Matthew Wheeler took his first picture through an ice lens in response to a challenge by Scientific American and CBC calling on listeners to light a fire with a lens made entirely of ice. Too easy by far – Matthew took it one step farther and started photographing the natural beauty of his surroundings through the ice lenses he made.
Check out the photos (mirror site) or a video on DiscoveryChannel.ca.
Via Digg
iView Multimedia Press Release:
iView Multimedia has released iView MediaPro 3.1 for both Windows and Macintosh. MediaPro is now a Universal application and runs natively on Intel-based Macs. Version 3.1 also features the new Notepad Tool, designed to enable communication between creative professionals and their clients.
Notepad Tool
Notepad enables communication between a MediaPro user and his/her client. The client simply drags and drops selected catalog items onto the Notepad palette, adds comments and then e-mails the Notepad file. This Notepad file imports easily into the creative professional’s original catalog where he or she can view the client’s feedback and execute the appropriate actions.
Improved Catalog Reader
iView also announced an improved Catalog Reader, the free utility that allows MediaPro users to distribute and share iView catalogs with anyone using a Windows or Macintosh machine. The addition of Light Table functionality enables Catalog Reader users to view and compare up to 6 images on-screen and mark items with labels and ratings to aid the image selection process. iView Catalog Reader supports all 100+ media file formats of MediaPro, offers slide show and search functionality and supports Notepad. iView customers can now include a MediaPro catalog and copy of Catalog Reader on a CD or DVD and their clients can launch and run the catalog directly from the disc, without installing an iView application.
Designed for creative professionals, iView MediaPro 3.1 is a FREE UPDATE for MediaPro 3 users and also delivers features such as:
For a complete list of improvements, please download this version history document (PDF, 28KB):
DOWNLOAD MEDIAPRO 3.1 NOW:
http://www.iview-multimedia.com/downloads/
This update is free for registered users of MediaPro 3.x. This update works best with the latest version of QuickTime (7.x) from Apple, which is strongly recommended to both Windows and Macintosh users.
An updated manual for iView MediaPro 3.1 is now available on the iView support page.
Via PhotographyBLOG
Randy from Holgamods continues to kick ass: he’s now selling a Holga lens mounted on a body cap for use on Canon EOS cameras (Rebel XT, 20D, 30D, etc.). US $34.95, order here.
I’ve ordered cameras from Holgamods before and recommend him strongly. If you want a Holga and don’t want to modify it yourself, this is the place to go. (I have no relationship with Randy other than being a satisfied customer.)
A book of Edward Levinson‘s pinhole photographs will be published June, 2006. The book is titled "Timescapes Japan – A Pinhole Journey" and contains images of Japan as seen through the eyes of Edward Levinson and his pinhole cameras. Selected black and white photographs from three series of work from 1993 to recent work with brief text in English and Japanese.
The featured photographs are from Levinson’s "Healing Landscapes", "Sacred Japan", and "Japanese Cityscapes" series.
The book is being published by Nippon Camera Publishing Co. and will sell for 3,000 yen (tentative price about $30 US)
For more information, see Edward Levinson’s website.
Via Pinhole Visions
Joe Reifer writes:
If you’re in the San Francisco Bay Area, check it out! Featuring the work of fetching ("Tickets" – lower left), broken obelisk ("Time Machine" – lower right), lensflare ("Countdown Quonset" – upper right), and yours truly, guacamole airlines ("Third Floor Looking Out" – upper left).
The show is from 7–31 July, 2006, at Lucky Ju Ju Pinball Gallery, 713 Santa Clara Ave Alameda, CA, US. Opening reception on Friday, 7 July, 2006, 7–10pm.
The Birds and the Bees portrays a breadth of interpretations, as the photographers attach human states of being such as joy, sorrow, growth and death to this well-known phrase
Karen Crisp photographs exotic and invasive plants, investigating the unsettling qualities that can be present in these environments.
Paul Pachter portrays the immediate landscape of his garden of 20 years, expressing aspects of his personal history.
Isabella Pachter collects images of preserved and mounted animals and nature scenes to create collages that comment on the portrayal of nature in the west.
Kellie Gray explores the nature of existence and questions our individual realities using digital stills captured from hours of video tape.
Part of the Auckland Festival of Photography 2006 [blogged previously], this exhibition features a range of photographic approaches, encompassing ‘pure’ large format photography, pinhole photography, manipulated and re-photographed images, and digital stills capture.
Dates: 7–24 June, 2006
Opening reception: Tuesday, 6 June, 2006, 7:00pm
The show is at Artstation, 1 Ponsonby Rd, Newton, Auckland, New Zealand
Via Pinhole Visions
John from Team Droid has great instructions, with step-by-step photos, for how to build a 30-shot 120 foamcore pinhole camera (phew!). He writes:
It all started on a long plane flight in the beginning of 2006. I was doodling in my Moleskine notebook and musing about pinhole cameras when and idea struck me. What if I made a camera that was panoramic and high capacity at the same time. I had been shooting with my 6×9 medium format pinhole (120 film) for a few weeks and was happy with the images but wished I could get more than eight shots a roll and have a wider field of view. What I thought was if I moved the pinhole closer to the film plane and rotated to aspect 90 degrees I could get dozens of images on a single roll of film and still get a pretty good sized negative. Turns out I can get about 30 images on a roll and even a quickly made pinhole will produce a satisfactory sharpness.
Check it out at Team Droid
Via the f295 Pinhole Photography Forum
Mass.Romantic, Cynthia Meadows‘ debut show of color photographs, opens at the Kingston Museum of Contemporary Art on Saturday June 3, 2006, and remains on view through June 28.
An opening reception will be held on the evening of June 3, from 5 to 7 pm, at
KMOCA , 105 Abeel Street, Kingston, NY, US. In the gallery after the opening, it’s time to dance! Come celebrate life with Kandykorn and her friend Erica, aka DJ Meow Mix.
Via Mr. Andrew Long
This show features color pinhole photographs done in Kyoto, Japan by Fred Verhoeven and black and white Woca Plastic Camera Photographs of northern Japan by Court Bell.
Fred Verhoeven is a photographer from San Francisco, CA. Court Bell is a American Photographer living in Sendai, Japan. This show is presented as Japan viewed through American eyes.
Gallery is located minutes away from JR Kannai Station in Yokohama.
Gallery Otamachi
3-35-2 Otamachi
Naka-ku
Yokohama, Kanagawa, JapanDates: Monday, June 05, 2006 – Sunday, June 11, 2006
Opening reception: Thursday, June 08, 2006 at 05:00 PMArtist websites at www.fred-verhoeven.com & www.courtbell.com
Via Pinhole Visions
Right to Create write:
The USPTO has rejected the broadest claims of the JPEG image format patent held by Forgent Networks.
It’s nice to see the Patent Office doing the right thing, but it’s too bad that more than $100 million dollars that Forgent has extorted from industry will never be returned to its rightful owners. Forgent gets to keep that money, regardless of how the PTO rules. For nearly 19 years, this patent has stood without challenge. Now, just over a year before it was to expire, the PTO declares that it is bogus.
Continue reading at Right to Create
The Public Patent Foundation, who brought the challenge, write:
"The Patent Office has agreed with our conclusion that it would have never granted Forgent Networks’ ‘672 patent had it been aware of the prior art that we uncovered and submitted to them," said Dan Ravicher, PUBPAT’s Executive Director. "Making matters worse here is that this new prior art was known by those who filed the application that led to the ‘672 patent, but none of them told the Patent Office about it, despite their duty to do so."
Continue reading at pubpat.org
Via Right to Create