28 July 2010
Luminous Screen Emulsion Transfers ★ laptopogram.tumblr.com

laptopogram.jpg
© Aditya Mandayam

This, practically would make your iPhone, iPad, or any LCD screens your truly digital negative. Aditya Mandayam:

For the past few years I made prints like this: shoot-develop-scan film, print digitally. The Laptopogram is an inverse. […] Laptopograms are images made by pressing photosensitive paper onto a laptop screen and flashing an image in a manner not unlike contact printing or photograms. […] ‘Laptopogram’ is a misnomer – I reckon they can be made with pretty much any monitor. Perhaps ‘Luminous Screen Emulsion Transfers’ is a better. 

Brilliantly authentic. Excuse me, I got some dusting to do.

(Via Photojojo)

Lens Adaptability ★ novoflex.com

I have yet to jump ship to the cross camera lens mix-matching, but Novoflex has given one reason to, they just launch a new adapter for Nikon lenses to Canon EOS bodies that is able to maintain electronic metering function, the catch? It costs $300:

The new adapter is made to very precise and high standards to ensure exact infinity focus on the Canon camera. With the EOS/NIK-NT adapter automatic exposure metering via stop-down metering is possible as is aperture priority auto exposure. The new adapter features a lever on the side of the adapter to let users control the aperture on G series lenses. For users of non-G series Nikon lenses Novoflex also offers their original Nikon to Canon adapter, the EOS/NIK.

Keep in mind, though, using a lens adapter means loosing light, and it requires some additional investments, like your time (practice) and accessories like a split-image focusing screen for the auto focusing function that you loose.

21 July 2010
Incepted ★ blogs.suntimes.com

Reader’s comment on Whole lotta cantin’ going on – Roger Ebert’s Journal:

Surely any film that inspires these volumes of conversation and dialogue prior to opening for the movie-going public must possess in it some seed of greatness. The movie has planted itself in the minds of everyone who has seen it and it has grown there, equally for those who embrace the film as those who react against it. By inspiring this discourse Nolan’s film has already proven his thesis to be accurate, empirically, whether the dissenters agree or not.

Ben gets it.

Roger the Sketcher ★ flickr.com

The man never ceased to surprise me.

After his thoughts on movies, and the linked piece on Architecture, I [discovered this today](http://www.flickr.com/photos/rebert/).

I wonder what kind of music, or theater, or even cookings, a man with such an imaginative mind & artistic brain can create.

The Pragmatic Cover

19 July 2010

© Gregg Segal for TIME

David Cameron on TIME Magazine’s Europe Edition, July 19, 2010 by Gregg Segal.

I got to read the cover story, but my first impression on the cover was dull, disastrous & unappealing, I hope it is intended that way as part of the whole story.

19 July 2010
Image of a Man ★ blogs.suntimes.com

Wonderful piece on Architecture by Roger Ebert. As an Architecture drop-out, I bitch about buildings more than I build, so knowing it’s my words against the world, I let other people do the talking:

Much modern architecture has grown tiresome to me. It does not gladden the heart. It doesn’t seem to spring from humans. It seems drawn from mathematical axioms rather than those learned for centuries from the earth, the organic origins of building materials, the reach of hands and arms, and that which is pleasing to the eye. It is not harmonious. It holds the same note indefinitely.

And he’s talking about Chicago. I can only imagine what is happening all over the world.

16 July 2010
The Journey is The Reward ★ telegraph.co.uk

Sting on his new album Symphonicities:

“There’s a bit of cabaret, it’s a little bit middle of the road, but I’m trying to create something new in this interface between pop and symphonic music. I think these songs have enough harmonic movement in them to warrant a symphony orchestra playing them. I want them to sound like a rhythmic unit as opposed to aural wallpaper for somebody’s vanity. It’s sonically rich: you can do almost anything with an orchestra. I don’t know where it’s going, but that’s something I love. The journey itself is the reward.”

Rob Mathes, musical director for the project added this bit from his blog:

Regarding the critics, I hope some listen all the way through to hear the blistering “She’s Too Good For Me” which I have described as Stravinsky writing a Roadhouse blues, to hear “Pirate’s” and “Black Seam”, the moody and brooding “Burn For You”, a Sting composition from his early 20′s. There is enough beautiful stuff in there to raise the eyebrows of even ferocious naysayers. In the end you just have to do the best you can and let the work speak for itself.

The album is Sting at his best, musically rich, unpredictable and genuinely fresh. And as he noted at the interview: “The journey itself is the reward.”