goldengod

If you make it halfway through listening to a cover of “Tainted Love” before you realize it’s in French, you need sleep! I’ve been really active online this week so I’ve got six quality links for you to look at and even more sitting in my queue for next week:

• Canon Announces EOS 1D Mk III DSLR - Canon announces the new model of my dream camera, including the ‘live lcd’ feature for the first time on a Canon DSLR. No price or release date yet.
• Photo Illusions - A cool collection of photographic illusions in which a hand holds a printed photo or other object in the frame.
• Spot Runner - Buy niche television advertising all over the US for under $100. Who wants to make nonsensical ads and run them in Fargo?
• Jeff Han’s Multitouch - Technology genius Jeff Han demonstrates a much larger version of his now-famous touch screen interface.
• Where to Find Fresh Blogs - Chris Garrett gives you five ways to discover new blogs and five ways to get your blog discovered.
• The End of Hollywood - David Louis Edelman looks at why the Hollywood movie industry is dying and what they can do to turn the whole thing around.

Check back again tomorrow for another update, possibly involving dirty pictures of your mother!

In a hilarious turn of events, a prankster in Switzerland convinced a major Swiss newspaper to publish a two-page fake Gucci ad. The ad features a picture of the prankster himself, posing topless with a bottle of Gucci perfume.

Not only did he manage to get his fake Gucci ad published, but he avoided having to pay for it. The prankster arranged for the $50,000 perfume ad bill to be sent directly to Gucci. Swiss police are currently looking for him with the intention of pressing fraud charges.

This also isn’t the first time he’s tried to pull of a major prank:

According to the Zurich-based daily Blick, the man attempted to book concert venues by passing himself off as Puerto Rican singer Chayanne. The paper said it narrowly avoided also being conned, but was tipped of the hoax by record company Sony BMG, which represents Chayanne.

I’m impressed. This man ranks right up there with the ZUG and Improv Everywhere crews as one of my favourite pranksters. Check out the AP coverage for further details.

Flipping through my archives, I’ve come across a photoset of an abandoned theme park somewhere in Asia. They’re hauntingly beautiful, like someone’s long-forgotten childhood.

Unfortunately, they’re hosted on one of those sites that just posts collections of interesting photos without providing any context. I can drool over them, but I don’t know the exact location Aand I can’t email the photographer to tell him I think his work is amazing.

This is where you come in. I need your help, Internets. Since I know so many people who go searching for this kind of cool stuff on the Internet, I’m hoping one of you has some additional information about these photos I can use.

If you know anything about the photographer or location, please leave a comment and let me know. These photos are phenomenal and I’d really like to know more about where this is or who shot it.

I found some sexy photography links this week. If high quality glass and light-sensitive chemicals make you horny baby, click here like you’ve never clicked before. And for the love of Justin Timberlake, clean up after yourselves!

• How to measure anything with a camera and software - There is some hella useful stuff on this list that I’m going to start using right away, some of these are a must if you use Flickr.
• Erwin Olaf - An amazing art photographer. Jhayne originally brought her to my attention with the Royal Blood series, but I’ve been looking at her work for the New York Times lately.
• 5 Things You Need to Know About SLR Lenses - A short simple article on the features you need to look at when buying an SLR lens.
• Ultimate Creativity - An unattributed collection of photographs that show some impressive Photoshop work.
• Johnson Tiles Turn Digital Photos Into Wall Art - For a price, you can have any digital photo or piece of artwork permanently printed onto floor, wall, or bathroom tiles.
• Kids, the Internet, and the End of Privacy - A long read, but an excellent one. New York Magazine’s Emily Nussbaum write about “The Greatest Generation Gap Since Rock and Roll.”

I mean it, clean that mess up or I will turn this website right around young man!

Project 365 by Brian Larter

My friend Brian Larter has embarked on a unique photographic journey for 2007. He has challenged himself to take at least one photo every day for the whole year and is posting the results on his website.

The project, part challenge and part New Year’s resolution, was created by Taylor McKnight. When the project began in 2004, he didn’t think it would catch on.

Now there’s a Flickr pool with over 400 participating members. Photojojo has three great reasons for you to join those 400 and try out this idea:

• Imagine being able to look back at any day of your year and recall what you did, who you met, what you learned… (Often we find it hard to remember what we did just yesterday or even last night, let alone a whole year ago!)
• Your year-long photo album will be an amazing way to document your travels and accomplishments, your haircuts and relationships. Time moves surprisingly fast.
• Taking a photo a day will make you a better photographer. Using your camera every day will help you learn its limits. You will get better at composing your shots, you’ll start to care about lighting, and you’ll become more creative with your photography when you’re forced to come up with something new every single day.

When Brian originally told me he planned on doing this, I considered joining him. Hell, I still consider taking a crack at it. I’ve decided not to, though, because my plate is still a bit full with the Year of Faith.

I’m really glad he’s doing it, I love following it. It’s like watching a TV show on the evolution of the modern photographer. I try and look for ways that he’s improved with each photo and think about how I can improve mine.

An added bonus for me is that it’s a glimpse into the daily life of someone that I’ve known for a long time, but never very well until more recently. Brian and I have been vaguely aware of each other for about six or seven years now, but only in the past year or two have we made the jump from acquaintances to friends.

If you’re a photographer and you want to improve your skills while investing only a small amount of time each day, give this a shot. Send me the link!

The reports of my apathy have been greatly under-exaggerated.

I apologize to leaving you guys hanging, but I took a much needed blog vacation for a couple weeks. I’ve been feeling a lot less energetic this month and I needed to just take a break to recoup. I’m not sure if it’s February doldrums or if the changes in my diet caused the massive apathy, but it seems to have passed.

Either way, I am back and another word that rhymes with back. I am listening to Andrew W.K., working, and attempting to help a friend with job issues. Regular update schedule returns tomorrow with a post every two days and a link dump on Wednesdays.

In the meantime, go ahead and reread some of my more popular content to get your fix:

• Vancouver Zombiewalk 2006 CBC Footage
• Digg Rigged Drama Bigg
• Francois Brunelle’s Doppelgangers
• Illuminares 2006 Photo Update
• New Bravia Ad Launch

Leica IIIf by selva

Researchers at Rice University are currently working on a single-pixel camera, designed to correct the inefficiencies of modern digital cameras.

I’ve written about the Megapixel Myth before, but you’ve got to be thinking that a solitary pixel is a tad small. A recent BBC article provides an explanation of the project:

Instead of taking the light from an object through a lens and focusing it on a pixel array, we actually reflect it off an array of mirrors. This digital micromirror device, as it is known, consists of a million or more tiny mirrors each the size of a bacterium. From that mirror array, we then focus the light through a second lens on to one single photo-detector - a single pixel.

As the light passes through the device, the millions of tiny mirrors are turned on and off at random in rapid succession. Complex mathematics then interprets the signals assembling a high resolution image from the thousands of sequential single-pixel snapshots.

(found via SCI FI Blog)