Advertising Battles

Wang Qingsong is bang on:

My new work "Commercial War" focuses on the power of ads and the misconceptions that ads can create. For this photo work, I constructed a chaotic backdrop where over 20 people are depicted in a frenzy of competition with some even fist fighting while jostling for ad positioning on a huge billboard advertisement; this struggle for the most optimal outdoor ad placement is perceived as inevitably bringing power and influence. The struggle for ad placement in public space in China is not unlike a battlefield strewn with casualties after a pitched battle for power. Today one brand wins. The next day, its competitor will replace it with better positioning on public spaces. Every day, new ads go up, and old ones fall down, scattered in pieces, and discarded on the ground under newly erected billboard advertisements. [Link]

Photosynth: Visually Tagging The World

Amazing Demonstration of Photosynth by Blaise Aguera y Arcas.



Photosynth Website.

Harry Potter Leak: EXIF Is Not A Smoking Gun

Much has been made of the Harry Potter torrent and the fact that the digital images available contain data that can be used to trace the images back to the camera if it has been serviced. What no one seems to recognize in this discussion is that EXIF data is easily edited if you know it's there. Programs which allow you to do so and even facilitate EXIF editing of 314 of the 355 EXIF fields are priced from cheap to free.

EXIF data in digital images offers a wealth of data storage - not just date, time, and camera information but everything from GPS info (that's what makes photo geotagging possible) to information about the camera settings when the photograph was taken to all kinds of custom fields that can be edited to help protect copyrights (image credits, license terms, etc.). Virtually all of these fields can be edited with the exception of date and timestamps. (View a PDF guide to EXIF fields.)

Not many people make use of EXIF data to edit it but it is perfectly legal to do so, at least when it isn't covering up a crime, and there is no way of knowing with certainty that the author of the Potter photos now circulating on the Pirate Bay did not edit the photos' EXIF data.

If they didn't, law enforcement is in luck, and of course any EXIF data is a place to start in tracking down the culprit, especially one with such horrible carpeting. But news outlets are treating EXIF data as the equivalent of a DNA test, which is only true if you could change your own DNA with a freeware computer program.

R.I.P. Ladybird Johnson

No. 8, from the series "Life Sized," by Jennifer L.F. McNichols

[Obit]

DIY Slide Projector

[Via]

Wall Murals

Art wall murals. More at the link.

A dad's project for his young son, made in Photoshop. How-to at the link.

A decorative painter who painted faux effects at Disneyland Paris.
More samples at the link.

3D Printing An Illuminated Photobox

Industrial Design Sandbox reports:

This photograph is transformed into a topographical relief surface. The brightest portions of the photo are the thinnest section and the darkest areas are the thickest sections. This 3D data is converted into surfaces and fabricated using an FDM machine.

[Link]

Love, Shredded: The Blankie Photographs of "Dirty Wow Wow"

The new book Dirty Wow Wow and Other Love Stories: A Tribute to the Threadbare Companions of Childhood features images of stuffed animals and other objects ravaged by the love of children. The most striking photographs in the book are of children's blankies. It looks like they've been digested by baby dinosaurs. They're just gorgeous.

Ten Speed Press gave TiP special permission to blog these. Click on them for a larger view.

Rags

Belmont Blankie

Blankie

Photography studio Hornick/Rivlin did a great job with this project. With most of the shots in the book straight-on photos of stuffed animals (only a few are from non-"catalogue" perspectives) I'm guessing that orienting these floppy, tattered blankets was one of the most interesting parts of their shoots for this book. And they did an outstanding job. You can check out more of their work here. (Note to photographers and artists everywhere: If you abandon a site and put up a new one, take the old one down, because it will still draw visitors, most of whom won't think to look for another site after clicking on the top Google search result for your company!)

Ten Speed Press is running a contest for readers through the month of May to submit their own photographs and stories of "lovies" online for a chance to win a copy of the book and other prizes. A new winner is selected every week.

I wrote a bit more about the book here.

Images reprinted with permission from Dirty Wow Wow and Other Love Stories: A Tribute to the Threadbare Companions of Childhood. Copyright (c) 2007 by Cheryl and Jeffrey Katz, Ten Speed Press, Berkeley, CA. Photo Credit: Hornick/Rivlin.

