Beautiful trailer for Like Crazy, a film that was shot entirely on the Canon 7D and sold for $4 million

A day in the life of New York City, in miniature, by Sam O'Hare.  This is what inspired me to start shooting time lapse photography.

The Longest Photographic Exposures in History

The German photography artist Michael Wesely used large format cameras (4x5 inches) to capture the light of his objects for up to 3 years in monochrome or colour.

In 2001 he was invited by the Museum of Modern Art in New York to use his unique technique to record the re-development of their building. He set up eight cameras in four different corners and photographed the destruction and re-building of the MoMa until 2004 - leaving the shutter open for up to 34 months!  Wesely claims that he could do exposures almost indefinitely - up to 40 years.

Check out the full article here.

What do you do when you have a large book collection? And we mean a ridiculously large collection. Well, you could live in an entire house lined with bookshelves like this one! Designed by Japan’s Kazuya Morita Architecture Studio in Moriguchi City, the entire interior of the home, which has been dubbed Shelf-Pod, is lined with an extensive latticework of laminated pine board. The designers even created a mosque-like domed roof for the house since the homeowner’s book collection consists primarily of Islamic history texts.

Sunflower Seeds is made up of millions of small works, each apparently identical, but actually unique. However realistic they may seem, these life-sized sunflower seed husks are in fact intricately hand-crafted in porcelain. 

Each seed has been individually sculpted and painted by specialists working in small-scale workshops in the Chinese city of Jingdezhen. Far from being industrially produced, they are the effort of hundreds of skilled hands. Poured into the interior of the Turbine Hall’s vast industrial space, the 100 million seeds form a seemingly infinite landscape. 

Porcelain is almost synonymous with China and, to make this work, Ai Weiwei has manipulated traditional methods of crafting what has historically been one of China’s most prized exports. Sunflower Seeds invites us to look more closely at the ‘Made in China’ phenomenon and the geo-politics of cultural and economic exchange today.

‘Another Earth’s’ Brit Marling does stardom her way

The fact that Marling is doing stardom her way will probably ring true to her classmates at Georgetown, where she majored in economics and studio art. (She grew up in Chicago and Florida.) After a summer interning at Goldman Sachs, she turned down a job offer at the investment bank, telling them she wanted to be an artist. As class valedictorian, she told the assembled students, faculty and parents that she doubted getting straight A’s was something to aspire to. Rather, it might be a sign of not being a rebellious-enough thinker or not taking enough risks.

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/rebirth/

REBIRTH is a riveting journey into living history - an act of personal witness to one of the most profound events in American history and the healing that has come in its wake. The result of a decade-long process by director Jim Whitaker, the inspirational story of REBIRTH follows the nearly ten-year transformation of five people whose lives were forever altered on September 11, 2001 - and simultaneously tracks via unprecedented multi-camera time-lapse photography the minute-by-minute evolution of the space where the Twin Towers once rose. Both a singular cinematic and human experience, REBIRTH is deeply intimate and uplifting - providing a moving portrait of how trauma and grief metamorphose into hope and rebuilding as the human spirit transcends the unthinkable over time.

High Speed Video of Popcorn Popping - 6200 fps, playback @ 25 fps

http://www.ted.com JR, a French street artist, uses his camera to show the world its true face. He makes his audacious TED Prize wish: to use art to turn the world inside out. A funny, moving talk about art and who we are. Learn more at insideoutproject.net.

JR exhibits his photographs in the biggest art gallery on the planet. His work is presented freely in the streets of the world, catching the attention of people who are not museum visitors. His work mixes Art and Action; it talks about commitment, freedom, identity and limit.  Learn more at www.tedprize.org

Camera Obscura

I love this National Geographic article about Abelardo Morell’s camera obscura.   An inverted image of New York City’s Central Park in fall splashes across walls and ceiling in a photograph using the technique of camera obscura.  Darken a room, make a small opening for light, and let the outside come in.   Photographer Abelardo Morell’s camera obscura turns darkened rooms into magical landscapes.  I will attempt my first camera obscura this weekend at Ira Lippke Studios and share the results soon.  In the meantime, check out the full article at National Geographic.