I’ve been off news­pa­pers for years and been liv­ing with­out cable (TV) for more than a year. Local (air) TV does not exist to me.

He’s in. I know many who are. Are you in? Consider this, why?

Jump to baekdal’s blog.

The key is not being afraid to make mis­takes, but to feel safe mak­ing it and quickly move on—we all know that, but what we for­get most of the time is to know when we make such mis­takes and how to fix it. Apple has Steve Jobs, and Disney Pixar has John Lasseter. What about you?

Toy Story 3 direc­tor Lee Unkrich:

The project “wasn’t work­ing at all,” he says, until Lasseter stepped in at the 11^th hour, tore up what was there and rebuilt the story to res­onate with audi­ences, pulling off what many at the stu­dio con­sider Pixar’s best film. (And that was hardly an iso­lated case. “Ratatouille” was repaired much the same way, with “Incredibles” direc­tor Brad Bird over­haul­ing the project late in the game. Lasseter even allowed direc­tor Andrew Stanton to “reshoot” a cou­ple scenes on “Wall-E” — a costly fix rare in animation.)

Lasseter preaches fail-safe phi­los­o­phy — Variety via Twitter/DisneyPixar

Surprising his­tory was made when one of the world’s lead­ing cam­era com­pany intro­duces one of the ugli­est & cheap­est full-frame DSLR. A com­pany was pur­chased by its rival and again pur­chased by another rival to fight the other two biggest rivals to try to out sell one another. Today the Minolta-Konica-Sony’s lat­est incarnation—Sony A850 was intro­duced and won two of the world’s most pres­ti­gious con­test in the world of DSLR, nom­i­nees are:

update: see below for the link real ugly look­ing cam­eras archive.

2009 nom­i­nees for the lowest-priced, Full-frame DSLR:

• Sony A900
• Canon EOS 5D (Mark I)
• Sony A850

2009 nom­i­nees for the world’s ugli­est DSLR:

• Sony A850
• Sony A850
• Sony A850

…and the win­ner for 2009, cheap­est & ugli­est DSLR are:

Head over to imag­ing resource’s review

Also read:

The world’s ugli­est cam­eras (The Online Photographer)
The world’s most beau­ti­ful cam­eras (Flickr discussion)

Simply Spectacular.

You can find Part I of the series here

30072009 II by Chih-Han Hsu (via today and tomor­row)

Photo by Benedict Redgrove

Extensive CGI recon­struc­tion of the iconic land­mark now allows new pos­si­bil­i­ties for pho­tog­ra­phers and other cre­atives to use the space with­out restric­tion or com­pro­mise on photo real­is­tic qual­ity whilst pre­serv­ing the pris­tine design, and styl­ish atmos­phere that would have oth­er­wise been lost for future generations.

I’ve always debated about CGI’s threat to cre­ativ­ity, both per­son­ally and socially due to its inside-the-box nature; it doesn’t have any room for nat­ural inci­dents nor organic process. Some of the world’s best pic­tures, my own work included; were born out of small inci­dents and mishaps that hap­pened dur­ing a photo-shoot, or sim­ply a glimpse of idea that appeared dur­ing one’s inter­ac­tion with oth­ers on-location. Virtual real­ity solu­tions are ster­ile and tend to halt any process that might spiced up the end result after the lights are turned off.

This how­ever is a fine exam­ple of where CGI can be use­ful: dam­age recov­ery. Organic fac­tors aside, many com­mer­cial pow­er­house will find this reliev­ing, a fresh cup of cof­fee to any retoucher’s night­mare. Though it requires a cer­tain level of dig­i­tal mas­tery & per­spec­tive pre-visualizing, the end results can be both dar­ing & dis­as­trous, one thing is sure though; it ain’t gonna be cheap.

Futurist TWA Flight Center reborn in Happy Finish CGI

Lovely shots by ZaysMom533.

Beautiful col­lec­tion of polaroids by Sugar Land of France.

Photo linked to the gallery, orig­i­nal post can be found here.

Beautiful images by Federico Erra. Notice the dis­tinctly con­sis­tent style in these images, such per­son­al­ity in any pho­tographs are the basics that defines your indi­vid­ual pho­to­graphic style. Click photo to jump to Federico’s Photostream.

Canon USA & Its Digital Learning Center has cre­ated a mini site to present some learn­ing mate­ri­als from the Travels to the Edge series where Art Wolfe shares his shoot­ing tips, exclu­sive gal­leries, his choice of gears, even some behind-the-scene pho­tos & videos from this excit­ing new series.

In ‘Making the Series’ sec­tion at the series’ web­site, Art shared a heart­felt message:

When Art saw the rough cut of the rev­er­ent episode filmed in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, he expe­ri­enced a moment when it hit him-“this is why I’m doing this series.” The del­i­cate birds and hearty ani­mals that thrive in America’s last untamed wilder­ness con­vey a clear message-there is an unequiv­o­cal need to pre­serve this won­drous habi­tat. He also shared that inspi­ra­tion on the series came from the 50’s High Adventures show with Lowell Thomas, which was a pre­cur­sor to Indiana Jones.

Photography has always been strongly con­nected with trav­el­ing, as much as nature’s con­nec­tion to their inhab­i­tants; when such beauty brings together tal­ents, tech­nol­ogy & inspi­ra­tion, and bring along some uplift­ing expe­ri­ence in the process, nature con­veys a sim­ple yet reveal­ing mes­sage that we are here only to give & share.

As I have pre­vi­ously writ­ten about Art on Fumbling toward the great shot, he is one of the lead­ing, most pub­lished nature pho­tog­ra­pher of our time. His books were my early inspi­ra­tion and I’m here today partly because of his pas­sion­ately crafted vision & his talent.

You can learn more about his work from his per­sonal web­site.

Original photo & poem by anoth­er­philoso­phie

Translated from span­ish:

What would be of the sound with­out silence
The light with­out the dark
A life with­out life

Photographer Chase Jarvis:

I was tak­ing pic­tures every 30 sec­onds or so as the sun was bounc­ing in an out of the clouds low on the hori­zon. I was look­ing at how the light was falling on the ground, cre­at­ing the dra­matic shad­ows behind her, and exam­in­ing the dif­fer­ence between full sun and the par­tially dif­fused sun to make a choice with the AD and the CD as to which would be bet­ter for our shot.

Read on to see how this image was cre­ated.