Colossal | A blog about art and visual ingenuity.

Unusual Long Exposure Firework Photographs by David Johnson

Unusual Long Exposure Firework Photographs by David Johnson long exposure light fireworks color

While attending the International Fireworks Show in Ottawa, Canada earlier this month photographer David Johnson had his camera in hand to document the night. When Spain’s entry into the competition begin he decided to try something a little different resulting in the photos you see here which are unlike any long exposure firework shots I’ve ever seen. Via email David tells me how he accomplished the effect:

The technique I used was a simple refocus during the long exposure. Each shot was about a second long, sometimes two. I’d start out of focus, and when I heard the explosion I would quickly refocus, so the little stems on these deep sea creature lookalikes would grow into a fine point. The shapes are quite bizarre, some of them I was pleasantly surprised with.

What’s interesting is that unlike usual firework photos that seem to make long trails across the sky, Johnson’s photos look like flowers with little triangular plumes coming to a point. Pretty amazing. You can see several more photos here.

New Interpolated HD Video of Curiosity Mars Rover Descent Depicts Real-Time Landing

New Interpolated HD Video of Curiosity Mars Rover Descent Depicts Real Time Landing space Mars

I’ve seen several different videos of Curiosity’s descent down to the Mars, and while incredible because of what they depict, none approached the frame-rate we might normally expect from an actual film. Using footage provided by NASA, Reddit user Godd2 just spent the last four days on behalf of all humankind creating a stunning interpolated HD version of the descent. In layman’s terms interpolation involves taking a choppy video, in this case NASA’s 4 frames-per-second video, and rendering the “missing” frames in between resulting in an incredibly smooth 25 frames-per-second video. This is, I believe, the closest approximation ever of what it might feel like to land on another planet in real time using actual footage. Amazing. Here it is on YouTube.

By Christopher on August 26, 2012 • Mars space

The Pleasure Of: A Video Compilation of Life’s Most Pleasurable Moments by Vitùc

The Pleasure Of: A Video Compilation of Lifes Most Pleasurable Moments by Vitùc video art

Taking the first bite of a watermelon. Cracking an egg. Floating in the ocean on a sunny day. These are brief, seemingly inconsequential moments that almost immediately slip from memory as they pass, neither life-altering or particularly remarkable, and yet taken together they become a sort of texture of our lives. Filmmaker Vitùc recognized the importance of these small moments and collected several dozen of them in his new video short called The Pleasure Of that was shot in part with an iPhone 4s. Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet did something similar in Amélie as he introduces a number of quirky pleasures enjoyed by Audrey Tautou’s character and I find this film by Vitùc to be just as charming.

By Christopher on August 26, 2012 • video art

Underwater Experiments Continued: Wonderful New Photos of Jellyfish by Alexander Semenov

Since first covering the photography of Russian biologist Alexander Semenov (previously) back in January his self-directed “Underwater Experiments” series has continued unabated as he releases other-worldy shots of the Earth’s most elusive creatures almost daily. Again and again Semenov captures some of the most jaw-dropping photographs of underwater life I’ve ever seen, most frequently an animal called lion’s mane jellyfish (Cyanea capillata) which is the largest known species of jellyfish in the world. What you see here only scratches the surface of his work over the last couple of months, definitely urge you to get lost in his underwater gallery.

By Christopher on August 26, 2012 • jellyfish nature underwater

Moth Trails at Night

Moth Trails at Night long exposure insects

Ontario-based ceramicist Steve Irvine caught this wonderful long exposure shot of fluttering moths swirling around a floodlight at night. Via National Geographic:

Fluttering wings leave lacy trails as moths beat their way to a floodlight on a rural Ontario lawn. The midsummer night’s exposure, held for 20 seconds, captured some of the hundreds of insects engaged in a nocturnal swarm.

You can see the photograph a bit larger here, and prints are available in their art store.
(via neatorama)

By Christopher on August 25, 2012 • insects long exposure

Green Pedestrian Crossing in China Creates Leaves from Footprints

Green Pedestrian Crossing in China Creates Leaves from Footprints trees leaves installation environment China advertising

Jody Xiong of DDB China in conjunction with the China Environmental Protection Foundation created this wonderful outdoor campaign to create a subtle visual reminder of the environmental benefits of walking versus driving. Enormous white canvases with a bare tree were placed across 132 crosswalks in 15 Chinese cities. As pedestrians crossed their shoe soles were imprinted with a small amount of green paint, leaving behind a trail of leaf-like footprints. BBD estimated that nearly 3,920,000 people passed through the installations, and the final posters were eventually hung has billboards in several urban locations. Awesome! (via moeity)

By Christopher on August 25, 2012 • advertising China environment installation leaves trees

Colossal Turns Two

Photo by Kevin Meredith.

