Stimulating Pixels

Just discovered the recently launched NASA Images web site. From this article that talks about the launch:

The launch is the first step in a five-year partnership that will add millions of images and thousands of hours of video and audio content, with enhanced search and viewing capabilities and new user features.

How cool is that?!?!

The design of the site looks like it should be easy to get around. I’ve downloaded a couple and they are decent resolution. My hope is that higher resolution becomes available as well.

Been looking into doing some digital panoramic/virtual-tour type stuff. The site panoguide.com has some good info and equipment stuff on it. Dropping the link here so I can find it later.

Apparently this is from a 1994 MTV awards show. The Leningrad Cowboys and the Red Army Choir performing Sweet Home Alabama.

I’m not sure what to think, but it’s pretty awesome in that kinda hurts my mind to see the Red Army Choir doing Skynard type of way.

I’ll confess to not remembering seeing a Fold-In from Mad magazine when I was a kid. I’m sure I saw them on the occasions that I could get my hands on one. This was a rare occurrence as the magazine was frowned upon by my folks. Regardless, the N.Y. Times has an article up on Al Jaffee. The guy who makes the Fold-Ins.

The article is interesting by itself, but make sure to check out the gallery of Fold-Ins. These things are amazing.

Sitting in a hotel room on yet another trip to Atlanta and after having had a few drinks myself to unwind. I find the The 6 Stages of Drunkenness in Japanese Cellphone Charms highly amusing.

In the spirit of the hand clapping from the earlier post. Here’s another hand related vid that’s just fun. And groovy.

It takes a min to get going, hangs out for a bit in the realm of intresting, then gets just a bit crazy. I’m not sure which came first, the hands or the bodies, but this one is also fun:

I doubt I have either the fine or gross motor skills to pull of either one of these. Makes me wonder how many takes it took to produce these since there’s no cuts. I’d like to think it was just one for each.

From Fark. A bunch of these made me chuckle. link

Can’t believe in all my years of photography, I’ve never seen this before. At least, not that I remember, and I think I would have remembered.

Here is a video of how to make what is probably a pretty good little stabilizer. Not as good as a tripod, obviously, but I’m sure is better than hand holding. Especially in tight spaces. It’s nothing more than a bolt that you attached to the tripod mount of your camera with a sting attached that has a weight at the other end. You just drop the weight, step on it and pull up against the sting to provide some stability.

If you are using a lens with image stabilization built in, you can probably do some pretty long hand held exposures.

Haven’t tried this one yet, but it looks quite nice. A free, open-source piece of windows software that purports to allow you to make a DVD out of most any video file or files on your computer. Link and a how-to.

This is an older article that I just saw by a guy named Ken Rockwell. It’s called How to Become a Professional Photographer. It’s long, but worth a read if you are in early stages of considering starting just about any business. He talks a lot about how the important part of running a photography business is the actual business side rather than the photography side. Also, about how important sales and marketing are.

I’ve thought off and on since I probably about that time I first picked up a camera about having a photography business. I’ve worked directly for a few photographer and with a bunch more and freelanced myself for a while. From everything I’ve seen, the article pretty well nails it.

Perhaps my favorite quote is up towards the top:

Would you like to photograph anything you want, anywhere you want, anytime you want, any way you want, with a great professional camera system? Would you love to travel to luxury destinations and photograph whatever, whenever you want?

The only way to do this is to keep your real job and do photography on your own time.

I haven’t been shooting much recently, but I couldn’t agree more.