How Drake Rescued the Long-Lost Art Carnival Luna Luna - The New York Times:

Earlier this year, in a 50,000-square-foot warehouse lined with weathered shipping containers and crates, the Viennese artist André Heller was reunited with one of the great loves of his life and career.

The psychedelic works inside, unseen by Heller or the world for 35 years, had long been lost to history, despite their flashy provenance. Together, they made up Luna Luna — a functional amusement park where the rides and attractions also happened to be contemporary art from the likes of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Salvador Dalí, which Heller had conceptualized and opened, briefly, in Hamburg, Germany, in 1987.

Standard disclaimer that it’s NYT so could be sh*twalled… But the pics are worth the trip.

Daring Fireball: Samsung Responds, Hand-Wavingly, to Fake Moon Photos Controversy:

And that’s my point. What if the moon weren’t the same? What if it gets hit by a large meteor, creating a massive new visible-from-earth crater? Or what if our humble friend Phony Stark blows tens of billions of dollars erecting a giant billboard on the surface of the moon, visible from earth, that reads “@elonmusk”? A photo of the moon taken with one of these Samsung phones wouldn’t show either of those things, yet would appear to capture a detailed image of the moon’s surface. A camera should capture the moon as it is now, and computational photography should help improve the detail of that image of the moon as it appears now. Samsung’s phones are rendering the moon as it was, at some point in the past when this ML model was trained.

Japanese Manhole Covers Are Beautiful:

The Courtyard – cabel.com:

This apartment building is near my house. Built in the 50’s and remodeled in the 2010’s, to the credit of whoever rehabilitated the building, they kept the courtyard. And they landscaped it nicely. As part of the landscaping, there’s a large area of rocks in the center of the courtyard. And to someone living in this building, this courtyard rock garden became a canvas.

Toad Poses For Adorable Dollhouse Photos:

I so adore this set! Too bad it’s instagram so I can’t easily link to any of them withot ugly embed code…

Apple unveils the best photos from the Shot on iPhone Macro Challenge - Apple:

Over the course of several weeks earlier this year, iPhone photographers from around the world shared their best macro photos for the Shot on iPhone Macro Challenge, making even the smallest details seem epic in images taken with their iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max. Today, Apple is announcing the 10 winners who highlight the global and diverse community of iPhone photographers, with finalists from China, Hungary, India, Italy, Spain, Thailand, and the US. Their stunning images will be featured on apple.com, on Apple’s Instagram (@apple), and on billboards in select cities.

Spectacular image of a distant star captured by new Webb telescope during alignment milestone | Boing Boing:

"While the purpose of this image was to focus on the bright star at the center for alignment evaluation, Webb's optics and NIRCam are so sensitive that the galaxies and stars seen in the background show up," NASA reports. "At this stage of Webb's mirror alignment, known as "fine phasing," each of the primary mirror segments have been adjusted to produce one unified image of the same star using only the NIRCam instrument. This image of the star, which is called 2MASS J17554042+6551277, uses a red filter to optimize visual contrast."

The Winners of 2021 International Landscape Photographer of the Year Contest:

All of the winners and shortlisted entries of the 2021 International Landscape Photographer of the Year contest look fantastic, but I managed to pull out a few favorites. From top to bottom, photos by Tanmay Sapkal, Wayne Sorensen, Takashi Nakazawa, and Tom Putt.

You can view the winners online, or in PDF form.

Tags: best of   best of 2021   photography

A Bug in Early Creative Commons Licenses Has Enabled a New Breed of Superpredator | by Cory Doctorow | Jan, 2022 | Medium:

Here’s a supreme irony: the Creative Commons licenses were invented to enable a culture of legally safe sharing, spurred by the legal terror campaign waged by the entertainment industry, led by a literal criminal predator who is now in prison for sex crimes. But because of a small oversight in old versions of the licenses created 12 years ago, a new generation of legal predator has emerged to wage a new campaign of legal terror.

An Astronaut Steers an Elaborately Constructed Paper Spaceship in a Window Display by Zim & Zou | Colossal:

Equipped with joysticks and panels of gauges and knobs, an intricately constructed spaceship built by Zim & Zou (previously) navigates through a starry expanse of whimsical planets and alien creatures. The pink-and-blue craft, which was designed as a window display for Hermès, is the latest project from the French artists, whose elaborate scenes and characters are constructed from precisely cut paper sculptures. This fantastical work, titled “Journey of a Lifetime,” peers over the adventurous protagonist, who traverses an unknown world amidst a chaotic scene of levers, monitors, and tea that’s flung into the air of the weightless environment. You can see details from the installation and more of Zim & Zou’s work on Behance and Instagram.

The most brilliant bookshops in the world | Financial Times:

FT writers nominate awe-inspiring places to get your literary fix, from Mumbai to Buenos Aires

This story sits at the intersection of Bookstores and Architecture, every single location breathtaking.

(7) John Kraus on Twitter: “I took the ProRAW file into Lightroom CC on the iPhone. Amazed at the detail I was able to extract. Wow! #ShotOniPhone t.co/S85uhoSLw…” / Twitter:

Andy To’s gorgeous 4K iPhone 13 Pro video shot in Mexico City:

This is some breathtaking footage. Make sure you watch in full screen, at the highest resolution your setup will support.

2021 Photomicrography Competition | Nikon’s Small World:

Macro-photography, at it’s best, reveals the alien landscapes right in front of our eyes in enlightening ways… Every one of the winners here does exactly that.

via - kottke.org

The right to bear arms!: Just look at those guns. This is certainly what the founding fathers intended.

Miniature Life:

This is hard-core relevant to my interests.

A Drone’s View of the Great Pyramid of Giza:

Alexander Ladanivskyy recently photographed the Great Pyramid at Giza from an unusual vantage point: straight overhead with a drone. The final photo in the series is so close-up that you can see the graffiti on the stones at the tip of the pyramid. (via colossal)

Dorset photographer shoots Star Wars Lego in cinematic style - BBC News:

Not content with merely building his Star Wars Lego kits, photographer Daniel Sands has found another use for his collection. The 34-year-old Dorset photographer tested his creativity during lockdown by putting his models into the action of the movie universe.

Minimalist Creative Funny Photography:

jwz: The Light Herder:

All the images in this video are created by video feedback only - no computers are involved. The upper and lower monitors both display the same thing - the image from the camera, which is looking at the upper monitor. This creates a video feedback loop (much like a microphone next to a speaker creates an audio feedback loop).

IPPAWARDS | iPhone Photography Awards:

Retro Modern Movie Posters:

Check out these retro modern movie posters from Patrick Concepcion; the Groundhog Day one is simple perfection. You can check out Concepcion’s work on his website and Instagram or buy prints on Etsy.

The World’s Most Beautiful Gas Stations:

A selection of great photos from a number of photo-essays.

See the Highest-Resolution Atomic Image Ever Captured - Scientific American:

Behold the highest-resolution image of atoms ever seen. Cornell University researchers captured a sample from a crystal in three dimensions and magnified it 100 million times, doubling the resolution that earned the same scientists a Guinness World Record in 2018. Their work could help develop materials for designing more powerful and efficient phones, computers and other electronics, as well as longer-lasting batteries. The researchers obtained the image using a technique called electron ptychography. It involves shooting a beam of electrons, about a billion of them per second, at a target material. The beam moves infinitesimally as the electrons are fired, so they hit the sample from slightly different angles each time—sometimes they pass through cleanly, and other times they hit atoms and bounce around inside the sample on their way out.

Developing 120-Year-Old Photos Found in a Time Capsule:

I am not surprised at the contents of the photos…