This is lovely—especially from a safe, dry distance:

PetaPixel writes,

A couple of years ago, adventure photographer and Visit Austria creator Peter Maier captured a stunning rainstorm timelapse titled ‘Tsunami from Heaven’… It was captured from the Alpengasthof Bergfried hotel in Carinthia, Austria, and shows a sudden cloudburst (AKA microburst or downburst) soaking an area around Lake Millstatt. 

Filmed near here just a few weeks ago, this 10-minute documentary is utterly gripping. I can’t get over the unflappability of the firefighters, or the borderline-suicidal intransigence of some homeowners. Bummer that I can’t embed it, but I think you’ll find it well worth your time.

[Via Bill Hughes]

Seems like a win:

With the newly launched “Rights Manager for Images,” Facebook is offering creators and publishers access to content-matching technology similar to what it introduced in 2016 to combat stolen videos. The new feature, which is available in Facebook’s Creator Studio, will allow rights owners to assert control over their intellectual property across Facebook and Instagram, including when the image is embedded on an external website.

“One thing we can never say… is that we haven’t been told…” 😑🔥

Hats off—and wings up—to Prof. Adrian Smith & team from NC State:

[They] utilized a black light to attract unusual insects, like a plume moth, eastern firefly, and a rosy maple moth that, as Smith notes, resembles “a flying muppet.” He then recorded the creatures’ flight maneuvers at 3,200 fps to capture their unique wing movements, which he explains during each step. 

Let your freaky proboscises fly:

[Via]

I’m not sure what’s most bonkers: the existence of this vehicle at the turn of the last century; its continued existence & operation ~120 years and two world wars later; or the advances in machine learning that allow this level of film restoration & enhancement:

Denis Shiryaev of Neural Love then took the original footage and used a neural network to upscale it to 4K. He also colorized it, stabilized it, slowed it down to better represent real-time, and boosted the frame rate to 60fps.

Check out the results:

[Via]

I have no inside info on this one, but it sounds like a positive development. PetaPixel writes,

Google Images is continuing to make changes that benefit photographers. The image search engine is testing a new “Licensable” badge that aims to help photographers sell their photos through search results. […]

By specifying licensing information for the photos on your website, Google will automatically add a new “Licensable” badge to the photo’s thumbnail whenever it shows up in Google Images results. The badge tells viewers that license information is available for the photo.

Check out this post from PhotoShelter’s founder, who seems enthusiastic, for many details.

Fond memories of my childhood attempts to string up bed sheets to make ski slopes for my Lego guys came rushing back as I saw the miniature work of Tatsua Tanaka. As PetaPixel writes,

Tatsuya Tanaka is a master of turning everyday objects into miniature worlds that seem larger than life. He’s been doing it daily for almost a decade, and in the midst of the COVID pandemic, he’s started to integrate some all-too-familiar objects into his work.

We first featured Tanaka’s impressive dioramas six years ago, and believe it or not, he hasn’t stopped. Every day since April 2011 he’s created a new miniature world by pairing high-quality human figurines with everyday objects arranged into fun and creative scenes.

All hail the eye-popping (JEEZDAD!—there, I said it for you) glory of ultra slow motion.

[Via]

What a terrible shame. From Daily Overview:

The tools for drawing out lighting strikes & lens flares look really fun. Of the whole suite PetaPixel writes,

Optics is described as “the definitive digital toolbox for photos,” but what it offers is maybe better described as a comprehensive mishmash of filters, presets, lighting effects and lens flares… with some masking technology thrown in for good measure. It’s honestly hard to tell what Optics is primarily meant to do, because it does so much.

Here, check it out:

If you’re curious and want to try out Optics, you can learn more about the plugin and/or download a free trial on the Boris FX website. And if you actually want to buy a copy for yourself, you can purchase a permanent license for $149, an annual subscription for $99, or a monthly subscription for $9.

On YouTube the company notes, “25% off permanent licenses and subscription options. Use coupon code: optics25.”

Masterful match-cuts; moving message.

Muse writes,

The W+K team—working with Pulse Films director Oscar Hudson, Joint editors Peter Wiedensmith and Jessica Baclesse, and the visual effects team at A52—researched 4,000 sports action sequences and chose 72 of them to combine into 36 split-screen moments, where the action on both sides appears to meld into one.

