TED Tuesday: Ocean's glory and horror

Photographer Brian Skerry shoots life above and below the waves -- as he puts it, both the horror and the magic of the ocean. Sharing amazing, intimate shots of undersea creatures, he shows how powerful images can help make change.

TED Tuesday: Not-so-ordinary photography

Taryn Simon exhibits her startling take on photography — to reveal worlds and people we would never see otherwise. She shares two projects: one documents otherworldly locations typically kept secret from the public, the other involves haunting portraits of men convicted for crimes they did not commit.

TED Tuesday: Stats are boring, visuals are NOT

Artist Chris Jordan shows us an arresting view of what Western culture looks like. His supersized images picture some almost unimaginable statistics -- like the astonishing number of paper cups we use every single day.

GIVEAWAY!!! Poster print for FREE!

This blog is hosting an 18x24” Rolled Poster Print giveaway sponsored by DigitalRoom.com. You’ll love the photo-quality poster prints, which can be useful for anything from mounting on a wall at home to promoting your campaign to the world!

The winner for the prize of (1) 18x24” rolled poster print** will be chosen on Tuesday, 29th September, 2009. For more information on the sponsors as well as the printing service, please visit,
Poster Printing - http://www.digitalroom.com/poster-printing.html
Digital Printing - http://www.digitalroom.com/
** This offer is open to US residents only. FREE UPS Ground Shipping for US residents.

To enter you must:
· Leave a comment explaining how you would use the Poster Print if you won.

Additionally (optional):
· Write a short blog post about this giveaway and link back to this blog as well as DigitalRoom.com.
· Paste the link to your post in your comment mentioned above.

The winner:
· The winner will be selected on Tuesday, 29th September, 2009 and announced on this blog.
· The winner’s e-mail address, name and the URL of the winner’s post will be sent to the sponsor by the author of this blog.
· Prizes will be awarded by coupon code sent out in bulk e-mail on 1st October, 2009. If you do not receive your coupon code at that time, check your junk mail folder. If you still cannot find your coupon code, email blogs@uprinting.com and they will help you claim your prize.

Sunday spotlight: As seen on Earth

National Geographic's mission is to inspire people to care about the planet. Hence they have created an 'Infinite photograph' that is made up of hundreds of photos of the natural world, each submitted by users to My Shot (Submit a photo). Dive into this photo-mosaic portrait of the Earth to see it through the eyes of users like you. Move the yellow square over an area you would like to explore, click, and go. Double-click on an image to see more information about it. Keep clicking—and diving deeper into the Infinite Photograph—to get a truly boundless picture of Earth.

What inspires you? Send in your best photos of the natural world to NatGeo and it'll be added to 'Infinite Photograph—As Seen on Earth.'

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Sunday Spotlight: Extreme Ice Survey (EIS)

The recent Wilkins ice shelf collapse has provided us with one more danger signal that the global warming is for real. And more and more scientific studies are point towards the disturbing (at least it should be) possibility that IT IS already too late for us to stop the climate change. It is well and truly underway and all we can try to do is lessen its impact by slowing down its devastating march. The Earth is predicted to be in the middle of sixth mass extinction. So while we’re trying to get our act together in slowing down the climate change, it is also a good idea to try and record the ecology as it is today. Because after 20 to 30 years, many of its features will be extinct, such as various species or ecosystems. Extreme ice survey (EIS) is one such attempt at painstakingly recording the ice-features of the world before they start vanishing like the Wilkins ice shelf.

EIS describes itself as “the most wide-ranging glacier study ever conducted using ground-based, real-time photography. EIS uses time-lapse photography, conventional photography, and video to document the rapid changes now occurring on the Earth's glacial ice. The EIS team has installed 27 time-lapse cameras at 15 sites in Greenland, Iceland, Alaska, and the Rocky Mountains. EIS supplements this ongoing record with annual repeat photography in Iceland, the Alps, and Bolivia.” The originator of this idea and project, James Balog, is an internationally acclaimed nature photojournalist and a mountaineer with a graduate degree in geomorphology. In 2006, while shooting for a cover story for National Geographic, Balog recognised that the features that took centuries to develop were being destroyed in just a few years or even just a few weeks. These changes were the most visually dramatic and immediate manifestations of climate change on our planet today.

The project was started with the aim of recording the movements, birth and demise of these magnificent white, glittery landscapes across the planet. The website showcases some fabulous videos, photographs and time-lapses that are a result of meticulous efforts of the EIS team. The website also gives some interesting information about glaciology and climate change that any visitor will find useful. But it doesn’t just stop at telling you how the glaciers form but it goes on to tell you what you can do to stop them from disappearing so fast.It is definitely a website and a project that is worth a look and think, a commendable effort on behalf of humanity to preserve the images of the present which might be lost forever to our future generations.

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Best NASA pictures of the Earth

In this blog post, I just want to share something with you all. No opinions, no thoughts, no debates. Just plain old getting fascinated by the amazing advances we’ve made in space observation and photography and it’s results.

NASA's Earth Observatory announced the ten most popular pictures of our home planet from its 'Image of the Day' catalogue on 28th April, the culmination of a user-voted contest marking the tenth anniversary of the observatory's Web site. These pictures range from the picture of Earth as seen from Saturn to the beautiful abstract painting-like patterns made by sea currents and wind in the Bahamas.

Go feast your eyes!

