90 Ans Après la Grande Guerre

Posted on November 20, 2008 by Gary

The popular French news site LeMonde.fr published a phenomenal collection of news and multimedia related to World War I at the start of this month in remembrance of the 90th anniversary of the Great War. The édition spéciale, which corresponds to a print publication in France, compiles stories, photographs, audio and video associated with the war nearly a century ago.

One such video is a shot documentary highlighting the works of Jacques Grison who, as a child, played in the countryside of Verdun without even realizing that 300,000 men died there in 1916. Now a photographer, Grison has documented the landscape of Verdun, capturing a world that looks as if the war ended only days ago. Even if you don't understand a single word of Français, the six minute long video is worth watching.

Idée Multicolr Flickr Search

Posted on October 29, 2008 by Gary

I've seen quite a few Flickr API mash-ups, but this has got to be one of the most creative. Idée Inc. has created the "Multicolr Search Lab" that uses a collection of 10 million Creative Commons licensed images on Flickr to match photographs to a user-selected color palette.

As the user selects up to ten colors from the palette on the right, the mash-up searches an index of matched colors and pulls up results in the form of thumbnails, each linked to the image's Flickr page. Not only is this just plain fun, but because of Creative Commons licensing, an artist can quickly find images to use in a project (as long as he/she gives credit and shares alike). Idée's Piximilar, the engine behind this app, seems to be a very powerful and groundbreaking image analysis system. It will be interesting to see how this algorithm is incorporated into future projects. For now, you can check out Multicolr at http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolr/.

Personal Collection: “The Lone Rose”

Posted on September 19, 2008 by Gary

The image above is from my personal photography collection. The original photograph was taken in downtown San Diego whilst trying to find a way to drive around a stuck freight train while listening to a Swedish radio station. Yeah, it's complicated. Anyway, I rediscovered this photograph the other day, and decided to try a few editing techniques involving Corel Painter X that I had been meaning to experiment with. What you see above is the result. In order to bring more depth into the photograph, I added more bokeh into the background of the image, increased the vignette, and selectively muted and enhanced the colors. I recommend going to the photo's Flickr page and viewing it at a larger size.