Nike’s not alone in leaning into juxtaposition in a time of ‘rona: check out this fun, cheeky campaign for German rail travel, built in part using an algorithm that searches for visual similarities:

[Via Peyman Milanfar & Mogan Shieh]

I really enjoy being taken inside the craft of visual storytelling, so I dug this step-by-step narrative of the techniques used in & around Carl Weathers’ character’s death in Predator.

It’s especially interesting to contrast the sophistication on display with the cornball simplicity of Commando, a prototypical Ahnuld joint made just two years earlier. Now that my boys are getting just old enough to watch these flicks, we’re going back through the canon, making the quality uptick here all the more striking.

Now, lemme know if someone has documented the inside story of Bill Duke’s inspired “I’m gonna have me some fun” freak-out. Meanwhile, here he is representin’ on our fam’s last Yosemite trip.

Stunning.

With the help of a polarized light microscope, THE VIBRANCY records the fascinating crystallization processes of various substances. The film is the sequel of THE ARCTIC, and the 26th film of the Envisioning Chemistry series. For more images please visit The Vibrancy or Behance.

[Via PetaPixel]

The fam & have safely returned to scintillating (🙄😌) San Jose, tired & happy from our two-week sojourn around the American Southwest. I hope to get back to sharing interesting bits here soon. Meanwhile, here’s a fun little bullet time vid I made in Arches National Park using my indispensible Insta360 One X:

 

 

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chillin’ like an arch villain

A post shared by John Nack (@jnack) on Jul 2, 2020 at 8:23pm PDT

Many years ago, I trekked with fellow Photoshop PM Bryan O’Neil Hughes to explore Death Valley’s Racetrack Playa. It was just as amazing as one would hope, even if it cost us a tire and a couple of blown-out shocks.

I think back to this fondly upon seeing Russell Brown, Eric Paré and Jeremy Verinsky venture out to the ‘track to capture some beautiful light paintings:

When Google debuted Night Sight mode on the Pixel 3, I was blown away at how well it worked compared to my iPhone X & even my DSLR. In the time since then, Apple has greatly stepped up its game, but I still find Night Sight (now on Pixel 4) to be unmatched for low-light imaging.

Having test-driven Pixel 3 at light artist Bruce Munro’s installation in Saratoga (gallery), I was excited to visit his new work, Sensorio, in Paso Robles. Happily both the installation and the Pixel 4 dazzled. You can check out some results here:

To my slight chagrin—having been a naysayer about turning Camera Raw into a filter one can use in Photoshop, on the grounds that doing so would be a crutch at a time when Adobe should do the hard work of revamping a motley set of disparate, 30-year-old adjustment dialogs—I find myself hitting Shift-Cmd-A all the damn time. Thus I’m glad to see the UI freshened up & tools made easier to access:

As for getting the rest of the adjustments-house in order, I wasn’t wrong, but ACR-in-PS gives me fewer reasons to care. On we go!

Constraint -> Creativity. Christopher Dormoy writes,

Having to stay home does not mean less creation. It is time to observe and experience elements and details of our daily life that we find at home.

I wanted to play with ice, flower and ink and see what kind of universe I can created with the macro and motion timelapse technique. I spent many hours to observe and experiment the ice and how it react with liquids like ink but also, oil, paint and soap. Some effects are hypnotic and surprising.

“Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.” ― Walker Evans.

[Via]

…or at least, the 64K-🐢 drone footage. Aerial cameras + workers wielding giant rollers full of temporary white paint are helping count these magnificent old dudes. (I think I spotted Crush down there…)

Constraint -> Creativity: Travel photographer Erin Sullivan has put her time at home to really fun use, conjuring tiny worlds using household objects & vegetables. Check out this gallery on My Modern Met.

Check out the NYT’s gallery. I marvel at this incredible outpouring of solidarity around the world, from Berlin to Australia & beyond:

LA TODAY!!!!! #BlackLivesMattters #GeorgeFloyd pic.twitter.com/Cy5CJU5Lh0

— Ron Kurokawa (@ronkurokawa) June 8, 2020

I’m very pleased to see that after happily finding a new post-Google home with DxO, the Nik Collection has hit version 3.0, offering non-destructive editing, perspective correction, and more.

Among the notable changes:

By taking advantage of the TIFF MULTIPAGE file format, the plugin suite is able to combine “the input image, the saved Nik editing parameters, and the output file” into a single file. DxO claims this as a “first” for a suite of creative photo plugins, resulting in “unparalleled versatility.”

As for pricing & availability:

The Nik Collection 3 was launched early this morning and is available to purchase right away for a “special introductory price” of $100 for new users, or $60 for upgrades. Come July 1st, the collection will go back up to its MSRP of $150 for new users or $80 for upgrades.

