Hubble telescope: wallpaper from our galaxy and beyond

I met someone the other day who had not seen pictures of the galaxies we can see (so far) with our telescopes. Go look, even if you have seen them. Where we live is actually very BIG and the piece of it we're most concerned with is so small. Some days it helps to have the perspective. I'm going to put a nebula on my desktop to remind me, because I can.

Creating fake graffiti with Photoshop

Be on the lookout for digital biting and posing.

Light art by Michael Bosanko

I wish they would stop calling this a kind of (or a replacement for) graffiti, but it is kind of interesting. I suppose we'll have machines that do this soon to create 3D light sculptures, but right now, the images are being created inside cameras.

Alex Pardee on Harley-Davidson

Check out Alex's fabulous characters on gas tank and drawing.

Devious Behavior

Proving once again that graffiti is an equal opportunity sport.

New airbrush book: Overspray

This is a luscious coffee-table dominator full of glossy eye-candy from California. It's not a how-to book, it's a celebration of four great artists' work. Plenty of good visuals on their website too.

"Overspray is the comprehensive account of the rise of airbrush art, and of the equally bright and glossy Los Angeles culture in which it flourished during the 1970s. Inspired by surf graphics, psychedelia and Hollywood glitz, a generation of young artists made every lip and palm tree glisten, and every record cover slick as a well?lubricated sex toy. Fueled by a combination of intense demand, sleepless nights and brutal competition, the four men at the center of LA's airbrush art market -Dave Willardson, Charles E White III, Peter Palombi, and Peter Lloyd - embarked on careers that produced work for Playboy, Levi's, the Rolling Stones, American Graffiti and Tron. Overspray tells the unvarnished story of these four artists, through images of their best-known work, and frank, in-depth interviews. Viewed today, their surreal, funny and hyperslick imagery; seems all the more fantastic - which combined technical precision; and wild flights of imagination."

Photographers' rights, UK, US

BTP rail enthusiasts guidelines (UK)

A Downloadable Flyer Explaining Your Rights When Stopped or Confronted for Photography (US)

Electrabel candle stop-motion production

This is insane and yet so cool. I'm glad the people doing it got paid (it's an ad apparently).

Stop-motion animation is so wonderful to consume and so mind-boggling to create. Amber Case tweeted about this one (link above, just do it), which took weeks, but here's a cool claymation she did recently with a family member in one day.

Anyone with a digital camera, tripod, and some time can make stop-motion now by sequencing photos using almost any modern computer, so that's pretty exciting. It's just a really fast slide show, technically, like a cartoon.

Wade's Vagabond Journey

Wade is the best sort of wanderer: the kind who publish their photos, stories, and insights. He's got a blog where his 9 years of world travel (ongoing) are documented. He's going to Eastern Europe and the Middle East next, so give him a shout if you're over there. He writes good stuff about graffiti now and then too. Here's an interesting look at graffiti in Portugal with Odeith, Eskema, and Mr Dheo. And he tries to publish about 50 photos per day.

HDR graffiti photos and HDR tutorial

I'm not sure how documentary it is, but HDR photos of graffiti sure are dramatic. The tutorial link is at the bottom of the page and it's aimed at typical cameras and hobby photographers.

Flickr has an HDR pool where you can see lots of interesting landscape and building HDR effects, also.

Meeting of Styles

Photos and videos from 2008's MOS are now up!

Light Art

People are calling it "light graffiti" (or "urban light art," LOL), but it needs a new name. An interesting collection of artists and works. Here are more examples.

Election night photos in Chicago

My photos of the election night rally in Chicago didn't turn out as well as these did, but this slide show shows the crowd and the new first family, and it gives you a real sense of what it was like on the ground. It is being reported that 250,000 people were there at the rally in Chicago with us, although most of those folks would have been outside the park itself where you can't see them. This wave of humanity you can see is the first 40,000 or so who made it inside.

It was a trip leaving the park. Everyone was especially polite -- in a state of shock really. Optimistic shock, but definitely stunned. We walked for a dozen blocks in a crowd as far as you could see of quiet happy people. No cars. Every once in a while a wave of happy shouting would pass over us. I've never seen so many happy, relaxed, well-behaved cops in my life. I've never felt safer in a big crowd.

Now, perhaps, a change for the better is in the wind. Let's all hope so.

Rezine69 Light Graf Exhibition

President elect, Barack Obama

Yes We Did.

Here are some excellent photos from the campaign.

I participated in the election-night rally in Chicago (thanks, Killian!), and I'll post a few photos from it in a day or two.

B.OLD in UK

Wonderful picture.

30 tutorials that will teach you Photoshop

Plus, they have Illustrator tutorials and soon Fireworks, InDesign, Dreamweaver, After Effects and Flash. And the tutorials are from other sites ... that also have tutorials! Best of all, it's all free and at your own pace. (Actually, the best part is that if you take the time to sharpen your digital design skills, you'll have very well-paid work in your future if you want it.)

Tip: Students and teachers get amazing educational discounts on software.

FotoFlexer

Edit photos online and save them to your favorite locations. If you don't have your own photo editor this is for you.

Illegal Only magazine from Poland

Another great graffiti magazine has recently come out of Poland, Illegal Only. It is free, downloadable, Mac/Windows - Flash. This format is really cool, because the pages turn quickly and it has some music and video also.

But the best thing is the photography.

Issue 3 features Odessa, Ukraine, and it's something you've got to see. Here is a taste:



Of course they want your artful bombing photos too.

Apple photobooks 20% off until May 11 (USA only)

I've heard these are really nice looking, but I haven't made one yet. It's supposed to be super easy to make photobooks with iPhoto and there's a tutorial here on Apple.com

Cristopher Cichocki

Tasty. Cristopher's work must be seen because words can't do it any justice.
Tip: the small pictures are clickable.

Fotolog continues to delete writers' sites

I think I've said this before, but it is only getting worse, so I'll say it again: Fotolog seems to have a special hatred for graffiti artists, because it routinely closes their sites without warning (and we hope that's the worst thing they do). I suggest all you folks with fotologs go to Flickr instead.

Wherever you do it, make sure you keep copies of your photos, because most companies can't be trusted to keep them safe, and it's a hassle to download them one at a time too.

Interactive graffiti wall

Hamburg, Germany: Daim, Tasek, Daddy Cool, Desur, and Seak have again found something new to do -- this time with Quick Read (QR) codes and "mobile tagging."

QR codes can be snapped by your phone camera, interpreted by software, and then translated into words or websites, or whatever they mean. Plus they look cool.

You can make your own, print them onto stickers and join the fun wherever you are as well.


This one says http://graffiti.org

Cool Tools

The brilliant Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools site has some great things on it. Recently I saw

Book on HDR photography
Motion Mountain Physics / Art book - free PDF download

He also has some interesting realtek on his Street Use site. Check out the painted trucks from Pakistan.

Online photo editing tool - Splashup

FFFFound

This is a great site to stick in your RSS reader and dip into whenever you could use a little visual inspiration. Lovely and amazing design, architecture, and random delights.

Thanks to Miss P for the tip.

THE WOMANHOOD LEARNING PROJECT wants your photos

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS!

The Hip-Hop Association invites ILLUSTRATORS AND PHOTOGRAPHERS to submit work for THE WOMANHOOD LEARNING PROJECT.

The Womanhood Learning project is a two-year initiative that explores women's roles and leadership positions in different sectors within Hip-Hop culture and the community. This project is intended to bring unity within women in Hip-Hop by creating a space to learn, build, and bring about concrete change through an online platform - www.womeninhiphop.net, a book, a case study, and a marketing campaign empowering women around the world.

We are searching for illustration and photographs that depict women in Hip-Hop, be it rhyming, b-girling, Djing or just representing Hip-Hop through social art, activism and entrepreneurship for the womeninhiphop.net website.

If your work is selected, you will receive contributing credit on the website, special thanks in the forthcoming book entitled - Fresh, Bold and So Def: 100 Influential Women in Hip-Hop, get international exposure by having your work included on our website and you will get invited to partake in exclusive events and discussions related to the Womanhood Learning Project.

There is no cost or limit to the number of entries you can submit to THE WOMANHOOD LEARNING PROJECT.

Images should be 300DPI, CMYK, TIFF or EPS.

Please send your submissions or inquiries to entries@womeninhiphop.net by December 19, 2007.

SUBMIT AN EVENT!

We are declaring 2008 "THE YEAR OF THE HIP-HOP WOMAN" and we want to create a global events calendar to promote activities that focus and promote women in Hip-Hop.

So please email us at events@womeninhiphop.net by December 21, 2007, and send us the dates and a short description for your event and a flier or a link to a website if you have one. This way we know what's up and we can support all the "Hip-Hop Ladies" worldwide next year.

Tornado wallpaper for your desktop

Thanks, Ariel!

