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Surveillance
The Futura Is Now
Great article on Wes Anderson's continual use of the lovely Futura font over Mark Simonson's blog. Mark also has a great Flickr set of fonts spotted out in the wild.
9th Feb 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Half Exposed
Attention camera geeks. Check out this dissected Nikon D3 camera.
9th Feb 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
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iPhoto '09
I've got my mitts on a copy of the latest version of iPhoto - Apple's photo management software, and I'm loving it. It's got three great new bonus features: Maps, Syncing and Faces.
Geotagging has been picking up momentum for a while now - and with more and more phones and cameras coming with built-in GPS, it's only going to get bigger. Geotagged photos are now all pulled together on a map, with the co-ordinates reverse coded to show location names, allowing you to search for places and find photos taken there. Pretty nifty. Adding locations isn't a big feature yet, but any locations added in Flickr can be synced using the next new feature.
Just when PhotoCopy had launched their excellent Flickr syncing program, Apple have added Flickr-syncing to the mothership - and it works perfectly. Any set of photos can be used to create a Flickr set, which then uploads to your chosen account. Any changes made to the set or the photos (adding tags, changing title etc) are automatically updated online, and even more impressively any changes made online are synced back to the program.
With more and more services becoming available to run sophisticated photo sites using Flickr (1, 2, 3), anyone can now manage a detailed photo site using just iPhoto.
Here's an example using the Chimp surveillance data.
Finally, iPhoto now uses facial recognition. If you saw this on CSI you would dismiss it as implausible, but it actually works incredibly well. As you first set it up, it scans through your library and marks any faces it thinks it has found. You can then click these and add a name - and as the names build up, the program quickly suggests other photos with that person in. It's right maybe 70% of the time, which makes tagging these photos super easy. You can then search your library for a name, and bingo - all the photos of one person in one place. The tagged photos work pretty much like Facebook's photo tagging, so as expected you can now upload directly to Facebook, keeping all that data in place.
I wasn't intending this to sound like a software review, but there's no denying how it's turned out. The best photo management album out there just got way better.
CSF - 4.5 Stars
2nd Feb 2009 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Rock Star Parents
Great set of 70's photos up at The Guardian by Life magazine photographer John Olson. Have a peek inside the homes of rock star parents Francis and Rosemary Zappa, Floyd Crosby and more.
19th Jan 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
City Shrinker
Nice piece on Shift/Tilt lens photography over at Creative Review.
19th Jan 2009 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Get Papped!
Tired of the same old profile picture? Why not draft in a paparazzi like Izaz Rony to get those unique off-the-cuff pictures? Wired has the full story.
12th Jan 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Super Surf
We've mentioned Pulitzer-winning photographer Vincent LaForet before on Chimpomatic, for his video short to promote the High Definition video capabilities of the new Canon 5D Mark II stills camera (get it here). That promo got him a ton of interest, and the owners of Smug Mug have generously funded his next project, which will be a surf movie with Jamie O'Brien, shooting out at the world famous pipeline wave.
There's an area-man approved element to the project too - as they will be shooting the film on a handful of the 5D cameras, as well as an adapted Red One.
22nd Dec 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Bigger and Best
Forget the chimp top 5 charts, and head over to The Big Picture for their 3 part run-down of the year's best photographs.
UPDATE: Part 2 here, Part 3 here.
18th Dec 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
The Big Picture: Mumbai
The Big Picture has an unsurprisingly excellent set of photos up from Mumbai. Proceed with caution.
28th Nov 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Shake It Like A Fuji Instax Picture
Doesn't quite have the same ring about it as "Polaroid" really, but Fujifilm and Tomy are hoping to sweep up the instant picture void with their new cameras
27th Nov 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Official Photographer
Being Barack Obama's official photographer seems like a full-time job.
18th Nov 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
In Pictures
Nicely topical round-up of pictures of the new Prez Barack Obaba over at The Big Picture - although as noted in the comments, he's clearly taken too many steps as he heads towards this particular slam-dunk.
5th Nov 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Guitar Face
Loving Flickr's Guitar Face photo pool. This pic was nabbed from Red~Cyan.
10th Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Retro Space Travel
They may be reviving the Cold War, but Russia's Space Program has never really gone into decline. They've always been busy and haven't got caught up in the health and safety issues that have plagued the NASA program. Russia's fleet is built to last.
Great pictures from Big Picture.
7th Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
London At Night
London At Night is the latest subject on killer photo website The Big Picture. It looks about ready to star in a Michael Mann movie.
3rd Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Hold On To Your Hat
Damn, I thought they'd turned this thing on already - and we'd survived. Turns out the first planned particle collisions won't be until "before the end of the world year."
Monster snaps via The Big Picture.
1st Aug 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Lunar Round-up
Tons of cool Space News for you today. While trawling an old "stuff to put on Chimpomatic folder" I just came across this WIRED story about broadcasting video back from the moon, as well as links to the mentioned panoramic photos, which are stunning. They are hosted by the excellent Panoramas.dk, which we have previously reported on.
On top of that, The Big Picture have run a feature on Moon photography, pulling together a set of nice big images, many of which featured in Michael Light's excellent excellent Full Moon exhibition.
14th Jul 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Ice On Mars?
Dice-size crumbs of bright material have vanished from inside a trench where they were photographed by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander four days ago, convincing scientists that the material was frozen water that vaporized after digging exposed it.
Check out The Big Picture for some stunning photos.
20th Jun 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
The Big Picture
The Big Picture feature on Boston.com has been grabbing my attention for quite a while now. Every day they feature a collection of news images on a (usually topical) topic. Today's set feature the recent storm devastation in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Check out their website, or subscribe directly to their RSS feed.
17th Jun 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet