Notes from the rabbithole

Google gives online life to Life mag's photos

2008-11-19T20:12:00.001+09:00

Google gives online life to Life mag's photos

Google gives online life to Life mag's photos
8 hours ago

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (AP) — Google Inc. has opened an online photo gallery that will feature millions of images from Life magazine's archives that have never been seen by the public before.

The new service, available at http://images.google.com/hosted/life, debuted Tuesday with about 2 million photos. Eventually, Google plans to scan all 10 million photos from Life's library so they can be viewed on any computer with an Internet connection.

About 97 percent of Life's archives have not been publicly seen, according to Life.

The photos can be printed out for free as long as they aren't being used as part of an attempt to make money. Time Warner Inc., Life's parent company, hopes to make money by selling high-resolution, framed prints. The orders will be processed through Qoop.com.

Life's archives include photos from the Civil War as well as some of the most memorable moments from the 20th century, including the Zapruder film capturing John F. Kennedy's assassination.

Google has been indexing a wide variety of information that previously wasn't available online as part of its efforts to lure even more traffic to its popular search engine. For the past four years, Google has been scanning millions of books stored in dozens of libraries around the world.

The Life partnership represents Google's biggest undertaking in professional photography. Google hopes to work out similar arrangements with the owners of other large photo archives, said R.J. Pittman, a director of product management.

Ron Eglash on African fractals

2008-11-13T01:24:00.000+09:00

Just awesome.

Photo Exhibition : Kwon Choul, photojournalist

2008-11-09T14:22:00.003+09:00

Kwon is a friend of mine who contributed some images to my recent TOKYO REALTIME: Kabukicho project

Photo Exhibition : Kwon Choul, photojournalist
Time: 2008 Nov 01 11:00 - 11:00
Summary:

Living in Kabukicho (Main Bar)
Kokoro-chan, a homeless girl in Kabukicho (Sushi Bar)

Description:

FCCJ Main Bar & Sushi Bar
November 1-November 29, 2008
Kwon Choul, photojournalist

I come from Korea, and a relatively peaceful part. Perhaps that's why Kabukicho, Japan's biggest entertainment district, was at first too much to fit into my viewfinder. But soon, recording the fleeting moments of the town became an addiction.
The women of Kabukicho summon all men's dirty desires. Bloods and violence are daily visitors. Sometimes I want to turn my face away from Kabukicho and its tourists, students and drunken salarimen. But if you want to really see people’s lives you have to conquer fear and surrender yourself to violence and desire. That’s why I live and shoot in Kabukicho. Within the Kabukicho district, the Koma Theater Plaza is crowded with people throughout the day. Ten years ago cardboard houses started to concentrate in the area. In one of these houses I met a small girl living with her father.

"What is your name?"
"Kokoro!"
She held up four fingers to tell me her age and smiled.
"Who are you living with, Kokoro?"
"Hmmm... With my daddy."
"What about your mom?"
"I don't know!"

After Kokoro was born in Asakusa her father took her to Omiya, Shibuya, Ikebukuro, and finally to Kabukicho. Now she lives in a child welfare facility.

Kwon Choul, photojournalist.
Born in South Korea, 1967.
Kwon is well known for his work on Shinjuku Kabukicho, Hansen's disease, North Korean escapees, US military base issues, and minorities in Japan.

Publications:
"Kabukicho Jihen (Kabukicho Affairs) 1996~2006" (Wani Magazine)
"Kokoro-chan, a girl in Kabukicho" (Kodansha, will be published December 2008)

Ninagawa X LaChapelle

2008-10-29T13:04:00.003+09:00

Couldn't help but noticed the similarities between this photo by Mika Ninagawa above, and this shot of my sister Avalon by DAVID LaCHAPELLE (Avalon Fallen in Shrubbery, 1995) below:

cevin key X dj oto

2008-10-27T16:34:00.003+09:00

Web gallery of shots I took at a skinny puppy dj set at Shinjuku Kabukicho's MARZ on Oct 25th '08

all shots created in-camera (no photoshop)

You can hear some of Elliot's (DJ OTO) tracks here:
http://djoto.com/

yamanote halloween party outlawed

2008-10-26T22:26:00.001+09:00

yamanote halloween party outlawed

Canon 40D Hacked to Record Movies

2008-10-22T07:37:00.000+09:00

http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/09/23/canon-40d-hacked-to-record-movies/

Death of the historic war photograph

2008-10-09T03:49:00.000+09:00

Photojournalists around the world agree that the monumental snapshot of war, epitomised by pictures like Robert Capa's Falling Soldier from the Spanish Civil War, and Vietnamese Nick Ut's children running from a napalm attack in 1972, has lost its power on contemporary internet-using audiences.

Internet viewing figures show a shift in attitude towards pictures of war. People no longer trust old style current events photography, and appear to be losing interest in it.

continues on Telegraph

Tonchidot: Sekai Camera

2008-09-30T01:31:00.004+09:00

Canned demo vaporware, or possibly the greatest advance in the integration of mobile location-based contextual video-driven telephony with user contributed content the world has seen?

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/17/tonchidot-madness-the-video/

Thanks Haru-chan!

Leica S2 with 56% larger sensor than full frame

2008-09-25T13:30:00.002+09:00

Photokina 2008: Leica has unveiled a brand new autofocus DSLR system designed for professional users, which is configured around a 30x45mm sensor (i.e. 56% larger than 35mm full-frame).

