]
• Retouching:
  • RetouchShoppe will retouch your images for a flat fee of $100/image. [Via]
  • Charging just slightly higher rates, "Photo Retoucher to Kidman and Stefani Turns Eye on $5.8 M. Village Townhouse" [Via Gary Cosimini]
• HWMS: How Would MacGyver Shoot?  Quite possibly with the aid of a ghetto--but cool and effective--string-based image stabilizer.
• Toronto Star photographer Lucas Oleniuk illustrates the issue of global warming in a video created entirely by using still images.  The Thoreau quotation is chilling and well chosen. [Via]
• The NYT talks about the rediscovery of a collection of Robert Capa's negatives, presumed lost in World War II. The article is accompanied by a slideshow and a Zoomify-powered high-res view. [Via Katrin Eismann]
• Popular Photography mourns the passing of Herbert Keppler (who apparently got his own action figure). [Via]
  

January 24, 2008

One *miiiillion* images per second

Dang--and I thought 1,200fps was pretty impressive, but that's so last week.

The camera fiends at Vision Research have trotted out the Phantom V12, a crowd pleaser said to be capable of grabbing 1MM images per second (if you can live with 256x8 resolution; resolution goes up as frame rate goes down).  Their gear is "targeted at industrial applications ranging from biometric research to automotive crash testing," they say. "Essentially," opines Engadget, "this little bundle of joy is meant to be strapped into daredevil-type situations in order to grab as many photos as possible within a split second."  Check out the company Web site for videos of a popcorn kernel popping and more. [Via Jerry Harris]

The proliferation of these high-speed capture devices makes me remember a talk given last year at Adobe by Microsoft researcher Michael Cohen.  He described the idea of "thick photos"--essentially taking little movies instead of single frames, making it possible to select the perfect moment in a series.  This development will probably further irritate photo purists, but I'd like to see a camera maker take a run at the idea.

[Update: Michael points out that his ideas are covered in some detail in this paper.  His own page offers more technical bits.]

January 21, 2008

"Enter The Ghetto Matrix," Flash Panos, & HDR

• "How to Enter The Ghetto Matrix": Graffiti Research Labs built their own bullet-time camera rig, then used it to make a music video. [Via]
• Flash-based panoramas:
  • The NYT features a pair of interactive panoramas shot at Ground Zero in lower Manhattan.  The audio helps add to the sense of being there, though I'd recommend skipping the built-in animation & instead clicking and dragging to navigate for yourself.
  • Rob Corell passed along these 360° video panoramas, created with the help of Papervision 3D. Go Irish.
• More high dynamic range action:
  • HDR Japan is chock full of, well, Japanese HDR.
  • Masato Ohta has posted a great machinery shot. [Via]
  • Macworld reports on Hydra, an inexpensive new application for merging exposures to create HDR data.
  
  

January 17, 2008

Casio spitfire cranks out 1,200fps, does DNG

Speaking of DNG, author/photographer Ben Long has released his Convert Raw to DNG Automator Action, enabling easy conversion to DNG via AppleScript.  Solid.

For more memory-crushing camera goodness, see previous.

January 11, 2008

Flickr phlows, Photo Friday

• National Geographic hosts a great set of photo contest winners & runners up. [Via]
• FILE Magazine is running the interesting 36 Exposures challenge, bringing back the discipline and scarcity of film. [Via]
• Flickr bits:
  • Photophlow (currently running a private beta) aims to add a social dimension to Flickr, wrapping the photo-sharing site in (I think) Flash-based tools for chat, collaboration, and more.
  • Mash-up "museumr" aims to show your work hanging in a museum. [Via]
• Say what you will about the health impacts, but smoking still looks cool.   Cape Town-based photog Grant caught another great B&W shot, plus many others.
• Photojojo talks about creating one's own Photo-opoly.  Modifying your Monopoly board is good and all, but when can we print ourselves as 3D objects?  (No more fighting over who gets to be the little car.)  Maybe the folks at JuJups.com, "a new generation 3-D design creation gateway that allows consumers to create their own 3D content" (info), can help.  Meanwhile, I'm already covered.
• History:
  • The National Gallery of Art is showing The Art of the American Snapshot 1888-1978 and has posted an interesting slideshow.  [Via reader Petra]
  • German site Focus.de hosts "A brief visual tour of the history of the digital camera, 1975–2002."  Good to see the ol' Apple QuickTake 100 again.  My school owned one of those and a (Canon?) XapShot.  Man, they were the bomb...  [Via]
  • This spy camera watch prototype from 1969 apparently sold for nearly $60,000 on eBay. [Via]
    

