We’re getting to the point at which photographers can buy fancy aerial drones without having to sell a kidney. You’ve probably already seen photos and videos shot from camera-equipped radio-controlled helicopters before, but did you know that the camera’s view can be beamed to a pair of goggles, allowing the photographer to be immersed in a first-person-view of what he or she is shooting?
Read more at http://www.petapixel.com/2012/10/10/camera-equipped-copter-beams-fpv-to-goggles-for-beautiful-aerial-imagery/#fhshDf6UBPWd8Zg9.99
Here’s a beautiful video in which Esben Nielsen shows off this kind of rig through various shoots this past summer in Bornholm, Denmark:
Read more at http://www.petapixel.com/2012/10/10/camera-equipped-copter-beams-fpv-to-goggles-for-beautiful-aerial-imagery/#fhshDf6UBPWd8Zg9.99
If you have semi-deep pockets and would like to use one of this copters for your own FPV aerial photography, check out Quadrocopter‘s Cinestar multi-rotor helicopters (used by NASA, Google, National Geographic, and the BBC). The cheapest DIY kit costs around $3,200.
Read more at http://www.petapixel.com/2012/10/10/camera-equipped-copter-beams-fpv-to-goggles-for-beautiful-aerial-imagery/#fhshDf6UBPWd8Zg9.99
If you’re corresponding with known terrorists and attempting to overthrow the US government, it’s safe to expect a knock on your door from the FBI. But what if you just happen to think that storm clouds look really, really cool?
Michael Galindo, 26, learned the hard way that anything and everything is seemingly fair game for an FBI investigation. He was taking photos of a dark and stormy rain cloud above his native Texas town of Houston last month and had to pay the consequences for it when a federal agent appeared at his front door on Friday.
Galindo answered honestly when FBI Agent David Pileggi showed up at his Houston household last week and asked him about some photos he took on September 13 near the former Lyondell Refinery.
“He said I was spotted near the refinery but I couldn’t even remember doing that. I thought it had to be somebody else,” Galindo tells Photography is Not a Crime. “It wasn’t until he mentioned my camera that I made the connection.”
Galindo says he never once stepped foot on the refinery’s property, but it was enough to raise suspicion nonetheless. Someone at the facility spotted him shooting photos and phoned in the police, who in turn rang up the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force.
According to Galindo, he was just “looking for a clear line of site” so he could snap a photo of storm clouds overheard, something he does regularly as a volunteer member of he National Weather Service’s Skywarn program, a coast-to-coast system that lets civilians submit breaking information about any storms stretching across the sky. The Skywarn website acknowledges that the program is run in conjunction with 122 local Weather Forecast Offices throughout the country, including many that offer free training classes to amateur meteorologists.
Galindo tells Photography is Not a Crime that the entire incident with Agent Pileggi ended peacefully. “He told me, ‘you’re not a threat and you are doing a public service but just be careful next time,’” the man recalls. That isn’t to say, though, that he got off without a hassle: Galindo says the agent asked him questions off a three-page document that involved any history he may have had with the US military or traveling overseas.
Now, Galindo says, he is left wondering if the FBI has since opened up a file on him.
“The worst thing I’ve done is get speeding tickets, but I haven’t gotten one in three years,” he tells the website.
Photographer Kirsty Wiseman didn’t want to shell out money for a real beauty dish — she doesn’t really need one — so she built this funny-looking DIY beauty dish for a few pennies using a couple of Styrofoam bowls, a couple of cocktail sticks, and a piece of aluminum foil. After playing around with it, Wiseman was delightfully surprised to find that her gear hack actually produced decent results.
She writes,
In sum, although my beauty dish is somewhat smaller (and uglier) than your average dish, it’s worth playing about with a homemade one until you can appreciate what size you want to work with and whether you like the results to warrant buying the real deal.
I’m on the look out for larger polystyrene dishes to broaden the area I want to work on but in the interim, I’m happy to faff around with my little creation until I decide whether to spend the big bucks or not. Or maybe just continue using this monstrosity and fake it until someone can convince me otherwise.
To try your own hand at creating an ugly beauty dish to play around with, head on over to Wiseman’s site for a step-by-step tutorial.
Read more at http://www.petapixel.com/2012/10/05/build-yourself-a-cheapo-diy-beauty-dish-using-styrofoam-bowls/#A3F8ej8tbwVqcpeV.99
Back in the summer of 1942, the US Army called upon a young man named Glenn W. Eve (above left) for World War II. After finding him to be 5’9” and just 125 pounds, the military deemed him unfit for combat. Unlike Steve Rogers, there was no experimental serum available to Eve, but luckily he had a desired skill: photography. In 1944, Eve was promoted to private first class and placed in the Signal Photo Corps in order to document the happenings in the Pacific.
One of interesting inventions being used during the war was the Mobile Photo Lab: a full-fledged lab built into the back of a 34-foot semi in 1944. Inside was a negative developing room, a printing room, and everything else a photographer back then needed. Its purpose was to “provide immediate photographic processing of high priority pictures”, something that is now more easily done using digital cameras, laptops, and the Internet.
