RT @PerlmanOfficial You may see the horizon.. All I see is a fiddle
Category: Photography
Old-Fashioned Photography? (Nudge-nudge)
So part of the fun in these "Kids React" videos is kids trying to figure out technology that I grew up with, owned, used, knew like the back of my hand, usually with great hilarity.
But part of it is being reminded of how things were and, in some cases (certainly this one) how much better things are. Because while there are some disadvantages to our world of mobile phone cameras and chips — there are some huge advantages, too. It's not jetpacks and flying cars, but I'll take it.
(h/t +Les Jenkins)
Kitten the Kitten
I have to say, I'm pretty impressed by the "face painting" "Halloweenify" stuff that Google is doing for Halloween — in this case, of a picture of +Kay Hill. Nicely done.
This is the way the world (looks after it) ends
It's a relatively recent (1920s) city, turned to ghost town by flood immersion and subsequent recovery. Or a perfect set for your post-apocalypse movie feature.
This Ghostly Town Spent 25 Years Underwater Before Resurfacing
At one time, Epecuén was a booming resort city: a grand town on a beautiful lake, attracting vacationers from all over Argentina in the 1920s with its revitalizing salt waters. There were hotels, nightclubs, and restaurants. Today, it’s a thicket of bleached white ruins, latticed with rusted steel and fallen power lines.
Part of the Landscape
Some spectacular photos for the NatGeo 2014 contest
Wow. And these are just from entries so far. Gorgeous stuff.
Originally shared by +In Focus:
2014 National Geographic Photo Contest – 32 photos – http://goo.gl/csfpyc – National Geographic Magazine has opened its annual photo contest, with the deadline for submissions coming up on October 31, 2014. The Grand Prize Winner will receive $10,000 and a trip to National Geographic headquarters to participate in its annual photography seminar. The kind folks at National Geographic were once again kind enough to let me choose among its entries so far for display here on In Focus.
The silent rails of the Chemin de fer de Petite Ceiture
Time marches on. But sometimes it's fascinating to look at its footsteps.
By the Silent Line: Photographer Pierre Folk Spent Years Documenting a Vanishing 160-Year-Old Parisian Railway
The Chemin de fer de Petite Ceinture (French for “little belt railway”) was a 32 km railway that encirled Paris, connecting all the major railway stations within fortified walls during the Industrial Revolution. In service from 1852 to 1934, the line has now been comple
Marmot 1, Photography 0
A time lapse video in Glacier National Park, Montana, thwarted by a curious marmot. The time lapse sections were edited/compressed as planned, stopping when the marmot showed up …
(via http://space.io9.com/this-timelapse-was-derailed-by-an-inquisitive-marmot-1622507266))
On self-censorship in war
A tale of a photograph in the first Gulf War. And not the one below. And it's not that no one would publish it, it's that no US news outlet published it at the time (and AP pulled it off the wire).
And, yes, it's a pretty gruesome picture, but, as the photographer, Kenneth Jarecke, wrote at the time, "If we’re big enough to fight a war, we should be big enough to look at it."
The War Photo No One Would Publish
When Kenneth Jarecke photographed an Iraqi man burned alive, he thought it would change the way Americans saw the Gulf War. But the media wouldn’t run the picture.
Slip-slidin' Away (Photography Edition)
Some great pix here.
Reshared post from +Les Jenkins
Awesome shots of folks the moment they exit a water slide.
I Love Summer
View the album on Flickr.
On the Ugliest Government Buildings in Washington
An amusing photo essay, to be sure, but a few note"
1. Ah, I remember the 70s, and its architecture. In fact, I remember it so well that I remember when it was all brand new and pretty and used extensively in various science fiction TV shows and movies as What The Future Will Look Like.
Which aesthetic, like pretty much everything else from the 70s, has been soundly rejected. Alas, you can easily toss that polyester leisure suit and replace that avocado green tile in your kitchen. You can't quite as easily toss that three-city-block government office you built back then.
2. Concrete is a pretty awful material to work with. In retrospect. It does not at all age well. And, let's face it, Washington, DC, sits on a swamp. Lots of humidity and heat and rain and all that will make any building look a bit worn, and concrete most of all.
(Visit London some time, if you don't believe me.)
Add to that what I strongly suspect is seriously tight capital maintenance funding for government buildings (because why should they be treated any differently from the rest of our infrastructure?), and it's not at all surprising that these structures (and their surrounding grounds) are not aging well.
Sure, they're going to keep the buildings on the Mall and other tourist locales in shape, but if we're letting our major bridges and interstate highways fall apart, what are the odds we're going to keep the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development headquarters looking shiny and pristine. Especially when there are plenty of folk in DC who'd just as soon see it abolished.
The 7 Ugliest Government Buildings In Washington, D.C.
DO NOT PROCEED if you are allergic to concrete.
Taking pictures is legal, but also harassable
Talk to the official management, and they are quite clear that taking pictures of these government buildings is legal. Which it is.
Actually go there and take pictures? Yeah, security, and security's managers, and other managers who talk to the security people, kinda think otherwise.
Quoth one security guard: "Be smarter next time, and don’t take any more photos here."
("Nice Freedom of the Press you got here. Be a shame if something were to happen to it.")
Dear Security Apparat: If your ability to thwart Evil Terrorists is dependent on nobody being able to observe your building from the outside (or, at least, nobody being able to take obvious photographs from the outside), then your security is crap and will not, in fact, thwart anyone.
Reshared post from +George Wiman
"We're in a post 9-11 world," they said…
Apparently, at building after building, just taking a picture gets you into hot water. Even if you are a reporter with credentials. That is not a free society.
Why You Should Not Take Photos Of The 7 Ugliest Buildings In D.C.
Unless you like getting your camera taken from you.
What the world was like just before I knew it
In 1964, I was three, my brother just a baby, so I wasn't aware of any of this stuff … but I would be, soon enough.
The full photo gallery is at http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2014/05/1964-the-world-50-years-ago/100743/
Reshared post from +In Focus
1964: The World 50 Years Ago – 50 photos – http://theatln.tc/1gy3SDD – 1964 was an eventful year — a half-century ago, humans were making strides toward space travel beyond the Earth's orbit, and Tokyo hosted the 18th Summer Olympics. The Beatles took America by storm, as Race Riots gripped big cities — and the the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law. Boxer Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali and the heavyweight champion of the world. Cyprus devolved into civil war between Turks and Greeks, and President Lyndon Johnson escalated U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.
In album 1964: The World 50 Years Ago
Streets of the City in Black and White
These are really lovely.
Reshared post from +Kee Hinckley
These are just beautiful photos.
Photos from Anzio
Some photos taken by George Silk at the Battle of Anzio, seventy years ago. These were pics that were rejected by censors or editors at the time. Odd slices of military life in a war zone.
Anzio: Rare and Classic World War II Photos From Italy | LIFE | TIME.com
Um … no, not attractive
Really.
Why do I have the sense that corsets are going to make a come-back. Or else body image fads that would you fit into a corset without actually wearing one. Yeesh.
Reshared post from +Marty Shaw
New disturbing body-image trend. The bikini bridge. Seriously, who sits around and dreams this stuff up?
PSA to the ladies – The only guys that are impressed by things like bikini bridges and thigh gaps are probably not the guys you really want to be, although you might not realize that until you've spent time with the superficial loser.
Also, guys like sex. As in, shake the bed/pound the walls/sore to walk the next day sex. You will never experience that kind of passion because the guy will be worried that he'll break you if he's able to count your ribs.
Is the ‘bikini bridge’ the new thigh gap? Disturbing new selfie fad circulating on social media
The phrase describes when your hipbones protrude, creating a space between your pants and lower abdomen.
Google Glass, Get Offa My Lawn!
If I were getting married today, I would still probably not wear Google Glasses, but I would be sorely tempted. My own memories of my wedding are, honestly, fairly spotty (and were even then); the nature of the event burns some images in the brain (feeling myself grinning like an idiot as Margie appeared), but tends to lose the narrative. We have a variety of professional photos and a wedding video, shot relatively unobtrusively from the back of the church, but I'd love to see (and hear) more of the experience.
But that's my (likely) choice, not a Grand Pronouncement of Societal Rectitude that such a rant seems to imply. Attendees / witnesses of a wedding have the inalienable right to snark about a variety of things (the garb of the participants, the sermon, the music, the flowers, the choice of spouse, the reception, the Other Family, etc.), but these are generally wrapped up with the shrug of, "Well, it's their wedding." Which it is.
It is not the End of Days that someone has adopted this (fairly) unobtrusive technology to enhance their memories and their experience. Indeed, while it's still probably more visible than most people would want, and will make for during-wedding photos of the bride that are more date-able than most (though, let's face it, there are a lot of "Hey, you actually wore you hair like that back then? I remember that decade, long ago …" wedding pictures out there), I think the criticism about this being the wrong focus is 180 degrees off. It's a focus on the personal experience of one of the wedding participants, which is exactly what it should be about.
Embedded Link
Why I ranted about the Google Glass bride
Earlier this morning, I read something in Mashable about a bride who walked down the aisle wearing Google Glass. “My husband and I have a love for technology. We wanted to use Google Glass to captu…
Pictures perfect
Timing is everything. (And taking lots of pictures is a great way to increase coincidental timing.)
The 27 Incredible Once In A Lifetime Shots | Marine Chic
List of the 30 incredible once in a lifetime shots is something that we will love and enjoy every day.
Earthrise
A fascinating story of an accidental photographic event.
Reshared post from +The Bruce, Mile High
Accidents Happen
Earthrise is one of the most significant and iconic photographs in history — it crystalized for many the essence of the idea of how fragile our planet is.
And yet it was totally unplanned and was very nearly missed.
This recreation from NASA uses audio tape from the orbiter as well as more recent, highly accurate surveys to show the exact orientation of the ship as the astronauts scrambled to find the right film to take the shot after noticing the beauty of the moment while performing rather mundane duties. Some amazing work.
+Joe Little, I thought you might particularly enjoy it given your background in aeronautics and interest in photography.
Happy 45th Anniversary, Earthrise! What a nice Christmas Eve present, then and now.
Embedded Link
NASA | Earthrise: The 45th Anniversary
In December of 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 became the first people to leave our home planet and travel to another body in space. But as crew members Frank Bor…
The Ghosts of San Francisco
Great ghost photos of San Francisco immediately after the quake and today.
(h/t Mary)
Composite Then and Now Photos of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake