1 000 000 000 000 Frames A Second
This is incredible. Watching the duality of light in super duper slow motion! Awesome! Science rules!
In 1964 MIT professor Harold Edgerton, pioneer of stop-action photography, famously took a photo of a bullet piercing an apple using exposures as short as a few nanoseconds. Inspired by his work, Ramesh Raskar and his team set out to create a camera that could capture not just a bullet (traveling at 850 meters per second) but light itself (nearly 300 million meters per second).
Stop a moment to take that in: photographing light as it moves. For that, they built a camera and software that can visualize pictures as if they are recorded at 1 trillion frames per second. The same photon-imaging technology can also be used to create a camera that can peer “around” corners , by exploiting specific properties of the photons when they bounce off surfaces and objects.
Among the other projects that Raskar is leading, with the MIT Media Lab’s Camera Culture research group, are low-cost eye care devices, a next generation CAT-Scan machine and human-computer interaction systems.
Papers:
Andreas Velten, Thomas Willwacher, Otkrist Gupta, Ashok Veeraraghavan, Moungi G. Bawendi and Ramesh Raskar, “Recovering ThreeDimensional Shape around a Corner using Ultra-Fast Time-of-Flight Imaging.” Nature Communications, March 2012
Andreas Velten, Adrian Jarabo, Belen Masia, Di Wu, Christopher Barsi, Everett Lawson, Chinmaya Joshi, Diego Gutierrez, Moungi G. Bawendi and Ramesh Raskar, “Ultra-fast Imaging for Light in Motion” (in progress). http://femtocamera.info
“Though photographs in the near future will still be composed by people holding cameras, it will gradually become more accurate to say pictures were computed rather than ‘taken’ or ‘captured.’”Popular Photography magazine
Year-long exposure of Skyline
Photographer Michael Chrisman used a pinhole camera fitted with photosensitive paper to make a 365-day exposure of the Toronto skyline from Jan. 1, 2011, to Dec. 31, 2011.
A lovely year-long exposure of the Toronto Skyline made with a pinhole camera. Over 365 different streaks of the sun as they slowly pass the sky creating the streaks.
I’ve TRIED to make a pinhole camera myself and it is not easy – this is super impressive.
The camera, a simple black box, was mounted to the side of a rusty metal box next to a shipping beacon near the shipping canal. Chrisman used tape and a few bricks to “secure and position the camera for its long wait,” he said in an email exchange with the Star.
Chrisman, a 31-year-old freelance editorial and art photographer, put it there on Jan. 1, 2011, knowing a lot could go wrong. Mishaps could include the camera being stolen, which has happened in some of his earlier time-exposure experiments.
Toronto News: Year-long exposure of Toronto skyline produces ‘dreamy’ image – thestar.com.
ALL the Star Wars
I saw this in Wal-Mart today and I really want to get it. Looking to get it online at Amazon. Excitedddd. It’s pretty sweet and ultra nerdy. A’la me.
September 11th.
Amid all the ceremonies and what not about this day 10 years ago, I am going to post this one picture. To be honest, September 11th didn’t mean a lot to me. I was only 11 at the time and I had no idea of the implications of it for the future. I remember my grade 6 teacher pulling in the TV so we could watch it during class. But the weight of the situation didn’t hit until I was much older. This is going to be the defining moment of our generation, as the generations before us had World Wars and nuclear bombs.
Nightime Star Photography Tutorial Video
Super cool video on night photography. Part of me wants to get out and try some of this tonight.
The Carousel
Nostalgia – it’s delicate, but potent. Teddy told me that in Greek, “nostalgia” literally means “the pain from an old wound.” It’s a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine. It goes backwards, and forwards… it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called the wheel, it’s called the carousel. It let’s us travel the way a child travels – around and around, and back home again, to a place where we know are loved.
Clearly I’ve been watching too much Mad Men before I got to bed. This is from the season one finale where main character is leading a pitch for a rotating Kodak projector. This monologue is spectacular, as is the entire series. Enjoy.
Need Old Piano STAT.
When I’ve got the money, and the sweet awesome computer, I am going to do this. Mmmm computer in old piano. It’d be super awesome with my speakers in it too.
Monday Morning Randomness! Gallery.
Heaven Is A Place On Earth
Look at me go! Writing another blog post! There’s just a few things that happened today/a few days ago that are worth posting!
Also – hit play on this video and then read the below stuff. Just a little mood music to make your reading experience that much more enjoyable. Look at me, a multi-media blogger.
If you didn’t hear, NASA made a big announcement about extraterrestrial life today. I borrowed this from io9.com it’s Everything You Need to Know about NASA’s completely new life-form.
What is the discovery?
The discovery, made by NASA scientist Felisa Wolfe Simon and her team, is straightforward enough. We often think of carbon as the crucial element for life, but actually there are six elements that work together as the basis of every last organism we’ve ever found. These are carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulfur, and phosphorus. Phosphorus is part of the structural framework of DNA and RNA, essentially acting as the molecular girders that hold everything else in place.That makes phosphorus essential to the stability of DNA and, in turn, the existence of life.
Wolfe Simon investigated whether a different element could be substituted in the place of phosphorus. The obvious place to start is with arsenic, which is directly below phosphorus on the periodic table and thus shares many of the same properties. Her team headed to California’s Mono Lake near Yosemite National Park. Mono Lake is an incredibly unusual ecosystem, with three times the amount of salt as seawater and, crucially, it’s poor in phosphorus and rich in arsenic. Despite this, life thrives in Mono Lake, and so the team collected some microbe-rich mud and took it back to the lab.
