World city panoramas transformed into 360-degree globes

These are pretty and amazing, so pretty amazing. I have an app, as we all do, but this one I have is called Small Planet and it creates worlds from pictures taken with my phone, impressive. Then again there are these images which go far beyond my clever little app.

As see on The Guardian Website The stereographic projection technique was used to convert aerial panoramas of cities including Paris, Sydney, Shanghai and Chicago into mini-globes. 

Paris, FranceThe Champs-Élysées
The 360-degree aerial panoramic photos were taken for AirPano, a Russian not-for-profit project created by a team of enthusiasts

St Petersburg, RussiaPeterhof palace

Sao Paolo, BrazilOctvio Frias de Oliveira Bridge

Sydney, AustraliaSydney Opera House
The original photograph was usually taken from a helicopter, although sometimes the team used a plane, hot air balloon or drone

Want to see the rest of these rather wonderful images go here

Here are some of mine using Small Planet, no helicopter, plane or drone required

Radcliffe Square, Oxford

Sydney Opera House

Launceston, Tasmania

Oriel Square, Oxford

Tom Palumbo – Paris

Palumbo has work on the Flickr site, his Paris images are atmospheric and beautiful.

Images from Paris cafés and nightlife in 1962, the same week Yves St. Laurent’s runway show vaulted Dior to new heights.

here is the link to the Flickr photostream http://www.flickr.com/photos/tompalumbo/sets/72157604469886784/

Henri Cartier-Bresson: ‘There Are No Maybes’

In 1971, Sheila Turner-Seed interviewed Henri Cartier-Bresson in his Paris studio for a film-strip series on photographers that she produced, with Cornell Capa

Q. Have you ever really been able to define for yourself when it is that you press the shutter?

A. It’s a question of concentration. Concentrate, think, watch, look and, ah, like this, you are ready. But you never know the culminative point of something. So you’re shooting. You say, “Yes. Yes. Maybe. Yes.” But you shouldn’t overshoot. It’s like overeating, overdrinking. You have to eat, you have to drink. But over is too much. Because by the time you press, you arm the shutter once more, and maybe the picture was in between.

Very often, you don’t have to see a photographer’s work. Just by watching him in the street, you can see what kind of photographer he is. Discreet, tiptoes, fast or machine gun. Well, you don’t shoot partridges with a machine gun. You choose one partridge, then the other partridge. Maybe the others are gone by then. But I see people wrrrr, like this with a motor. It’s incredible, because they always shoot in the wrong moment.

Q. Can you bear to talk a bit about your equipment?

A. I am completely and have always been uninterested in the photographic process. I like the smallest camera possible, not those huge reflex cameras with all sorts of gadgets. When I am working, I have an M3 because it’s quicker when I’m concentrating.

Do you want to read more of this interview….of course you do go here

Related articles

• The Decisive Moment and the Brain (petapixel.com)

Photographer Jonathan Alpeyrie recounts Syrian hostage ordeal

On 29 April, Jonathan Alpeyrie, a French-American photographer, was abducted in Syria. Eighty-one days later, he was sold for $450,000 and returned to Paris. He recounts his ordeal to Le Journal de la Photographie and Paris Match.

Jonathan Alpeyrie was on his third trip to Syria when, on 29 April, he fell into a trap and was abducted. “I got into a 4×4 with a Katiba officer, my fixer and two soldiers. We came to a checkpoint where masked men pulled me out of the car, forced me to kneel and pretended to execute me,” he tells Michel Puech at Le Journal de la Photographie.

 In his account, Alpeyrie discusses his 81 days of captivity, which he spent, at times, handcuffed to a bed “with five or six soldiers and two Islamists. One day, a young soldier, who looked crazy and made me uneasy, wanted to execute me because I had gone to the bathroom without asking for permission. He put his machine gun against my forehead but the others yelled at him and sent him away,” he explains……....READ MORE

Jonathan Alpeyrie © Michel Puech.

 

Read more: http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/news/2286266/photographer-jonathan-alpeyrie-recounts-syrian-hostage-ordeal#ixzz2bNmQBHkY 
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British Journal of Photography Ones to Watch: Pari Dukovic

Pari Dukovic has been selected as one of BJP’s 20 photographers to watch in 2013

Image © Pari Dukovic.

Born in Istanbul in 1984, Pari Dukovic got into shooting stills through his father, who wasn’t a photographer but had worked in a portrait studio as a teenager, “pulling the glass plates and taking them to the printer to be enlarged for silver gelatin prints”. The excitement of that experience was passed on to his son.

 “He has always been my biggest inspiration and the strongest supporter of my journey to become a photographer, and was a big influence on me picking up a camera and starting to shoot,” says the 27-year-old, who now lives in New York. “I got my first camera as a birthday present when I was eight – an all-mechanical Zenit 122. It was a huge camera for me as a little boy, but my dad wanted to get me a real camera that would last a long time. At that age, I was just taking family pictures for fun, but things started to click when I was about 14, when I started looking at books by famous photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson. I loved his work. Growing up in Istanbul, a city with such old-world charm, made me connect with his work, especially the photographs of the streets of Paris.”.….MORE

From a series Fields of Glory, see more on the website here

www.paridukovic.com.

Read more: http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/feature/2233733/ones-to-watch-pari-dukovic#ixzz2IEbJzK7n
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Cartier-Bresson: A Question of Colour

This exhibition features some of the colour photography of Henri Cartier-Bresson

Somerset House, The Strand, London WC2R 1LA

8 November 2012 – 27 January 2013
Daily 10.00-18.00 
Until 21.00 on Thurs 8, 29 Nov & 6, 13, 20 Dec
Terrace Rooms & Courtyard Rooms, South Wing
Free admission

It is well-known that Cartier-Bresson was disparaging towards colour photography, which in the 1950s was in its early years of development; his reasoning was based both on the technical and aesthetic limitations of the medium at the time.

Featuring 10 Cartier-Bresson photographs never before exhibited in the UK alongside over 75 works by 14 international acclaimed photographers, this extensive showcase will illustrate how photographers working in Europe and North America adopted and adapted the master’s ethos famously known as  the ‘decisive moment’ to their work in colour.

Further details are available here

Magnum Photos

You probably know about Magnum Photos or if not you will have heard of some of the photographers who are associates of this world important photo agency.

As the Magnum website says: Two years after the apocalypse that was called the Second World War ended, Magnum Photos was founded. The world’s most prestigious photographic agency was formed by four photographers – Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger and David “Chim” Seymour – who had been very much scarred by the conflict and were motivated both by a sense of relief that the world had somehow survived and the curiosity to see what was still there. They created Magnum in 1947 to reflect their independent natures as both people and photographers – the idiosyncratic mix of reporter and artist that continues to define Magnum, emphasizing not only what is seen but also the way one sees it. If you would like to read more of the history go here

Henri Cartier-Bresson said of the starting of the agency: “Back in France, I was completely lost,” legendary photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson explained in an interview with Hervé Guibert in Le Monde. “At the time of the liberation, the world having been disconnected, people had a new curiosity. I had a little bit of money from my family, which allowed me to avoid working in a bank. I had been engaged in looking for the photo for itself, a little like one does with a poem. With Magnum was born the necessity for telling a story. Capa said to me: ‘Don’t keep the label of a surrealist photographer. Be a photojournalist. If not you will fall into mannerism. Keep surrealism in your little heart, my dear. Don’t fidget. Get moving!’ This advice enlarged my field of vision.” We are so lucky he didn’t end up working in a bank.

Henri Cartier-Bresson

FRANCE. Paris. Place de l’Europe. Gare Saint Lazare. 1932.