The Sims Go Swimming

Shared via Flickr by Mareen Fischinger.

Famous Altered Photographs

Before

After

Wired has a great image set of famous altered photographs, ranging from the recent (Lebanese bombing, U.S. military operations) to the historic. Above, Trotsky is "disappeared" from an event photograph (the man next to him in "Before," and next to a big gaping void in "After," is Lenin).

Paolo Magari's photographs

smile :)
Originally uploaded by paolo margari.

I don't know this girl, but she's in Think In Pictures' blog header now. Collaboration made possible by Creative Commons.

Self-Portraits by Gisela Giardino

mosaiqued self ( g^n )
Originally uploaded by TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³.

One of two images used for the new header. Giardino has a lot of interesting self-portrait projects on Flickr; check them out here.

Collaboration made possible thanks to Creative Commons licensing.

Joshua Gibson On Susan Sontag, Annie Liebowitz, and Camille Paglia

Joshua Gibson at Fagistan posted a great piece yesterday about Camille Paglia's ongoing war on Susan Sontag. Here's an excerpt to entice you:

Paglia has a well-known problem with Sontag, though it's one that, even after reading "Sontag, Bloody Sontag", I've never really been able to understand. Paglia hypes herself as one of "Sontag's most outspoken critics" based, almost solely, on that one essay. The essay doesn't really make any particular intellectual charge against Sontag, but instead focuses on how Paglia invited Sontag to give a lecture at Bennington College. Sontag was late and then had the audacity to read a new short story rather than deliver a grand cultural lecture. She was also mean to Camille. This "outspoken criticism" is nothing more than girlish humiliation and resentment and hardly worthy of a serious intellectual attacking another serious intellectual.

It gets even better. And then better still. Read it here.

Inside-Out Bears By Kent Rogowski

Photographer Kent Rogowski turned teddy bears inside out and restuffed them for a great photo series. The book will be published in May.

Photograph copyright Kent Rogowski 2007.

[Via|Link]

Imitation for Education

Recreating an artwork's composition is one way of "looking" intensively at it. I love what instructor Glenn Zucman is getting his Art Appreciation students to do at California State University-Long Beach. These photos crack me up.

Jacques Louise David, The Farewell of Telemachus and Eucharis

Diego Rivera, Flower Day

These photos are alive with thought and meaning but are totally hilarious at the same time. I had friends in college who sketched on index cards to use as flash cards for art history tests. This method seems so much better, because it looks like so much more fun.

Glenn, will you please make your students recreate one of the photos below?

One of my favorite people. Kind of hard to reproduce though, what with the hierarchical scale. The Photoshopping jobs are pretty rough, so scratch that one.

Hmmm. Better. I'm now reminded of a Sesame Street coloring book which put the show's characters in all of these famous paintings. I think Grover was Washington. Or was it Bert?

Okay, this is my real request. I'm sure you're covering Botticelli, this is a very important painting, and it also happens to be one of my favorite paintings of all time! That grace. That tension! It's like a dance, but also like a marionette dancing, with the angel pulling her into that angle like she has a little string. Beautiful. I'd like to see the kids in Long Beach pull it off.

Taming The Wild

From Tom Simpson's "Old Disneyland" Flickr set.

Flickr Now Supporting Once-Ostracized Illustrators, Screenshot Uploaders

Flickr's wavering policies in the past regarding using Flickr as an illustration portfolio or to show off screen captures of software has been to restrict user accounts and block their images from being included in search functions. When some users responded negatively to these moves, others stepped in and aggressively defended Flickr's status as "for photos only." Flickr fumbled around for a while, sending some pretty mixed signals.

The "photo-sharing" site has finally come around to accept that new user bases are not a bad thing, and is now supporting search filtering for both of those robust types of content, which people have been putting up for years.

Good for Flickr.

[Via|Link]

Adding Randomness To Your Photos

Photo by Wam Moseley.

In-camera techniques for more creative and artistic shots.

Partial Demolition As Art

From the Unconscious Art of Demolition Flickr pool.

Overnighters

David Ichioka arranged timed photographs of sleepers at thirty-minute intervals throughout the night.