Los Angeles Twilight Approach and Landing

Surfbum published this wonderful video of a low level approach and landing at LAX Airport during a fiery red sunset. The video below is 30 actual minutes compressed into about three minutes.

The video is taken with the Canon Powershot S95 compact camera. The Canon Powershot S95 has one of the largest sensors for a compact camera. Coupled with maximum aperture of f/2.0 (wide angle view) the camera can take some really nice photos and video during low light.

 

 

If you want to see it in real time / raw video, check out the video below

Dubai Fountain playing Michael Jackson

Take a look at these videos of the Dubai Fountain show with Michael Jackson “Thriller”.

The first video is shot a little higher than what you would normally see from ground level. On the ground it is very hard to see what is going on in the back. The second video gives a very good overview of the show and you can take a good look at the patterns.

Video 1

 
Video 2

Science Comedy

Did you enjoy the ‘A Virus Walks Into a Bar’ video? It turns out that the entire talk is available on the web. Click on the photo below to start the video or click here to watch the video.

A Virus Walks Into a Bar

…and tells some jokes about viruses, bacteria, photons, neutrinos and more. Watch this funny talk by Brian Malow.

To understand the Schrödinger's cat joke better, read this.

Trajectum Lumen

Just opened in the city of Utrecht, The Netherlands: Trajectum Lumen – A Utrecht Tale of Light.
Trajectum Lumen is an exploration route through Utrecht passing a number of light installations which illuminate historical locations. These light artworks shine a new light on the old buildings :-)
Opened on 7 April 2010, this free exposition will continue until 2018. The exposition starts with 18 light artworks. There will be 25 in total when everything is finished. The ambition of Utrecht is to become the cultural capital city of Europe in 2018.
The artworks will be switched on from dusk until midnight. I am planning to see the artworks by myself (I wonder what HDR photography will do here).  If you want to know when dusk starts in Utrecht – use the application TPE to determine this. I have written about this in an earlier post.
Meanwhile, take a look at the video below and the photos from the press kit.
 


Bakkerbrug


Buurkerk
  
Ganzenmarkt

Famous Failures

Watch the video…
If you have never failed, you have never lived!

The SE-R Project

Cool car advertisement shot with a Canon 5D. Look below to see how they made this video.

What is In Your Bag? – Part 8

Damon Webster is publishing a series of videos where Kristian Dowling explaining what he is carrying in his bag. He is a Nikon shooter and also tells about the lenses he uses in part 2 and 3. In part 4 he tells about the cameras he uses.

Part 1
 
Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

The World of Abbot and Atget

Take a look at this documentary of the photographers Eugene Atget and Berenice Abbott. I have seen Atget’s photos in the BBC documentary The Genius of Photography, but I did not know that Berenice Abbot was heavily influenced by him.
The documentary is in English with Dutch subtitles and voice-over. Click here to watch it, or watch it below (requires Silverlight 2.0)

Dubai Fountain

 
Just outside the Dubai Mall one of the most beautiful attractions of Dubai can be found: The Dubai Fountain. Modeled after the one in Las Vegas, the Dubai Fountain is the world largest and one of the world’s tallest fountains.
Taking photos of the show was a little bit tricky. How to expose for the bright fountain show, while maintaining detail in the buildings in the background? I eventually settled for a high ISO to get a relatively fast shutter speed to stop the water motion while still getting some details in the buildings.
Click on the photo below to start the slideshow:

The two videos below were shot from the Waterfront Promenade.
[ Technical details: Panasonic DMC-TZ7, HD format, Motion Jpeg compression.
Make sure you select the YouTube HD format when your computer supports it: ]

The Baseballs - Umbrella

Nice remake of a popular song. When I first heard it on the radio I thought it was an unreleased Elvis Presley song and that Rihanna made a cover version…
The video looks so authentic!
Click here for the official video.

Sunrise and Sunset For (Landscape) Photographers

Being at the right place at the right time is not an easy task for photographers. Generally speaking there are only two times when you have the chance that ‘ the light is right’. This is during sunrise and sunset when the sun is low above the horizon. The sky takes on wonderful colours and the lighting is much softer than in the middle of the day. This is called the ‘golden hour’. Click here to see an example. Especially landscape photos can look great or just awful, depending on the quality of the sunlight.
The downside of this all is that you have to get up early to arrive at your photo spot before sunrise. And if that is not enough, you will stand outside taking photos during sunset while your significant other is waiting for you because normal people are having dinner at that time. So I find it very important to know when and how the sunrise/sunset will be.
I used to lookup sunrise and sunset times at NOAA but it is a little difficult because you have to jump around to enter all the values for date, time, location etc. and I had only a vague idea where the sun would be.

Now I have found ‘ The Photographers Ephemeris’  (ephemeris=a table of values that gives the position of astronomical objects in the sky on a given date and time). This (Adobe AIR) application for Windows/Mac is made by a landscape photographer for (landscape) photographers. It has a nice user interface which lets you easily change location, date, time, see where the sunlight comes, and much more. With a little work you can determine when terrain (like mountains) will block the direct sunlight on your position, or if the sun will still be visible from your vantage point. This is something I have never been able to do before.

Click on the videos to get a quick introduction on what the application can do for you!

Documentaire 'Fotograaf John Gollings - Oog voor architectuur' online

De AVRO heeft de documentaire 'Fotograaf John Gollings - Oog voor architectuur' waar ik eerder over geschreven heb online gezet. Je kan de video hierboven bekijken (Microsoft Silverlight is noodzakelijk), of klik hieronder om de uitzending te bekijken.

Gura Gear Kiboko

Gura Gear Kiboko lightweight camera bag from guragear on Vimeo.
Photographer Andy Biggs designed his own camera bag. In the video above he explains all the features.

What Is In Your Bag? – Part 4

Trey Ratcliff from www.stuckincustoms.com, well known for his HDR photos all around the world, tells what he is carrying with him on his travels.

Waiting for TRON Legacy

I still remember the days when I was playing the game Light cycle on my BBC microcomputer. This game was based on a scene in the movie TRON.
In the movie a programmer named Kevin Flynn (played by Jeff Bridges) gets sucked into an arcade machine. He has to play all kinds of computer games while trying to get out. One of them is driving on a light cycle which leaves a wall behind. The object of the game is to crash your opponent into a wall.
Coming this December, about 28 years later, the story continues. Kevin’s son hears that something is happening in his father’s place. Jeff Bridges (now an Academy Award winner :-) will make a re-appearance. 
This week the official trailer for TRON: Legacy has been released (the video above).  I am planning to watch this movie because it reminds me of the good old science fiction movies of the eighties like TRON (a no-brainer) but also Blade Runner, War Games, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial and Firefox.

Left Brain and Right Brain

When taking a photo very interesting things happen in your brain. Your left brain (or hemisphere) tries to operate the digital camera. You right hemisphere tries to make a pretty composition. The left hemisphere operates serially, linearly and methodically, is about past and future and thinks in language. The right hemisphere is a parallel processor, thinks about the present, the right here and know, and in pictures.

To get a better understanding of the differences between the left and the right hemisphere, please take a look at the video of dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. She is a neuroanatomist and suffered a stroke in the left hemisphere of her brain. She studied what happened with her brain during her eight year recovery.