The list of great photographers encompasses the very best in the world

Abbas,  Christopher Anderson,  Eve Arnold, Olivia Arthur, Micha Bar Am, Bruno Barbey, Jonas Bendiksen, Ian Berry, Werner Bischof, Rene Burri, Henri Cartier-Bresson Chien-Chi Chang, Antoine D’Agata, Bruce Davidson, Carl De Keyzer, Raymond Depardon, Thomas Dworzak, Nikos Economopoulos, Elliott Erwitt, Martine Franck,

Stuart Franklin, Leonard Freed, Paul Fusco, Cristina Garcia Rodero, Jean Gaumy, Bruce Gilden, Burt Glinn, Jim Goldberg, Philip Jones Griffiths, Harry Gruyaert,

Philippe Halsman, Erich Hartmann, David Alan Harvey, Tim Hetherington, Thomas Hoepker, David Hurn, Richard Kalvar, Josef Koudelka, Hiroji Kubota, Sergio Larrain,

Guy Le Querrec, Erich Lessing, Herbert List, Alex Majoli, Constantine Manos, Peter Marlow, Steve McCurry, Susan Meiselas, Wayne Miller, Dominic Nahr, Trent Parke,

Martin Parr, Paolo Pellegrin, Gilles Peress, Gueorgui Pinkhassov, Mark Power, Raghu Rai, Eli Reed, George Rodger, Moises Saman, Alessandra Sanguinetti ,Lise Sarfati,

Ferdinando Scianna, Jerome Sessini, David Seymour, Marilyn Silverstone, W. Eugene Smith, Jacob Aue Sobol, Alec Soth, Chris Steele-Perkins, Dennis Stock,

Zoe Strauss Mikhael Subotzky Nicolas Tikhomiroff Larry Towell Peter van Agtmael John Vink Alex Webb Donovan Wylie Patrick Zachmann Cornell Capa

Robert Capa, Inge Morath,

If you would like to read more about any of these photographers go here

Magnum are good at showing their work and the website is a joy, I would definitely bookmark this and go back there regularly to see what is new, I visit their site at least once a week, go here to see what is on offer today

Magnum also publish excellent books and I would recommend any of them, these are some of my favourites

This special and important photography book presents, for the first time, the very best contact sheets created by Magnum photographers. Contact sheets tell the truth behind a photograph. They unveil its process, and provide its back story. Was it the outcome of what a photographer had in mind from the outset? Did it emerge from a diligently worked sequence, or was the right shot down to pure serendipity a matter of being in the right place at the right time? This landmark publication provides the reader with a depth of understanding and a critical analysis of the story behind a photograph, the process of editing it, and the places and ways in which the selected photographs were used. For anyone with a deep appreciation of photography and a desire to understand what goes into creating iconic work, Magnum Contact Sheets will be regarded as the definitive volume. With 435 illustrations in total, 230 in colour, including over 3,600 frames on 139 contact sheets.

Here the photographers of Magnum, 50 years after the legendary group began its documentary mission, address the world following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989; a period which has seen the triumph of US capitalism at one extreme and the resurgence of ancient blood feuds at the other. The book is built around photo-essays selected and introduced by the photographers, many shot especially for the book. From Henri Cartier-Bresson to Magnum’s newest recruits, each photographer navigates the issues of history in their own way – some tackling the dramatic changes in the world head-on in the traditional manner of the “concerned photographer”, others choosing subjects and aesthetic viewpoints which are entirely personal. The result is an album of contemporary photography about the world today. “Magnum” is introduced by historian, broadcaster and cultural commentator Michael Ignatieff, linking the substance and pace of change in the post-Cold-war world with the historic role of the Magnum witness and image-maker. This is a book about history and humanity, journalism and art, and revealing the photographers of Magnum entering a new era.

Founded by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Magnum Photos is an iconic international photographic cooperative whose members have captured the major historical events of their times, as well as private and intimate moments. A year’s worth of these images is offered in this beautiful book that features full page reproductions organized to reflect what Cartier-Bresson himself declared a ‘community of thought, a shared human quality, a curiosity about what is going on in the world, a respect for what is going on and a desire to transcribe it visually.’ Nearly 70 photographers are represented with five to six images and the current Magnum members have selected the photographs that they consider to best represent their own output. Opposite each photograph is a page reserved for special dates, reflections, and notes. Published in an appealing and impressively-sized format, running more than 700 pages, this book includes images that make history both individual and universal.

First Camera Patent 8th May 1840

The patent number was 1582 and surprisingly was taken out by Alexander S. Wolcott a man from New York. I am sure if asked without the aid of google I would have said George Eastman of Kodak fame.The camera used the a daguerreotype process with a concave reflector.

“Louis Daguerre (Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre) was born near Paris, France on November 18, 1789. A professional scene painter for the opera with an interest in lighting effects, Daguerre began experimenting with the effects of light upon translucent paintings in the 1820s.

Louis Daguerre regularly used a camera obscura as an aid to painting in perspective, and this led him think about ways to keep the image still. In 1826, he discovered the work of Joseph Niepce, and in 1829 began a partnership with him.

He formed a partnership with Joseph Niepce to improve upon the photography process Niepce had invented. Niepce, who died in 1833, produced the first photographic image, however, Niepce’s photographs quickly faded.

After several years of experimentation, Louis Daguerre developed a more convenient and effective method of photography, naming it after himself – the daguerreotype.”…….The daguerreotype is a direct-positive process, creating a highly detailed image on a sheet of copper plated with a thin coat of silver without the use of a negative. The process required great care. The silver-plated copper plate had first to be cleaned and polished until the surface looked like a mirror. Next, the plate was sensitized in a closed box over iodine until it took on a yellow-rose appearance. The plate, held in a lightproof holder, was then transferred to the camera. After exposure to light, the plate was developed over hot mercury until an image appeared. To fix the image, the plate was immersed in a solution of sodium thiosulfate or salt and then toned with gold chloride.

Exposure times for the earliest daguerreotypes ranged from three to fifteen minutes, making the process nearly impractical for portraiture. Modifications to the sensitization process coupled with the improvement of photographic lenses soon reduced the exposure time to less than a minute.

Although daguerreotypes are unique images, they could be copied by redaguerreotyping the original.”..…MORE

Daguerreotype Photograph 1839 John Plumbe Photographer

Negative to Postive Process

The inventor of the first negative from which multiple postive prints were made was Henry Fox Talbot, an English botanist and mathematician and a contemporary of Daguerre.

Talbot sensitized paper to light with a silver salt solution. He then exposed the paper to light. The background became black, and the subject was rendered in gradations of grey. This was a negative image, and from the paper negative, Talbot made contact prints, reversing the light and shadows to create a detailed picture. In 1841, he perfected this paper-negative process and called it a calotype, Greek for beautiful picture.

George Eastman of Kodak made great strides with the introduction of photography to the mass market.

“In 1888, George Eastman invented dry, transparent, and flexible, photographic film (or rolled photography film) and the Kodak cameras that could use the new film.

George Eastman was an avid photographer and became the founder of the Eastman Kodak company.

George Eastman and the Kodak Camera

“You press the button, we do the rest” promised George Eastman in 1888 with this advertising slogan for his Kodak camera.

George Eastman wanted to simplify photography and make it available to everyone, not just trained photographers. In 1883, Eastman announced the invention of photographic film in rolls. Kodak the company was born in 1888 when the first Kodak camera entered the market. Pre-loaded with enough film for 100 exposures, the Kodak camera could easily be carried and handheld during its operation. After the film was exposed (all the shots taken), the whole camera was returned to the Kodak company in Rochester, New York, where the film was developed, prints were made, new photographic film was inserted, and then the camera and prints were returned to the customer.”….….More

Photograph Taken With Kodak Camera – Circa 1909

Wet Plate Negatives

In 1851, Frederick Scoff Archer, an English sculptor, invented the wet plate negative. Using a viscous solution of collodion, he coated glass with light-sensitive silver salts. Because it was glass and not paper, this wet plate created a more stable and detailed negative.

Photography advanced considerably when sensitized materials could be coated on plate glass. However, wet plates had to be developed quickly before the emulsion dried. In the field this meant carrying along a portable darkroom.

 Dry Plate Negatives & Hand-held Cameras

In 1879, the dry platewas invented, a glass negative plate with a dried gelatin emulsion. Dry plates could be stored for a period of time. Photographers no longer needed portable darkrooms and could now hire technicians to develop their photographs. Dry processes absorbed light quickly so rapidly that the hand-held camera was now possible.

 Flexible Roll Film

In 1889, George Eastman invented film with a base that was flexible, unbreakable, and could be rolled. Emulsions coated on a cellulose nitratefilm base, such as Eastman’s, made the mass-produced box camera a reality.

Color Photographs

In the early 1940s, commercially viable color films (except Kodachrome, introduced in 1935) were brought to the market. These films used the modern technology of dye-coupled colors in which a chemical process connects the three dye layers together to create an apparent color image.

Strip of Negative Film”

Photographic Films

The first flexible roll films, dating to 1889, were made of cellulose nitrate, which is chemically similar to guncotton. A nitrate-based film will deteriorate over time, releasing oxidants and acidic gasses. It is also highly flammable. Special storage for this film is required.

Nitrate film is historically important because it allowed for the development of roll films. The first flexible movie films measured 35-mm wide and came in long rolls on a spool. In the mid-1920s, using this technology, 35-mm roll film was developed for the camera. By the late 1920s, medium-format roll film was created. It measured six centimeters wide and had a paper backing making it easy to handle in daylight. This led to the development of the twin-lens-reflex camera in 1929. Nitrate film was produced in sheets (4 x 5-inches) ending the need for fragile glass plates.

Triacetate film came later and was more stable, flexible, and fireproof. Most films produced up to the 1970s were based on this technology. Since the 1960s, polyester polymers have been used for gelatin base films. The plastic film base is far more stable than cellulose and is not a fire hazard.

Today, technology has produced film with T-grain emulsions. These films use light-sensitive silver halides (grains) that are T-shaped, thus rendering a much finer grain pattern. Films like this offer greater detail and higher resolution, meaning sharper images.

Digital Cameras

Texas Instruments patented a film-less electronic camera in 1972, the first to do so. In August, 1981, Sony released the Sony Mavica electronic still camera, the camera which was the first commercial electronic camera. Images were recorded onto a mini disc and then put into a video reader that was connected to a television monitor or color printer. However, the early Mavica cannot be considered a true digital camera even though it started the digital camera revolution. It was a video camera that took video freeze-frames.

Since the mid-1970s, Kodak has invented several solid-state image sensors that “converted light to digital pictures” for professional and home consumer use. In 1986, Kodak scientists invented the world’s first megapixel sensor, capable of recording 1.4 million pixels that could produce a 5×7-inch digital photo-quality print. In 1987, Kodak released seven products for recording, storing, manipulating, transmitting and printing electronic still video images. In 1990, Kodak developed the Photo CD system and proposed “the first worldwide standard for defining color in the digital environment of computers and computer peripherals.” In 1991, Kodak released the first professional digital camera system (DCS), aimed at photojournalists. It was a Nikon F-3 camera equipped by Kodak with a 1.3 megapixel sensor.

The first digital cameras for the consumer-level market that worked with a home computer via a serial cable were the Apple QuickTake 100 camera (February 17 , 1994), the Kodak DC40 camera (March 28, 1995), the Casio QV-11 (with LCD monitor, late 1995), and Sony’s Cyber-Shot Digital Still Camera (1996).

Kodak DC40

The rest is history!

 

The big picture: Henri Cartier-Bresson in 1950s Moscow

Henri Cartier-Bresson visited Moscow in 1954 to document daily life under communism. Cartier-Bresson sought to capture with his camera what he called decisive moments, coincidentally graceful arrangements of people or objects that other observers would have overlooked. He wandered through foreign cities like a libertine on the prowl, poised to take advantage of any opportunity for visual seduction. The taller soldier here, whose lips curl into a raffish smirk as he strides towards a possible conquest, might be a mirror-image of the invisible photographer. You can feel the frisson of sensual anticipation that accompanied the click of the shutter.…more

If you want to see more go to this rather excellent site, here are some pictures from there

Ed van der Elsken’s Love on the Left Bank

Ed van der Elsken’s Love on the Left Bank – in pictures

First published in 1954, and long since out of print, Love on the Left Bank has just been reprinted by British publisher Dewi Lewis. It follows the fictional story of Ann, a bohemian living in Paris, and is one of the first photobooks to record the birth of rebellious youth culture in Europe. Gallery here

Read a review by Sean O’Hagen from The Guardian