paris sous la neige

Browsing Flickr pics of Paris in the snow. Verdict: the City of Man loves its snow men »

Photo by joli_dragon


Photo by iulian nistea


Photo by Jimmy Bobo


Photo by . ADRIEN .


Photo by Hugo Lafitte

speaking of eats

Sakurako Kitsa makes captivating bento (and documents them on Flickr) »

BTW: have you ever tried to follow the Japanese provision of eating five colors for every meal? Been trying. It's hard.

Surface Area Required To Power The World (revision)

Surface Area Required To
Power The World (revision)
Originally uploaded by mkandlez

New information design crush. Mccandelish's whole stream is a dream.

Be sure to embiggen this one.

frigid.

Photo: Mark Menjivar

A refrigerator is both a private and a shared space. One person likened the question, "May I photograph the interior of your fridge?" to asking someone to pose nude for the camera. Each fridge is photographed "as is." Nothing added, nothing taken away.

Photographer Mark Menjivar, in his artist's statement for You Are What You Eat, a photographic series of refrigerator interiors.

No permalink available, unfortunately, so click on Project > You are what you eat from the link to find the work.

I learned of Menjivar's fascinating photos in the September | October 2009 issue Orion Magazine.

I considered shooting my own fridge for this post and then decided against it. Too naked.

Although I might be tempted to take a timed interior shot for the In the Fridge Flickr group »

From one of the group's admins, Roo Reynolds:

I hate to sound weird, but this group is for photos taken from inside refrigerators with the door closed. All other images are liable to be removed from the pool. Thanks.

Os Gêmeos

The sky is grey... I've wings and I know I could reach it... And change it's color... But I sold my wings, and prefered to buy blues glasses...

Os Gêmeos, translated by Joαnα Joαnα and featured in a photograph by cowe.

The New York Times ran a piece this morning on the Brazilian brothers Otavio and Gustavo Pandolfo, who call themselves Os Gêmeos. Their first public piece in Manhattan was unveiled on July 17 at the northwest corner of Houston Street and the Bowery.

It's lovely, and it prompted me to search out shots of Os Gêmeos' work on Flickr.

Enjoy »


Os Gemeos
Originally uploaded by trashisfesch

kids these days

DSCN2191
Originally uploaded by meteotek08

When we launched at 9.10am on that morning the critical point for the experiment was to see if the balloon would make it past 10,000m, or 30,000ft, which is the altitude that commercial airliners fly at.

We took readings as the balloon rose and mapped its progress using Google Earth and the onboard radio receiver. At over 100,000ft the balloon lost its inflation and the equipment was returned to the earth.

We travelled 10km to find the sensors and photographic card, which was still emitting its signal, even though it had been exposed to the most extreme conditions.

Eighteen-year old Gerard Marull Paretas whose science project, conducted with his pals Sergi Saballs Vila, Marta­ Gasull Morcillo and Jaume Puigmiquel Casamort, went really really well -- as reported in Teens capture images of space with £56 camera and balloon in the Telegraph.

Boys after my own heart -- they've posted a Flickr slideshow of the project »

belated

Happy Valentine's Day
Originally uploaded by brendaj

Cephalopods are the new bacon.

via @me3dia

the far side reenactment flickr pool

Far Side cover
Originally uploaded by entitee

For all that post-Christmas what am I going to do with myself now, time.

Get busy »

(Here's a couple of favorites.)

because we all need a little something lovely to start the week with

Mondays, with notcatherinezeta & co »

man up the road

pola ghost
Originally uploaded by manuptheroad

Spent some time in manuptheroad's flickrstream today.

So glad for it »

melancholy and the man in 8A

The Man in 8A
Originally uploaded by Ingrid!

I for one am afraid that American culture's overemphasis on happiness at the expense of sadness might be dangerous, a wanton forgetting of an essential part of a full life.

I further am concerned that to desire only happiness in a world undoubtedly tragic is to become inauthentic, to settle for unrealistic abstractions that ignore concrete situations.

Adapted by the Chronicle Review from Eric G. Wilson's In Praise of Melancholy.

I clipped this earlier this morning but didn't know how to illustrate it or comment on it, so I shelved it.

Then PT Power tweeted about Ingrid!'s post re the Man in 8A.

I still don't know how to comment on it but I'm putting it out here because I find myself wrestling with a tangle of emotions -- as the presidential campaign unfolds, as I come to terms with my Grandmother's Alzheimer's and the fact that she's gone now, really, even though she's still here on this earth.

I'm trying to "hold it," as a friend advised me to, "like you would a sore toe."

To honor these feelings. To know that they're true.

¿dónde está?

It seems there's not as much ambiguity in the visual world as you might guess.

Estimating geographic information from images is a difficult, but very much a doable, computer vision problem.

Carnegie Mellon graduate student James Hays speaking in a CM press release about the visual pattern recognition system that he developed with Assistant Professor Alexei A. Efros which uses geotagged Flickr photos to place any geographically specific image on the map.

Hays and Efros' algorithm can accurately geolocate the images within 200 kilometers for 16 percent of more than 200 photos in their test set -- up to 30 times better than chance.