January 07, 2008

War and rebirth, in photos & illustration

• When not driving between continents & documenting the experience, German-born, Brooklyn-dwelling photographer Christoph Bangert produces gripping photojournalism in Iraq, Darfur, and elsewhere.  You can find his Iraq effort reviewed here, and on the NYT site Christoph narrates over a selection of his photos.
• Offering a different take on Iraq, Shooting War is a graphic novel written by Anthony Lappe & illustrated by Dan Goldman.  You can find background & a review on MotherJones.com.  According to that site, "To layer drawings and shading on top of photos, Goldman drew everything directly onto a 21-inch touch screen using an electronic, wireless pen, Adobe Illustrator, and Photoshop. Everything combined, this is a slick-looking book."
• On a rather brighter note, the NYT features a slideshow on kite flying in Kabul--a colorful pastime banned under the Taliban.  See related article, with video.
  

January 06, 2008

'007 in review: Photography, design, and more

Photography:

• 2007 was the year the digital SLR boomed, reports CNET's Stephen Shankland, offering links to top stories throughout the year.  He notes that "Adobe released Photoshop Lightroom in March, and in just a few months it surpassed in popularity the earlier Apple rival, Aperture."
• Serious photogs keep seeking a nice compromise between SLR quality & compact portability.  A number of folks around Adobe's West 10th floor have been intrigued by the Canon G9; see Ben Long's review.
• Meanwhile a megapixel backlash seems to be building steam. "The more pixels, the worse the image!" says a German camera-testing lab, arguing that splitting a compact sensor into smaller & smaller bits is bad juju.
• In terms of the craft itself (which keeps proving itself death-proof), Rob Galbraith rounds up a large group of pictures of the year collections.  The sheer number of galleries is a little daunting (paradox of choice, anyone?), but I can at least vouch for MSNBC & Canada Post galleries.  I find the little NatGeo gallery underwhelming.

Adobe:

• The company was so busy (Creative Suite 3, Lightroom, new CEO...), it's hard to believe that it was just in '07 that so much went down.  Fortunately Scott Kelby provides a thorough overview.
• Zeroing in just on Photoshop Lightroom, Scott's colleague Matt Kloskowski offers A look back at Lightroom in 2007, recalling the year's interviews, cool add-ons, and more.

Design:

• The architectural smartasses at Curbed have gathered up the Top 10 Craziest Architectural Renderings of the Year.  Each one links to funny, wry commentary ("Rise, massive shadow-inducing cantilever, rise!").  Aside: Who knew a W Hotel was going into Harlem?
• One of my favorite blogs (frequently pilfered here), Core77, looks back at What Happened in '07. Herewith I'm gonna need all my pizza laser-cut, stat.
  

January 02, 2008

Non-destructive imaging: Easy as PIE

"Over the last couple of decades," writes photographer and author Peter Krogh, "the term non-destructive has been applied to many different kinds of imaging technologies. While the term is useful as a broad classification, it covers so much ground that it can often add more confusion than clarity..."

With an eye towards helping identify which type of non-destructive imaging offers the best tools for given tasks, Peter has written an interesting and thorough overview (PDF) of what, exactly, entails "non-destructive imaging."  In it he proposes some terminology--e.g. Parametric Image Editing, or "PIE"--to help distinguish one kind of approach from another.  Thanks to Peter for all the hard work in parsing the issues & proposing clearer ways to talk about them.

The paper joins others in Adobe's collection of Adobe digital photography white papers and primers.  The paper have been very well received, and you might find them worth browsing.

