MyPixelBucket

The blog has been really, really quiet for the last 8 weeks, due to the Christma break, the need to take a real, long break with everything for a little while, and now a faulty drive on which is stuck all of my stuff. Hence nothing new photography-wise for people following what’s happening here.

This said the blog will soon close to give place to a new one, linked to a website and something looking like a real photography gallery. This massive change might take some time, but I’m definitely looking for something happening around early spring time.

Stay tuned for further annoucements !

Look ! My studio is tiny !

I downloaded Strobox on my iPhone yesterday after reading an article on Photography Bay. The idea behind this app is really great, and it could be very handy if it wasn’t stuck in a 4 meter square space, looking at the size of the icons vs. the size of the iPhone screen. Now for the moment you cannot zoom in or out or scroll around to make the work space bigger, but reading suggestions on their website, that should be the first thing addressed in their next update. This said the app is free, and you can play a bit with it if you don’t have in mind to create intricate lighting setup with 10 items or more.

I’ve piled up all sort of stuff in a dark corner, somewhere in my bookmarks, between October and now. I thought it was about time for a digging :

- A smart guy playing with Photoshop found two very simple tricks to make it run faster. I tryed it both at home and at work on Windows 7 and OSX, and it seems to help a bit with large size images or when dealing with multiple files open at the same time.

©David Noton

- The Photography Blog had an interesting article a couple months ago about long exposure photography, written by David Noton and illustrated with some of his beautiful images. Highly recommended for landscape shooters.

- The people behind “I’m a photographer, not a terrorist” campaign and website organise a flash mob on Trafalgar Square on Saturday 23rd January 2010, at 12.00 (Noon). Try to show up with a camera and show support to help keeping our photography rights in the UK.

- CoolIris Express has been announced earlier this month. This is a new tool designed to help people with very little coding or web designing skills to put together online galleries. More details on The Photography Blog again.

Last but not least, I’ve finally posted five of the many digital pictures shot with my 30D during our road trip in Sweden. I found it very hard to make a good selection, considering that I always thought the analog pictures taken with the Mamiya to be a lot better. This will conclude my series on Sweden for now. Hope you like them.

Power Station in Göteborg

Pizza box left on the street

Rescue Post on Ugglarp’s Beach

Beach Shelter – Ugglarp

Copenhagen – Rådhuspladsen

Resuming my photography activity, I have posted a few recent pictures on my flickr taken from my trip in Sweden.

Uppsala Domkyrka’s interior

Flag and the sea shore near Ugglarp

Grave in a churchyard near Skokloster

This is a name that very few people might know outside of Brazil and of the Samba community, but Neguinho do Samba was a major figure in the world of Afro-Brazilian music.

He founded the Salvador da Bahia-based Bloco Afro Olodum after leaving Ile Aiye, and later founded the woman-only band Dida. The work he achieved is huge, especially trying to help bahianese young kids to step up from endemic poverty, and the unfortunately far too common circle of drugs and violence that take their toll in Brazilian youth. His efforts to promote Afro-Brazilian music and culture led him to work with Michael Jackson and Paul Simon, among other noticeable music celebs.

He died last Saturday at the age of 54 of a heart attack, and will be greatly missed. More can be read here, and pictures of the funeral procession in Salvador have been posted on Travelblog.org.

Paz a sua alma.

Well, further to the previous post showing Stranger Than Kindness video, here’s a follow up with embedded audio players for the two previously unreleased tracks: Stranger Than Kindness and Here Before, taken from Fever Ray’s official website. I love this type of sharing system.

But furthermore to this, they’ve also released an Halloween mix on RA’s monthly podcast, available as a free download provided you register on their website first. That’s another hour of Fever Ray delight. And I also seriously think about having a specific Fever Ray category on the blog since I cannot pass on any news about them.

And now, enjoy the music while you can :

Stranger Than Kindness by Fever Ray

Here Before by Fever Ray

Here’s Fever Ray’s latest video found on Kanye’s blog and Vimeo. That’s somewhat good news that might relief disappointment and frustration for those who’ve bought Fever Ray’s album when it first went out, and then have seen it re-released very recently with previously unfeatured titles ina bonus CD that cannot be found individually. One of the new titles being the rendition of Nick Cave’s Stranger Than Kindness, that was performed by Fever Ray during their tour last summer, and made hereafter available in this video. Enjoy.

Stranger Than Kindness from Fever Ray on Vimeo.

Kodak launches a photograph contest to celebrate the first year of existence of its newest low ASA film Kodak Ektar 100. No doubt this type of contest, also held by Fujifilm, are meant to keep up the industry of analog photography in a relatively good shape and maintain an interest for their customers into it. Hence if you’ve got an analog camera, a retailer selling those films, and live in an area sunny enough to allow shooting as low as a 100 ASA, why not joining ?

Via Photography Blog.

