Look At The World's Greatest Skylines Without Any Lights On When we envision the world’s greatest cities--from San Francisco to Sao Paulo to Paris to Tokyo--we usually picture bridges and towers and cathedrals: the built environments that have left lasting impressions on our mind’s eyes. The irony being that those skylines have been in place for at most a century or two; the sky above has looked the same for millions of years. Our greatest cities are often the sources of the most light pollution. In those places, we rarely see the stars. But, with a clever method of composite imaging, the French photographer Thierry Cohen has turned the lights out in the city to reveal the stunning stars that have always been overhead. In his series "Darkened Cities," Cohen creates a visual reminder of what the world would look like if it were free of light pollution, and asks us to ponder how an increasingly urban society can disconnect us from the natural world.
Amazing Panoramic Photos Of Hiroshima After The Atomic Bomb Blast Every once in a while, we interrupt our regular live coverage of breaking news about Internet companies from around the world to highlight amazing photography. In 2009, we featured the world’s largest spherical photo, and earlier this year, the world’s largest photo ever taken indoors. Today, 360Cities published a series of historical 360° photos of Hiroshima, taken six months after the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb codenamed “Little Boy” on the Japanese city (on August 6, 1945). It was the first time an atomic bomb was used as a weapon. According to Wikipedia, “Little Boy” directly killed an estimated 80,000 people, and by the end of the year, injury and radiation brought total casualties to 90,000–166,000. Approximately 69 percent of the city’s buildings were completely destroyed, and about 7 percent severely damaged. Bonus link: 2011 “The Peace Declaration”, penned by Matsui Kazumi, Mayor of Hiroshima
Ansel Adams Photographs In 1941 the National Park Service commissioned noted photographer Ansel Adams to create a photo mural for the Department of the Interior Building in Washington, DC. The theme was to be nature as exemplified and protected in the U.S. National Parks. The project was halted because of World War II and never resumed. The holdings of the National Archives Still Picture Branch include 226 photographs taken for this project, most of them signed and captioned by Adams. They were taken at the Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, Kings Canyon, Mesa Verde, Rocky Mountain, Yellowstone, Yosemite, Carlsbad Caverns, Glacier, and Zion National Parks; Death Valley, Saguaro, and Canyon de Chelly National Monuments. The Kings Canyon photographs were taken in 1936 when the establishment of the park was being proposed. In addition, there are eight photographs taken by Adams of Yosemite in the General Photographic Files of the National Park Service. To Order: All prints are labelled: "Carlsbad Caverns National Park."
World War II: The American Home Front in Color - In Focus In 1942, soon after the United States entered World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order creating the Office of War Information (OWI). The new agency was tasked with releasing war news, promoting patriotic activities, and providing news outlets with audio, film, and photos of the government's war efforts. Use j/k keys or ←/→ to navigate Choose: This girl in a glass house is putting finishing touches on the bombardier nose section of a B-17F navy bomber in Long Beach, California, She's one of many capable women workers in the Douglas Aircraft Company plant. # P-51 "Mustang" fighter in flight, Inglewood, California, The Mustang, built by North American Aviation, Incorporated, is the only American-built fighter used by the Royal Air Force of Great Britain. Marine lieutenant, glider pilot in training, ready for take-off, at Page Field, Parris Island, South Carolina, in May, 1942. Answering the nation's need for womanpower, Mrs. Tank commander, Ft. U.S.
The Creative Process of Ansel Adams Revealed in 1958 Documentary Today marks what would be the 111th birthday of Ansel Adams, the American photographer who captured the sublime power of the wilderness, taking iconic images of the American West, most notably in Yosemite Valley. (See photo gallery here.) Original footage documenting the creative life of Ansel Adams is surprisingly hard to come by online. Ansel Adams, Photographer (1958) is available at YouTube and Archive.org. Follow Open Culture on Facebook and Twitter and share intelligent media with your friends. Related Content: Discover Ansel Adams’ 226 Photos of U.S. Alfred Stieglitz: The Eloquent Eye, a Revealing Look at “The Father of Modern Photography” 1972 Diane Arbus Documentary Interviews Those Who Knew the American Photographer Best Henri Cartier-Bresson and the Decisive Moment
History of typography: Humanist Incunabula Every subject, from dentistry to dog handling has its own vocabulary — terms that are peculiar (unique) to it. Typography is no exception. Learning the lingua franca (lingo) of type will make typography that much more accessible; and that will, in turn, lead to greater understanding, and hopefully a greater appreciation for all things “type”. Today we’re going to take a look at just one of those terms, namely “Humanist”. Humanist | Old Style | Transitional | Modern Slab Serif (Egyptian) | Sans Serif By the end of this six-part series, you will be quite au fait with all of these terms; and just imagine the joy you will experience when you proudly exclaim to the delight of your spouse, girlfriend, boyfriend, neighbor, guy at the corner shop, Look at that Humanist inspired type! So, without further ado, let’s begin our journey — a journey that will take us from the incunabula to the present day. Characteristics So what makes Humanist, Humanist? Examples Further reading:
Journeys - Yosemite National Park - What Adams Saw Through His Lens - Travel And then you’re there. Pale, curvaceous granite rocks dance in the skyline. Dozens of people stand along the edge of the pull-off, called Tunnel View, trying to capture the scene. Some snap two quick shots with disposable yellow cameras, and others set up their tripods for hours, watching the light strike Yosemite’s monoliths. On the left, El Capitan, a rock climbers’ mecca, appears the tallest. Many people know these sights by name, but more know them by sight alone, as captured through the lens of the legendary American photographer . Adams first visited Yosemite in 1916 when he was 14 years old. The park itself also remained a favorite. The first step on an Ansel Adams-inspired trip to Yosemite is to visit the gallery run by his family. I ordered three books written by Adams from the gallery’s Web site before my trip: Adams’s autobiography, his collected photos of Yosemite and a step-by-step explanation of some of his works called “Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs.”
The Top 100 ‘Pictures of the Day’ for 2012 Dec 11, 2012 After the positive reception from last year’s Top 50 ‘Pictures of the Day’ for 2011, the Sifter promised to highlight the top 25 ‘Pictures of the Day‘ at the end of every quarter, eventually culminating in an epic Top 100 for 2012. That time has come! Below are the top 100 POTDs for 2012. I can’t thank you enough for taking the time out of your day to check out the site. *Please note the photographs themselves were not necessarily taken in 2012, they just happened to be featured as a POTD this year. Enjoy! COPYRIGHT© 2012 RMS TITANIC, INC; Produced by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute
Originality in photographs according to US Court of Appeals What is original (and is thus protectable) and what is not in a photograph? Questions like these have troubled copyright lawyers (and possibly courts, too) since the invention of photography itself. As this blogger learnt from The Hollywood Reporter, the First Circuit Court of Appeals has just delivered a decision addressing this Hamlet's dilemma, in little more than 6,000 words. The case is Donald A Harney v Sony Pictures Television, Inc, and A&E Television Networks, LLC, a fascinating appeal from the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts with an even more intriguing factual background. Background On a sunny spring day in 2007, freelancer Donald Harney snapped a photograph of a blonde girl in a pink coat riding piggyback on her father's shoulders while leaving a Boston church on Palm Sunday. In 2010, Sony produced a TV film based on Rockfeller's identity deception and entitled Who is Clark Rockfeller? What the Court of Appeals said
Tim Roda’s Hidden Father: A father draws from his past to create images with his family (PHOTOS). Tim Roda, courtesy DanielCooneyFine Art, New York The black-and-white family photos that make up Tim Roda’s series “Hidden Father” were, for the most part, taken with an old Minolta 35mm camera, the same model Roda’s father had used. It might not seem to be an important detail, but it is significant since Roda’s work is often rooted in family history and domestic life coupled with his attraction to more traditional forms of photography, specifically the film negative. Like Roda’s other work, “Hidden Father” explores the role of the father and the son’s relationship within the family. Roda said that when he was a child his introduction to making art began with his imagination and creating things with whatever happened to be around. “Sometimes there are memories and sometimes other things that trigger ideas that need to come out,” he said. “I work with materials the same way my dad did or my grandfather did,” he said.
The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Public Domain, Making Them Free to Reuse & Remix Earlier this week, Oxford's Bodleian Library announced that it had digitized a 550 year old copy of the Gutenberg Bible along with a number of other ancient bibles, some of them quite beautiful. Not to be outdone, the British Library came out with its own announcement on Thursday: We have released over a million images onto Flickr Commons for anyone to use, remix and repurpose. The librarians behind the project freely admit that they don't exactly have a great handle on the images in the collection. You can jump into the entire collection here, or view a set of highlights here. To learn more about this British Library initiative, read this other Open Culture post which takes a deeper dive into the image collection. Related Content: The Rijksmuseum Puts 125,000 Dutch Masterpieces Online, and Lets You Remix Its Art The Getty Puts 4600 Art Images Into the Public Domain (and There’s More to Come) The Digital Public Library of America Launches Today, Opening Up Knowledge for All
The Ultimate Directory Of Free Image Sources So, you need an image for your blog? We’ve spent some time categorizing our favorite sources for free images and organizing them in such a way as to help you find what you’re looking for. Here are the criteria we’ve examined: Subjects: Does a site focus on specific genres of images, or is it a mass collection of various image types? High Resolution: Lots of great image resources emerged in the pre-Web 2.0 phase, but it wasn’t until bandwidth dramatically increased that allowed for the uploading of much higher resolution images suitable for editing and printing. License: The licenses vary extremely from source to source. Safety: Government sites and many specific subject collections are extremely safe for students to use. Search Engines While these websites do not actually contribute image content themselves, they’re able to index images in a way that makes it easier to search for free content. Category Favorite: Bing Images Bing Images Compfight Creative Commons Search Everystockphoto HiveStock
theconversation Kim Kardashian has made headlines again for a selfie. And this time it’s not in the Daily Mail – no, instead it’s Jonathan Jones, the Guardian’s art critic, whose recent piece celebrates Kardashian and “the power of the nude”. This “selfie would turn Titian on”, gawks the headline. Only in our time does every image of beauty tell women to get thin, thin, thin … Rich, ample, curvy, rampant flesh is, for Rubens, simply and obviously sexy. After rhapsodising about how Titian loved a curvy gal and that Kardashian too “really does love her own body” – making her almost the same as Titian, then – he concludes that Kardashian “is raising questions about the nude today”. It is not obvious why Jones sees the idealisation of thin female bodies as inherently more misogynistic than the idealisation of “fat” female bodies; nor indeed whether the idealisation of any kind of female form can be described as misogyny at all. That’s right. More. So I can do no more than offer words of caution.