Photo News of the Week – 5/11/13
Some really interesting personal behind-the-scenes pictures of President George W. Bush were revealed online via photographer Eric Draper’s new photo book entitled ‘Front Row Seat: A Photographic Portrait of the Presidency of George W. Bush (Focus on American History Series)‘
Next up, the coined “Instagram Act” in the UK has officially passed, which causes concern that the changes will allow UK companies to use copyright material from anywhere in the World without the approval of the copyright holder. However, here’s what the law actually states: The British Government’s intention is to “create a mechanism for old works to be published and made available to the public, once it becomes unfeasible to establish the original owner (such as the documents in a museum’s collection)”. Click the image below to read the full story over at DPreview:
Ever wonder how intricate Apple product photography is? Well photographer Peter Belanger, who photographs Apple products for a living, posted a behind-the-scenes in-depth time lapse video showcasing what goes into photographing iPhones, specifically the iPhone 3Gs. It looks like some pretty tedious work! Apparently Apple is very picky with detail as you can see via the video below. He says most work is done in camera which he now shoots with a Canon 5D Mark III and a Canon 24-70mm f2.8L lens. Click the screenshot below to check out the video:
Here’s something that’s causing a big uproar in the online community: Adobe announced that they’re cancelling their Creative Suite, which will cease “perpetual license” sales of Photoshop and its Creative Suite counterparts and place it under a subscription-based only model. Basically you can no longer purchase Adobe apps, you have to now rent/lease them. They’re now shifting and focusing on putting everything toward the Creative Cloud, which seems to be the latest trend with companies these days. Now, if you happen to cancel your subscription, don’t fret–Adobe promises not to delete any of your files from your computer. However, you will obviously not be able to use them via the software once your subscription is up.
Radioactive man! Camerapedia listed 54 lenses that have been reported as radioactive and that, if you use them often enough, you may want to take note of. Radioactivity in old camera lenses is due mostly to the widespread use of thorium glass elements in the 1940s, ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, so if you don’t have any super-old lenses, you have nothing to worry about! Thorium oxide is highly refractive and low dispersion; this translated into cheaper high-quality glass by allowing manufacturers to make lenses of lesser curvature. There’s a full list up now which you can view below by clicking the image, which apparently Kodak has the most lenses featured on the list; ouch. (via PP)
Not really NEW news but still really interesting: pictures from a 1946 educational book called ‘Shortcuts to Photo Retouching For Commercial Use’ have hit the web which details how photographers retouched pictures before the Photoshop days. It makes you realize just how much painstaking work went into tweaking photographs in the past, which resulted in those cartoon-looking images in ads that everybody loves. Everything from lines in a clock, to literally painting on a sky or a face went into retouching images. Click the picture below to view some of the pages from the book: (via Gizmodo)
My man Conan posted a hilarious video which features a parody infomercial about the late great Ansel Adams’ complete work, which they turned into an audio book versus your cliche counter top picture book–and to top it off they got actor James Gandolfini (aka Tony Soprano) describing the pictures! “OK, what do we got here, looks like a curvy road, a bunch of mountains–not bad, it’s a nice picture!” Ha, click the screenshot below for a good laugh:
So Snoop Lion, aka Snoop Dogg, launched his very own free photo app called “Snoopify” which lets users turn their personal pictures into “Snoop-themed masterpieces.” Basically, you can now add Snoop-themed stickers like 40’s, a wad of money or even Snoop himself to their pictures and share them to Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Hmmm…. (via NME)
Into old photos? Well, almost a million images featuring what it was like to be in old-New York in the mid 1800s have been made public for the first time online. The city’s Department of Records officially announced the debut of the photo database about two weeks ago. Taken from the Municipal Archives collection of more than 2.2 million images, the 870,000 photographs feature everything from city oversight to ports and bridges to grisly gangland killings. Some really fascinating images here. Check them out by clicking the old-school photo below: (via DM)
Trying to transition over into video? You’ll love this: Behind-the-scenes footage and b-roll from the filming of the new ‘Star Trek’ film, ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’, is now online, pretty cool to see the lighting and rigs they use on set. I spotted the RED Epic along with the giant IMAX camera–what else do you see?
