The Year's Most Amazing Scientific Images
posted by Artw on Dec 4, 2009 - 17 comments

Portraits of Power "An interactive portfolio of portraits by Platon of world leaders, with commentary by the photographer."
posted by gwint on Dec 4, 2009 - 24 comments

Tokyo Blues is a photography book about taking a closer look at the ordinary, in this case an omnipresent blue construction tarp which shows up just about everywhere in Tokyo. This is the first book in an apparently planned series by Do Projects. The book is available for sale or as a free PDF under the CC license.
posted by malphigian on Dec 3, 2009 - 16 comments

HDR photography seems to be polarizing. People either love it, or hate it, including here on MeFi. For those who enjoy exploring the possibilities HDR presents, a good place to start is Stuck In Customs. Trey Ratcliff has the first HDR photo ever to hang in the Smithsonian. He offers a comprehensive, six-step HDR tutorial if you want to try it yourself. A sampling of his HDR travel photography is here, and throughout the site, and he is also experimenting with HDR video technology. [more inside]
posted by netbros on Dec 3, 2009 - 58 comments

Todd Fisher's Kissing Series. Photographs of people kissing. His other photographs are quite good as well. [more inside]
posted by chunking express on Dec 2, 2009 - 85 comments

Remember Paper is a blog with photos of interesting magazines, books, and other paper-based ephemera. NSFW.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy on Nov 29, 2009 - 10 comments

Bush and Blairline-dancing, The Queen on the loo, Marilyn wanking (nsfw). The phototgraphy of Alison Jackson blends the real and the irreal.
posted by Artw on Nov 27, 2009 - 25 comments

Basic Sounds is a blog of art and technology blending. Lots of enhanced photos, art installations, modern sculpture, and A/V performance. Modern, abstract, hi-tech, and surreal. Lots of shiny pretty things to look at while you digest. Monthly archives go back to 2003. Nothing NSFW on the main link but I did come across a smattering of NSFW images in the archives.
posted by Babblesort on Nov 26, 2009 - 6 comments

Many is a collective project exhibiting fine photography found by fine photographers.
posted by chunking express on Nov 25, 2009 - 7 comments

Fotomat 's tiny drive-up huts with the yellow roof were an icon of the 1970s suburban experience, with 4000 of them throughout the U.S. You drove up, gave your film to the girl inside, and got prints a couple of days later. But stores began closing en masse in the 1980s with the boom of in-store "prints in an hour". Most Fotomats have been torn down or are crumbling away (cool slideshow), a few being used for coffee or cigarettes. Former alumni are out there and share some memories stories on Facebook. Fotomat unbelievably is around and has a website but this September they threw in the towel on their Snapfish-like business model.
posted by crapmatic on Nov 25, 2009 - 35 comments

"I began bringing a camera along to work, photographing my surroundings. And as this project progressed and I slowly learned my craft, I became increasingly fascinated with other photographers who had been in a similar situation, those who had found themselves recording their own jobs: The Insiders [A tiny bit NSFW] ."
posted by chunking express on Nov 24, 2009 - 22 comments

Chad Richard creates ground-breaking time-lapse photography with HDR techniques. For example, his recent compilation video Time-Lapse Favs. His weblog, Time Traveler, includes tutorials and samples. [more inside]
posted by netbros on Nov 24, 2009 - 31 comments

Scotland's National Collection of Aerial Photography includes a plethora of pictures of Scotland, notably Edinburgh and Glasgow, seen from above, many dating back to WWII. But there are also photographs of wartime European cities and images of elsewhere from the Aerial Reconnaissance Archives.
posted by Lezzles on Nov 24, 2009 - 4 comments

Frank van der Salm Photography: Zone ll Cluster ll Control ll Sector ll Gate ll Descent
posted by vronsky on Nov 22, 2009 - 16 comments

Photographer Matt Logue's empty L. A. shows the effect of the city being completely people-less.
posted by gman on Nov 20, 2009 - 42 comments

Kyle Cassidy's In The Hive "As fine art photography increasingly at times adopts the tropes of snapshots I often find myself in galleries wondering if the artist didn't possess some sort of faulty camera whose shutter tripped randomly... I asked twenty-three people scattered around the U.S. to wear their cameras everywhere and over the next 48 hours I sent eleven text messages at random intervals asking everyone to take a photo of whatever was in front of them at that moment." [more inside]
posted by muddgirl on Nov 19, 2009 - 13 comments

