In the category of "Things Only a Photographer Would Do," I bring you the cell phone of Flickr use Joey_joey_joey, whose birth certificate was evidently completed in triplicate.
Joey3 took his new iPhone 4 and customized some decals to make it look like a Leica — right down to the red-dot logo.
While doing photo work in Yellowstone National Park two months ago, I stopped at a pulloff from Dunraven Pass in the Washburn Range. I walked a bit, crossed over a knoll and came across a fantastic vista overlooking a huge valley, pastures and mountains.
The walk had left me a bit out of breath (I referred to each hike as high-altitude training for softball). Still, I felt compelled to return to the car, get a camera and return so I could shoot a series of 14 photographs as raw materials to make a QuickTime VR panorama.
A QuickTime VR uses stitched-together photos to create a 360-degree scene. Using your computer's mouse, you can see everything as if you were there — it virtually puts you right in the middle of the landscape.
The article includes a decent gallery of meteor-shower photography and paintings, a link to optimal viewing locales in the Northern Hemisphere, a good explanation of what causes the showers, and a history of their source comet's discovery.
On a related note, regular readers may remember that I spent an overnight photographing a meteor shower last year. While I didn't luck into any meteor streaks in my photos, I did manage to produce what I thought was a nice night landscape: "Starry Night, Cornwall."
This week presents another astrophotography opportunity: The annual Perseid meteor shower is hitting its peak.
The showers have technically already begun, but the best of the show will be tomorrow and Friday, August 12 and 13. Predictions for this year's display call for upward of 80 visible meteors per hour.
PopPhoto.com has published an interesting photo essay about interesting lenses manufactured in the last few decades.
Lenses covered range from a 1700mm f/4 to a 200-500mm f/2.8 to a 50mm f/.95 to a 6mm fisheye and more. These are the extremes of the extremes in photographic glass.
When planning my trip to photograph Yellowstone National Park this summer, I faced an interesting conundrum. I wanted to be there in July; my schedule was more accommodating in July; the weather would be warmer in July. However, everything I read about shooting Yellowstone said to avoid July, because that's the month when most people visit.
The problem isn't that I don't like people. It's that lots of people come in lots of cars, which in turn inhibits a Yellowstone photographer from getting lots of work done.
So I went in June instead, despite the inconvenience and the cool weather. Turns out that was an excellent decision.
This July was not only the park's busiest month of 2010, it was also the park's busiest month ever.
For the first time a few years, the sun has launched a major solar flare directly toward Earth. The eruption was expected to hit our planet sometime today, causing effects as diverse as disrupting satellites to creating dramatic light shows in the higher latitudes tonight.
The latter is the reason for this post. Photographers around the upper reaches of the globe may have an opportunity to shoot fantastic images of an aurora borealis, a rare opportunity for summer.