All right. I really meant to post some links on Friday, but I was too busy at work as usual. Still I have a few things I think to be worth a look that I’d like to share. Some cool stuff to finish this gorgeous Sunday with (at least in Paris), or to keep somewhere close for a smooth start tomorrow morning.

The Sherlock Holmes ©Phill Price 2009

- London-based photographer and blogger Phill Price comes everyday with a picture taken in London. This is pure street photography as I love it. Phill also organizes events for the London Flickr Meetup and PhotowalkLondon Tweeter group. He’s also co-host of the PhotoLegal podcast, a very precious source of various legal information about photography and copyrights in the UK.

Susan - New York ©Salma Khalil 2009

- Salma T. Khalil is featured among other artists on Flak Photo this month. I find her recent work on young brides very touching. Here follows Salma T. Khalil’s statement on this yet untitled serie :

Currently Untitled

This project explores marriage and its definition amongst women who have surpassed the
average age of marriage (25) in the U.S. yet have remained single.
In the portraits, the women wearing the same wedding dress and are pictured in their
spaces. The photograph is an object of fantasy. They are dressed in a symbol that is a
stereotype of constrained societal pressure, a tradition of roles and expectations. Their spaces
represent the stage of life they are in, whether they live in a studio space on their own or with
a significant other to whom they are not married.
Accompanying the photographs are video interviews that bring the viewer back to reality.
The women are in their own clothes and freely share with us their own opinions on marriage,
family and the multitude of paths they plan.

- Amazing wildlife, portraits, street and architecture photography by George Logan. I cannot show any of his work as his web gallery is in Flash and pictures cannot be saved from the site, but pay it a visit. Really worth it.

- If you have followed recent announcements about Canon cameras, then you now know that the 1D Mark IV has become official and that a few people have had the privilege of an early hands on to take sample pictures and even test out thouroughly the video feature. This is the case of Vincent Laforet, who made a new short film named Nocturne. The movie is at the moment down due to a request from Canon, but hopefully this will be up again soon. In the meantime, you can read tech details and see sample images on Canon Rumors’ blog. Following this are now rumors coming about the future Canon’s flagship camera : the 1Ds Mark IV, with a solid one stating it would have a 32 megapixel sensor. All of these specs to be taken carefully though, until an official announcement on the real features by Canon.

- The final line will be for Spike Jonz’s recent short film titled We Were Once A Fairy Tale, featuring Kanye West. Was originally found on Kanye’s blog, but for some reasons he had to take it down. Later found again on Fubiz and Dailymotion. It certainly has something to do with photograhy as the special effort made on usage of a short depth of field, combined with a low intensity lighting featured in the night club, are some of the keys to the very special atmosphere emanating from the video.

It’s all over the internet this morning : Adobe has just made Lightroom 3 Beta available as a free download, so that anybody can give it a go and discover a whole bunch of new features such as improved noise reduction and sharpening filter, direct image upload to a flickr gallery (more options available for flickr pro users) and slideshow editing and exporting tools which include sound integration and direct export to the most popular video sharing websites. I wouldn’t be surprise if Adobe tries in the near future to follow the recent integration of HD video in next gen DSLRs, and integrates in turn a video option that will let users manage their video footage the same way they do with their still images. If not entirely as part of Lightroom, it also might be a bridge extension between the latter and Adobe’s video software products (After FX and Premiere). But I’m just guessing here.

For more information, you can read full-length articles on John Nack’s blog, Photography Bay and Light Mods among many others.

You can also download Lightroom 3 Beta for free following this link.

I’m trying to resume my photographic activity, which is close to zero these days due to intense sport training and Greek learning. A slight shift of priorities for a short period hopefully. Here are some pics from our little family trip to Scandinavia last summer. This post’s destination : Copenhagen, Denmark. Lovely city, quite expensive, but definitely a go if you were to be around close enough for a couple of days stop.

And don’t hesitate to visit the flickr gallery for more pics and updates on my works.

A quick one to post about an event I didn’t know about earlier this month’s : the World Animal Day. It goes back as far as 1931 apparently. As often, Boston’s The Big Picture blog comes with a top rated selection of photographs to illustrate that day (October 4th). Please indulge yourself with a high dose of baby animal cuteness.
My favorite is still that one below though.

Here’s an announcement big enough to pull me out of my total lack of activity this month. It could have been anything else, but it’s gonna be this Polaroid official announcement that they will put back to production a limited serie of their Polaroid 1000 instant camera in 2010. As mentioned on Polapremium the Impossible Project is a source of inspiration for the camera maker to put back their discontinued models on the market. Let’s hope they make further annoucement about other models to be made available again soon. (Via)

Back in time : after the portraits series I’m going a couple of weeks back to the very beginning of my trip in Scandinavia. The first stage takes place both in Amsterdam and Copenhagen. Enjoy the ride.