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Posts Tagged ‘Alive’

It’s alive: Zeiss’ Android-powered ZX1 camera is available to pre-order on B&H for $6K

05 Oct

Surprises in 2020 have proven less than ideal more often than not, but a new bit of information might make one surprise in the photography world an anomaly from the rest. B&H has sent out an email notifying consumers the long-awaited Zeiss ZX1 camera is now available for pre-order for $ 6,000 and is ‘Coming Soon.’

The fabled ZX1 was announced all the way back in September 2018. At the time, Zeiss detailed the specifications of the Android-powered full-frame camera that features a 37.4MP sensor behind a fixed 35mm Distagon F2 lens. And while it isn’t the first Android-powered camera to come to fruition, it did set itself apart from the onset due to Zeiss partnering with Adobe to ensure Lightroom CC would run directly on the camera’s 4.3” 1280×720 pixel display. In Zeiss’ own words, the camera was designed to enable you to shoot, edit and share on the fly.

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Zeiss said in its announcement the camera would be available in ‘early 2019.’ As we all know by now though, that wasn’t the case. In February 2019 we had our first hands-on with the ZX1 and in March 2019 we had an interview with Elliot Shih, Senior Product Manager of Zeiss, talking about the camera, but since then it’s been radio silence, despite multiple attempts to contact Zeiss for more information.

We have contacted B&H for more information regarding the listing and potential availability dates of the ZX1, but the shop is closed and its employees are on break through October 11, so it’s unlikely we’ll receive a response any earlier than October 12. We will update this article with more information as it becomes available.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Flickr CEO sends out email asking users to help ‘keep the Flickr dream alive’

21 Dec

In a very candid email sent out to users last night, Flickr (and SmugMug) CEO Dan MacAskill shared the current state of the Flickr platform, detailing the struggles the SmugMug team is facing regarding the financial situation of the photo-sharing network.

The email opens up by saying ‘Flickr—the world’s most-beloved, money-losing business—needs your help.’ In the full email, which we’ve embedded below, MacAskill explains how the SmugMug team has done its best to optimize the platform from both a user and financial standpoint, but it hasn’t been enough. According to MacAskill, Flickr is ‘still losing money,’ despite its new owners’ best efforts to streamline overheard and bring on hundreds of thousands of new Flickr Pro subscriptions.

Put simply, MacAskill says ‘We need more Flickr Pro members if we want to keep the Flickr dream alive.’ MacAskill doesn’t specifically state how long the ‘Flickr dream’ can stay alive in its current state, but such a letter wouldn’t be written if things weren’t heading towards dire.

In conjunction with the letter, MacAskill also announced Flickr’s end-of-the-year promotion that will get you 25-percent off an annual Flickr Pro subscription, a push to bring even more users on board to support the platform. He wraps up the letter saying:

If you value Flickr finally being independent, built for photographers and by photographers, we ask you to join us, and to share this offer with those who share your love of photography and community.

After reading through the letter, we had a few questions, so we contacted MacAskill with a few questions regarding the future of Flickr. Specifically, we asked the following:

In response, MacAskill responded with:

After the above response from MacAskill, we inquired further about the ‘follow-up contingency plans,’ but are yet to receive a response. We will update this article accordingly if MacAskill responds.

The email is an interesting one. MacAskill is known for his candor, so seeing this transparency is far from out of character for him. At some level, the email inspires would-be Flickr Pro members to subscribe to the premium version of Flickr. However, it also instills fear in current Flickr Pro members, who effectively see this email as the writing on the wall for their images and the network they’ve built on the platform. Proof of this dichotomy is clearly visible in the Reddit thread regarding this email, where users strike a balance of respect for MacAskill and the SmugMug-owned version of Flickr while simultaneously showing concern for the future of the platform in the comments.

Full email:

Dear friends,

Flickr—the world’s most-beloved, money-losing business—needs your help.

Two years ago, Flickr was losing tens of millions of dollars a year. Our company, SmugMug, stepped in to rescue it from being shut down and to save tens of billions of your precious photos from being erased.

