Now this is an idea worth exploring. Artist & fashion illustrator Shamekh Bluwi has been cutting out holes in some of his work to allow the scene behind to ‘paint’ the sketches. He’s been sharing the creative idea through a series of photographs on his Instagram account.
We’ve seen similar work before, most notably FILMography the New York Movie Scenes blog by Christopher Maloney. However instead of lining up old movie scenes with the surrounding architecture, or indeed merging the past and present using old photographs, Shamekh envelopes the scene to evoke real world scenes on his sketches. Continue reading →
One look around Emily Scaife’s website is all it takes to see that this photographer is full of great ideas. Scaife uses photography, film making and illustration in her work and she has an extraordinary skill in turning the seemingly mundane into a visual delight, creating optical illusions by isolating her subject matter through either a macro lens, microscope or scanner and tricking us into thinking we’re looking at something entirely different. My favourite of these series are the ‘Cosmic Crispies‘. Scaife has given them the byline ‘Meteorological breakfast’ and they certainly make a wonderful feast for the eyes:
By photographing them in black and white against a pitch black background she makes them snap, crackle and pop in our brains as little asteroids (we’ve seen this type of imagery coming back from NASA – they’re not cheating and using Rice Crispies too are they?!). They are fascinating to look at and compare, who’d have thought each Crispie would be so different?
What is fast becoming the most idiotic cliche a photographer and his or her subjects can take part in has earned this particular family an Internet backlash it (probably) deserves.
CBS 58 news channel reports that despite receiving criticism from the Globe and its creepy uncle, they are not sorry for what they did and would prefer to just get on with their lives. Despite not having the common sense to realise that staging photographs on train tracks is an utterly selfish and thoughtless act they had no idea it was illegal. Continue reading →
In what may be heralded as one of the most important photographic breakthroughs in recent memory, Pizza Hut has unveiled a pizza box that comes with a lens, thus turning it into a projector. Revolutionary!
The instructions say that you’ll require a smartphone and a darkened room. Then as with any cardboard projector the luminescent image of the screen will be projected and focussed through the lens that comes with the pizza. Ingenious. Perhaps they were inspired by Google’s cardboard Virtual reality system. Continue reading →
To coincide with the launch of their new photography prize, Source, the Ireland based contemporary photography magazine have commissioned a short film called ‘How do you Make a Prize Winning Photograph?’ A question most of us have probably asked themselves at one point or another.
The short generally makes little to no sense at all, like a lot of contemporary photography without context, however filmmaker Richard West has done a great job of at least sprinkling a hint of inspiration into two minutes.
Entry into Solas Prize costs $30 and there is $11,500 prize money available with the prospect of two exhibitions.
Here’s a cute picture of Darth Vader and one of his minion Storm Troopers taking a selfie using a selfie stick made out of a light sabre.
This picture has been making the rounds on Twitter and Reddit today and looks set to carry on going viral over the next couple of days. Great news for the original photographer, right?
Wrong! Not a single retweet, share or blog I’ve found has cited the original artist, and that’s the point we want to make. Even after conducting a backwards image search on Google which usually does the trick, we turned up hands empty, again with countless links to sharing the photo uncredited. Continue reading →
Synaesthete James Wannerton experiences a sensation of taste in his mouth when he hears different words and sounds. Teaming up with photographic artist Sam Cornwell they have created a visually stunning set of photos as part of a synaesthesia style campaign for the UK’s 2015 general election.
James says the tastes he experiences are involuntary and in no way reflect political allegiances he may hold. The fact Nick Clegg gives him the disgusting sensation of a meatless bone of lamb is neither here no there. While ‘Labour party’ derives a taste of vinegary chips, ‘Conservatives’ taste of hard toffee and these sensations cannot be changed.
ABOVE: David Cameron / Conservatives tastes of hard toffee, macaroons, blue ink & the texture of cloth.
Representing the seven main political parties, the posters are linked by only the cursive line of a restaurant table draped in the party colours. James says he can elaborate extensively on the tastes he experiences with words. He explains The Liberal Democrats and Nick Clegg without holding back: Continue reading →
This year will mark forty years since the invention of the first functioning digital camera, and despite it being a measly 0.01 Mp it heralded a new age of digital photography and with it came a death cry for film.
Yup, film is still very much in use by photographers. (Click for an Amazon Link)
Prompted by this incredibly dull article published recently by the BBC I decided to ask some fellow photographers what reasons they had for still shooting the so-called outdated technology. Here’s the list…
1. Film Photography was Already Perfect.
Those of us lucky enough to have photo albums from the ’90s and before tucked away in our parents’ homes will undoubtedly take great joy in flicking through the tattered card pages, looking through the embarrassing portraits, day trips to the zoo, the beach, birthday parties and that time our trousers fell down in the park. The point I’m making is these vernacular photo albums were perfect and they were all shot on film.
Even old Photo Albums Found at Junkyard Sales have that Perfect Photographer’s Touch
Fast forward to today and we’re not only making fewer albums, we’re taking more photographs to get that perfect shot. Even our smartphones are littered with countless portraits of our children, nieces and nephews, because the photo before could have been just a little bit better. Back in the day of film photography we didn’t worry about that and those photo albums that we look back on are still as perfect today as when our parents first stuck them down.
This morning I stumbled on to the wonderfully engineered Word.Camera website via a PetaPixel blog post. The premise is simple: Convert a jpeg into somewhat meaningful English language.
To test it out I uploaded this small jpeg of my son on top of an abandoned building, silhouetted by the Sun.
I gave the computer an unusual image with plenty of contrast to decipher.
It took the algorithm a few minutes to process an answer. Finally I was presented with several paragraphs of text giving a better than vague description of the image it received:
Of course, a barbed wire, a men, and an energy. Thus, the barbed wire remains unknown. The men evokes typing, and the energy is made from an enterprising or ambitious drive. Probably, the barbed wire remains unknown.
…Yet, a silhouette and a sunset: the silhouette evokes outlining, and the sunset is not the time in the evening at which the sun beginning to fall below the horizon.
Ok, it’s a little jumbled, but understandable English for anyone who has at least a slim grasp on the language. The prose has a familiar air of poetry about it and perhaps with a little human refinement could even be passed off as professional.
I spoke to David Phillips, who operated a poem a day blog in 2014 to ask his thoughts on how the computer algorithm could shake up the industry. Continue reading →
Phogotraphy 