5 Must-Read Books by TED Global Speakers, Part 2
by Maria Popova From life before birth to living with death, or what marine life has to do with global equality. With TED Global a mere 24 hours way, it’s time for the second part of this year’s reading list of books by TED Global speakers, a continuation of the first installment of five featured here last month. Here are five more powerhouses of cognitive stimulation for your vicarious TED experience, spanning everything from philosophy to economics to marine biology. We’ve previously pondered the grand questions of what makes us human and what makes us uniquely us. An excerpt from the book was a TIME cover story last year and The New York Times‘ Nicholas Kristof rightfully called it a “terrific and important new book.” [P]regnancy is now something it’s never been before: a frontier. How come some of the world’s most “developed” nations are also among the most dysfunctional? The contrast between the material success and social failure of many rich countries is an important signpost.
New camera technology helps remove photobombers from your pictures
Photobombers. Can’t avoid ‘em, can’t live without ‘em. Sure, they make for hilarious afterthoughts when you spot them, but it sure is painful when all you wanted was a perfect picture of your girlfriend by a pretty water fountain and what you get is a bunch of drunk college kids peering out behind her, armed with Four Lokos. With this new patented object-removal technology, users are to take a moment to frame the shot before snapping the picture as they normally would. The idea is similar to Adobe Photoshop’s new Content-Aware fill function, which clone stamps an area of a picture you deleted with what the program assumes should be there instead. However, before you get excited, it does not seem like Remove will be a downloadable app for various mobile platforms.
'Where Children Sleep': A Round-the-World Tour of Bedrooms - Maria Popova - Life
From a teahouse for geishas-in-training to a hut in the Amazon, a book captures the diversity of kids'-room interior design 11-year-old Joey, who killed his first deer when he was seven, lives in Kentucky with his family. On the heels of my recent homage to where children read and learn comes a curious look at where they sleep. That's exactly what Kenyan-born, English-raised, Venice-based documentary photographer James Mollison explores in Where Children Sleep—a remarkable series capturing the diversity of and, often, disparity between children's lives around the world through portraits of their bedrooms. The project began on a brief to engage with children's rights and morphed into a thoughtful meditation on poverty and privilege, its 56 images spanning from the stone quarries of Nepal to the farming provinces of China to the silver spoons of Fifth Avenue. 7-year-old Indira works at a granite quarry and lives in a one-room house near Katmandu, Nepal, with her parents, brother and sister.
Colour photographs of Shackleton’s Antarctica, 1915
The 'Endurance' frozen in 76-35 South, 1915 The rigging of the 'Endurance' encrusted with RIME crystals, 1915 Dog teams scouting a way to the land, 1915 Sir Ernest Shackleton watching a lead forming, 1915 The pink glow of the rising sun shining on a pressure ridge, 1915 The 'Endurance' under full sail, held up in the Weddell Sea, 1915 The Deck of the 'Endurance', 1915 A mid-winter glow, Weddell Sea (showing The 'Endurance'), 1915 Glimpse of the Ship ['Endurance'] through Hummocks, 1915 35 South, 1915 New Fortuna Glacier, 1915 Glacier, New Fortuna Bay, 1915 Face of the Neumeyer Glacier, 1915 Alfred Cheetam signalling the Shackleton expedition, 1915 The Bosun [John Vincent] of the 'Endurance' mending a net, 1915 Frank Hurley with Cinematograph, 1915 Frank Hurley photographing under the bows of the 'Endurance', 191 The impenetrable icefield which prevented us from reaching the land (showing part of the 'Endurance'), 1915 A Sub-Antarctic sunrise. A mid-summer sunset with the 'Endurance' frozen in, 1915
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Using Lasers To Take Insane 3D Macro Photographs Of Flying Insects
If taking high end macro shots of insects strikes you as hard, how about upping the level by taking the pictures while insects are in buzzing around mid-flight. Too easy you say. Let do this 3D. Photographer and designer Frans Fotoopa (photo grandpa) built a monster futuristic camera rig that does just that. This unique camera system uses a few ingenious ideas. However, no one has to hit the shutter once the insect is in focus, a lens equipped with a photo-diode picks up the reflected laser and triggers the shutter. And just to make this a little be easier on the Frans, bright green lasers mark the pint of intersection. Well, the shutter is not your average shutter too, it is a dedicated Uniblitz VS14 shutter that reduces the oh-so-long 53 milliseconds lag of a regular shutter to mere 3.3 milliseconds. Two camera are used a D200 and a D300 mounted so the two AF105/2.8D micro lenses are facing sliding mirrors that are aimed at the focus point. [Fotoopa's How to take insects in-flight]
colourful bubbles & some common sense!
We mentioned in our post on Ellie V Pullen Preschool last term, that the children were enjoying a bubble blowing art activity. Bubble mixture (just water and detergent) are placed in a bowl with some Edicol dye added. This is an activity we’ve done many times over the years – children love it! We noticed at Ellie V Pullin that they joined two straws together so when the bubbles come up and over the edge of the rim of the container, the children’s faces didn’t get covered in bubbles … the way they always did at our kinder! When the bubbles were nice and high the children carefully pressed a piece of paper over the top of them and made a very ‘bubbly’ pattern. Then they changed colours and repeated the process as many times as they wished. The resulting art work was stunning! Tags: bubbles, detergent, straws
Nikon 1 sensor 'capable of 4K,' faster lenses on the way
We weren't all that impressed with the Nikon J1, finding its mix of small sensor and unconventional interface to stack up poorly next to competing Micro Four Thirds or NEX cameras. Nikon doesn't just create a new lens mount and ecosystem every year, though, and the company clearly has big plans for the 1 line — some of which have been explored in a DP Review interview with Tetsuya Yamamoto, General Manager of Nikon's Development Headquarters. One of the major flaws we noted in our J1 review was the lack of fast, bright lenses, an issue compounded by the small sensor, and this makes taking good low light pictures very difficult on the 1 cameras.
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Photoshop CS6 teaser demonstrates darkened UI
It's hard to tell when darkened UI elements and black or dark gray backgrounds became associated with "professional." While Apple's Aperture and Adobe's Lightroom are the best known proponents of the concept in image editing, they're certainly not the first pieces of software to bear the subdued look. Darkened graphics programs always seemed especially popular on "exotic" platforms like SGI and Amiga, and NeoChrome had a dark UI on Atari in the late 80s. These days most of Apple's "serious" applications are dark, or getting darker, and Adobe is close beside them. Adobe just showed off a "sneak peak" of Photoshop CS6 on YouTube, which includes a darkened UI for "a more immersive experience."
dy/dan