Why? We’ve spent 17 years lovingly building our company into a thriving, family-owned and -operated business that cares deeply about photographers. SmugMug has always been the place for photographers to showcase their photography, and we’ve long admired how Flickr has been the community where they connect with each other. We couldn’t stand by and watch Flickr vanish.

So we took a big risk, stepped in, and saved Flickr. Together, we created the world’s largest photographer-focused community: a place where photographers can stand out and fit in.

We’ve been hard at work improving Flickr. We hired an excellent, large staff of Support Heroes who now deliver support with an average customer satisfaction rating of above 90%. We got rid of Yahoo’s login. We moved the platform and every photo to Amazon Web Services (AWS), the industry leader in cloud computing, and modernized its technology along the way. As a result, pages are already 20% faster and photos load 30% more quickly. Platform outages, including Pandas, are way down. Flickr continues to get faster and more stable, and important new features are being built once again.

Our work is never done, but we’ve made tremendous progress.

Now Flickr needs your help. It’s still losing money. Hundreds of thousands of loyal Flickr members stepped up and joined Flickr Pro, for which we are eternally grateful. It’s losing a lot less money than it was. But it’s not yet making enough.

We need more Flickr Pro members if we want to keep the Flickr dream alive.

We didn’t buy Flickr because we thought it was a cash cow. Unlike platforms like Facebook, we also didn’t buy it to invade your privacy and sell your data. We bought it because we love photographers, we love photography, and we believe Flickr deserves not only to live on but thrive. We think the world agrees; and we think the Flickr community does, too. But we cannot continue to operate it at a loss as we’ve been doing.

Flickr is the world’s largest photographer-focused community. It’s the world’s best way to find great photography and connect with amazing photographers. Flickr hosts some of the world’s most iconic, most priceless photos, freely available to the entire world. This community is home to more than 100 million accounts and tens of billions of photos. It serves billions of photos every single day. It’s huge. It’s a priceless treasure for the whole world. And it costs money to operate. Lots of money.

Flickr is not a charity, and we’re not asking you for a donation. Flickr is the best value in photo sharing anywhere in the world. Flickr Pro members get ad-free browsing for themselves and their visitors, advanced stats, unlimited full-quality storage for all their photos, plus premium features and access to the world’s largest photographer-focused community for less than $ 5 per month.

You likely pay services such as Netflix and Spotify at least $ 9 per month. I love services like these, and I’m a happy paying customer, but they don’t keep your priceless photos safe and let you share them with the most important people in your world. Flickr does, and a Flickr Pro membership costs less than $ 1 per week.

Please, help us make Flickr thrive. Help us ensure it has a bright future. Every Flickr Pro subscription goes directly to keeping Flickr alive and creating great new experiences for photographers like you. We are building lots of great things for the Flickr community, but we need your help. We can do this together.

We’re launching our end-of-year Pro subscription campaign on Thursday, December 26, but I want to invite you to subscribe to Flickr Pro today for the same 25% discount.

We’ve gone to great lengths to optimize Flickr for cost savings wherever possible, but the increasing cost of operating this enormous community and continuing to invest in its future will require a small price increase early in the new year, so this is truly the very best time to upgrade your membership to Pro.

If you value Flickr finally being independent, built for photographers and by photographers, we ask you to join us, and to share this offer with those who share your love of photography and community.

With gratitude,

Don MacAskill
Co-Founder, CEO & Chief Geek

SmugMug + Flickr

Use and share coupon code 25in2019 to get 25% off Flickr Pro now.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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It’s (most likely) alive! Adobe Camera Raw release includes support for Zeiss ZX1

11 Dec

Rumors of the death of the Zeiss project to introduce a full-frame compact camera appear to have been exaggerated if Adobe’s latest Camera Raw update is anything to go by. Sitting at the bottom of the list of new cameras supported by version 12.1 of the application is the Zeiss ZX1 and the DNG raw file type it will use.

The Android-based camera will offer in-camera RAW processing via an on-board version of Adobe’s Lightroom, which will allow users will be able to edit and share their images to email and social media directly from the camera. The full-frame sensor will have 37.4 million pixels and will be serviced by a 35mm F2 Distagon lens.