You can download the trial version here.

As society whirls around us, I take a certain kind of comfort in seeing the planet keep whirling as well.

Colossal writes,

With a camera peering out over the landscape of Tivoli, Namibia, Bartosz Wojczyński focused on the sky. The Polish photographer created a hypnotic timelapse spanning 24 hours that has a focal point in the atmosphere rather than on the land. Each minute, he snapped a frame that subsequently was looped 60 times to create the final 24-minute version that’s a mesmerizing look at Earth’s cycles.

Come with me, my-yyyy love, into the Ningaloo Canyons in 4K…

Colossal notes,

Spanning 180 hours in total, the underwater adventure led to the discovery of more than 30 new aquatic species, in addition to the longest animal ever recorded. A member of the Apolemia genus, the record-breaking organism reaches an unprecedented 154 feet.

Arthur Cauty has created an interesting “exercise in light painting and parallax displacement to create the illusion of 3D (or 2.5D) and motion in a series of still photographs captured after nightfall.”

This film is comprised entirely of still images. All motion achieved in post production. The only time lapse shots are the star trails. All other shots are typically comprised of between 3 and 5 exposures of the same subject, but with different lighting in each, then blended together or transitioned between to give the effect of seamless motion.

“Who would have thought an anthropomorphized camera crane could bring joy to thousands of camera nerds the world over,” writes PetaPixel. And yet here we are, and I’m charmed. 😌

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Rapid Motion Camera (@rapid.camera) on May 4, 2020 at 8:04am PDT

What in the what what?

As PetaPixel writes,

Engineer and YouTuber Ben Krasnow over at Applied Science has put together a fascinating little optical demonstration that explains the physics behind ‘hypercentric’ optics and how they allow you to see around and behind objects. He even shows you how to build your own.

See their post (and of course the video itself) for details.

Days of Miracles and Wonder, part 3,293… 😳🚁🦋

Kottke writes,

For an upcoming episode of a show called Spy in the Wild, PBS’s Nature used a tiny drone disguised as a hummingbird to capture footage of a swarm of half a billion monarch butterflies as they overwinter in Mexico.

And of course I can’t let butterfly footage go by without gratuitously showing one of my favorite kid videos ever, captured of my then- (and now-) mysterious son Henry at age 2:

[Via]

I imagine you’re as fatigued by all this stuff as I am—but honestly this piece is really touching & beautifully composed.

Spanning more than 30 countries, the film includes a breadth of perspectives, from a 93-year old Malayan grandmother to a 19-year old Slovenian man, and includes an original score that was remotely performed by musicians from around the world.

[Via]

You’re up, Philly:

And you, London:

I can’t help thinking of The Road:

Fin.

How much do I love that after 35+ years doing this, Russell is still doing things like popping out of bed at 3am with madcap energy, just to make something beautiful? Enjoy:

😲

Beginning with a man blowing his lips, an impressive compilation by Donato Sansone merges short clips of car crashes, fiery explosions, and punches thrown during a boxing match into a believable series of consequences. 

[Vimeo] [Via]

Damn… I never thought I’d see this—not ever to such a degree. Thank God at least that people are taking social distancing so seriously.

[YouTube] [Via]

TBH the last thing I want is for coronavirus talk to infect (ahem) my escapist art-posting, but I’ve gotta give Markus Hofstätter props for the sheer effort he put into making this 7-frame animation with archaic tintype printing (or as my wife asked, lacking all context, “Why did that dude put a picture into a panini press?”). You can watch his process from the beginning (and check out PetaPixel for the full story), or just jump to the finished animation at the end:

[YouTube]

Hmm—apparently Ricoh (maker of my O.G. Theta 360 camera) is planning to spin off a new company to make tiny, consumer cams. I wonder, do normal folks see enough value in making tiny planets or in posting interactive panos to make this take off? I guess we shall see.

[YouTube]

So cool! I’d never actually watched these Apollo 16 clips on their own, unedited & with original dialog intact.

PetaPixel writes,

For this particular project, Shiryaev used the stabilized version of the footage that NASA itself released in July of 2019 as a baseline. He then fed it through the same AI software that he’s been using to upscale all of the videos he’s released: Google’s DAIN interpolate frames and achieve 60fps, and Topaz Labs’ Gigapixel AI to upscale each frame and achieve 4K resolution. 

More about the mission from NASA:

[YouTube 1 & 2]