Photography

Section

Design Photography

Light Painting Evolved: Introducing the Pixelstick

Designed by Duncan Frazier and Steve McGuigan of Brookyln-based BitBanger Labs, the Pixelstick is a fancy new gadget for creating long-exposure light paintings. The device reads digital images created in Photoshop (or any other editor) and displays them one line at a time through an array of 198 full-color RGB LEDs. The images can be any height up to 198 pixels tall and many thousands of pixels wide creating huge possibilities for visual effects. You can see more example images created with the device here and learn more about it on Kickstarter.

Photography

Switcheroo: Quirky Portraits of Couples Swapping Clothes by Hana Pesut

Switcheroo is an ongoing portrait project by Canadian photographer Hana Pesut where fashionably dressed couples are asked to swap clothing for a pair of portraits sent against an identical backdrop. While the premise is pretty simple, the results are often highly amusing because of all the subtle details and unusual juxtapositions. Giant feet crammed into tiny high heeled shoes, the seemingly nervous faces of cross-dressing in public, or even the genuine grins of subjects who clearly enjoy the project as much as the photographer.

The portraits shown here are among the most recent from a trip to Japan, and you can see many more on her Tumblr. Pesut also gathered many of the best portraits into a book. (via My Modern Met)

Photography Science

Animal Earth: New Photos Exploring the Diversity of the World’s Most Obscure Species

We’ve all grown up learning about familiar animals like fish, tigers, elephants, and bears, but this new book from Ross Piper takes the opposite approach: exploring the diversity in size, shape, and color of the world’s most obscure and rarely seen organisms. With photography from Alexander Semenov, Arthur Anker, and other animal specialists and researchers, the 320-page Animal Earth promises to open your eyes to a variety of truly bizarre species from the deepest oceans and the most adverse climates. The book is set to be published in mid-November from Thames & Hudson.

 

Animation Photography

Light Goes On: A New Light Painting Stop Motion Video About a Skateboarding Skeleton by Darren Pearson

Light painter Darren Pearson (previously here and here) is back with a new stop motion short that follows the adventures of a skateboarding skeleton. In the making for nearly a year, the video involves over 700 individual photographs that were painted in camera using a small flashlight.

History Photography

The Beauty of Death: Catacomb Saints Photographed by Paul Koudounaris

In 1578 word spread of the discovery in Rome of a network of underground tombs containing the remains of thousands of early Christian martyrs. Many skeletons of these supposed saints were soon removed from their resting place and sent to Catholic churches in Europe to replace holy relics that were destroyed during the Protestant Reformation. Once in place the skeletons were then carefully reassembled and enshrined in costumes, wigs, jewels, crowns, gold lace, and armor as a physical reminder of the heavenly treasures that awaited in the afterlife.

Over the past few years photographer Paul Koudounaris who specializes in the photography of skeletal reliquaries, mummies and other aspects of death, managed to gain unprecedented access to various religious institutions to photograph many of these beautifully macabre shrines for the first time in history. The photos have been collected into a book titled Heavenly Bodies released by Thames & Hudson early next month. (via Hyperallergic)

Photography

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2013 Winners and Honorable Mentions

The results of the 2013 Wildlife Photographer of the Year were announced yesterday and a number of phenomenal images made the shortlist of 100 photographs. The annual competition now in its 49th year is led by two UK institutions, the Natural History Museum and BBC Worldwide, who collectively received 43,000 photos from 96 countries this year. The photos will begin an international tour in the UK starting in November and you can find exhibition times and dates here.

The first two images shown above, Essence of elephants by Greg du Toit of South Africa and Mother by Udayan Rao Pawar of India are the two grand title winners. The rest of the photos are a mix of both winners and runner-up selections, and you can read much more about each photograph over at Wildlife Photographer of the Year. (via My Modern Met)