Mamika
Sacha Goldberger’s 91-year old grandmother was depressed & lonely so he did what any French photographer would do.
He dressed his grandmother up as a superhero and took pictures.
Frederika became Mamika and hasn’t been depressed since due to a little fame and good fortune:
Subsequently, Sacha, the grandson/photographer, is now being approached by Hollywood directors about making a movie.
[My Modern Met via Kottke]
Identify this Celestial Body
Phil Plait @ Discovery Magazine explains:
The Sun’s surface puts out light at all wavelengths, but the surface isn’t solid. It’s a gas, and it tapers off with height. Normally, a thin gas in space emits light at very specific colors as electrons jump from one energy level to another in the individual atoms. But compressed gas in the thicker, denser part of the Sun mashes together all those energies, spreading them out, so it emits white light (that layer of the Sun is called the photosphere). Above that layer, where the gas is thinner (in a layer called the chromosphere), the hydrogen does emit light at specific colors. One of these, Hα, is in the red part of the spectrum, and in fact hot, thin hydrogen emits very strongly in Hα.
By plopping a filter in front of a telescope, you can block a lot of the light from the photosphere but let light from the chromosphere through. That’s what Alan Friedman did — he used a filter that let through a very narrow range of colors centered on Hα — to get this stunning picture. Well that, plus quite a bit of image processing! But everything you’re seeing there is real, and is happening on the Sun.
Bonus:
[via Kottke]
Asymmetry
We’re all imperfect. Lopsided. Weird.
Bart Nagel slices you in half though, reassembles, makes you symmetrical. Your left side is a different person than your right side is a different person than You. Observe:
(Another busy spurt. Only one update today. Apologies.)
Lightbulb Eatah
My little brother Kevin is an excellent photographer, but he’s also full of surprises. For example, I was not aware that he produced short films until I spoke to him about it a couple of days ago.
Here’s a little video he produced starring Amy Stone, who, among other things, can eat glass:
View more of Kevin’s videos here.
View his blog here.
View some of his pictures here.
Very proud of my multi-talented little brodder.
Rolling Shutter Effect
o_O
This weirdness is due to what’s known as the rolling shutter effect which is due to…
a method of image acquisition in which each frame is recorded not from a snapshot of a single point in time, but rather by scanning across the frame either vertically or horizontally. In other words, not all parts of the image are recorded at exactly the same time, even though the whole frame is displayed at the same time during playback. This produces predictable distortions of fast moving objects or when the sensor captures rapid flashes of light. This method is implemented by rolling (moving) the shutter across the exposable image area instead of exposing the image area all at the same time.
[via Your Mind Blown]
Boston Globe’s Tour de France Pictures
The Big Picture from the Boston Globe compiles the most stunning images, no?
I recommend their RSS feed if you’re not already on that tip.
Part I of their Tour de France coverage.
More stunning scenery can be found at Part II.