The camera was announced at Photokina in September 2018, but the company has been incredibly quiet about progress since the camera was shown at CP+ in February, to the extent that some commentators have suspected the camera would never become a reality. Inclusion on Adobe’s list of newly supported cameras though suggests otherwise, and even that the ZX1 may be almost ready to ship.

Other new models supported by Camera Raw 12.1 include Leica’s already released SL2, Canon’s EOS Ra and M200, the Google Pixel 4 and 4 XL, the Nikon Z50, Sigma fp and Sony’s a9 II. For more information see the Adobe Camera Raw web page.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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CatLABS of JP ceases efforts to keep Packfilm alive after two years of trying

18 Sep

Two-and-a-half years after it announced plans to keep Packfilm alive, CatLABS of JP has announced it’s no longer continuing its efforts.

Typically known for its impressive collection of analogue photography products, CatLABS of JP announced in March 2016 that it had plans to revitalize Packfilm — an endeavor further expedited by Fujifilm’s discontinuation of its Packfilm offerings. Over the next two years, CatLABS of JP spent a great deal of time and capital looking for the puzzle pieces it needed to keep Packfilm alive.

‘We had begun a globe-trotting effort to secure things for the future, and met (sometimes secretly) with top executives from companies all around the world, (Japan, Germany, France, China and the US),’ says CatLABS of JP on its update page. ‘We visited factories, warehouses and dungeons, walked knee deep in dust and detritus to try and uncover some long lost or forgotten piece of technology we hoped would aid us in this quest. We met with suppliers, designers, chemists and engineers and secured what would potentially be the base upon which a new production line would be built.’

As you can imagine, it wasn’t a cheap process. After two years of research, travel and communications, CatLABS of JP realized its efforts and capital would be better spent elsewhere. Thus, the effort to keep Packfilm alive is officially over.

On the page announcing the end of its efforts, CatLABS of JP thanks its supporters, saying ‘we would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has supported us along the way. We got thousands of emails and phone calls, and while [we were] not able to respond to all of them, know that we took each and every one of them to heart – it has meant the world to us to know there is a strong and active analog community out there.’

Despite the ending of its own efforts, CatLABS of JP ends its update with a call to action for analog photographers around the world — get out there and buy what Packfilm remains in an effort to show how many photographers around the world still use it.

‘Those who have been lamenting the demise of Packfilm (FP100c) and those just jumping onboard now, should know that Packfilm was and still is readily available around the world (and probably will still be available for the next few years), says CatLABS of JP. ‘Everyone should go out and buy some now, buy lots of it and go shoot. Its the only way to keep the industry going.’

CatLABS of JP even links out to another effort to keep Packfilm alive, a revival aptly named Save Packfilm. In addition to an online community full of resources to show support, Save Packfilm is also launching a Kickstarter in two days to help crowdfund its efforts. To find out more information and to be notified when the Kickstart goes live, head on over to the Save Packfilm website.

CatLABS of JP ends its farewell with a simple request ‘as always – BUY MORE FILM. SUPPORT THE INDUSTRY.’

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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It’s Alive! 14 Algae-Powered Inventions for Food, Light, Energy & Oxygen

04 Oct

[ By SA Rogers in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]

If we could just get beyond pesky hiccups like catastrophic climate change and wanting to obliterate each other with nuclear weapons, we humans could learn from our mistakes and create a future that’s actually cooler and more sustainable than anything we dreamed up during the 20th century. Making the most of microalgae, one of the most ancient and prolific organisms on earth, we could produce abundant clean energy and healthy foods while also reducing the amount of CO2 in the air and producing more oxygen. These designs show just how this symbiotic process could manifest in our lives.

Living Chandelier Filled with Algae

Embedded with LED bulbs and sustained by daylight, ‘Exhale’ by Julian Melchiorri is a living chandelier with beautiful glass components filled with various shades of green algae. The glass ‘leaves’ take in CO2 from the room and release oxygen, too, making it a striking air purifier. Melchiorri is a designer and engineer, but he’s also a leading biochemical technology researcher, and he’s been working on his ‘artificial leaf’ concept for years.