Russian food porn. [more inside]
posted by TheWhiteSkull on Nov 18, 2009 - 59 comments

Charles Van Schaick was a photographer in Black River Falls, Wisconsin in the late 19th and early 20th Century. His work was made famous by Michael Lesy in the book Wisconsin Death Trip in which the photographs were juxtaposed with local newsreports of murder, suicide, disease, insanity, animal mutilation and other calamities plus the occasional non-morbid event. Flickr set of photos used in Wisconsin Death Trip. Some of the texts from Wisconsin Death Trip. Robert Birnbaum interviews Michael Lesy about Wisconsin Death Trip and other things. Over 2500 photographs by Charles Van Schaick owned by The Wisconsin Historical Society. [Warning: Some of the photographs are of deceased infants]
posted by Kattullus on Nov 15, 2009 - 20 comments

David Guttenfelder is the chief Asia photographer for The Associated Press. Recently, he has been focusing his lens in Afghanistan. Photographer Collection: David Guttenfelder in Afghanistan and On Assignment: Afghanistan.
posted by netbros on Nov 13, 2009 - 9 comments

Andrew Zuckerman's Bird Book
posted by ooga_booga on Nov 13, 2009 - 32 comments

Hiroshi Watanabe -- Love Point::Suo Sarumawashi::Ideology in Paradise::"I see angels every day"::Kabuki Players::Japanese Studies::Northern Places::Species Among Us
posted by vronsky on Nov 13, 2009 - 6 comments

National Geographic photographer Paul Nicklen (previously) relates the harrowing tale of a sweet, insistent, and ferocious lunchmate (note - clip begins with a dramatic drumbeat, mind your speakers) [more inside]
posted by Hypnotic Chick on Nov 12, 2009 - 37 comments

Phyllis Galembo: 100 Years of Halloween Costumes and Masquerade
posted by vronsky on Nov 11, 2009 - 6 comments

The American Image: The Photographs of John Collier Jr. at the University of New Mexico. "In 1941 to 1943, Collier worked as a photographer with the Farm Securities Administration and the Office of War Information under Roy Stryker and documented many areas around the eastern U.S and northern New Mexico." The full photoset is at flickr here.
posted by dersins on Nov 11, 2009 - 2 comments

KATHMANDU_GLUE^nsfw // Frankie Nazardo set out to capture the glue gangs of Kathmandu.
posted by nitsuj on Nov 10, 2009 - 31 comments

Re-inhabited Circle Ks - an exhibit of identical storefronts abandoned by a national chain of convenience stores and re-purposed by new businesses. [more inside]
posted by mullacc on Nov 10, 2009 - 61 comments

The Polar Discovery team has documented science in action from pole to pole during the historic 2007-2009 International Polar Year, and covered five scientific expeditions. The science projects explored a range of topics from climate change and glaciers, to Earth’s geology, biology, ocean chemistry, circulation, and technology at the icy ends of the earth. Through photo essays and other multimedia, they explain how scientists collected data and what they discovered about the rapidly changing polar regions. From the awesome folks at WHOI.
posted by netbros on Nov 9, 2009 - 4 comments

Enchanted Spaces by Marrigje De Maar. Russia::Finland::China::Japan
posted by vronsky on Nov 6, 2009 - 9 comments

The 65-Year-Old Virgin: Robert Bergman’s photographs, finally revealed. "The last time Robert Bergman had a gallery show, it was 1964, and he was 20 years old. The college dropout and his best friend, Danny Seymour, took their earliest photographs, produced in a 'lint-filled darkroom'—a.k.a. his mother’s laundry room—to a 'rinky-dink bookstore' in Minneapolis’s run-down West Bank. 'Me and Danny just threw some pictures up on the wall,' he says. 'You couldn’t even call that a show.' Bergman is 65 now, and making a real debut in not one but three venues, at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center; Chelsea’s Yossi Milo Gallery; and, extraordinarily, the National Gallery of Art. (This is the National Gallery’s first artist’s debut show ever.)" An interview with Robert Bergman, and a slideshow of some of his work.
posted by ocherdraco on Nov 4, 2009 - 13 comments

Photos by Wayne Levin of surfers, swimmers, fish and more. (-v-)
posted by vronsky on Nov 4, 2009 - 9 comments