December 26, 2007

Sharks eating cameras, Infrared shooting, & more

Holiday break = catching up on photography online:

• The Nikon D80: Great camera/delicious shark meal (i.e. lousy shark-be-good stick). [Via]
• The NYT features a great perspective on a slide, showing ballplayer Luis Aparicio coming into third in 1962.
• Photojojo has a solid round up of resources on shooting holiday lights (with a camera, thankfully).
• Gear:
  • PopPhoto talks up The New Infrared Revolution, made possible by digital cameras.  Too bad that for most cameras the process of removing the IR filter is somewhat expensive & renders the cams unable to shoot regular photos.  The accompanying gallery of IR shots includes some good (and some sorta marginal) stuff.
  • The Zigview S2 Digital Viewfinder "clips onto the optical viewfinder of your DSLR, adding a swiveling live 2.5-inch LCD display that can not only be extended on a cable as a remote, but can also automatically trigger the camera when it detects motion." [Via]
  • "Your popup flash doesn’t have to suck," reports Adobe's Terry White in reviewing the $30 Lightscoop.  My wife tried to score one of these for me for Christmas, but thanks to publicity from David Pogue & others, they've been sold out.
• Artistry:
  • Patrick Winfield achieves a kind of fragmented impressionism in his Polaroid composites (not entirely safe for work). [Via]
  • The Nocturna installation uses stereoscopic imagery to unusual effect (ditto on the warning).
  • For whatever reason, gigantic "people pictures" were all the rage in the early 20th century.  [Via]
  • Speaking of large images, Nils Nova's Opposition of Memory uses very large inkjet prints to create an interesting optical illusion. [Via]
• Matt Kloskowski shares an omnibus list of 28 Lightroom Resources. [Via]  On a related note, Carlo from South Africa writes in to note that he's uploaded a set of B&W presets.
• I get a kick out of Sony's new ad campaign, illustrating the importance of timing by showing famous photos ruined by some intruding object.  Unfortunately I can link to just this one example, though others appear in banners, etc.
  

December 20, 2007

Borrow from Flickr -> Live to regret it

Through Google Image Search & the like, it's almost ridiculously easy to find pictures of nearly anything you can imagine--and just as easy to drag them into editing tools for your own use.  Do it to a motivated photographer, however, and the practice can end in tears.

Last week, an image taken by photographer Lane Hartwell was used without permission in a parody video posted on YouTube.  She wasn't pleased, contacted the band, and filed a takedown notice with YouTube.  CNET's Stephen Shankland recaps the events to date, then interviews Hartwell.  She notes that she's had to deal with similar incidents frequently (five in just the last two weeks).

Over in the NYT, David Pogue talks about "the generational divide in copyright morality."He lists a number of the scenarios he mentions to gauge audience reactions to what kind of media copying is acceptable.  Short story: older people see shades of gray, whereas younger people think that anything goes.

I wonder what these folks would say about appropriating a piece of photography, artwork, or software.  If a college kid did a painting that got used in a GM ad campaign, I'm betting he or she would feel entitled to some compensation.  Now, if that painting got used in an amateur video on YouTube, would that be okay?  What if the video promoted a hate group?  Do these guys think that the creators of intellectual property deserve to have any say over how their work is used & whether they're compensated?  Without any of their skin in the game, the general answer seems to be no.

[See also: Lawrence Lessig's talk on "How creativity is being strangled by the law."  Also, Derek Powazek has posted some sensible thoughts about collaborative media.  Rule 1: Ask First.]

December 15, 2007

Urban decay, pigs on mopeds, & other good photos

• Art collective Henry VIII's Wives uses elderly Glaswegians to re-enact iconic photos of the 20th century.  Triiippy...  My wife says she'd really like to hear the conversations between the photographer & the pensioners.  ("Yeah, so there was this little girl who got burned by napalm, and we want you to play her!") [Via]
• Also in the vein of photo reinactment, check out these classic photos done via Lego.  (Presumably the conversation with the Legos is shorter.)  [Via]
• I'm loving the portfolio of Diane Varner; I especially like this leaf bagel.  Her site talks about some of her Camera Raw & Photoshop post-processing techniques, and on PhotoshopSupport.com she discusses her work & ideas.
• I can't tell you much about it, but I like this neat panoramic timelapse image. [Via]
• Henrik Kam captures urban decay in images from Hunter's Point .  His work appears in Photolucida's list of Top 50 list of photographers for 2006.
• "Sleepycity is photographically deconstructing your city."  I like this nifty bit of light painting in what looks like some sci-fi set.
• If that's up your alley, see also these '70s light paintings. [Via]
• My friend Khoi just returned from Vietnam, where he captured this pig riding a moped (so to speak).

