On January 2nd, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino proposed a one-year wage freeze for city workers, including the Boston Police Department. The Boston Police Superior Officers Federation agreed to a contract on January 23, but not until after the city dismissed its residency case against West Roxbury Police Sergeant Michael Hanson. In the mix of the deal was an alleged list of more than 25 superior police officers who are living outside the city in violation of their contracts' residency requirements. Through the use of strong-arm tactics, the Mayor got his wage freeze and at least 25 of Boston's Finest got to keep their jobs. The following day, two warrants were issued for Shepard Fairey's arrest.On Wednesday, February 4th, Mayor Menino met with Shepard and was photographed shaking his hand following the unveiling of Fairey's 'Peace Goddess' banner on the North wall of City Hall at a public event to promote his show, Supply and Demand, at the Institute of Contemporary Art / Boston. Thursday night Shepard sat for a Q-and-A talk at the ICA which was publicized by the museum after which he signed autographs for more than an hour. Shepard was not arrested until two full weeks after the warrants had been issued and after numerous public appearances in Boston.
Meet Robert Sabuda and Matthew Reinhart, the two artists who have single-handedly (well, with four hands) revived the pop-up book for a new millennium. Chances are your child owns one of their awe-inspiring creations, be it The Wonderful Wizard of Oz with its spinning paper cyclone, or Encyclopedia Prehistorica: Dinosaurs with its jaw-gnashing T-Rex. Maybe you've received one as a gift yourself, from a friend who appreciates your inner child.
Bought the star wars one for a friends kid. It was very impressive.
The Next American Revolution: Main Street vs. Wall Street -- Seeking Alpha
The impetus for the French Revolution can’t be summarized in a blog post, but there were two core elements that strike me as perfect parallels for the ongoing lack of judgment among some elites south of the border. I’ve always thought that average Americans shared many of the ideals of The Enlightenment, particularly equality and freedom of the individual.Now that American taxpayers are bailing out many of the elites of their society, the parallels to pre-Revolution France begin to appear. Louis XVI took power during a financial crisis. France was nearing bankruptcy and the costs of the government exceeded tax revenues. Some of the most blessed in society didn’t pay tax.
As the post production lead here at our studio, I'll use post as a microcosm for the shift in the stock industry. I learned post production skills out of necessity, and the initial response that I had to the immense power of post production was to make the most technically perfect images that I could. Detail in every pixel. Perfect transitions between light and color values. Smooth, pleasing skin tones. Enhanced eyes and teeth. Erased blemishes. Grey cards, noise reduction plugins, hell, I wrote an article on the minutia of edge specific sharpening. You get the drift. I was a dream come true to stock agencies. Every image that went across my desk was PERFECT.But creativity requires change. In this instance for me it was embracing the "imperfect". If you look at Chase's images that I've been working on lately, you won't find detail in every pixel. More likely you'll find that the highlights and shadows are gone, the colors have shifted due to a heavy hand with the contrast and saturation controls, the transition areas might be a bit harsh.
I agree with this. Stock companies demand more then 100k ads. It sucks the life out of it... lol!
We did all the retouching on this here site. I like the motion they added. Nice touch.
Snapshot: Grace Jones | | guardian.co.uk Arts
The arabesque that Grace Jones is executing in this 1978 photograph/artistic creation may be graceful, but it is also impossible. "What I'm interested is the illusion of reality," says the photographer and art director Jean-Paul Goude, who was to be Jones's Pygmalion, transforming her from hard-partying model to an androgynous fantasy image and international superstar. "And unless you are extraordinarily supple, you cannot do this arabesque. The main point is that Grace couldn't do it, and that's the basis of my entire work: creating a credible illusion."
Retouching has been around a lot longer then Photoshop, fyi. It actually goes back another century, but I won't bore you with details.
Current Unemployment Rate & Statistics 2009 - Job Layoffs, Loss | Mint.com Blog
The overall unemployment rate currently stands at 7.2 percent, a 15-year high according to Bureau of Labor Statistics. Each day since the current recession began, in December 2007, the news has been full of reports of job layoffs. Just today the government released a report indicating that the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits is at its highest level in a quarter of a century, as more workers seek government assistance. Could the news get any worse? It’s all in how you calculate the numbers.