Here’s a taste of what it was like working out of a mobile photo lab during combat, according to a letter from Capt. Herman to Lt. Sontheimer:
Sleeping under the laboratory truck and other vehicles during their first night on the beach-head, the crew members got their first taste of combat. Sniper fire crackled close around them and U.S. artillery barrages screamed overhead intermittently.
[...] To handle priority, tactical processing at night, the men often worked through Jap air-raids in which bombs struck within a block on all four sides of them. Exploding bombs frequently caused so much vibration of photo enlargers that prints blurred and had to be remade. Yet, production kept up to schedule and the men slept when they could.
Throughout the first month on Leyte Island, the mobile lab crew worked an average of 12 to 18 hours a day (and night).
As the only photo lab on islands at times, the photographers were called upon to process images that were critical to the war effort on very short notice and around-the-clock.
After the war, Eve bequeathed a large collection of his unpublished photographs to his daughter Debra, who left them in a box for decades until finally revisiting them a few years ago. She has since published many of the never-before-seen images to a website she set up titled “The Pacific War Photographs of Pfc Glenn W. Eve.”
Here’s a sampling of the photographs along with the captions given to them by Glenn W. Eve:
“Part of the devastation caused by the atomic boming of Hiroshima, Japan.”
“The first meeting of Gen. MacArthur and Emperor Hirohito in Tokyo. Sept. 1945 at the General’s Headquarters.”
“Gen. MacArthur signs surrender documents aboard the Missouri, Tokyo Bay, Sept. 2, 1945″
“Looking down the Ginza, Tokyo’s main shopping district. Sept. 29, 1945″
UC Berkeley’s library system is the fourth largest library in the United States, so it’s no wonder that treasures are often forgotten and buried inside the rare collections. Case in point: a massive collection of signed prints by Ansel Adams have been discovered in one of the 32 libraries, just sitting around in a box.
The San Francisco Chronicle writes that dance professor Catherine Cole made the discovery after following a trail of documents:
“I kept seeing the name Ansel Adams and thought ‘what the heck is he doing all over the UC archives,’ ” says Cole, who followed this lead to the Bancroft Library, where 605 signed fine prints by Adams sat in a box, among the university’s rare collections.
[...] “This is an extraordinary resource that has been buried like a time capsule,” says Cole, 49, who discovered the prints while doing independent research on the California Master Plan for Higher Education.
Adams had been commissioned in 1964 to photograph the University of California school system by then-President Clark Kerr.
f you’re in the Berkeley area, you should stop by the Bancroft Library Gallery, where 50 of the beautiful photographs are now on display for free public viewing. Most of the found prints have never been exhibited before, so you’ll be in for a treat!
MORE ADAM'S PICS
…and some more sample shots from the brief few moments we spent playing around with it:
Go ahead and start playing around with underwater Street View directly on this page:
This project, which we first wrote about back in February, has the goal of mapping out six of the largest coral reefs in the world.
You can browse the locations directly through Street View or on the special website the company has set up for its underwater imagery.
Sending a camera up to the edges of space on a weather balloon has been done quite a bit now, but perhaps none of the projects have been as creative as Ron Fugelseth’s effort. Ron worked with his 4-year-old son to give his son’s favorite toy train Stanley a fun and exciting ride to space. They built a rig consisting of a weather balloon, a styrofoam box, an HD video camera, and an old cell phone for GPS. Stanley was then attached to the outside of the box using a rod, positioned so that the camera would be perpetually pointed at Stanley with the world in the background.
When Stanley got to 18 miles above ground, the balloon popped, ending the trip up and abruptly starting the rapid journey back down. Using the GPS information, Fugelseth was able to recover the rig 27 miles away inside a corn field.
He then took the BTS and journey footage, animated Stanley’s eyes, and created the beautiful short film seen above that documents the entire project from start to finish.
Fugelseth writes in the video’s description,
My 4 year old and Stanley are inseparable like Calvin and Hobbes. He’s been attached to him since he was two, and they play, sleep and do everything together. I animated Stanley’s face with After Effects and Photoshop to bring him to life how I imagine my son sees him.
Here’s the original video I made of my son and Stanley when he was 2 years old, same basic concept.
He also includes some safety tips and words for warning for anyone who would like to attempt the same thing:
First off, I called the FAA 15 minutes before launch (per their instructions) so they could make sure no planes fly into the flight path.
Second, the box was only 2 pounds and made of foam core, with a wooden dowel to hold Stanley in front of the camera.
I spent two months monitoring the winds with this website to pinpoint the general area that he would land. For safely, I launched him from a location that I knew would bring him down into farm land. The prediction website was only 5-10 miles off, so he landed safely in a corn field, far away from any towns.
I didn’t want Stanley to be a murderer. Plus I wanted to make sure my son got Stanley back. :)
Good job Fugelseth. You definitely deserve some kind of Dad Award for doing such an awesome project with your son!