Details at dpreview

Is Google evil?

2008-09-25T13:24:00.005+09:00

Randall Stross looks at whether Google's relentless collecting, processing and commercializing of our most personal information begs for public oversight, in this article (designed to promote his book Planet Google: One Company's Audacious Plan to Organize Everything We Know, Free Press, 2008)

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/24/EDV1134BDS.DTL

Get to know WeeGee the Famous

2008-09-21T17:07:00.002+09:00

He captured tenement infernos, car crashes, and gangland executions. He found washed-up lounge singers and teenage murder suspects in paddy wagons and photographed them at their most vulnerable -- or, as he put it, their most human. He caught couples kissing on their beach blankets on Coney Island and the late-night voyeurs on lifeguard stands watching them. And everywhere he went, he snatched images of people sleeping: drunks on park benches, whole families on Lower East Side fire escapes, men and women snoring in movie theaters. He was the supreme chronicler of the city at night. --bio continues at http://www.soundportraits.org/on-air/weegee/

Selected Works online at the Weegee's World courtesy of the International Center for Photography Midtown

more biography here:
Weegee: Paparazzi or Social Documentarian?

Thanks Koga-san!

Financial Death Spiral Made Simple

2008-09-18T20:18:00.001+09:00

TIME: How Financial Madness Overtook Wall Street

The Monkees - Porpoise Song (Theme From HEAD)

2008-09-15T14:08:00.000+09:00

Nice article on Araki by Andrew Lee

2008-09-06T18:30:00.001+09:00

And the Japanese art scene certainly
differs from other countries. Takashi
Murakami and other Japanese artists
argue that there is no distinction between
high and low art in Japan because “art”
was a concept introduced from the west.
Araki agrees. “In my mind there is
absolutely no hierarchy. Just like all
women are beautiful. I really don’t like
the idea of what is right and what is
wrong. What is sacred, what is profane.
What is art and what is obscene. I don’t
want that kind of categorisation.

http://homepage.mac.com/a.lee/main/writing/araki221005.pdf

Far out talk by Sir Martin Rees

2008-09-02T02:42:00.000+09:00

Sir Martin Rees: Earth in its final century?

TED Talk: Photography connects us with the world

2008-08-30T13:54:00.002+09:00

David Griffin: Photography connects us with the world

SLR camera shoots high-def movies, too

2008-08-28T05:58:00.004+09:00

When I first got my Canon 5D DSLR I was disappointed to discover that it couldn't shoot video. Why could my $750 Panasonic LX1 with Leica lens shoot 640 x 480 video at 30 frames-per-second, but my $2500 Canon can't I wondered.

Enter the Nikon D90

New Nikon SLR camera shoots high-def movies, too
By PETER SVENSSON – 1 hour ago

NEW YORK (AP) — Nikon Corp. on Wednesday launched the first digital still camera with interchangeable lenses that also shoots movies.

The D90 single-lens reflex camera, or SLR, takes 12.3 megapixel stills, but can also shoot movies in the high-definition 720p format. It will be available in September for $1,000 without a lens.

Compared to a consumer digital movie camera, the D90 will provide extra versatility for a videographer, since different lenses have different looks and applications.

iZotope iDrum for iPhone and iPod Touch

2008-08-25T19:19:00.004+09:00

The folks at iZotope put together a rather smart rhythm step-sequencer for the iPhone/Touch device. Hone your beatmaking while on the go. Only $4.99 in the App Store. Demo video available here.

I wonder if Nintendo will ever open up a dev kit for the DS?

Anti-Evolutionist

2008-08-25T00:50:00.003+09:00

Image found in the appendix of Marvin Minsky's Society of Mind

Tell It to Judge, and Photographer

2008-08-24T22:27:00.004+09:00

NYT spotlight on Steven Hirsch, the photographer behind Courthouse Confessions

Video link here

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Tokyo Koenji Awaodori Dance Festival

2008-08-19T00:02:00.001+09:00

Upcoming shooting opportunity

Tokyo Koenji Awaodori Dance Festival is held annually on the last Saturday and Sunday of August.

http://www.koenji-awaodori.com/indexEn.html

Tokyo Koenji Awaodori Festival was first held in 1957 and celebrated the 50th anniversary in 2006. As the festival developed into a huge event, the number of visitors has also grown significantly from the original few thousands into 1.2 million.

Photography as a Weapon

2008-08-14T09:02:00.002+09:00

NYT article on photography by Errol Morris

Photography as a Weapon

Baghdad 5 years on

2008-08-10T22:06:00.002+09:00

A Guardian journalist returns home to Iraq to find that far from what we hear in the US, the surge has produced nothing approaching normalcy or peace, but rather ghettos seething with violence, with nothing but makeshift walls dividing the increasingly hostile warring factions.

US claims that the military surge is bringing stability to Iraq. By traveling through the heart of Baghdad its easy to see by enclosing the Sunni and Shia populations behind 12ft walls, the surge has left the city more divided and desperate than ever.”

Check out parts 2 and 3 of this very candid view of Iraq:

Baghdad, 5 years on (part 2 of 3): killing fields

Baghdad 5 years on (part 3): Iraq’s lost generation

Pilobolus on Conan O’Brien

2008-08-10T22:00:00.000+09:00