The system "analyzes the composition of the photo, notes how textures and colors are distributed and records the number and orientation of lines in the photo. It then searches Flickr for photos that are similar in appearance."

It'll be interesting to see whether the same algorithm can be applied to video.

Read the press release »

old dog, new trick

A Thomas Smillie cyanotype from the Smithsonian Collection -- which is now available on Flickr along with 862 (at this count) other copyright-free imagery from the museum.

There's something about the Smithsonian -- "the world's largest museum complex and research organization" -- using Flickr to share its copyright-free imagery with the masses that would have been remarkable once upon a time.

But today makes perfect sense.

Although interestingly the Smithsonian has opted to permit downloads of the assets, but has not enabled blogging or cut and paste html syndication of the imagery. Hmm.

The Smithsonian's Flickr Photostream »

Also of interest: the Smithsonian has posted a robust set of cyanotypes by Smillie -- whom they bill as "The Smithsonian's First Photographer" -- and they're lovely »

Thanks boing boing!

historic marker

That building to the right with the Chinese lanterns? That's the Legendary Palace in Oakland, CA (shot the week before last) where once upon a time b1-67er and I had legendary dim sum (almost entirely by accident) and the World's Best Mechanical Engineer refused to eat his greens (but had no problem putting away the pork) and later I'd shoot a bunch of pics at the Oakland Bonsai Gardens just for fun that Mastercard would pay four hundred whole dollars to use as part of their online Priceless Picks campaign.

Honest. All true.

And if it weren't for Flickr that last part wouldn't even have happened. (Thanks, Flickr.)

But Flickr had nothing to do with the dim sum.

Which was legendary.

11

11
Originally uploaded by lucyblue64.

I have no idea. Really. But isn't it wonderful?

mem'ing

Memes usually make me cringe a little
This one seemed different.
Courtesy of Sidereal.

The concept:
a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.

b. Using only the first page, pick an image. (Editor's Note: I read this too fast -- and forced myself to use the first image within each search result.)

c. Copy and paste the html into your blog or Flickr stream. (Ed. At dogfaceboy's suggestion I used BigHugeLabs Mosaic tool. worked like a charm to get those images that folks didn't want to share as thumbs.)

The Questions:
1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up.
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One Word to describe you?

1. Green Tea, 2. Prosciutto Mint Wrapped Figs With Goat Cheese Dipping Sauce, 3. Sunrise, 4. buttercup, bug and ochre, 5. Untitled, 6. 6 gingerale & pomegranites, 7. So long, 8. Hello cake, 9. Swaggy the swagman (self proclaimed), 10. these hands can tell a story........, 11. breathless12. Not available

Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

flickr progeny

Arrived home this evening to a package from Encino (who do I know in Encino...) which I opened to find contained the somewhat jingoistically titled Aurora: A City Second to None, featuring a shot that I took of the Sherer Building on page ix.

Nice.

It’s the kind of book that city boosters give out to promote the marvelousness of their metropolis. It would be interesting to know how much of the photography in this photographically rich book was supplied by the good people of Flickr.

Notably absent is mention of the fact that Aurora, Illinois is home to Wayne’s World, a dubious honor that elefanterosado was kind enough to remind me of not too long ago.

Another Aurora resident who is missed on these pages is Baby Goff, who showed up on this good earth only yesterday. BG is also a product of Flickr -- it took the photosharing site to bring his folks together, even though (if I’m remembering this right) they both have deep family roots in the same small town in Texas.

Welcome little one -- and big hugs and congratulations to p2wy and *April*.

Happy 'Day.

situational context, part 1

Photo: Henri Cartier-Bresson

“When everything is blurred you cannot convey the motion of the bicyclist.”
“Why is the staircase so ‘soft’? Camera shake?”
“Gray, blurry, small, odd crop.”

Flickr comments/criticism (made in, I suspect, a DeleteMe thread -- one of the few places on Flickr where criticism is invited) on a Henri Cartier-Bresson photo that a Flickrite posted as one of their own. As cited in Flickr: Sepia No More in Sunday's New York Times Magazine.

The piece does a pretty good job of identifying the qualities that can catapult images into the upper regions of Flickr’s Explore -- serious saturation, aggressive postproduction processing, and images that read well as thumbnails -- and also bemoans Flickr's impact on popular photography.

the decisive moment

Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare
Originally uploaded by Balakov.

Flickrite Balakov exploits Lego People for his art.

I'm not asking him to stop »

via Neatorama. god bless 'em.

my calling card

my calling card
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

At Patrick's invite I'm adding the pink house at the end of the row to the Flickr calling card group.

There are a lot of shots that I like more than this one. But I have to admit that this one has all my characteristics.

Shot suddenly and on the fly while walking down a Dublin street in improbable sunshine. (Okay. So I'm not always walking down Dublin streets. But I'm often shooting suddenly and on the fly.)

Plus a little bit of architecture.
A little bit of decay.
A certain sort of symmetry & a smidge of geometry.

And a whole lot of blue sky.

Yep. Guilty.