Here is a visual guide to the truth behind the numbers
New York artist Sam Bassett takes portraits to the next level. Blending the feel of installation art with plan ol’ ethereal awesomeness, he shoots his subjects in a way that manages to be about them while also immersing them into something that transcends them as well. The results are completely kick-ass images that encompass more than who a person is and what they do, but creates an energy and atmosphere of how what they’ve done has shaped their life. The environment of the portrait becomes a reflection of them as a whole - their history and accomplishments - rather than just a documentation of their physical appearance.
And his website sucks. So go here to see the images instead.
YouTube - Her Morning Elegance / Oren Lavie
Her Morning Elegance / Oren Lavie
Cool stop motion video.
Look at the "Face to Face" series.
Between Takes: The 'Kind Of Blue' Sessions : NPR Music
Morning Edition, January 29, 2009 - These days, an official request to review the reel-to-reel tapes from a typical Columbia Records recording session in the late '50s — say Johnny Mathis, Duke Ellington or Doris Day — brings up boxes upon boxes of reels. But Miles Davis' Kind of Blue sessions hardly dented the tape budget. Three reels of Scotch 190, at the time a workhorse product of the recording industry, hold all that was recorded at those two historic dates in 1959.
WALLRIDE(S) - A LOOK BACK WITH ANDY JENKINS — Club Mumble
Twice a year the Girl Skateboard Company Inc releases a catalog containing new products from most of the brands under their roof in Torrance, California. Girl, Chocolate, Royal, Fourstar, Ruby, Skate Mental and Lakai are all represented within it’s pages along with skate photos and other editorial. More than a catalog, Wallride is a perfect bound collectible book to be put on the shelf.
Richard Nicholson Photography - 'Last One Out, Please Turn On the Light'
Last One Out, Please Turn On The Light a survey of London's remaining professional darkrooms
So for the record, about 10 years ago I said darkrooms would be going bye bye and there would be a few left as fine art labs.....
WD 2TB Caviar Green Monster Drive Preview - HotHardware
A quick glance at the numbers here show this new big-boy Caviar Green drive from WD offering more than competitive performance versus the likes of Samsung's Spinpoint F1 and Seagate's Barracuda 7200.11 -- both 7200RPM-based products. HD Tach shows an average read speed of 90MB/s and average writes at 80MB/s. We'll be digging into performance metrics with other tools like IOMeter in the days ahead but this early view certainly looks good for a disk with this sort of capacity. We'll be looking at power as well but WD claims this drive drops in somewhere around 7 Watts under read/write load and 5 Watts at idle. With the ever-increasing demand for bulk storage, this new WD drive offers a smaller carbon footprint as well, with a full 2TB available in a single 3.5" drive.MSRP for the new ginormous Caviar is set at $299.
The Henry Clay People on MySpace Music - Free Streaming MP3s, Pictures & Music Downloads
Nice bar room music, like if the Hold Steady did not suck.
thesign.Hehe, the Hollywood Pic, "Behind the Scenes" being hung in Sweden.
Beervana, as Portland's known, has more breweries and brewpubs than any city on the planet, and that means never being more than a mile from the freshest beer imaginable -- beer that traveled no more than a few yards from the fermenter to the serving tank to your pint glass. It means patronizing places where the brewers are a creative force, not just rubber-booted employees; where they can free themselves from production brewing to whomp up truly special beers, which patrons promptly drink up, allowing the brewers to exercise their creativity yet again.
CarnivorePE is inspired by DCS1000, a piece of software used by the FBI to perform electronic wiretaps. (Until recently, DCS1000 was known by its nickname "Carnivore.") Improving on the FBI software, CarnivorePE features new functionality including: artist-made diagnosic clients, remote access, full subject targetting, full data targetting, volume buffering, transport protocol filtering, and an open source software license. Carnivore is created by RSG.
Macintosh Performance Guide: Configuring Photoshop
1) Hide the Histogram panel when running actions or scripts (testing or not). Hiding it drops the diglloydMedium/Huge execution time by about 10%. Even in the middle of an multi-step action, Photoshop updates the histogram display after each step, which can be a time-consuming operation, especially with CacheLevels=3.2) Use the Bigger Tiles plugin in conjunction with DisableScratchCompress plugin. Failure to use these plugins results in a penalty of up to 50% on Mac OS X in any “decent” configuration (over 100% for Photoshop CS3). Download the Plugins. It’s bizarre that Adobe calls these “legacy” plugins, because they have a massive performance impact.