Inside a dead zone
Photographer Kazuma Obara smuggled some cameras into the Fukushima nuclear reactor site, taking some unauthorized views into the ruined reactor.
Hungarians!
Went to the Royal Academy of Arts in London today. They have a very interesting show running right now featuring Hungarian photographers of the early 20th century, focusing particularly on Brassaï, Robert Capa, André Kertész, László Moholy-Nagy and Martin Munkácsi.
It’s quite a fascinating exhibition. Hungary today is a small landlocked country, but of course from the mid 1800s through to 1918 it was part of the vast Austro-Hungarian Empire, and it was into this world that those five men were born. Yet all eventually left Hungary, all were Jewish, all changed their names, and all achieved most of their fame outside Hungary. And all made huge contributions to different aspects of modern photography.
Steampunk
So, followers of steampunk should take a look at Jeff VanderMeer’s new book - the Steampunk Bible: an Illustrated Guide to the World of Imaginary Airships, Corsets and Goggles, Mad Scientists, and Strange Literature.
It’s a fascinating compendium of all things both steamy and punky, and includes a couple of photos I took of the fabulous Raygun Gothic Rocketship!
A camera for outer space
In case you ever find yourself aboard the space shuttle and in need of a quick brush-up on how to operate the traditional NASA Hasselblad cameras, Hasselblad have kindly posted a copy of the instruction manual online. Better hurry - only a couple more shuttle launches left!
Burning Man 2010
It’s been a long time coming, but my photos from the Burning Man art festival 2010 are finally online.
The shots also serve as something of a reminder: never assume that, while repairing your camera, the repair people didn’t inadvertently introduce a new fault!
24 hour view of the sky
Beautiful, and a crazy amount of work! Respect for that.
http://epod.usra.edu/blog/2011/01/twenty-four-hour-view-of-the-sky.html
The oldest digital camera
A fun slideshow of some historically noteworthy digital cameras over the past 35 years, starting with an amazing camera that a team at Kodak built in 1975. That unit recorded to audio cassettes and could eke out images 100 pixels square. Nifty, though I think I prefer the newfangled machines we use today!
I do recall using the Canon RC-250/Xapshot, and another Canon analogue camera (an FD-mount RC camera, but I don’t recall the model number) that actually recorded TV-quality images to tiny floppy discs back in 1989 or so. Hugely expensive, nowhere near the quality of film, but pioneering nonetheless.
Motor City no more
Grimly beautiful photographs of Detroit.
There are cave photos
And then there are cave photos.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/01/largest-cave/peter-photography
Wow.