The pandemic has inspired a slew of great courses for young artists, like this Bite-Sized Art History course that teaches about President Obama's official portraitist Kehinde Wiley and shows young artists how to make their own portrait in his style. Read the rest
Matt Round created an AI-driven face generator specializing in UK Ministers of Parliament: This MP Does Not Exist. The results have the special look of British portrait photography, political culture and nutritional standards, and (unusually for neural-network driven generators) the small pool of source images only heightens the results' inbred luster.
Read the restUsing MPs’ official photos, we trained a neural network to generate a whole new UK Parliament
I'm a big fan of Moment's lens system for Android and iOS smartphones. The company is staffed by folks who are just as passionate about mobile photography as I am. More importantly, they seem to understand that having to buy entirely new lenses every time you land a new handset is twelve different kinds of Bullshit. With Moment's second generation lens system, all you need to do when you invest in a new smartphone is plunk down some new cash for a new photo case and you're in business. Their business model makes me feel comfortable with fielding the relatively steep cost of their high quality smartphone accessory lenses and other kit.
Today, Moment announced that they're releasing a new 58mm telephoto lens. If you're using it with a single lens smartphone like the Google Pixel 3, it'll provide you with 2X optical zoom. Have a dual camera lensed phone like my iPhone 7 Plus? You can expect 4X optical telephoto zoom. That means better photos of far away subjects, portraits and landscapes without having to deal with the pixilation that comes from using digital zoom. Having this option makes me feel much less obligated, in many cases, to bring along an actual camera with me.
I've got one on the way to me and can't wait to try it out. I'm curious to see how it performs versus the last incarnation of their tele lens. I'll post a review with a few choice shots of the lens in action just as soon as I can. Read the rest
In certain circles, it's become popular for brides to ruin their wedding dress after the wedding, leading to more and more elaborate and risky photos. Pierre Violle specializes in the genre, and he's captures some amazing underwater couples over the years: Read the rest
LinesLab is "an experimental design studio established by Sergej Stoppel that explores algorithmic art and robotics." Among his cool works are these single-line portraits. Read the rest
Nacho Guevara came to America without documentation, and since he got his green card, he has been using his photography skills to humanize fellow migrants in their homes. Read the rest
Allan Pachino Wallace uses edibles to create detailed portraits, like athlete Stef Curry made from curry. He also made Salt Bae of salt: Read the rest
Yulia Brodskaya (previously) creates beautiful textured portraits by tightly folding and quilling colorful paper and affixing it upright on a flat surface. Here's a timelapse of her piece Girl with peacock earrings. Read the rest
I think it's amazing. It's more Scientology than Scientology. She looks like she's about to drop the first forty minutes of Mallwave, a genre of electronic music made of irony that's been aged in acrylic casks since 1987, ready to blast all the other waves into space to dance among the stars.
Update: of course it turns out Mallwave is not only already a thing but is already over.
The WaPo's David Fahrenthold exposed incredible self-dealing by millionaire presidential candidate Donald Trump, who settled lawsuits to the tune of $258,000 using his own charity's money. More amusingly, he spent charity cash on a giant portrait of himself.
Thanks to a helpful anonymous traveler, the portrait can now be revealed: it's apparently this one, at Trump's own private resort (commissioned for $10k or $20k, depending on which of the listed portraits it is.) I've crudely corrected the perspective, and the original is below.
That it's a paintover of an overexposed publicity photo makes it even better:
The anonymous photo as originally shot:
UPDATE: Here's another angle, showing the exquisite detail of Liquitex Basics acrylic paint slapped over a gigantic gooogled mugshot.
BONUS: Another, even better photo, from Enrique Acevedo, who reports the exact location and dimensions: "a four-foot-tall portrait of Donald J. Trump at the entrance of Champions Bar & Grill at the Trump National Doral Resort in Miami, Florida."
Hey @Fahrenthold just checked and the portrait is still hanging at the Champions Lounge. How much did you say it cost the Trump Foundation? pic.twitter.com/hGAun6KgCO
— Enrique Acevedo (@Enrique_Acevedo) September 21, 2016
DENOUEMENT: The painter is Havi Schanz; at least for now, his Wikipedia page is a hoot. Read the rest
South African photographer Paul Shiakallis produced a series of photos, "Leathered Skins, Unchained Hearts," of the "queens" of Botswana's heavy metal "Marok" scene, mostly in their homes. Read the rest
Brazilian artist Edu Monteiro's Autorretrato Sensorial ("Sensory Self-Portait") is a series of photos in which he poses with all manner of objects wrapped around his head, from bananas to an octopus. Read the rest
Photographer Szymon Swietochowski created these stunning staff portraits for Polish ad agency Ars Thanea. Read the rest
UK born, South African educated painted visited America and produced a series of beautiful portraits of Juggalos. Read the rest
Cici James -- founder of Brooklyn's amazing science fiction bookstore Singularity and Co -- posed for a body-painted portrait amongst her wares. Read the rest
Artist Philip J Bond created a set of illustrations depicting the women who've been to space. They're beautiful and full of personality and style, and really do justice to their subjects. I just showed these to my five year old daughter, and she was as entranced as I was.
Working for months at a time just penciling a comic book I started these portraits to get a bit of inking and colouring out of my system. I shouldn't say 'portraits', I'm not going for much of a likeness. Usually I'll glance at a couple of photographs and then go off and draw a vague impression. Margaret Seddon is blonde, Judith Resnik is a bit barmy looking, that sort of thing.
Sculptor Jeremy Mayer writes, "This is my latest project- a portrait commission.
The client, Mark Pelzner, came to me with 3 typewriters bequeathed to him by his late father, Marvyn Pelzner. Mark wanted me to take those typewriters and make a likeness of his dad that would be mounted on a box which holds Marvyn's ashes.
There are some parts in the sculpture that came from other typewriters in my stash, but most of the parts are from Marvyn's typewriters. The eyes, for example, are made from his Smith Corona desktop, the shoulders from his Underwood portable, and parts of the head were from his desktop Underwood No. 5.
"Marvyn was an Optometrist in the San Francisco Bay Area who was a big San Francisco Giants fan and a doting grandfather.
Many thanks to the Pelzner family for coming to me to work on such a powerful and personal project. I feel very fortunate to have been entrusted to do this.
As usual, I made this using only typewriter parts- no solder, no glue, no welding, no armature."
(Thanks, Jeremy!) Read the rest