Excuse me while I step out from behind the curtain for just a moment.

On cold fall day in 2009 I shuffled into an office at the Richard J. Daley Center in Chicago (the dreary building with the giant Picasso sculpture out front), was given a juror number and was told that in exchange for seven hours of my life I would be paid just enough money to buy a really fancy sandwich. I then found a seat in a row of immovable rickety chairs that were probably installed during the Nixon administration and waited for my number to be called. At the time I was doing freelance web design and I pulled out my laptop to do some work on a project when I discovered with horror there was no wireless. A quick survey of the room revealed almost nothing of entertainment value. A few old newspapers, some back issues of terrible magazines, and a crackly old TV (also Nixon era), stuck permanently on local news. Rumor quickly spread that it was going to be a slow day, nobody should expect to be called for actual jury duty. I literally had nothing to do.

So I sat. And waited. For some reason I launched a text editor on my laptop and started making a list of things I had been thinking about doing lately (read: procrastinating for months). At first it was just ten simple things that we all put on our lists “get in shape” and “read more books”. But as I sat there, with this day of civic boredom stretching into infinity before me I became ambitious. I made spaces instead for 100 things and decided to get specific. “Learn to kayak. Run a 5k. Take a course in ceramics.” Because why not? All that pot throwing has to be pretty calming and therapeutic or meditative right? The list went on and on. There were plenty of easy things and lots of hard ones. I put “Finish a book” on there about a dozen times because I’m terrible about finishing anything I begin to read. Then, way down toward the bottom, at number 83: “Start a blog.”

The entirety of 2010 was spent Doing the List. It was tacked up on my closet door, three pages taped together, and to keep up the pace I did one thing every 4 days. For 365 days. I ended up the year in great shape having run my first race (and subsequently haven’t run again, but hey, I finished 163rd out of 600). I made some wobbly ceramic cereal bowls or also flower pots. There was kayaking, traveling, I spent time with my dad in his wood shop making a wooden acrobat toy for my son… it’s so completely fragile you can’t actually play with it, but it looks great! And, as part of it all, just to cross off a line-item on this boredom-induced bucket list, I started a little blog I decided to call ‘Colossal’ where I posted cool art and design things that I found online each day starting with the photograph above by Kevin Meredith.

As of last week Colossal is now two years old. Nearly 30 million people have stopped by for a visit. It was nominated for a 2012 Webby Award in Art and a number of influential people have said extremely kind and humbling things about it. But what’s more interesting to me than its size or relative influence is this: I never set out to make the blog you see here today. None of it was planned or envisioned. I’d like to think that Colossal was destined to exist regardless of my temporary stay in jury purgatory but who knows. I started posting things, followed my happiness in whatever I blogged about, ditched what wasn’t working, and it soon lead to this glorious world of visual artists, filmmakers, designers, musicians and performers I never knew existed, some of whom I’ve even had the pleasure of meeting and seeing their work first-hand. In the end, I made a daunting list of 100 things to do, stuck with it, and a random item suddenly became this huge life-changing thing. Go make a list. I recommend it.

Colossal has taken an enormous amount of time to build and upkeep, requiring tons of help and patience from so many people. I want to thank my wife Megan and son Caleb who are now (mostly) accepting of me jumping up in the middle of everything screaming THIS MUST BE BLOGGED IMMEDIATELY. Thanks to Paul Overton at DudeCraft for being the first blogger to ever link back to Colossal with kind words. Thanks to Veken Gueyikian, Alice Yoo, Shelby White, Johnny Strategy, Chase McClure, Scott Beale, and Paul Strauss for tons of invaluable advice and help the past two years. Also thanks to Media Temple and CloudFlare for keeping things firing on all cylinders. And most of all thank you—specifically you—for visiting.

OK, back behind the curtain. Let’s look at more art! Have you seen Tim Tadder’s water wigs and I have no idea what’s happening in this claymation by Emanuel Strixner but I love it.

By Christopher on August 24, 2012 • colossal

A Glass Sphere Solar Energy Generator Capable of Converting Sun and Moonlight into Usable Power

A Glass Sphere Solar Energy Generator Capable of Converting Sun and Moonlight into Usable Power sun solar power moon light glass

Barcelona-based German-born architect André Broessel of rawlemon has constructed an enormous glass ball lens filled with water capable of harnessing power from the sun and even the moon (last image), and converting it into usable energy. I have no idea about the practicality of its use, but it sure is gorgeous. Broessel proposes that the spheres could be embedded in buildings allowing for natural light to stream through while capturing valuable energy. See much more over on Designboom.