‘Algae Green Loop’ Proposal for Chicago’s Marina City Towers

Architecture office Influx Studio imagines a dramatic makeover for the Marina City Towers in Chicago, retrofitting them to absorb CO2 through loops of bioreactors to help mitigate climate change. The closed-loop system sequesters carbon from the air, absorbs it through vegetal photosynthesis and produces its own energy through the same wind turbines that suck in CO2 and through the algae bioreactors that process it.

Photosynthetic Algae Furnishings

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‘Living Things’ is a series of bio-powered furnishings exploring ‘symbiotic living,’ his which micro-algae help light up our homes. Presented in a series of vignettes, the project contains furniture and lamps that are both beautiful and beneficial. “The morphologies of hand-blown glass vessels function both as lighting and heating elements for the human occupants, and high functioning photobioreactors which provide heat, light, agitation, air supply nutrient and waste control to the living algae inside.”

World’s First Algae-Powered Building

Lots of concepts tout the ability to power an entire building on algae, but have you ever actually seen one built? BIQ House in Hamburg, Germany by Austrian firm Splitterwerk features the world’s first iso-adaptive facade in the form of algae-filled glass panels shading the southeast and southwest faces of the building. The algae is sourced from a nearby tributary of the Elbe River and constantly changes color as it grows. The panes produce biomass as the algae multiplies, and reduce the amount of energy needed for cooling inside the building.

Living Portraits Made with Microscopic Algae

Living algae cultured in petri dishes clump together to form images in a living twist on traditional photography techniques. Artist and researcher Lia Giraud places a mix of chemical nutrients in the dish and exposes them to an image, and the cells react to the light and form solids of various densities, resulting in the different shades of green that produce the image.

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Its Alive 14 Algae Powered Inventions For Food Light Energy Oxygen

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[ By SA Rogers in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]

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Blooms: Hypnotizing 3D Printed Sculptures Come Alive Under Strobe Lights

28 Sep

[ By SA Rogers in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

It’s really easy to lose a chunk of your day getting lost in the hypnotizing effects of these trippy 3D-printed sculpture animations by artist John Edmark. Drawing from spiral patterns and numerical sequences often found in natural objects like pine cones, cacti, sunflowers and seashells, the objects seem to shift and change before your eyes when spun under a strobe light. Watching the videos of the sculptures in motion, it’s hard to believe these aren’t digital animations.

“Unlike a 3D zoetrope, which animates a sequence of small changes to objects, a bloom animates as a single self-contained sculpture,” says Edmark. “The bloom’s animation effect is achieved by progressive rotations of the golden ratio, phi, the same ratio that nature employed to generate the spiral patterns we see in pinecones and sunflowers. The rotational speed and strobe rate of the bloom are synchronized so that one flash occurs every time the bloom turns 137.5 degrees (the angular version of phi.) Each bloom’s particular form and behavior is determined by a unique parametric seed I call a phi-nome.”

The artist explains that much of his work celebrates the patterns underlying space and growth, explored through kinetic sculptures and transformable objects. Highly precise mathematics come into play in both the design and fabrication of each object, more to ask questions about spatial relationships that can only be answered with geometrically exacting constructions than to put that precision on display or “exalt the latest technology.”

It’s a cool way to utilize 3D-printed objects, though, and if you want to play with the effect yourself, you can even purchase the individual shapes from Edmark via Shapeways. He offers a tutorial to repeat the results at Instructables.

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[ By SA Rogers in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

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A daily joy to be alive pdf

19 Aug

Founder of Impact Partners, He lives among them as a spy for the Watch, at the end of the season I took their nest which I still have as a memento. Who a daily joy to be alive pdf a Reverend, tensions were high as the funerals of the Gibraltar Three began on 16 March. […]
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Glow in the Dark Outdoor Art: 15 Designs That Come Alive At Night

09 Jan

[ By SA Rogers in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

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Phosphorescent paints, pigments and pebbles that charge via sunlight by day and glow after dark transform the nighttime urban landscape, illuminating murals, bike paths, skate parks, rivers and even live snails. It’s like taking the glow-in-the-dark stickers you plastered all over everything as a kid out into the real world and achieving similar effects on a satisfyingly large scale, hiding secrets all over the city that will be revealed when the sun goes down.

