- People as smoke: the simple tricks of long exposure produce a ghostly presence. [Via Marc Pawliger]
- The Big Picture showcases the wrath of nature:
- I used to play soccer against the guys from Cedar Rapids, IA, and I hate seeing the city submerged. Scroll down as the photography gets more and more striking.
- Smoke from the northern California fires cast a bizarre light over the Bay Area last week. Apparently the T1000 got caught in the flames.
- Vintage photo manipulation:
- Wired New York features a wealth of early photos of the city. Among them you can find at least one example of rudimentary (yet surprisingly decent) photo manipulation.
- Sam Haskins talks a bit about how composite photos were made in the time before Photoshop and shows an example. "At the time there was zero retouching after the event. Now of course I have the luxury of scanning the transparency to clean and refine the image in Photoshop – God bless its digital socks." [Via]
- Doing their own thing:
- Phillip Toledano has created a photo essay of phone sex operators–a surprisingly articulate, diverse, and self-aware crew. (Fair warning: The photos are tame, but some of the blurbs beneath them are fairly frank.) [Via]
- Return of the ’70s Weirdos features 1978 & 2008 photos of a group of early Microsoft employees. [Via] Referring to aging dudes working for MSFT these days, a friend of mine calls the shuttle bus from Seattle to Redmond "The Ponytail Express."
- You never know what you’ll find via the American Gothic tag on Flickr. [Via]
I bought two old books on airbrush retouching. My plan was to scan them and put them online, but I soon realized the copyright nightmare that would cause (they weren’t quite as old as I hoped). A fascinating read, but perversely disappointing. In a world where “10 easy tips for Photoshop retouching” is daily blog fare (and a basis for at least one exceptional website), reading about genuine painting artistry is simultaneously thrilling and anticlimactic.