December 13, 2007

Would photography please "die" already??

Ah, the indestructable "Is Photography Dead" meme...

• Leica enthusiast Erwin Puts claims that in an age of digital capture and manipulation, photography does not exist anymore.
• The Online Photographer hosts reactions from photogs.
• Now Newsweek is jumping on the case.  And now here comes the NYT, taking on one angle.
• And...

Oh, who gives a crap?  Sorry, let me explain.  I thought about noting this not-so-little trend some time ago, but I've never been able to invest much passion in it.  People have been manipulating photography in every which way--through their choice of what to capture & what to omit; through changes to the scene/subject (adding lights, building sets, moving bodies on a battlefield); and through tweaks to the captured results--since the dawn of the technology.  So what?  I think Bridge engineering manager Arno Gourdol hit the nail on the head:

Being aware of composition, balance, symmetry and "owning the frame" is the creative act. The creative act matters, and the moment at which it occurs seems secondary--whether it is when pressing the shutter release on your camera, when making a print in the darkroom or when sitting in front of a computer.  This echoes the early days when photography was viewed as an unfair and unworthy competitor to painting...

I dunno; much of this "is photography dead" discussion strikes me as sterile and pointless--and maybe a strawman that's not worth beating up.  Yet I wonder whether it's driven by veteran photogs feeling threatened--comercially and aesthetically--by so many affordable tools that make competent image-making so much more attainable. 

Sure, yeah, we can debate this camera or lens vs. that one all day long--but all this stuff absolutely rocks compared to what pros were using just a few years back (to say nothing of what Arbus, Capa, Cartier-Bresson, and co. had).  You can say that digital makes us lazy, and there's some truth there; and yet it also fosters free experimentation & instant review of the results.  That quicker learning cycle, plus autofocus, good software, etc. helps get people "good enough" (technically, anyway) without years of slow and costly apprenticeship.  And when anyone can take a technically decent shot, then "good" becomes "trite," and people seek to define themselves by bucking the trend--making portfolios blurry or murky.

Therefore--and maybe I'll live to regret writing this--we end up with a bunch of freaked-out oldsters (or just curmudgeons at heart) twisting up a Dick Cheney grimace and saying, "Bah, I don't like this digital tomfoolery--not one bit!  In my day we had to huff developer until we saw Ernest Borgnine floating in the liquid--and we liked it fine!!  You kids are ruining everything."

Um, yeah.  Life, art, and expression move on.  If "photography" is something so brittle & exclusionary that it can't bear evolution, then goodbye and good riddance.  (Don't let the film door hit your ass on the way out...) It isn't, of course, so maybe we can just bury the is-photography-dead schtick.  But I'm not holding my breath.

December 02, 2007

Stoners, puzzles, & photos that aren't there

• "In college, take a year off and drive across the country, and camp along the way," "Old Geezer" advises young photographers. "Do it with good friends that are smart; not dumbasses that just want to get high. Bring some books. Bring some audio books if you can't read."  Also: "Always order good catering. That’s all the client really cares about." [Via]
• "This is a picture I did not take..."  On Unphotographable, Michael David Murphy describes the ones that got away. [Via]
• Befuddlr creates interactive puzzles from the contents of Flickr.  To get one of your images into the game, you can--according to the folks at Photojojo--"Upload your photo to the Photojojo Flickr group, go to Befuddlr and click “photojojo”, select your photo, and scramble it into an online puzzle game! The site will even time your unscrambling attempts, making for a perfect mid-day office-wide showdown." [Via]
• Speaking of Flickr, Jason Kottke test-drives the Eye-Fi wireless memory card, which enables direct upload from your camera to Flickr--no cables required.  (This strikes me as cool tech, but I'd much rather have the perhaps impossible GPS-on-a-card.)  Elsewhere, Photopreneur.com offers up 36 Reasons Flickr is a Photographer’s Ultimate Tool.