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Within a blink of an eye

[Image source: Alan Sailer's flickr]

A few days back I posted about some really cool time-lapse videos on the internet. Today's post is about the kind of photography exactly opposite to that, the high-speed photography. Time-lapse photography squishes very slow processes into a smaller time-scale and make them interesting to watch. The high-speed photography captures the fleeting moments of a very quick process by using high shutter speeds that make some fabulous visuals. A friend shared this link with me a few days back that shows some impressive shots taken by Alan Sailer. He uses an interrupted laser beam to trigger the camera at the precise moment when a bullet passes out of a given object and captures that "fragile" moment just before the object is blown to pieces. As destructive as it sounds, when you see his pictures, you will be left with a sense of awe and respect for his work! I'm sharing just one of many such fantastic images of his which I'm sure will more than whet your visual appetite :).

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Time- lapsed nature

Time-lapse photography / video have made the observation of a lot of painfully slow processes not so boring. In fact it makes the spectacle enjoyable in most cases. The technique involves recording a process, natural or man-made, onto film with very long exposure times. Or, as mentioned on Wikipedia, “Time-lapse photography is a cinematography technique whereby each film frame is captured at a rate much slower than it will be played back. When replayed at normal speed, time appears to be moving faster and thus lapsing. Time-lapse photography can be considered to be the opposite of high speed photography.”Aaron Rowe, a blog author on the Wired.com blog, has presented a list of what he thinks are the top ten time-lapse videos of naturally occurring processes. I’m not convinced that they’re all the best ones out there but they’re fascinating to watch for sure. It was difficult to decide which one to embed here in my post but I have chosen the ‘Thunderstorm’ video which is on #3 on Aaron’s list. The radpidly passing clouds constantly aglow due to lightening make a great spectacle. Follow the above link to the article for the rest 9. Happy time-lapsing!

Earth's diamond ring

[Image: JAXA/NHK]

I'm posting this purely out of fascination.....

We have seen a Solar eclipse from Earth many times as the Moon blocks the view of Sun and the diamond ring effect that is caused due to roughness (craters) of the lunar surface. But recently, Japanese lunar orbiter, Kaguya, caught the spectacular Solar eclipse from the Moon's perspective, while Earth blocked the Sun!

Take a look at the video and pictures. It looks very similar to the Solar eclipses we see from Earth but the idea of seeing our own planet causing the eclipse is what I find fascinating :).

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The solar system and beyond

Two very interesting articles came to my attention last week, one about our solar system and the other about the deep space beyond.

The article published on the New Scientist website is titled “Our unknown solar system”. It is kind of a compilation of six other articles that appear on the same website. Each of these six articles focuses on one aspect of the solar system that is still a mystery to the humanity.

The first article, How was the solar system built?, gives an insight into the birth of our solar system and of course about the things we do not know certainly about the solar system. The second, Why are the sun and moon the same size in the sky?, talks about eclipses. In the beginning it seemed a little weird to me that this should be a subject of an article. The explanation is too straight forward; the Sun is 400 times larger than the Moon but also 400 times farther. But as I went on to read the article, it became clear that the article focused on the possibility that this might not be a mere coincidence and how the size of the Moon might be responsible for origin of life on Earth. Is there a Planet X? is the third article in the series which, as the title suggests, explores the possibility of an as yet unknown planet on the outskirts of our solar system. The next article, Where do comets come from?, was a bit of a surprise for me as I had thought the astronomers knew the answer to this question. Along with listing what we do not know about the comets, it also gives nice overview of different types of comets and the reasons why it is difficult to spot and study them. The fifth in series is, Is the solar system unique?, which tackles the question in the title and the possibility of the answer being “no” is increasing along with our knowledge of the Universe around us. And lastly, How will the solar system end?, delves into the still-far-into-the-future event of the end of our solar system.

The other article is a contribution by John Roach to the MSNBC website. It talks about the project “From Earth to the Universe” which is one of the several projects organized to mark the International Year of Astronomy (IYA 09). More than 40 countries have agreed to participate in this project and have made 125 images from their respective space agencies for display around the world, in public places like the airports, parks etc. The article shares 10 of these images along with little information snippets about them. It makes a great read for anyone interested in mesmerising images from the outer space, which I think is most of us.

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New Scientist links

I am finding too many interesting articles, photo galleries and stories today to write a blog entry about each one! So I figured I'd just share the links with you all and then you can do the reading yourself :). So here goes,

Seven new wonders of the world,
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16323-seven-new-wonders-of-the-world.html

The year's weirdest animals,
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16320-the-years-weirdest-animals.html

Gallery: Most stunning images of 2008
http://www.newscientist.com/gallery/dn16286-best-images-of-2008

Be enlightened!

How to Make Fake UFO Photographs

This video doesn't prove OR DISPROVE anything but it gives us food for thought. So next time you see a UFO photograph and start to marvel, take a few seconds to think if it would be real?

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Small wonder

[Text and image from New Scientist webpage about the Nikon Small World competition]

Images of the microscopic never fail to amaze and since 1974 the Nikon Small World prize has recognised the very best work in the field. This year's winners range from dazzling views of tiny animals to surprisingly artistic scenes from inside shaving cream, in a portfolio of work from both scientists and artists.

Check out these superlatively artistic images that give a glimpse into the fascinating and beautiful world of microscopic scale.

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