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Impressive Photography Skills

ivana — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 16:44:31 +0000

This bro has too much time on his hands. See what I did there? Photography is the art, science, and practice of creating pictures by recording radiation on a radiation-sensitive medium, such as a photographic film, or electronic image sensors. Photography uses foremost radiation in the UV, visible and near-IR spectrum. For common purposes the term light is used instead of radiation. Light reflected or emitted from objects form a real image on a light sensitive area or a FPA pixel array sensor by means of a pin hole or lens in a device known as a camera during a timed exposure. The result on film or plate is a latent image, subsequently developed into a visual image An image on paper base is known as a print. The result on the FPA pixel array sensor is an electrical charge at each pixel which is electronically processed and stored in a computer-image file for subsequent display or processing. Photography has many uses for business, science, manufacturing , art, and recreational purposes.

Trespassing On Beauty – Photography Of Industrial Decay

ivana — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 12:53:51 +0000

Let’s say you knew where something really beautiful was, but somebody kept it locked away because their insurance company told them to. It’s not in anybody’s home. You didn’t want to steal or damage it. The only thing you wanted to take was pictures. Would you trespass to do it? A lot of people have been delving into secret places, abandoned places, seeking out the mysterious internal organs of our civilization. This passion is called Urban Exploration. Many urban explorers specialize in old factories and like to take pictures of them. This is the photography of industrial decay. At first it was just the obsession of many isolated shutterbugs from America, Canada and Western Europe. But many of these photographers started posting their pictures of abandoned factories on Flickr. It became its own genre, similar to the way cat videos have become so big on YouTube. One such photographer, a Canadian named Chris Smart, saw an opportunity to bring these photos and photographers together in an internet community. Thus was born the Industrial Decay Network. The IDN at first just supported an amazing photo blog. But then Chris had the idea to release the best photos in book form. Perhaps he could have hooked some mainstream publisher, but it’s not clear whether one would have been interested in an anthology of photos literally and figuratively from the underground, so in the spirit of DIY he went to a company that helps people publish their own books, Blurb, giving rise to three books (so far) IDN01, IDN02 and Chris’s own book Surface. What is the appeal of these photos? At first glance you might think they’re just pictures of creepy old buildings with lots of puddles and peeling paint. Actually, that is part of the appeal: they’re immensely atmospheric and the photographers work to accentuate this characteristic. If you have a taste for dark beauty, you will find it here. But the images are more than that. They are majestic, full of titanic spaces and distant vanishing points. They are like the ruins of Greek and Roman temples. They also connect us to history and to the roots of our civilization. IDN and urban exploration generally are a corrective to our tendency to be cut off from the vital substrate of the world, barricaded behind our iPods and video games. Lastly the factory machines have a steampunk quality, like Jules Verne. The technology in the IDN photos is often only 20-40 years old and has a vaguely science fiction-y quality to it. All of this truly fuels the imagination. There’s a lot of this material out there, so dig in. The pictures on this page are from IDN02, which is in my opinion the best of the books so far. Happy exploring!

Nick Veasey: Photography And X-Rays

ivana — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 09:51:52 +0000

As it happens with a lot of what eventually become serious, x-ray photography, which made Nick Veasey famous, started out as a joke. Veasey himself tells how the idea to use an x-ray machine, rented from an hospital to discover a prized can of Pepsi, from a pile of thousands more atop of a truck came about (and before you call him crazy, be aware that the prize was worth 400 000 pounds). Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to find the can, however, this bizarre experiment gave him a brand new range of perspectives that triggered the career he embraces today and that made him famous world-wide. But what was initially the joke of a mediocre student and irresponsible young man (that’s more or less the way Veasey describes himself), as time went by, took on the size of great seriousness and rigour. The radiation is dangerous and the technical difficulties many, the logistics are complex, the research continuous and the failed experiments many. All of this works more like a challenge for the photographer, who, dressed in heavy equipment, made out of lead and protected by thick concrete walls, makes countless plates of all kinds of daily objects. Just to create the image of a Boeing 747 inside a hangar, Vasey needed a few hundreds of plates with airplane details. The final result only came about after many hours and a lot of Photoshop. This is the process that explains the creation of severall human figures in everyday poses and tasks, which lend the photograph’s realism and poetic expressiveness. The skeletons are not real people, as one might think, but rather digital images, carefully placed in the photographs. Another peculiar characteristic of this process of obtaining pictures is the balance between the intensity of radiation and the time of exposure of the film. That is also where the computer steps in to do all of the calculus. The final colour is artificial and once again, the spectrum of frequencies used stands outside the visible light spectrum; the colour is, as such, a product of posterior and deliberate digital treatment. All of this makes Nick Veasey a unique artist. Under a greater influence from music and cinema than from Photography or Science, he knows what he wants: to see the inside of things. In a world that has grown used to looking only at the superficial appearence of things, Veasey longs to go deeper and capture their essence. And with that he expects to achieve some beauty.

Weird friendship-when food became best friend…

admin — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:27:06 +0000

This duck got himself all in a flap after inadvertently straying into the path of a giant Shoebill while heading towards water. But it was all water off a duck’s back for the imposing 4ft tall bird which instead of eating his smaller friend, carefully picked him up in his beak and moved him aside. Despite its fearsome reputation as a predator around water, the Shoebill seemed more concerned with completing its journey than tucking into a feathered snack.

Bird food: The 4ft Shoebill picks up the squirming duck after it walked across its path at San Diego Wild Animal Park in the U.S.

These extraordinary pictures were captured by 51-year-old amateur photographer Mark Kay, at the San Diego Wild Animal Park in the U.S. Mr Kay said he spotted the endangered Shoebill standing alone and immediately grabbed his Canon 1 DS camera and started shooting. He said: ‘I was getting my camera out of the bag when I started to hear the ducks quacking. I immediately started shooting. ‘I thought the Shoebill was going to eat the duck, but soon realised he was moving him out of the way. ‘I suspect the duck had moved into his personal space. I have been back to the animal park a number of times, but have not captured anything as interesting there during my returns. ‘After the duck fell to the ground, he seemed flustered and just walked away. The Shoebill just carried on.’

Excuse me: The little duck, which is towered over by the endangered Shoebill, is gently moved out of the way

The father-of-two, a professor of paediatrics and genetics at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, said he uses the sequence of pictures when teaching his students. He said: ‘What is most important is to know what we can conclude and what conclusion might be consistent with but not proved by our results. ‘I show the first image and almost everyone who sees it assumes the duck is to be eaten – that conclusion is consistent with what we see. ‘But if you look at the next frame, he is moving the duck away so our first conclusion although consistent was not the correct one.’

In a flap: The Shoebill then drops the startled duck to the ground, minus a few feathers, and carries on its way

Shoebills live in large swamps in eastern Africa and can grow to more than 5ft tall and can have a wingspan of up to 10ft. The species was only discovered in the 19th century when some of the birds’ skins were brought to Europe. Shoebills feed in muddy waters, preying on fish, frogs, reptiles such as baby crocodiles, insects and small mammals. The species is classified as ‘threatened’ and the population is estimated at between 5,000 and 8,000.

Fall into the autumn journey with mother nature with these beautiful photography

admin — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 13:06:40 +0000

A series of beautiful autumn pictures which provides a great sense of peace and tranquility. Loads of nice colors and very good perspective to capture the tranquility of this place.

Amazing nature in black and white photography

admin — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 14:51:15 +0000

Beautiful and very professional black and white nature photography