Wes Weber on the Adventure Rider forums posted a great set of photos a while ago of his dad and others ripping it up on some hardtail Harleys back in the 50's.
Monday Sep 26, 2005
Wes Weber on the Adventure Rider forums posted a great set of photos a while ago of his dad and others ripping it up on some hardtail Harleys back in the 50's.
Friday Sep 16, 2005
Wednesday Aug 17, 2005
PhotographyBlog has a good review of the new Nikon entry level DSLR. In a nutshell: 90% of the features of the D70s, with a lighter plastic body and lens. Unfortunately the thing is mostly silver/gray, not black. My guess is Nikon used this "cheaper" look to help differentiate between the D50 and D70 series.
As much as I love the solid feel of my D70, I can appreciate the weight savings after hauling that thing on Yosemite backpacking trip recently. It will be interesting to see how well these plastic units hold up in the field...
Saturday Apr 09, 2005
As seen on Google Maps:
Thursday Apr 07, 2005
Ten by Ten is an interesting way to process current events visually. Every hour, 10x10 scans the RSS feeds of several leading international news sources, and performs an elaborate process of weighted linguistic analysis on the text contained in their top news stories. After this process, conclusions are automatically drawn about the hour's most important words. The top 100 words are chosen, along with 100 corresponding images, culled from the source news stories.
It currently pulls news from Reuters World (pronounced Royters for those that call it Rooters), BBC World, and NYT International News.
Thursday Mar 03, 2005
By way of Roy today, an excellent short article on Garry Winogrand and street photography, my favorite kind. Taking photos of random people on the streets reminds me a lot of hunting: you have to be patient, alert, and constantly hover over the shutter release. I've never tried being as bold as some of these masters suggest- just walking up to people, nod or smile, then snap their photo. If you're not awkward and you look like you know what you're doing, it seems people will just assume you do and mostly ignore you.
I wonder if having a professional looking camera would aid or hinder in that regard? People might be annoyed if you disrupt them with a point-and-shoot like an Elph, but assume you know what you're doing with something like a SLR... but on the flip side, I know people have been intimidated when I bust out my D70 DSLR- like the giant lens is going to catch their every flaw. Hmmm... time to build that pinhole camera and go incognito...
Thursday Feb 03, 2005
When Nikon announced a $100 rebate on the D70 DSLR back in November, it pushed me off the fence and I finally got one. Shortly after, I completed their rebate process: "cut out your UPC, photocopy your right butt cheek, and send with a DNA sample to Nikon, PO Box...", and began the waiting game.
Being horrible with dates and generally remembering things, but having a huge pet peeve about companies not actually paying out the rebates, I scheduled an event on my Treo calendar at 6 weeks, the upper limit of their supposed refund mailing timeframe. That date came and passed about 3 weeks ago, but I've been too busy to pursue a course of action... not sure if I may have accidently thrown out a plain unmarked envelope thinking it was snail mail spam...
Well it finally arrived today! It was clearly labeled "Nikon" and "Your rebate is enclosed" with what appears to be a check poking through the window- more than enough to keep me from tossing it as junk mail. Good job Nikon-- even if it was 3 weeks late...
So if you were like me and jumped on the cheaper (and nicer) D70 bandwagon instead of the Canon series, watch for your rebate in the mail.
Tuesday Jan 11, 2005
Via boingboing, someone has put together an indexed site of 120 years of United States Geological Survey images, all in the public domain.
I suggest going through them chronologically. Some really sweet shots of San Francisco post 1906 earthquake, a lull during WWII (after which the shots are mostly color), all the way to more recent events, such as the 1989 quake. Not all images are from the US, and there are some pretty dull categories like erosion and minerals, but still worth poking around for the plentiful gems (ok, thats a bad pun).
Sunday Jan 09, 2005
If you're a fan of Flickr and all it can do, but are put off by having to peruse the massive collection or building your own feeds, take a look at FlickrBlog, News, offsite status and great photos daily.
Within its first 2 weeks of life, its mostly links to Flickr collections someone has choosen based on coolness factor. Hopefully it will include more links going forward, like its first post about Flickr as web services: the Flickr API and the inclusion of del.icio.us-style tags have turned Flickr into a service as well as a site.
Tuesday Dec 21, 2004
The Lomo is a cheap camera made in St. Petersburg, Russia. The photos it takes have a distinct look people find appealing. The original tutorial everyone was referencing went away, but has now been resurrected as a new document on how to achieve a similar affect in Photoshop.
Friday Dec 10, 2004
Via Roy via Metafilter, aerial photographs of San Francisco after the 1906 quake/fire.
Amazing stuff. Way more style points than the more recent attempts- nearly 100 years later.
Its unfortunate more modern technology wasn't available. How awesome would it be to see the remains of the city in high res, like these beauties.
Via PhotographyBlog:
The R-1 film camera from inventor Clifford Ross is capable of taking photos that have "100 times as much data as the average professional digital camera" using film negatives. Ross's camera is capable of resolving amazing levels of detail - apparently a tree on a ridge four miles away is sharply focused.
More info available at CNET News.
Reminds me of some of the gigapixel digital photostitching efforts.
Monday Nov 22, 2004
Via BoingBoing, The G-Cans Project is a massive project, begun 12 years ago, to build infrastructure for preventing overflow of the major rivers and waterways spidering the city... The site is all in Japanese, but if you click around the menus a bit, there are animations and diagrams of how the system works, and other interesting photos of the high-tech control center and turbine facilities. Supposedly the G-Cans project is also meant to be a tourist attraction, and can be visited for free.
Incredible photos. 2001: A Space Odyssey meets Doom (minus the monsters). Even the system diagrams are artful, reminiscent of a Royksopp video.
Wednesday Nov 17, 2004
Tuesday Nov 09, 2004
Another swipe from BoingBoing, this time its a photo gallery of sleeping Japanese businessmen in public places, like trains and sidewalks- apparently from overworking (or overdrinking).
Either way, its very disturbing stuff... enjoy!
