Category: Photography

Hank Green has made something really cool. Called the Artemis II Photo Timeline, it’s an interactive way to scroll through photos from NASA’s recent crewed mission to cislunar space — but pinned to NASA’s official schedule of the mission.

Nick Heer has more:

It is also a tribute to publicly available data. Though the timeline includes some videos published to Instagram and YouTube, the vast majority are images from Flickr. NASA usually uploads them with EXIF data intact, and Flickr preserves it. NASA also provided the mission schedule and, even better, has a public API for the position of the Orion spacecraft at any given time. Which means Green was also able to correlate the photos with where they were taken along the craft’s trajectory.

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Apple’s VP of camera software engineering Jon McCormack gave Nilay Patel a quote about how Apple views photography in our modern age. Here’s what he said:

Here’s our view of what a photograph is. The way we like to think of it is that it’s a personal celebration of something that really, actually happened.

Whether that’s a simple thing like a fancy cup of coffee that’s got some cool design on it, all the way through to my kid’s first steps, or my parents’ last breath, It’s something that really happened. It’s something that is a marker in my life, and it’s something that deserves to be celebrated.

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Scott Everett, writing at the up-until-now- slated-for-death-by-Amazon-dot-com DPReview:

We’ve heard from many of you over the past several weeks, and we realize there are many questions about what comes next for DPReview. We’re thrilled to share the news that Gear Patrol has acquired DPReview. Gear Patrol is a natural home for the next phase of DPReview’s journey, and I’m excited to see what we can accomplish together.

I want to reassure you that we remain firmly committed to what makes DPReview great: the best camera reviews in the business, industry-leading photography news and features, and one of the most active photography communities anywhere on the internet.

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Earlier today, Matt Haughey published a blog post about using a custom instance of Stable Diffusion and using to create self portraits, based on work by Andy Baio and this video on YouTube.

After following the steps in Matt’s blog post, I had everything up and running, and fed the machine about 25 photos of myself. I played around with a bunch of different prompts and got some pretty wild results:

Sidestepping the very complicated subjects related to AI-art, this was a pretty fun way to spend an hour of my day. That last one is true nightmare fuel, though.

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Apple’s built-in camera app meets the needs for most people, but for those of us who want more, Obscura has been a long-time favorite. Today, Ben McCarthy has launched version 3 of the app.

The new build comes with a new design that is more intuitive deign built around five modes: Photo, Pro Photo, Depth, Live Photo, and Video. There’s also a Watch app for controlling an iPhone that may be mounted in a tripod or is otherwise inaccessible.

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I was no fan of Windows XP, but this documentary about its default wallpaper is fascinating.

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Om Malik:

Photography as we know it has been around for about 150 years, though its origins can be traced to earlier civilizations. But it has never been so visceral, and so much a part of our daily lives, as it is now. In short, the arc of photography’s history is that it has always been about getting more and more people to take photographs. Our desire to know more about ourselves means we must have more of them, more often, in more places, and of many more things. Whether it was new chemicals or new film or new sensors, technological advances in this area have — by and large — been about making it simpler for us to capture the moment. All of it has brought us to today, when we have quietly passed the cultural tipping point where taking a photo is as second nature as breathing. There’s no art to it. It is just something we are always doing.

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The photographer:

It’s important to understand ProRAW and when to use it. ProRAW is not simply a magic switch you can flip on to make your photos better. In fact, the non-ProRAW file initially looks much better than the ProRAW file, so shooting ProRAW really only makes sense if you intend to spend the time fine-tuning the image in post.

I suggest turning on ProRAW when you are shooting in extreme conditions of any kinds (extremely low light, extremely high dynamic range with super bright highlights and dark shadows, mixed light temperatures, and so on). Also, use ProRAW if you plan on enlarging the images (on screen or in print).

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John Kraus shares some of my favorite rocket launch photos, and one of his most recent ones was shot on an iPhone XS Max.

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#ShotoniPhone + remote camera photography at the launchpad = ???? — Here’s an up-close look at yesterday’s SpaceX launch of CRS-19, captured using an iPhone XS Max placed at Space Launch Complex 40, just about 850 feet from the rocket, the day before liftoff. I’m continuously amazed at what modern smartphones can capture and I’ve enjoyed pushing the envelope with phones in the last few months. After a failed attempt to use an iPhone as a remote camera earlier this year, I was incredibly surprised to find images on the phone post-launch. If you’re unfamiliar with remote camera photography and my work in general: This phone operated autonomously from a distance that is unsafe for humans to watch the launch, which makes capturing these closeup images all the more difficult. ????????

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Andrew Burwell has put together an amazing site of his astrophotography, a collection of images he has created with a series of telescopes and the Mac. He has some truly beautiful photos posted.

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NASA’s official photographer has been on the job for 30 years, and to celebrate, some of his best shots have been curated over on the National Geographic website.

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Erin Brooks, writing at The Sweet Setup:

I recently traded in my iPhone X for the XS, and it feels like a much bigger difference when it comes to the camera, than past steps up, and I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, I feel a certain loyalty to iPhone, because it was kind of my first love when I picked up photography, and getting to be part of Apple’s World Gallery was one of the most memorable experiences of my life. On the other, I’m not sure I like some of the camera’s changes, or if I’m just not used to them yet. So, I come into this already wanting to love it, yet I feel a bit conflicted. Maybe it’s that I’m simply already spoiled: iPhone cameras have been excellent for so long that I take it for granted.

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