Shooting Wide Open

Jay Parkinson contacted aspiring models on ModelMayhem.com and shot them in their homes. (Geez, photography sounds so violent, shootings all over the place…) Good idea.

Who Does She Think She Is? A trailer for a documentary about how relatively few women artists there are despite their high numbers in art schools. Hmmmm.

Rachel Howe

I totally agree with what Amy Stein says in this post:

I just read this Wired article wherein the author hires her own paparazzo at $500/hr to stalk her throughout the day. The goal is to take “artful images that look unstaged and off-the-cuff.”

…this is further evidence that our cultural engine is running on fumes. I have not put the numbers into the computer yet, but I have a theory that our culture is about to become so self-referential that it collapses under it’s own weight of ironic self-awareness and forms a giant black hole of metaness.

Rob Hornstra

Liquid lenses in cellphone cams?

TROY, N.Y. — Despite their ubiquity, cell phones are not known for their ability to take picture-perfect photos. But budding “liquid lens” technology promises to change that by providing phone photogs with the autofocus capabilities lacking in today’s cellular optics.

The latest advance in this area comes from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, here, where researchers have developed a liquid lens by placing a few drops of water into a cylindrical hole drilled in a Teflon surface and using a small speaker (that plays a high-frequency sound) to provide the resonance needed to move the water back and forth, changing the focus of the lens. Light passing through the droplets transforms them into a mini camera lens, which is capped on both sides with plastic or glass.

The experiment, led by Amir Hirsa, associate chief of graduate studies in the school’s Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Nuclear Engineering, used the liquid lens to capture 250 images per second. “The mass of the system is pushed back and forth as a result of surface tension,” Hirsa says. “This adds variable focus capability to lenses that have never had it before.” Hirsa says the research could pave the way to a more sophisticated liquid lens that could be hooked up to a computer program that would only snap digital pictures of scenes or an object that is in focus instead of taking a series of images in approximate focus from which a photographer can choose.

The lens is simpler than earlier liquid lens designs that use a combination of water or some other fluid capable of conducting electricity and oil as well as an electric charge. By using water, sound and surface tension to adjust the focus, Rensselaer researchers are hoping to develop more efficient and less expensive lenses than those made by Varioptic, S.A., in Lyon, France, although the company has a significant head start: It first demonstrated a lens in 2005 that sandwiches drops of water and oil between glass or plastic, according to PC Magazine.

Varioptic’s design uses a small integrated circuit to deliver a low-voltage charge to the lens that causes the fluids to change shape. A higher current pulls the drop in on itself, creating a concave effect whereas a lower voltage makes it rounder. There are no moving parts, and the oil, which has to be of even density and temperature, helps keep the drop in shape and in place.

Varioptic earlier this year announced a partnership with Japan’s Seiko Instruments USA, Inc., to begin mass producing liquid lenses by the end of 2008. In June Varioptic began working with China’s Shenzhen Akkord Electronics Company, Ltd., to make the first 1.3- and 2.0-megapixel liquid lens variable-focus Web cameras. Philips Electronics in the Netherlands and the Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE) in Singapore have also developed prototype liquid lenses.

Hirsa says his team will seek more NSF funding to study the dynamics of the liquid’s movement and find a way to package the lens in devices such as cell phones or Webcams without breaking it or disturbing the droplets. “If you make the inside coated with something water-resistant,” he says, “the droplets would simply re-form if they were disrupted.

Sarah Gerats

An article on How to Fail as a Photographer that’s been floating around. Applies more to commercial photography than art or documentary, but he’s got some good points.

Smaller and smaller cameras? John Chiara‘s camera needs to be hauled around by a truck. (Think trailer pinhole.) I love the developing canister he’s made – he rolls it around on the ground to agitate. Imagine loading that in the pitch dark.

Corey Arnold

I really love Arnold’s photos. His was one of the very few portfolio sites where I clicked through every single photo. They’re the perfect meeting of compelling subject matter and technical prowess, especially the fishing work portfolios. Whether you think fishing’s humane or not, the lifestyle’s fascinating. Sometimes I look at pictures in the current trend of moody nothingness or center portraits of everyday people staring in the camera, and I like them, but at the same time, for me there’s something missing. That something’s in every one of his photos!

An anecdote from Mike Johnston:

A 28-year-old deliveryman who lives with his mother in Hemel Hempstead, England, returned from an American vacation and downloaded the pictures from his camera, a used digicam he had just bought off Ebay for £17. His vacation pictures were there, but so were photographs of high-tech weaponry, and documents, fingerprints, and academic records pertaining to multiple terrorism suspects, including Abdul al-Hadi al-Iraqi, a notorious fanatical Kurd who had been captured by the CIA in 2007.

The innocent vacationer went to the police, who at first ignored him. Before long, however, his home was swarmed by Special Branch agents, who confiscated the startled citizen’s computer and the offending Nikon Coolpix, compensating him handsomely but forbidding him to talk to the media or anyone else about what he might have seen.

Seems the previous owner of the camera is—for the time being, anyway—a spy with Britain’s MI6 espionage agency.

Philip Ebeling

What’s this? TED prize people trying to go viral with Nachtwey’s latest undisclosed project to debut on 10/3?

And Simon Roberts on editing.

I made a DIY PVC pipe light tent after seeing a $50 one on B&H that was basically that. Now I wonder whether I should paint the pipe to make it look more ‘professional,’ but I don’t know anything about painting stuff. Maybe a lot of gaff tape??

Last night as I was walking from BART, there were a pair of black women’s pumps sitting upright, heels together, on the edge of the sidewalk, as if their owner had vaporized suddenly, leaving them intact. I wonder if there are other pairs of shoes all around the city in the same condition. Maybe I should’ve taken a picture of them, started a whole set of barefoot vaporized people shoe photos… they’re probably not there anymore…