Shannon LaNier is a television reporter, actor, author, and a direct descendant of Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States. He's also a Black man — the sixth great-grandson of Jefferson and Sally Hemings, an enslaved woman who had six children with the Founding Father. Read the rest
Want to see more of this? Fans of the various Star Trek series have been using FaceApp, the popular smart phone facial editing software, to alter the faces (and gender expression) of popular Star Trek characters.
You can see many more on the Star Trek Shitposting Facebook group.
Images: Facebook screengrabs Read the rest
"Lost a window to the riot, didn't lose an opportunity," writes Memphis resident Tagawat on r/Memphis.
(Thanks, Jeff Cross!) Read the rest
Image Scrubber is a useful website that removes all the identifying metadata from any photograph and gives you the option to blur out certain parts of the photo.
This is a tool for anonymizing photographs taken at protests.
It will remove identifying metadata (Exif data) from photographs, and also allow you to selectively blur parts of the image to cover faces and other identifiable information.
Hit the open button to open a photograph. The program will display the data it is removing.
Click okay, and you can then save the scrubbed image by hitting save or right clicking on it and saving it. Maximum size is 2500x2500 pixels - larger images will be scaled down.
You can select between painting over the image or blurring it out. Dragging on the image will paint on or blur it. You can change your brush size via the slider. The blur function has built-in pixel shuffling/noise and is fairly secure but sensitive information should be covered with the paint tool.
This tool works offline: on a phone you can load the page then turn on airplane mode (or turn off wifi/data) before opening any pictures. On a computer, download the zipped code, open the folder, and open index.html in a browser with the internet turned off.
All processing happens directly in the browser- no information is stored or sent anywhere.
Image: Jumpstory / CC0 Read the rest
I'm honored that in the latest issue of The Burning Shore, Erik Davis, scholar of West Coast counterculture, reviewed The Family Acid: California, Roger Steffens's far-out photo album I published with my Ozma Records partner Tim Daly! Erik's excellent essay is a double review, also focusing on the Anthology Editions reprint of Dennis Stock's striking California Trip book from 1968.
From Erik Davis's The Burning Shore:
Read the restSteffens’s use of multiple exposures is perhaps the key gesture here. The decision to re-expose film is a dice throw, an act of faith in the playfulness of multiple perspectives and the value of subjecting an already captured image to the serendipity of leaps through time. Such images are also, of course, hallucinatory, and some of Steffens’ are trippy as shit. They not only recall the formal and symbolic palimpsests of psychedelic vision, but loop the question of the photographic object back into the eye of the beholder: seeing these impossible scenes, we glimpse our own seeing, our own congealing of reality from the virtual.
Other Family Acid images feature artifacts like diffraction spikes, iridescent orbs, and weird lensing effects. (Check out the cover shot up top, which juxtaposes the classic clerestory light of redwood groves with a mandalic UFO flare.) These are special effects, my friends, evidence of that hippie will to hack media tech in the quest for unusual experiences. They also recall the more sacred lights you can only chance upon, in the strangest of places if you look at em right, those wink-wink psychedelic glimmers that occasionally illuminate parking lots, or crumpled beer cans, or goofball commercial signage—Phil Dick’s “trash stratum,” temporarily kindled into something high and holy and wholly profane.[...]
Okay, now THAT is a selfie.
This is such a cool photography/biology experiment. Read the rest
“You need to let the little things that would ordinarily bore you suddenly thrill you," Andy Warhol said.
A collection of Warhol's Polaroid photos and snapshots are up for auction at Christie's to benefit the Andy Warhol Foundation’s emergency relief fund for artists. The body of work is title "Better Days."
PBS Nature's "Spy in the Wild" series employs spy cameras outfitted with animatronic animal disguises to capture intimate imagery of wildlife. In this clip, a drone wearing a hummingbird costume infiltrates a swarm of monarch butterflies in the mountains of Mexico.
On April 19, 1943, Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman ingested 240 micrograms of lysergic acid diethylamide, a curious compound he had synthesized for possible use as a respiratory and circulatory stimulant. An hour later, Hoffman wrote one sentence in his journal: "Beginning dizziness, feeling of anxiety, visual distortions, symptoms of paralysis, desire to laugh." As he rode his bicycle home, the effects intensified. Eventually though, the fear gave way to wonder.
"Little by little I could begin to enjoy the unprecedented colors and plays of shapes that persisted behind my closed eyes," Hoffman wrote. "Kaleidoscopic, fantastic images surged in on me, alternating, variegated, opening and then closing themselves in circles and spirals, exploding in colored fountains, rearranging and hybridizing themselves in constant flux..."
