Uncle Sam Wants You (off the billboards)

 

On August 8, CBS Outdoor signed a contract to post five billboards showing portraits of volunteer US soldiers taken by New York photographer Suzanne Opton. In the portraits, the soldiers, men and women, look dazed, confused and even traumatized — they had just returned from war in Afghanistan or Iraq, and were scheduled to go back to war in a few days.

Just days before the billboards were supposed to go up, however, the contract got cancelled — with little chance that Opton can find alternative public space to display her simple and poignant message.

 

Full article on Lens Culture along with the photo series and an audio interview with the photographer. LINK

OLAD: A Paw In My Face

The Field- A Paw In My Face

(source: false45th)

Dear Adobe:

 

Your installer is the worst piece of software on the planet… well, actually, your updater is worse. For the love of all things good, fix it. #505

Let me keep my browser open while you update your programs. Or eat hair. The choice is yours. #532

Why does Photoshop cost as much as a pre-owned small car? Drop the price please!! #215

remember when your applications were lightning fast? I miss that. #419

Could you make Adobe Reader start up slower? I’d like to have enough time to go get a sandwich
before I read a one page document. #614

Amen.

(dearadobe.com via shelton)

Casio to Release Camera With In-Built Time Machine

 Casio Computer Co Ltd will release the Exilim Zoom EX-Z300 and the EX-Z250, compact digital cameras with a “makeup function to beautifully capture people’s faces.” 

The function recognizes faces in a scene to optimize focus and exposure. It makes the skin look smoother in the picture and softens shadows on the face cast by sunlight with the use of an image processing technology…

The makeup function makes blotches and dullness less obtrusive by lightening the skin color of faces in the image. In addition, the function “makes the skin tone look softer and smoother, while covering annoying little wrinkles,” Casio said. With this function, “the skin looks clearer, younger and more natural in the pictures,” according to the company. The intensity of the image processing can be selected from 12 levels.

(source: techon)

 

Next month’s headlines: “Sony to release Digital Camera with Penis Enlargement function.”

 

This Casio press release sounds like marketing garble for ineffective software, but don’t discount the camera too quickly. It will probably move a lot of units and consequently spur a rash of similar models which will drive improvements in the technology.

Imagine future cameras with in-built photoshop, modifying you to the celebrity of your liking. “Oh and darling remember to hold down the ‘Ass-Like-Lopez’ button.”

Mark Seliger

 

Lindsay Lohan sporting bikini, Jay-Z flaunting wealth, and ladies draping over Nelly. Short retrospective and video of Mark Seliger’s stylish photography caricatography on Vanity Fair. LINK

OLAD3: 2080

Yeasayer – 2080

Source: emaemaema

Freestylin’ Retrospective Book

Christmas has been rescheduled to today. 

Lewman, Spike, and Jenkins collaborated with Nike to publish a retrospective book of Freestyle and Freestylin’. It features old interviews and drop dead amazing vintage BMX photography. But few copies were made and most were distributed at the Book Premiere, so it is pretty much impossible to find.

But now, oh why now it is online in PDF.

 

 

Nike deserves props for putting this book together, but doing such a limited print run is painful. What does a lad have to do? I’d go on a Japanese Torture Game Show for a copy.

(via: mysticnegro via krtschmidt)

OneLapADay: Air France

 

Air France- Beach Party 

Source: emaemaema 

The D90 Rivals Porn For Top Invention In History

When it comes to advancements in technology, a few milestones come to mind; The invention of toast. The telephone. Spaceships. Combustion engines. Bikes. Vibrators. Ikea. Steve Jobs. The internet. Paid internet porn. Free internet porn.

Well something has come along that is going to rival free porn, and it looks like this.

 

It is a DSLR. And it shoots HD Video too.

Chase Jarvis (and the whole of the internet for that matter) has posted sample pictures and videos from the D90! LINK

 

This camera (along with Canon’s inevitable answer) will send shock-waves across the media industry, even in the relatively small BMX world. It will allow Joe Kid to shoot BMX photos (to send to magazines) and videos (to try and make The Come Up) without having to buy and carry two sets of camera bodies and lenses. I did say Joe Kid because the price of this camera is US$999! And Joe Kid can get himself a US$599 Nikon 10.5mm DX fisheye lens and have himself a suitable set up for follow-cam footage. 

 

Once video technology improves there is no reason why the average consumer wouldn’t print up stills from videos. Where will this put the dedicated still camera? Or still photography for that matter?

 

Vincent Laforet who is hot off the Olympics trail has an interesting analysis on how DSLR’s new HD Video ability will affect the Sports Photography industry. Definitely a good read. LINK

While most newspaper photogaphers will be thrilled not to have to carry both SLR and video camera systems to perform their new duties, sports photographers may find that these cameras create serious headaches for them going into venues with broadcasters who own exclusive rights to the video content being broadcast from that very venue.  These will be very interesting times that will lead to some very precedent setting debate.

 

This camera assures a few things… Soccer parents will really really freak, there will be a rash of vertically shot videos on the internet, and $999 might mysteriously disappear from my bank account.

Whatever the case, the D90 is a sign of things to come. If you are in the photography industry, it is proof that you need to upgrade your breadth of skills and diversify because everything that can be animated will be animated.

OneLapADay: Let Me Clear My Throat

New segment on the blog (not that the blog has segments)- one song a day starting with this throwback.

DJ Kool – Let Me Clear My Throat (Remix feat. Biz Markie & Doug E. Fresh) 

Source: Rollo&Grady