Men at Lunch: A Documentary About One of the Most Iconic Photos Taken in NYC

Men at Lunch is an amazing new documentary film by Seán Ó Cualáin that explores the story of one of the most iconic photographs of the 20th century: Lunch atop a Skyscraper. the 1932 photo of eleven construction workers taking a lunch break while sitting on a girder suspended 850 feet above New York City.

It was taken on September 29, 1932 from the 69th floor of the RCA building during its last few months of construction. Despite being published in the New York Herald Tribune a few days later, the photo spent the better part of the past century either misattributed or marked with “photographer unknown”. Not until 2003 did a thorough investigation uncover Ebbets as the photographer behind the image. Men at Lunch doesn’t focus on the technical details of the photograph or the photographer behind the camera, but instead peers into the photograph itself to answer questions about the subjects. The description on the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) site states, Ever since the photograph was published anonymously in the New York Herald Tribune on October 2, 1932, the men’s identities have been a mystery. Many of those who have been fascinated by the photo throughout the years have shared the conviction that one of the workers is a distant relative; others, meanwhile, have questioned the photo’s authenticity outright. Accessing the vast photography archives at Rockefeller Center and the Iron Mountain storage facility in Pennsylvania, Ó Cualáin follows the clues in an attempt to discover the photo’s long-held secrets. With the meticulous, painstaking precision of a detective, Ó Cualáin tracks down the original glass-plate negative, and then reconstructs the photograph as a digital projection with actors recreating the workers’ poses, allowing the minutiae of the image to be studied from every possible perspective. Interviews with archivists, photographers, and historians eventually uncover compelling evidence that a few of the photo’s subjects may have roots in the small village of Shanaglish, Ireland. P.S. 30 Rock, which began here in 2006, will tape here until late 2012 or early 2013

Inspiring Photographer Talks @Google

On of the neat things about working at Google is the fact that the company loves letting its employees hear from the world’s best minds through the AtGoogleTalks. Through the series of lectures, Google invites well-known individuals to share on their area of expertise for 40-70 minutes. In addition to the thousands of politicians, musicians, and entertainers who have shared so far, there have also been a number of photographers invited for Photographers@Google presentations. The video above shows a lecture given by HDR landscape photographer Trey Ratcliff last year. It’s actually the second time he spoke at @Google. The first time was a year earlier as part of the Authors@Google series, when he talked about his new book on HDR and the photos that went into it:

Camera Pi – DSLR Camera with Embedded Computer

By daveh | Published August 13, 2012 I’ve had the idea of embedding a computer DSLR camera for a couple of years now, but for whatever reason I never got around to implementing it, mostly due to the cost of small single board computers. Until now, that is. With the release of the Raspberry Pi, embedded computing has all of a sudden become much more affordable. At €35 for the computer, it’s far cheaper than any of it’s rivals. So what I’ve done is take an old (broken) battery grip that I had lying around (for my Canon 5D Mark II), and made a few modifications to it so I could fit the Raspberry Pi SBC (Single Board Computer) into it. I left a few holes in the case so that I could get at the USB and network ports, and video port. it’s a fully functioning computer with a Linux Operating System (Raspbian), has 2 USB, network, video, HDMI and GPIO. Possibilities include: Wireless tethered shooting – attach a Wifi dongle to the USB port, so I can transmit pictures to a PC or tablet PC as I’m shooting. Attach a USB memory key or hard drive so I can back up the images on the camera. Remote control the camera using a PC, tablet PC or smartphone (from anywhere in the world). Intervalometer – take a picture every few seconds for those high-speed sunset sequences, including exposure adjustment as you go. On-the-fly image conversion for faster previews on remote display device (iPad, etc). Add a small LCD display to give status, allow user input via buttons, etc. Trigger camera via shutter release port, also allows waking up of sleeping camera, which cant be done via USB. There’s plenty of work to be done on the software side of things but the prototype is working. I can pull images from the camera and transmit them via either Wifi or ethernet. There’s a significant problem with the current USB drivers on the Raspbian linux disribution, though. After a few requests to the camera, the gphoto app responds with “Unknown Error”, and the only solution seems to be to unplug the usb cable and re-insert it. Not a workable solution, so I’ll have to look into that. Works fine on my other linux box, but a full-sized PC won’t fit into the battery grip! –Note– I found a wee ‘C’ code snippet that will reset a USB port, and that seems to do the trick if I call it between each gphoto2 call. Not ideal, but it gets me away from constantly unplugging the cable…. I initially started by powering it externally, so then I tried the device shown on the left. It’s the guts of an iphone car charger, which converts 12v to 5v, so I tried to see what it would put out if connected to 4xAA batteries, which is the end goal for power,as I want to be able to swap batteries during a shoot. Unfortunately, the DC-DC converter drops a volt from the 5.25v set of batteries I tried, giving me 4.25v. Not enough for the Pi. Putting it on a 12V supply gave me a nice 5.02v, but it’s more difficult to source a 12v battery that’s small enough for my purposes. However, I then spotted the parts lying on my workbench, and as I sat there looking at the parts I’d already taken out of the battery grip, I realised it might be possible to use some of them to make a compartment for a Canon 5D Battery, which runs at 7.2 volts. A quick test with one of those batteries showed the output of the DC-DC converter at a steady 5.02 volts, so I then attempted to boot the Raspberry Pi. And up it came. I measured the current at 450-480ma, with a Microsoft wireless keyboard/mouse USB adapter in the USB port. I could ssh in, so the network port was fine with that PSU. Great, Next to mount one of those batteries in the grip. Check out the following pic to see what I did there…. The first pic of the three shows the original double compartment. Next shows the compartment split in two, and the third shows the compartment mounted in the grip with the Rasberry Pi. There’s just enough room above the Pi to mount the DC-DC converter, and the final result is shown below. This image shows the Canon 7.2v 1800mAh battery. I’m not sure yet how long it will drive the Raspberry Pi when in use, but the initial measurements of 480mA when idle looks promising. So I should get a few hours anyway, which is ideal. And the whole setup put together. the white tab you can see on the right hand side is a spring loaded hook that keeps the battery locked in. Once you hold back the tab, the battery can be removed. I’d like to have a door on this to further hide the battery, but this is fine for the moment. I can boot up, and log in using a Microsoft wireless keyboard/mouse combination, connect to the network, browse the web, etc. I’ve ordered a nice neat USB cable for connecting the grip and the camera together. It’s 15cm long, with right angled connectors. Next to play with Wifi…. More to come…. Parts List (so far): Raspberry Pi – €35 Battery Grip – €35 7-12V to 5V DC-DC converter (probably about €10, I had one lying around) 7.2v 1800mAh battery (£9.99 from 7dayshop.com) 15cm USB cable €4 Raspberry Pi is a trademark of the Raspberry Pi Foundation Twitter: https://twitter.com/climberhunt @climberhunt Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/davidhuntphotography This entry was posted in Computer Stuff, Photography, Tutorial. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