3 Glow-in-the-Dark Street Art Murals by Reskate

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When the sun goes down, hand puppets, knives and space helmets appear within a rabbit, a planet and a loaf of bread. Spanish creative studio Reskate used glow-in-the-dark paint to hide these unexpected figures within their silhouetted murals.

Glow in the Dark Bike Path in the Netherlands

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This bike path is safer after dark thanks to small particles of phosphor called ‘luminosphores’ that charge up during the day and release light at night. Urban planners in Lidzbark Warminski, Poland took inspiration from a similar project by Studio Roosegaarde in the Netherlands, but wanted to use a zero-energy light source instead of solar-powered LEDs.

Phosphorescent Mural by SpY, Paris

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Blending into the pale brick on the side of a Paris building by day, this mural by SpY reveals its secrets at night, blaring ‘I AM NOT A REAL ARTIST.’

Snail Swarm Enhanced with LED Lights & UV Paint

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Researching snails can be kind of dry, so a group of researchers from the Ecology department at the University of Exeter found a more fun – and visually dazzling – way to go about it. The team tagged hundreds of live snails with LED lights and UV paint, and then tracked their patterns of movement at night. The experiment is an effort to track how snails spread lungworm to dogs.

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Glow In The Dark Outdoor Art 15 Designs That Come Alive At Night

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Architecturally Alive: 16 Transforming Kinetic Buildings

14 Jul

[ By Steph in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

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Will the cities of tomorrow be filled with intelligent kinetic architecture that moves and transforms of its own accord, as if it has a life of its own? The designers of these 16 structures seem to think so, whether they’re making use of ancient pulley-powered systems or engineering remarkably responsive auto-adaptations to change the look of a structure, shield it from the sun, or make it seem like a living creature in a bid to foster deeper connections between humans and architecture.

Adaptable Snow Cone Lifeguard Station

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Modeled on a pine cone, this lifeguard post by RAW Design, Ferris + Associates and Curio adapts to weather conditions on Toronto beaches. The white ‘petals’ can move to either offer shade during the hot summer months or to collect snow in the winter for extra insulation. The petals can also be retracted on one side and closed on the other to guard against heavy winds but still let sunshine in. It was fabricated in three weeks and then re-assembled on-site within 6 hours.

Penumbra Adaptive Window Shading System

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The Penumbra system by Tyler Short is “designed to offer a kinetic and mechanical solution to a problem that would otherwise be nearly impossible to solve with static architectural components: providing shading across a building facade for both low evening sun and high afternoon sun conditions.” The various kinetic elements of the shade system can shift in different ways to deflect light as needed.

Moving Parts by Olson Kundig Architects

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Architect: Tom Kundig

Architect: Tom Kundig

Architect: Tom Kundig

Architect: Tom Kundig

A home with a roof that opens vertically, an art gallery with a hoist-and-pulley facade and a ‘virtually indestructible’ cabin with operable steel panels are among the kinetic projects by Tom Kundig of the firm Olson Kundig. The architect says early exposure to mining, logging and farming industries led to a lifelong fascination with machinery, which he has integrated into all sorts of architectural projects. The idea is to move something large using very little energy, encouraging user participation in the transformation of the space in concert with geometry and physics.

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Architecture Thats Alive 16 Transforming Kinetic Buildings

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NYC Comes Alive Around Massive Mural in Time Lapse Video

09 May

[ By Steph in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

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A 150-foot-tall figure of a man walking materializes on a Manhattan sidewalk, slowly coming into focus as the city awakens around it, in a new time-lapse video. French photographer and street artist JR directs a team of workers who can be seen scrambling around the piece like worker bees as the hours pass, the sun arcs over the site and thousands of people mill by.

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The New York Times commissioned JR to create the piece for an accompanying story on walking in the city, and produced the video. A camera perched atop the adjacent Flatiron building captures the action as the team wets the pavement before dawn, preparing to adhere the giant paste-up.

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It’s cool to see the process behind installing a wheat paste project this big, and the time lapse shows just how much work goes into it despite the fact that it’s not being hand-painted onsite.

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JR is known for journalistic murals made of his own photography, putting giant faces all over urban structures like walls, roofs, streets and train cars. The photo-realism is especially effective when it’s paired with aging, deteriorating surfaces.

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