Wow:

We love VR. We love taking pictures. So we figured, why not try smashing the two together?

Sprayscape is a quick hack using the phone’s gyroscope to take pictures on the inside of a 360-degree sphere. Just point your phone and tap the screen to spray faces, places, or anything else onto your canvas. Like what you’ve captured? Share your creations via a link and your friends can jump into your scapes and have a look around using their phones or even Google Cardboard.

https://youtu.be/6o3_m4-YH9U[

 Nerdy details from the team:

 Sprayscape is built in Unity with native Android support. Sprayscape maps the camera feed on a 360 degree sphere, using the Cardboard SDK to handle gyroscope data and the NatCam Unity plugin for precise camera control.

The GPU makes it all possible. On user tap or touch, the camera feed is rendered to a texture at a rate of 60 frames per second. That texture is then composited with any existing textures by a fragment shader on the GPU. That same shader also creates the scape you see in app, handling the projection from 2D camera to a 360 sphere.

When a user saves a scape, a flat panorama image is stored in the app data. When a user shares a scape, the three.js web viewer takes that flat image and wraps it to a sphere, making it navigable on mobile web by panning, tilting, and moving your device.

[YouTube] [Via]

In the word of Beavis, “Fire… Fire.”

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Chuck that Dan Brown shite into some molten rock & peep this Inferno instead. (I mean, I’d listen to Werner read the phone book, and here he is talking volcanoes, for God’s sake.)

Werner Herzog’s latest documentary, Into the Inferno, heads just where its title suggests: into the red-hot magma-filled craters of some of the world’s most active and astonishing volcanoes—taking the filmmaker on one of the most extreme tours of his long career. From North Korea to Ethiopia to Iceland to the Vanuatu Archipelago, humans have created narratives to make sense of volcanoes; as stated by Herzog, “volcanoes could not care less what we are doing up here.” Into the Inferno teams Herzog with esteemed volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer to offer not only an in-depth exploration of volcanoes across the globe but also an examination of the belief systems that human beings have created around the fiery phenomena.

[YouTube] [Via]

whoa-oh-oh, I’m on fire…

Yan Liang of The Beauty of Science captures lovely combustion:

And if that’s up your alley, try some crystal:

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Amazing backyard pyrotechnics from The Slow Mo Guys:

“In total,” notes PetaPixel, “that explosion they captured lasted just 0.010004 seconds but they can stretch it out to a total of 50 seconds at 24fps. Bonkers.”

[YouTube]

From Boston to Benghazi, photogs are headed out to create beauty & raise money for a good cause. Scott Kelby writes:

If you haven’t signed up head over to the official site and see if there’s a photo walk set-up near you (if you haven’t checked in a while, it’s worth checking again – we have photo walks organized in over 1,000 cities with over 20,000 photographers walking around the world. – It’s not too late to sign up!)

Find a walk near you (it’s free).

Can’t walk? You can still help support the Photo Walk by supporting The Springs Of Hope Kenya Orphanage.

Don’t forget to share the event with your friends on Facebook or Twitter and use the event hashtag #WWPW2016.

 “POV: Preserve, Organize, Visualize”—that’s always been my mnemonic for Google Photos: your intelligent assistant should keep everything safe, help you navigate it through intelligent auto-organization, and then make it delightful to see & share the results.

Things are taking a big step forward with the introduction of concept movies:

Google Photos has always made movies for you using your recently uploaded photos. Now we’re going further, with new movies that are based on creative concepts — the kinds of movies you might make yourself, if you just had the time. And they’re not only limited to your most recent uploads. One of the first concepts is designed to show your child growing up right before your eyes.

Here’s a little capsule of my son Henry, made with zero work from me:

https://youtu.be/aNiu5mkyBns 


My fam has been loving these. When I sent her the Henry video, my wife said,

Oh my God, honestly? I’m all smiles. It’s so cute!!! The music is really perfect and the timing of shots against the music is also great. I’m feeling all mushy now.

And this is just the beginning:

We’re rolling out a couple more concepts this week, with more coming soon. Look out for a concept to commemorate the good times from this summer, and another one for formal events like weddings. And you don’t need to do a thing — these movies get made automatically for you.

As always, your feedback is most appreciated!

[YouTube]

Watching David Weiller’s footage of this Lychen Katydid from Costa Rica, I’m reminded of an old Creature Comforts bit featuring some animal being distinctly unimpressed with stick bugs: “Have you seen my impression of a stick? Yes.” (Damn if I can find the exact episode just now.) Anyway, here it is, your moment of specially evolved zen:

[YouTube] [Via]

Saving Private Ryan’s grueling first 28 minutes are iconic, but Evan Puschak provides a level of background (e.g. comparing the footage to battlefield films like John Ford’s The Battle of Midway) and insight I hadn’t heard before. Check it out:


 [YouTube] [Via]

This is your DSLR.
This is your DSLR creeping along wires via a little drone cart doohickus. 

Awesome. Check out the demo & read more at PetaPixel. 


[YouTube]

Where we’re going, we won’t *need* waves…

Gizmodo writes,

Freefly Systems’ Alta 8, designed to carry heavy video equipment, has eight rotors making it strong enough to tow a surfer on a wakeboard. Say hello to the new sport of dronesurfing where waves aren’t necessary.

[YouTube]

Watch a camera-wearing eagle named Darshan plunge off the top of the Burj Khalifa—and just wait til he turns on the jets:

FREEDOM is delivering its message to urban audiences by capturing never-before-seen footage taken from the backs of Eagle’s flying from iconic city landmarks. Flights have taken place from the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Tower Bridge, St Paul’s Cathedral, and the ArcelorMittal Orbit in London. … As a partnership FREEDOM is a pioneering movement for the conservation community. It not only seeks to reintroduce threatened birds of prey, but it also serves an ambassador role for all species, highlighting ways for people and organisations to become involved in supporting effective frontline nature conservation programmes.

The only thing that could improve the footage is Danzig pumping out a little Where Eagles Dare.

I’m not sure about all this “Darshan” talk, though. You know damn well it’s Donald.

[YouTube] [Via]

Wow.

“Using a GoPro Hero4 Session,” PetaPixel writes, “the clip puts you in the driver’s seat of a Hot Wheels car as it hurtles down 8 expertly crafted pieces of track connected by ‘teleporting tunnels…’ In all the car traversed about 200ft of track, most of it in the 4th section. As for the underwater drive, it’s real too.”

[YouTube] [Via Maria Brenny]

If somebody made Grand Theft Walnut, I’ll bet it’d look a lot like this:


 [YouTube]

Here it is, your moment of Zen:

[Vimeo] [Via]

“Some of these end up looking like decaying clowns,” writes Jason Kottke. Well put. Now enjoy a little unexpectedly beautiful macro photography:

[YouTube]

The results of Plotagraph Pro, which enables warping still images to create animations, look pretty interesting (see below), though at a subscription rate of $300 (roughly 2.5x that of Photoshop & Lightroom combined), I think it’ll be a challenging sell. You can see the tool in action via a tutorial on the site.

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Check this out: 

A new personalized image search engine developed by a University of Washington computer vision researcher called Dreambit lets a person imagine how they would look a with different a hairstyle or color, or in a different time period, age, country or anything else that can be queried in an image search engine.

After uploading an input photo, you type in a search term — such as “curly hair,” “India” or “1930s.” The software’s algorithms mine Internet photo collections for similar images in that category and seamlessly map the person’s face onto the results.

Beyond obvious fun & beauty applications, tech like this could be amazing for the age-progression work of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

[YouTube] [Via]

Props to Le Cut Studio and their DJI Phantom 4 drone: 

[YouTube] [Via]

Tired of waiting for Street View cars to capture the beautiful, winding roads of the Faroe Islands, local residents have devised SheepView360! Resident Durita Dahl Andreassen writes,

I gently placed a 360˚ camera, powered by a solar panel, on the back of a sheep that would take photographs as the animal freely grazed the open hillsides of the Faroe Islands. Photos are then transmitted back to my mobile phone so that I can upload them to Google Street View myself, finally putting the Faroes on the map in a very unique way!

Sometimes, in an often dark & sad world, someone—and some sheep—go and make it less so.

Cool stuff from GoPro, though I’d have liked a bit more detail on the actual camera/lighting settings: 

Please note PetaPixel’s important note of caution:

Warning: This photography technique can be very dangerous and can cause serious bodily injuries and damage to a place if not done in a safe and controlled manner. In 2016 alone, steel wool photography has been blamed for burning down an iconic shipwreck and a 1920s landmark. Thus, it should only be done with appropriate care for surroundings, adequate safety equipment, and permission to use the specific location.

[YouTube]

I dig the sharp, split-screen editing of these bodies in motion:

Inspired by the mythological chimera—a fierce hybrid of a lion and a goat with a snake’s head for a tail—director Steven Briand’s balletic short sees dancers merge three unique movement styles through a single sequence, all choreographed by MIA collaborator Cathy Ematchoua.

[Vimeo] [Via]

Sure, it’s no “frickin’ laser beam,” but the GoPro on this ill-tempered sea bass’s shark’s fin offers a novel perspective:

I’ll be honest, I was kinda bewildered when I first encountered this new mode in Photoshop the other day. As usual, though, spending a couple of minutes with Julieanne Kost adds a lot of clarity:

Bonus phrase: “100% mountain goat.”

[YouTube]

RIP Wun Wun.

[Vimeo] [Via]

Check out Rufus Blackwell’s lovely, time-warping tour of Saigon, shot through a DJI Osmo camera:

[YouTube] [Via]

Lovely. PetaPixel writes,

Google Maps and Google Earth just got a whole lot sharper thanks to NASA and its Landsat 8 satellite. Using beautiful high-res imagery captured by the new satellite, Google has built a better high-res cloud-free mosaic of the world based on some 700 trillion pixels of data.

Check out the difference below:

See the team blog post for examples & interesting details:

Like our previous mosaic, we mined data from nearly a petabyte of Landsat imagery—that’s more than 700 trillion individual pixels—to choose the best cloud-free pixels. To put that in perspective, 700 trillion pixels is 7,000 times more pixels than the estimated number of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, or 70 times more pixels than the estimated number of galaxies in the Universe.

This thing is beyond bananas:

The Mill has created The Mill BLACKBIRD, the first fully adjustable car rig that creates photoreal CG cars – it’s a car rig that can be shot at any time, in any location, without the need to rely on a physical car. Created in collaboration with JemFX, Performance Filmworks and Keslow, Mill Blackbird inspires and expands creative opportunities, offering a truly flexible production tool without sacrificing any quality or direction.

[YouTube] [Via Scott Valentine]

“Visiting The Gates was one of the highlights of my life,” says Margot wistfully, wishing we could make it to Italy to walk on the Floating Piers. At least this short film gets us closer:

Visitors can experience this work of art by walking on it from Sulzano to Monte Isola and to the island of San Paolo, which is framed by The Floating Piers. The mountains surrounding the lake offer a bird’s-eye view of The Floating Piers, exposing unnoticed angles and altering perspectives. Lake Iseo is located 100 kilometers east of Milan and 200 kilometers west of Venice.

“Like all of our projects, The Floating Piers is absolutely free and accessible 24 hours a day, weather permitting,” said Christo. “There are no tickets, no openings, no reservations and no owners. The Floating Piers are an extension of the street and belong to everyone.”

[YouTube] [Via]

Why do I keep waiting for the apocalyptic flash here?

“Las Vegas In Infrared” is a new 4-minute short film by Philip Bloom, who visited Las Vegas with a Sony RX100 IV that had been modified for infrared photography through having its filter removed. Most of what you see was shot from a moving vehicle with 2 second bursts at 250fps through a 665nm filter.

[Via] [YouTube]