It may look like it has been through some serious digital altering to show the progress of one climber trekking across a mountain top, known as time-lapse photography, but in fact this shot has not been tampered with at all.
This incredible snap show not one, but 28 climbers posing in perfect symmetry as they scale a near-vertical mountain in the Italian Alps.
It was taken on the ‘Ago del Torrone’ (a shard of rock known as Cleopatra’s Needle, 3,000ft above sea level on the border between Switzerland and Italy) perched 3,000ft above sea level, and took five hours of climbing and preparation in freezing temperature.
In this intimate scene we can see Curiosity, as if in mid-playtime, in its Mars sandbox — a geologically interesting area called “Rocknest.” In the lower left are the scoop trenches where samples of Mars soil have been excavated and in the upper right, the base of Mt. Sharp (the unofficial name of Aeolis Mons, a 3-mile high mountain in the center of Gale Crater). Wheel tread-marks surround the rover.
Every year for nearly four decades, Nikon has received hundreds of entries in its Small World microscope photography contest. Every year, the images are more amazing, and this year’s winners — selected from nearly 2,000 submissions — are undoubtedly the best yet.
Super-close-ups of garlic, snail fossils, stinging nettle, bat embryos, bone cancer and a ladybug are among the top images this year. The first place winner (above) shows the blood-brain barrier in a living zebrafish embryo, which Nikon believes is the first image ever to show the formation of this barrier in a live animal.
“We used fluorescent proteins to look at brain endothelial cells and watched the blood-brain barrier develop in real-time,” the winners, Jennifer Peters and Michael Taylor of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, in Memphis, said in a press release. “We took a 3-dimensional snapshot under a confocal microscope. Then, we stacked the images and compressed them into one – pseudo coloring them in rainbow to illustrate depth.”
Here are the top 20 photomicrographs from the 38th Nikon Small World competition, selected for their originality, informational content, and visual impact by a panel of scientists, journalists and optical imaging experts.
Above, the blood-brain barrier in a live zebrafish embryo by Jennifer Peters and Michael Taylor, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, Tennessee.
I have always been fascinated by photographs about lightnings. While it is relatively easily to put a lightning strike in any photograph using image editing techniques I still prefer the real thing. Since photography is a hobby of mine, I wanted to be able to photograph lightnings. However, when I tried to do it without any specialized equipment, I didn’t have much success.
Reading a bit about the subject on the internet I found there are many designs/solutions available, to get around the problem. Since the price of the commercially available ones are too high for my budget (and let’s face it, it’s not much fun buying something ready made when you can also make it yourself), I decided to make one for myself for less.
Steve on Flickr writes: “A recently acquired 1978 Heathkit dip meter, in excellent shape and tested very close to calibration. Had to replace the rotted foam that held the 9volt battery in place, but that was no hardship.”
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Photographer Caleb Charland made alternative batteries from apples on trees, stacked coins, and other fun things, then made these gorgeous photographs. via Colossal
One of the best parts of having NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars is the incredible images that it’s going to start beaming back to viewers on Earth.
After the probe’s safe landing, it sent several pictures of its wheels on the ground to mission control to let engineers know that everything was okay. But these dusty, close-up images cannot compare to the snapshots that the rover will soon be taking.
Curiosity is packed with no fewer than 17 cameras to shoot high-quality photos and videos in black-and-white, color, and 3-D stereo of the Martian landscape. While scientists are no doubt quite eager for the information that these images will contain, most of us will be excited to live vicariously through the rover and experience some breathtaking views on Mars.
None of the cameras has more than 2-megapixels of resolution, which at first seems surprising, but I think there are a few good reasons for it:
Lower resolution means smaller images. The bandwidth of the radios on Curiosity is limited to about 10-15Mbps (it tops out at 40, but it changes depending on position, and is shared with other streaming data), so larger images would take a much longer time to upload back to Earth. Anybody who remembers browsing the web with a 14.4k modem can relate.
Lower resolution also means lower noise and lower power. For a given sensor size, a lower-density sensor will have better noise performance than a higher-density design, assuming signal processing and fabrication tech are the same. It also means less physical gates on the chip, which reduces power consumption (and heat).
Finally, it’s important to remember that the cameras are mounted on a robotically controlled, motion-indexed platform, so taking adjacent, grid-aligned pictures that can be stitched together later is pretty easy.
Of all the cameras on Curiosity, I’d have to say the MAHLI is probably my favorite — it’s basically designed to act like a hand-held magnifying glass (if your hand is a giant robotic turret, anyway), taking macro photos of rocks and dirt. This allows geologists to note features like twinning, which can give clues about the origins of these samples.
This is an idea I’ve been kicking around for awhile — I’ve wanted to do a photograph which captured what I think of when I think of makers, and which makers themselves would enjoy as a work.
All of us started the same way — as curious kids (maybe big kids). At first, most of us were following in the path of someone else — along what feels like a straight, well-defined line. But there’s a point where things start to diverge, and we go off and do our own thing. That’s what making is all about, and that’s what I tried to capture here.
Symbolism aside, I just dig this image. I’d like to sell it as a print, with a portion of the proceeds going to charity. What I’d like to know from you is if you’d be interested in buying such a thing. It’s always hard to judge whether or not a print will sell, especially for the artist, who is often too close to the work to be objective — that’s what galleries and curators are for. But I don’t want this to be a gallery piece. I’d like it to be an affordable work that people can hang in their homes, hackerspaces, shops, or offices and enjoy, so I’m asking you directly.
This would be an 8×12 digital c-print, matted to 6×10, without a frame. The image above is a mockup of the final print in a frame. You can see a larger version of the image here. The price would be no more than $30/print and would include a custom matte.
Please respond in the comments if you’re interested.
UPDATE: Wow! Thank you all so much for your enthusiastic response! I’m currently working out distribution (shipping cost, setting up a shop, etc.) but it looks like this could really happen. Prepping the image for print takes some time too, because I set very high standards for myself when it comes to prints. Thanks again for your amazing comments and encouragement — they mean a lot to me!
Printable catalog (PDF)
I still prefer the real thing. Since photography is a hobby of mine, I wanted to be able to photograph lightnings. However, when I tried to do it without any specialized equipment, I didn’t have much success.
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