A Mendocino mid-fall marijuana harvest as documented by photographer Mathieu Young. (via - with some info)
posted by gman on Nov 3, 2009 - 94 comments

Philip Bloom's: Venice's People; Dublin's People; San Francisco's People; Sofia's People. Vimeo vids.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy on Nov 3, 2009 - 17 comments

A blog of strange (found) B&W photography
posted by grumblebee on Nov 2, 2009 - 37 comments

Angry People in Local Newspapers feels "sorry for local news photographers. They are hugely skilled and poorly paid, and sent out to photograph miserable people pointing at dog turds. Here, we celebrate their work"
posted by minifigs on Nov 2, 2009 - 30 comments

After the Wall: Traces of the Soviet Empire
posted by vronsky on Nov 1, 2009 - 12 comments

Iconic Photos
posted by Joe Beese on Oct 26, 2009 - 28 comments

Something vivid and sweet for Friday:
Liz Wolfe takes beautiful photographs.
Cool Hunting interviews Liz.
posted by isopraxis on Oct 23, 2009 - 30 comments

CARLOS JIMÉNEZ CAHUA : "This young Peruvian photographer, now based in New York, returned to Lima to document the city’s unchecked sprawl into the desert, where flimsy plywood houses huddle together, as if for warmth. Jiménez Cahua takes the long view, typically framing broad landscape vistas from an omniscient, elevated perspective, so teeming neighborhoods appear unpopulated, toy-like." NYer (alt view)
posted by vronsky on Oct 22, 2009 - 11 comments

11,000 Manhattan street corners.
posted by miss lynnster on Oct 21, 2009 - 31 comments

George S. Zimbel is a documentary photographer. [more inside]
posted by chunking express on Oct 21, 2009 - 7 comments

Alastair Levy is a photographer.
posted by nthdegx on Oct 21, 2009 - 16 comments

Photography of Corey Arnold: Human Animals ll Arcticness ll Fish-Work Bering Sea ll Fish-Work Norway
posted by vronsky on Oct 18, 2009 - 18 comments

The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. (warning: photos of dead birds)
posted by typewriter on Oct 17, 2009 - 65 comments

Photos from the war. A slideshow of photos taken by German soldier Werner Wiehe... vermisst in Russland, 1944. (While viewing the slideshow, might I suggest playing some appropriate musical accompaniment, arranged in sequential order?!)
posted by markkraft on Oct 17, 2009 - 18 comments

The Polaroid SX-70. A 10 minute promotional film by Charles and Ray Eames.
posted by ardgedee on Oct 16, 2009 - 15 comments

Infernal Landscapes. [more inside]
posted by WPW on Oct 16, 2009 - 17 comments

Jean M. Fasse (Red Cross during WWII, and later the Special Service). Shirley Ann Thacker (WAVE). Just two of the interviews from the extensive collection of material (photographs, letters, diaries, scrapbooks, oral histories and posters) at the Women Veterans Historical Collection.
posted by tellurian on Oct 14, 2009 - 4 comments

Vivian Maier's Photography. "This [site] was created in dedication to the photographer Vivian Maier, a street photographer from the 1950s - 1970s. Vivian's work was discovered at an auction here in Chicago." [more inside]
posted by chunking express on Oct 14, 2009 - 35 comments

Exact details are still forthcoming, but the impossible project announced that Polaroid is preparing to re-launch some of their iconic instant cameras and TIP will be manufacturing the film, at Polaroid's request. No doubt this will increase the ranks of their cult-like following, but will this second coming reverse what turned into a money-losing tech in our new digital age?
posted by revmitcz on Oct 13, 2009 - 40 comments

They're responsible for the slang terms "hip" and "dive."¹ Among many other traditions, Chinese immigrants brought opium dens to the Western world. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Dickens, and Oscar Wilde all embellished the existence of opium dens in Victorian England. In the expanding US, Chinese railroad workers brought opium dens to outposts as far-flung as El Paso. By the 1880s, US readers were familiar with the stereotypical opium den of urban Chinatowns like San Francisco's (pdf) -- where it was made illegal for white people to smoke -- and New York's (pdf).²

Learn more about opium dens, and see the photos, at the online Opium Museum. [more inside]
posted by mudpuppie on Oct 12, 2009 - 45 comments