Archive for the ‘Photography’ category

How Genetics Works | FlowingData

March 5th, 2010

I love simplicty and you don’t get much simpler than this visual depiction showing How Genetics Works | FlowingData. Thanks, Nathan, for another excellent post! Short and sweet.

Collection: How to take insects in-flight

February 8th, 2010

fotoopa rig in use (from flickr)

fotoopa has posted photographs and schematics showing his hardware design for taking pictures of insects in flight. While the depth-of-field is very thin (credit card thickness), the pictures he has posted are astounding.

Focus distance can by adjusted to every value. The focus range of the detector is very narrow. 1 to 2 mm at a distance of 700 mm form the camera. Objects of 2 mm diameter can by easily detected. Detector works also on full black insects. 4 lasers are used, 2 IR 5 mw lasers at 850 nm and 2 x 10 mw green lasers. The green lasers are only for visual position to the insects.

» Read more: Collection: How to take insects in-flight

The Online Photographer: The Worst Photograph Ever Made

September 7th, 2009

From 12/12/08, Mike Johnston, in his blog The Online Photographer, calls this Annie Leibovitz photograph “the worst photograph ever made“:

From pdnedu.blogs.com (http://pdnedu.blogs.com/.a/6a00d8341ce76f53ef010536887d0d970c-pi)

[picture taken from pdnedu.blogs.com (http://pdnedu.blogs.com/.a/6a00d8341ce76f53ef010536887d0d970c-pi)]

According to Mr. Johnston, “[the effort put into this photograph] was all done intentionally, front to back, top to bottom, money-no-object, by an army of the most talented professionals, from art director to stylists to make-up artists to baby-wranglers to lighting assistants to photographer to digital retoucher, all working assiduously in concert in pursuit of the utterly pointless.” Ouch!

Quotations from Sontag’s On Photography

September 5th, 2009

I recently finished reading Susan Sontag’s On Photography [ISBN 0-312-42009-9; Picador, 1973] and, in the spirit of the book itself (which includes a collection of quotations from others), I decided to record some of the most interesting quotations.

I intend to represent her points objectively and don’t necessarily agree with all her statements, but wanted to capture them here.

» Read more: Quotations from Sontag’s On Photography

Edgar Martins Posts Long Essay Addressing “Confusion” Around His Photographs

August 7th, 2009

Edgar Martins replies to the whole controversy stirred up by his photographs in the NYT Magazine. Read his own words, where he quotes Nietzsche, Roland Barthes, and Susan Sontag.

None of his post sounds even vaguely like an apology in the modern sense of the word, but an apology in the classical sense — a proof of his beliefs. I should have known I was in trouble when he starts with a quotation from Nietzsche.

[via PDNPulse: Edgar Martins Regrets "Confusion" Over NYT Magazine Photos.]

See also my other posts regarding Mr. Martins.