Google Hosts LIFE Photo Archive

posted by Jaitu at 07:53

Google is hosting the photographic archive of LIFE Magazine. The collection includes photographs and etchings dating back as far as the 1750's. The archive is still being populated and once complete should hold in the region of 20 million images. It is fully searchable (naturally, this *is* Google) and each entry has it's own page with additional information. It's an enormous and diverse collection of images and most of them at reasonably high resolutions too.

Go take a look: http://images.google.com/hosted/life

Real World Guitar Hero On A Bike

posted by Jaitu at 07:46

Okay the title may be a little misleading as there is no-one actually playing Guitar Hero in this clip. Instead you have a guy riding his bike along a route that has been marked out with the fret board arrangement for "Prisoner Of Society" by The Living End as you would see find it on Guitar Hero with the difficulty set to hard.
Along with the incidental details, like the occasional pyrotechnic, one easily missed but excellent detail is the LED strip across the handle bars that flash in the correct sequence and in time with the floor markings.

Originally seen on : laughingsquid.com

The Art Of Can Throwing

posted by Jaitu at 21:11

This is one of those not-cool-but-cool clips that pop up regularly.
In it a bunch of French guys throw cans into bins. They must have done these many, many times in order to catch the attempts that worked. The thing I find entertaining about it is that they maintain the nonchalant "meant it" faces in every shot.

Tilt-Shift Time-Lapse

posted by Jaitu at 20:59

I have a passing interest in photography and movie making, though I've never gone so far as to make a movie. The following clip is an example of two techniques I find fascinating combined in a fantastic sum-of-it's-parts result.
Tilt-shift lenses allow narrow bands of focus to be enforced in photos taken over large distances. In effect this gives everything the appearance of being a miniature model photographed in macro.
Time-lapse is the art of taking photos (or movie frames) at extended regular intervals and then playing them back in sequence allowing giving the impression of sped up activity.
The following clip combines both which results in a bizarre miniature Sydney under the microscope.

Bathtub III from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.