Pummelvision

Pummelvision takes a whole stack of your photos from the web, whether from Flickr, Facebook, Tumblr or a few others, and turns them into a frenetic vision of your life flashing before your eyes. This version is simply taking my 2000 most recent public photos but you can make it more tailored either by using individual Flickr sets, or Facebook tagged photos. It's interesting to see that it really highlights what my most frequent subjects are - flowers, landcapes, and food!

I Absolutely Must Have...

...this dress, from Anne Sophie Back. I love the hood, the sleeves, the material, the length, the photo....

The New Forest

a winter walk in The New Forest...

Lots more on Flickr.

Polarizing Filter

I'm starting to play around with some filters on my camera. I'm sure this isn't how a polarizing filter is supposed to be used but I like the inky lo-fi look it gives to this picture I took in the park yesterday. Nice and grainy but still with a decent amount of detail in the trees...

Shake It

There's quite a lovely Polaroid exhibition at the moment at Battersea Park's Pump House Gallery, featuring a fetching David Hockney composite Nicholas Wilder Studying Picasso, some gorgeous Guy Bourdin images and André Kertész's intriguing portraits of glass blobs. And I never knew that Andy Warhol was responsible for those endless Beauty features in glossy magazines - you know the ones - lightbox + perfume bottles = feature...

My New Favourite Blog

Bakerella might just be the best thing ever (besides actually eating cake). Concerned not only with making A LOT of very yummy cakes and other sweet lovely things, the posts are as much about imagination, decoration, colour, styling and photography. A feast for the eyes. eh? eh?! (sorry, had to...).

Apollo 11

A little bit slow off the mark I know but I only just had a look at this, and the images are too good not to share... Boston's The Big Picture with another astounding collection of photographs from the Apollo 11 Moon landings.

Looking Into The Past

Portland Oregon, Then and now, originally uploaded by Tinflower.

The lovely Looking Into The Past Flickr pool juxtaposes old photographs with their contemporary original locations.

Via Wired

Polaroid Pogo Printer

My new toy. Nice prints, not fantastic quality but then that's never what Polaroid things are for really. You can peel the back off them and they're sticky so I think they'll be good for sketchbooks and things too. The prints are 3x5" to give you an idea of scale.

The printer would be so much better if it came with some kind of very short cable, or even better, some card readers built in. As neither of my cameras have bluetooth I have to rely on this cable, which kind of ruins the gadget-prettiness.

Callie Shell: Obama

© Callie Shell / Aurora for Time

Callie Shell first encountered Barack Obama when she was producing what turned out to be an award winning photo essay about John Kerry's presidential campaign. According to digitaljournalist.org, she ended up turning in more photographs of Obama than Kerry, saying "I just have a feeling about him. I think he will be important down the road."

The full photo essay.

Time Magazine's selection for Barack Obama: Portrait of a Candidate.

Wellcome Award Images

Lovely abstract stuff from the Wellcome Image Awards. All microscopic scientific imagery, some of it is surprisingly beautiful. The Silkworm Trachea above I thought was lovely, and the red blood cells are particularly arresting too.

Full gallery.

Schtock

Found an interesting site today via Veer put together by someone who works at a stock photography agency. Apparently they just want to share all this visual candyfloss with the world out of the goodness of their heart. Hmmm. Think I have to agree with The Denver Egotist's views on it's innocence, but it's interesting non-the-less. The main gallery part of the site is comprised of photo-montages using a variety of available stock, but the blog of what's 'just crossed the desk' is an interesting look too.

New from Recycle Club

originally uploaded by recycle club.

New characters on Flickr from the always brilliant Recycle Club. These images make me feel so happy!

Light Graffiti.

This is just waiting to be ripped off by an ad agency and/or music video. Look out for the horse (or maybe dog?) walking through the car park. That's my favourite :) There are some great still photos here. Found via this good effort from Alistair. (My efforts unfortunately went quickly downhill once the ratio of alcohol consumed overtook the level of inspiration, combined with my little camera giving you about 1 second to complete your masterpiece. Will have to give it another go now I have a more flexible camera, and sober friends!)

American Photography 1900-1960

Walker Evans, Subway Passengers, New York, 1938.

I went to a really interesting lecture last night at The British Museum. It drew largely on the incredible, and very accessible, FSA archive. It highlighted how influential a few photographers in particular have been to contemporary photography and photojournalism, including Dorothea Lange, Helen Levitt, Alfred Stieglitz and of course Walker Evans. They're all worth a good look.


Walker Evans, Hale County, Alabama 1936.


Alfred Stieglitz, The Steerage, 1907.


Helen Levitt, New York, 1940.


Dorothea Lange, Woman of the High Plains “If You Die, You’re Dead–That’s All.” Texas Panhandle, 1938.

Michael Poliza

In some round-about way this morning I found Michael Poliza's site. He recently flew in a helicopter from Hamburg to Cape Town, and has a fantastic collection of imagery from it, particularly the aerial shots. It really struck me how patternistic (did I just make that word up?) some of them become but besides that, they're really just fantastically beautiful.

I like John Hinde too

I like has a great piece about the inimitable John Hinde at the moment, well worth a look.

Mustaches of the Nineteenth Century

mustachesofthenineteenthcentury.blogspot.com
Need I say more?

Take a theme - and run with it...

running from camera (2 seconds), originally uploaded by muggezifter.

Strangely fascinating

How We Are

Finally got around to seeing Tate Britain's fantastic How We Are exhibition of photography at the weekend, just before it closed for good. It was really fantastic, thought provoking and beautiful. Of course I managed to home in straight away on one of the few prints in the whole exhibition that included some interesting typography, Anna Atkins' Cyanotype title page from 'British and Foreign Flowering Plants and Ferns', c. 1852.

You can see lots more of them here.

Another that caught my eye was by Alfred George Buckham (1880-1986) who used his job as a pilot to take aerial photographs. The only example I can find at the moment is this quite fuzzy black and white image;

whereas in the exhibition the prints of views over London and Edinburgh were fantastically clear and more of a brownish, sepia colour. The London one was really detailed, with a crowd of boats all along the River.

As well as being great early aerial photos (albeit with super-imposed aeroplanes, which made them feel a little bit silly), the caption really amused me (copied from a scribbled version in my sketchbook, but I think that major points are right);
'Alfred George Buckham, 1880-1986, was the 1st head of aerial reconnaissance for the RAF in WW1, and later a captain. After crashing 9 times, he was discharged.'
9 times! Count 'em, 9. Would that by any chance be connected to the remainder of the caption;
'He took aerial photos with a heavy plate camera, and said, "If one's right leg is tied to the seat with a scarf or a piece of rope it is possible to work in perfect security".' Hmm.

Also in attendance were fantasic pieces by
Dorothy Wilding,
Percy Hennell,
Tony Ray Jones,
Norman Parkinson,
Grace Robertson (one of the very few women to work for Picture Post),
Charlie Phillips ("what makes a good photograph is to be honest.",
Nigel Henderson,
John Hinde,
the archive of The Daily Herald (now The Sun) including what I would describe as early pap shots of Diana Dors,
Tom Wood,
Keith Arnatt,
Stephen Dalton,
the inimitable Martin Parr,
Paul Seawright,
Anna Fox,
Susan Lipper and
Penny Klepuszewska.
All of whom I'd recommend looking up. Phew, that's a big list, sorry!

If you missed the exhibition I'd recommend the catalogue, although some of the photos really aren't done justice by a small print on a page, and neither are many of the photographers' projects done justice by a single photograph. I would have liked to have seen more of the published collections for sale in the Tate's shop.