Sharing the Joy of Photography Through Virtual Photo Walks

Back in May, we wrote about a photographer named John Butterill and his brilliant idea of using a Internet-connected phone to share his photo adventures with people whose mobility was limited. Google liked Butterill’s story so much that they’re sharing it as an example of the different things you can do through Google+ Hangouts. The video above is a neat look at how Butterill came up with his idea, and how the concept quickly spread around the world.


The idea has certain gained traction: Butterfill’s Google+ page titled Virtual Photo Walks has massed over 600,000 members.
The YouTube account he set up for the project now has over 20 videos showing photographers leading hangouts on virtual photo walks around the world. The locations visited range from beautiful national parks to inside views of car shows.

Reverse Image Search Returns Nearly Identical Photo from 36 Years Ago

While visiting beautiful New York City earlier this year, an Australian photographer named Kiernan traveled to the top of the Empire State Building and snapped a photograph of the cityscape. After returning home, he decided to do a reverse image search on Google just to see what he might find. He was surprised to discover that the top result was a nearly identical photograph that was captured 36 years ago.

Chicago-based illustrator Ken Smith, has the caption: Toward lower Manhattan and Wall Street; the twin towers of the 3-year-old World Trade Center are in the distance, and the sharp prow of the Flatiron Building is just to the left of lower center, where Broadway cuts diagonally across Fifth Avenue at 22nd Street. Kiernan tells us, I thought it was interesting thing to not only see the difference in New York over the last four decades, but also the power of Google image search and the rather nice surprise that someone else has in history chose to use the exact same composition and focal length so many years before hand. The next time you snap a photograph from a popular picture spot, try doing a reverse image search through Google or TinEye. You might find yourself taken back in time!

Touchdown: Mars rover Curiosity lands successfully (VIDEO, PHOTOS)

Robotic rover Curiosity has successfully landed in Mars’ Gale Crater. The goal of the $2.5 billion mission is to find evidence that the Red Planet was once capable of supporting life. After touchdown, the Curiosity rover sent home telemetry signal and black-and-white pictures from the surface of Mars. The first images sent by the Curiosity, though clouded by dust kicked up during the landing, clearly showed the shadow cast by the rover, with its wheels firmly on the ground. "We're on Mars again," NASA chief Charles Bolden said at a post-landing media conference. "It's just absolutely incredible. It doesn't get any better than this." The mission will help gather crucial data for an eventual manned expedition to Mars, Bolden said. Curiosity aims to discover if the planet was once able to support life, and whether it will be able to do so in the future. The final phase of Curiosity’s automatic landing sequence involved a hovering ‘sky crane’ that lowered the car-sized rover to the ground, and then deactivated by crashing into the surface of Mars. The technique had never been attempted in previous planetary exploration missions. The landing, described by NASA as “seven minutes of terror,” proceeded smoothly and within the planned timeframe. Deviations from the expected path of descent were within the lower range of engineers’ expectations, NASA scientist Adam Steltzner said. Just over a quarter of the craft’s 400 kilograms of fuel were expended during the powered flight phase. The Curiosity team will test the rover’s instruments and systems in the coming days before proceeding with the mission. Curiosity’s mission is expected to last for at least two years. The rover will seek out carbon-based compounds, which could prove that life once existed on Mars.

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