Flickr Graffiti Geotagging

As promised.

From the article:

"For example, fans of graffiti can search the word, "graffiti," and "New York City" at Flickr.com/map, and pull up photos of freshly painted tags, all plotted with pushpins on a clickable Yahoo map. A search for "Dumbo Brooklyn graffiti," for example, finds some 99 photos, including the infamous "Neck Face" tag, spray-painted on a brick warehouse at Jay and Front Streets in Brooklyn. Try finding that in a guidebook."

www.flickr.com/map

It's a bit fiddly so far. Search at the bottom, then click on the dots on the map to zoom in until they are at a meaninful level of detail. Or you can watch the slide show anytime.

Some cameras do the GPS/geotagging automatically (it's embedded in the information in the image files), so if you upload your photos to flickr, you might blow up your spot, or someone else's.

Be very careful what you upload anywhere if your camera has GPS.

I'm hoping Graphic Converter (Macintosh only) will have editing access to the GPS stuff as it already does to the camera info, however. If you have a clue about a Windows tool for removing image metadata, please send it to yo@graffiti.org and I'll add that here too.

Rezine Light Graff

If you're in Lyon France, the closing party is the 31st of May.

Showroom Artstep - 78 rue pdt E.Herriot 69002 Lyon - code porte 1982 - 1er étage

The Destroy Television 10-Day Second Life Avatar Lifelogging Art Show Movie?Thing

"When: Wednesday, May 23rd from 7 PM ET (4 PM PT) through Sunday, June 2nd, 10 PM ET (7 PM PT), with opening and closing events on the 23rd from 7 - 10 PM ET and on the 2nd from 7 - 10 PM ET

"Where: In real life at Fuse Gallery/Lit Lounge, New York City; on the web at dtv.sheeplabs.com (the site will be up and down before the show); and in the virtual world of Second Life, the free-to-use user-created 3D online virtual world (sign-up here), including a virtual exhibition at the GHava{SL} Art Center in Second Life [the opening and closing events will be held in real life at Fuse Gallery and in Second Life at the GHava{SL} Art Center]

"Who: Created by Jerry Paffendorf (SNOOPYbrown Zamboni in SL) and Christian Westbrook (Christian Prior in SL), curated by Annie Ok (Xantherus Halberd in SL), and featuring many people and locations in Second Life, including you if you visit the Destroy Television avatar in Second Life, on the web, or at the gallery

"What: Destroy Television is the name of an avatar in Second Life who streams live video of her life and adventures to dtv.sheeplabs.com, where you see and chat and influence her movement and camera controls in SL from the web. But wait! There?s more! Destroy Television, or DTV for short, records and shares her life through a process called "lifelogging" or "lifecasting" (to define terms, logging is keeping the record and casting is sharing it live -- a popular example of real life lifecasting is the 24/7 mobile camera at justin.tv). For the entire 10 days (240 hours) of the show she will automagically capture photographs of the things she sees and tag them with location names, names of avatars present, chat, and time stamp, at a rate of one tagged picture every five seconds. These many thousands of sequential and searchable pictures will be strung together into a 90-minute time-lapse video, a kind of feature-length machinima film documenting people, places, and activities in Second Life. A smaller set of these pictures will be automagically posted to DTV?s Flickr account."

[Visit the link above to find out why virtual-world events could be interesting and to access live links to the other websites mentioned.]

Ruedione Photography

A haunting black and white (Flash) slide tour of a train mission set to sinister German graffiti-rap soundtrack.

11 Spring St NYC - closing party news (Dec 17)

Outside of 11 Spring St on graffiti archaeology
(via Gothamist)

ireallylovecake's Flickr slide show of Dominican Republic walls and gallery (Doze Green and others) and inside 11 Spring St. for the last show.

MOS 2006 Switzerland

Amazing production, interesting web presentation, from Meeting of Styles in Winterthur last summer.

Ian's Shoelace Site

... because I know you care. Don't miss the More Lacing Photos link at the very bottom.

Lost Art's 2005 photo album

The link above is without sound. The one with audio is here. Lost Art has brought us the best Os Gemeos feature so far. Clearly they are phenomenal photographers. Enjoy their slide show from Brazil, Laos, Cambodia, USA and other interesting locales.

Exposition JR à la Friche pour David Walters

This is an interesting photo log, check it out.

Cute Overload

Bunnies so cute you will feel compelled to email other people about it.

Project: Trains

Helicopter pilot's photos of Mexico City

Mindblowing.