April 19 is now celebrated as Bicycle Day to commemorate the first intentional acid trip, a hallucinogenic revelation that had a profound impact on art, music, culture, and consciousness.
We can't go out right now, but we can go in. Way in. To celebrate Bicycle Day, my Ozma Records partner Tim Daly and I are offering a 33% discount on The Family Acid: California, a book of marvelous photographs drenched in the psychedelic experience.
For more than 50 years, photographer Roger Steffens has explored the electric arteries of the counterculture, embracing mind-expanding experiences, deep social connection, and unadulterated fun at every turn. After serving in Vietnam at the end of the 1960s, Steffens immersed himself in California’s vibrant bohemia. Since then, with his wife Mary and children Kate and Devon, he has sought out the eccentric, the outlandish, and the transcendent. Read the rest
Over at Wired, Medea Giordano has brought her insightful eye as a photographer and a writer to the new Polaroid 600 Barbie Throwback camera, a retro take on the classic camera with all the Barbie flourishes you'd expect. But according to Giordano, the seemingly-novelty nature of the camera is tertiary to the fact that … it actually might be the best Polaroid alternative available right now, or at least, the least shitty thing that still connects most closely with our nostalgic memories of what a true Polaroid camera should be.
Read the restThe new Polaroid 600 Barbie Throwback camera ($149) doesn't just look like an old Polaroid. It kinda is one. The camera's internals are made from original Polaroid electronics that have been refurbished and tested by Retrospekt, a vintage-product restoration company, housed in a new plastic exterior that is just slightly updated from the ‘99 version. No batteries are needed, as they’re built into each film pack. (It takes an eight-pack of 600 film in color or black and white.) Unlike some of the other instant cameras released today, it produces the full-size photos you’ll remember from yesteryear.
[…]
The new Polaroid—formerly known as Polaroid Originals and the Impossible Project—has had trouble with its film quality since it first released its instant film in 2010. We noted the improvements in film quality back in 2017, but as Gear writer Scott Gilbertson wrote in March, newer Polaroid film is still sometimes plagued by grainy areas or spots that don't look fully developed.
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Tape_measures is a fantastic Instagram account of photographs documenting how tape is being used as a design intervention to direct physical distancing in Singapore.
(via Kottke)
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View this post on InstagramRead the restToilet, Bras Basah Complex / 5 April 2020 [📷: @punkturedfunktion]
deMilked posted a fine selection of the "50 Weirdest Stock Photos You Won’t Be Able To Unsee." Many more at Bored Panda's archival post "177 Completely WTF Stock Photos You Won’t Be Able To Unsee." And for a constant stream, there's always r/WTFStockPhotos!
(via Kottke) Read the rest
UK wedding photographer Chris Wallace is on lockdown like so many of us. To keep his creativity alive, he staged and photographed a fantastic LEGO wedding. You can see the photos and Wallace's narration of the nuptials over at Petapixel. It looks more romantic and fun than many real weddings I've attended!
In this ethereal view the entire frame is peppered with bright stars and baby stars are revealed being formed within the pillars themselves. The ghostly outlines of the pillars seem much more delicate, and are silhouetted against an eerie blue haze.
Image credit: NASA, ESA/Hubble and the Hubble Heritage Team Read the rest
Photographer Lucas Zimmerman captured these dreamy long-exposure shots on foggy streets near Weimar, Germany. He followed up on the original 2013 series a few years later with Traffic Lights 2.0.
"...Photography shows us things we otherwise overlook, such as a simple traffic light on the street," Zimmerman says. "An all-known object, which produces a strong effect in an unnatural situation with a simple photographic setup."
(via Kottke) Read the rest
An relaxing compendium of macro photos of everday objects such as eggs, leaves and donuts, except for the loud reality-TV "zooming in" sound effect that makes you think Gordon is about to start shrieking at them.
Note the unnerving macro-scale resemblance of instant coffee to chicken nuggets.
More shut-in fun as legendary lensman, Mick Rock, goes through a collection of some of his most famous photographs and tells stories about them.
This incredible Bowie image, taken at Haddon Hall: “It was the light. It was unbelievable.”
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Mötley Crüe: Dirty little buggers. So much fucking cocaine.
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Queen (Bohemian Rhapsody cover): It's very hard to get away from this particular picture.
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Image: Screengrab Read the rest
