Is Flickr On The Bubble At Yahoo?

I have a Flickr Pro account for which I pay $25 annually and it gives me great piece of mind. Not that I believe that I am the next Annie Leibobvitz (gender aside) it's simply that I have had a photo disaster. I now find that having more than a backup on a usb drive allows me to sleep at night knowing that I am fully protected on and off site. Most of my photos are set to private and that's the way I want it. For many very good photographers Flickr is the only choice on line, but for most internet users Facebook is rapidly becoming the spot where you upload and share your photos.

This increase in photo sharing via Facebook, combined with Yahoo's recent layoffs and shedding of other web services and properties has caused for much discussion regarding the fate of Flickr. The nytimes.com has quoted Jordan Rohan, an analyst with Stifel, Nicolaus & Company as saying “The Internet is starting to rotate around the axis of Facebook — not everything, but everything social,” Mr. Rohan said. “Yahoo and Flickr don’t really have the gravitational pull that would make Flickr the axis that they once imagined.” 

Doesn't sound promising for Flickr yet I believe that they will remain relevant and apparently so does Yahoo: “Is Yahoo committed to Flickr?” Blake Irving, Yahoo’s product chief, wrote in a message on Twitter. “Hell yes we are!”

Viewing The Worlds Glaciers - From Space

The good folks at Wired's Wired Science blog have compiled a collection of images, captured from space by astronauts and satellites, of some of the worlds most impressive glaciers. "To a geologist, glaciers are among the most exciting features on Earth. Though they seem to creep along at impossibly slow speeds, in geologic time glaciers are relatively fast, powerful landscape artists that can carve out valleys and fjords in just a few thousand years."

Here is one from the collection. "Covering nearly 1,400 square miles, the vast Heiltskuk Ice Field lies in the southern Coast Mountains of British Columbia. Taken by an astronaut on the International Space Station, this photo captures the snow-covered mountain slopes as well as several of the ice field’s valley glaciers, which are wide swaths of slowly flowing ice and debris."

MIT Students Capture Photos From Space - Budget $160.00

Three MIT students, Oliver Yeh, Justin Lee and Eric Newton, used common consumer electronics and a weather balloon to snap pictures from space. Dubbed Project Icarus the three who specialize in taking low-cost aerial photographs that they display and sell through a website called 1337arts, captured the photograph below from 28 kilometres up.

"The camera used in the project was a 7.1-megapixel Canon Powershot the students bought used on Amazon.com. They installed an open-source firmware add-on to the camera that would allow them to program it to take a picture every five seconds.

To track the location of the balloon, they used a $50 pre-paid Motorola cellphone with GPS capabilities and installed a free program that would report the phone's location at regular intervals. A USB phone charger powered by AA lithium batteries kept the phone running during the five-hour voyage. They also installed an external antenna to boost the phone's signal"

Perhaps NASA should hire a few more MIT grads!



Source: CBC

Watchmen Photographer Talks about Life On Set

The official still photographer for the Watchmen movie, Clay Enos, talks about his 106 days on set in this Wired video...

Microsoft Releases Photosynth To Public

Microsoft Live Labs has made public Photosynth it's 3d photo stitching technology that now allows you to create and view immersive 3d photo spaces. "Photosynth takes a collection of regular photographs and reconstructs the scene or object in a 3-D environment. " according to the official Photosynth blog. To create or view photosynths you will be required to download the software but the requirements to run are reasonable, creating your own requires a Photosynth account. Microsoft is giving registered users 20GB of online storage for their Photosynth collections. This, according to CNet writer Josh Lowensohn "can easily fit 60 or more "synths" made up of around 150 to 200 photographs apiece"

I just took a tour of Stonehenge and the experience was great, the interface is intuitive and the images rendered quite smoothly. I'm definitely going to be playing with Photosynth some more...

Pleasantly Pleased With Canon Selphy CP740

On Friday I received my new Canon Selphy CP740 photo printer in the mail. I'd not done the research that usually would have gone into a gadget purchase on my part. In this case, I was cashing in points from one of my many rewards programs and was pleased to find that I had enough for this device. The order went in and I'd thought little of it until receiving notification that a parcel had arrived.

The Selphy is a tiny device dwarfed by my HP Officejet 6210 All-in-One, it is capable of printing postcard size (4 x 6) 100 year prints in 16.8 million colors. It's very easy to load both the print cartridges and paper, and prints either via Direct Print which is very handy or USB. I love the prints! I'm not one to print photos normally, just post them online or e-mail them around, but since the printer was not really costing me I thought why not? The only knock on it that I can see after very limited use is the speed of printing, about a minute per print, but it's amusing to watch as it lays down the colors in separate passes. If you are old enough to remember the Polaroid cameras it's a little like watching those pictures come to life... I'm sure there are better photo printers available, but this little guy has found a spot on my desk!

Photographer Allowed Into Worlds Not Viewed by Many

I've rediscovered my love for photography with the recent purchase of a Canon S5 IS. With this renewed affection, I find myself spending a lot of time on Flickr gazing at shots of all sorts of things and finding beauty in the strangest of subjects. I am definitely taking more pictures than ever before, and my photo abilities are benefiting from the practice and study of the works of others. Perhaps this is why I find this Wired article about photographer Taryn Simon so fascinating? Simon convinced authorities to grant her access to some very secretive research facilities and government offices usually hidden from the public and set about to photograph her exploits. There are some interesting pictures even though some of the subjects are disturbing.

Famous Yeti footprint photo sold at Christie's auction

boingboing is reporting that a famous photo of an alleged Yeti footprint was sold at auction in London for £3,500. The photo reportedly taken by Eric Earle Shipton in the Himalayas in 1951, shows a print above an ice axe that was positioned for scale / comparison. Link to the Christie's lot here.