There, they placed mud in a setting where the microbes would have everything they needed to live, such as sugar and vitamins. Crucially, however, they created a phosphorus-free environment and pumped the test area full of arsenic. Nothing should have survived in those conditions – indeed, arsenic is notoriously toxic. But the microbes didn’t just survive, they actually thrived in the seemingly impossible conditions.
Essentially, instead of things needing phosphorus to live, they can now use arsenic, which is found abundantly in our galaxy. So this proves that there is a bigger chance of things being out there. So yay!
In other news that no one I know cares about. Lebron James came back to Cleveland after being a dick in the off season. He got booed lots. Big deal.
And lastly, National Geographic recently published their 2010 photography contest. You can find some of them here, below I’ve posted my favourites.
Related Articles
Stop Motion + Billboards = Neat
The video consists of 355 photos taken with the Olympus PEN, printed in billboard size and shot again.The video was produced with the Olympus PEN itself. No tricks or computer animation at all. Hats off to to Takeuchi Taijin for his support and direction.
Genesis: 1:1:1
This nicely reflects my views on religion.
Somewhere, Zeus is grasping a lightning bolt. – CollegeHumor picture.
The Sandpit
I really want to try this! It’s called tilt-shift photography. By using special cameras and tricks you make everything look miniature! So cool
Lego Photos
Here’s a guy doing something pretty cool, he’s taking well known photos and then taking them again using Lego. Pretty awesome if you ask me. Click on the link for more.
This is from the National Geographic cover. I’ve always liked this photo, so it’s cool to see it done in Lego
Afghan Girl on Flickr – Photo Sharing!.
Tonight Feels Like a Matthew Good Night…
Blahh. That is the best way to describe the entirety of today. Blah.
I officially hate reading break. It’s so terribly boring. I have absolutely nothing to do. I suppose I could be playing guitar or recording or actually doing some reading, but I just have no motivation. I am in just a very blah zone this week.
My friend told me about one of his friends who is putting on an art show featuring younger people, and he told me to look into it to display my photos. So I did and I am going to be in this show later next week. So I’m trying to prepare to get some photographs together, and I’ve decided I’m going to get 3 printed for this show, two 8 x 10′s and one 11 x 14 to kinda be the feature piece. So I put in my order to Black’s and figure they’ll be ready by the afternoon sometime. So a few hours go by and my two 8 x 10′s are ready, and I’m like okay, the 11 x 14 will take a little longer that’s understandable. So I wait and I wait, constantly checking my email to see if this 11 x 14 is done. Eventually I got sick of waiting and met up with a friend for coffee (which is probably why I am up so late yet again). And she told me she had the same problem with Black’s last Christmas, she said it took them a week to print her photo because they have to do it in Toronto or something. So I was like fuck and eventually went home, called Black’s and they told me it should be ready in about ten days, which is just fucking great, I’m not going to have it in time for the showing. So I basically wasted my entire waiting for this photo to be ready, when really it’s going to be a whole week.
Hopefully tomorrow will be better, I’m going to go pick up my 8 x 10′s and find some frames for them @ Value Village. Maybe I’ll do something productive. Unlike today.
This whole week has been full of waiting and hoping. Girlfriend has been busy just about everyday except Monday (my birthday) with her papers, and with one roommate at work, one roommate in Calgary and the last having his long-distance girlfriend here, I’m pretty lonely. So I’m waiting for either Girlfriend to be done for the day, and then I get to spend a little bit of time with her before she goes back to work or to bed. And I’ve bought those shoes and waiting for them to come, I also won a new camera lens on Ebay, so I’m waiting for that, I’m got an iPod for my birthday using Aeroplan points, and that’s going to take 4 – 6 weeks to get here, so I’ m waiting for that to arrive, my best friend sent me a birthday package yesterday, so I’m waiting for that, and my brother is suppose to be sending Girlfriend her Christmas present sometime, so I’m waiting for that too. All in all, I’m waiting for 6 things to get here. And whoever invented package tracking sucks. Because I will check the status of these things about 15+ times a day to see if they’ve moved.
I’m not sure what else there is to say…my life has been far from interesting. Oh!
So it was my birthday last week. Well technically still this week, and for that I got some nice Lego and a guitar strap from Girlfriend, and amaretto and a mini-tripod from my roommates. But the best part was what my mom gave me. Well, made me. Well…knit me. I got a dark purple sweater vest from her. Great. Just great. She had me open it while I was on the phone with her, even worse. I had to pretend like I liked it. I am never going to wear it ever, I will provide a picture for your comedic enjoyment. So that’s just perfect. Now she can knit big things, I’ll be expecting a full sweater and mitts and toques for Christmas now. Blah.
I feel like I’ve probably posted this song before, but it’s one of my favourites. And since I said it was a Matthew Good night, I figure I should post some Matthew Good.
And with that, I bid you adieu.
- J
The Reason I Subscribe to National Geographic:
is Photos like this
National Geographic Magazine – NGM.com.
photo by Julie Adnan
Iraq—Some 160 miles northeast of Baghdad, in a Sulaymaniyah music hall ravaged by war, looting, and neglect, a violin-playing boy sounds a note of hope. His teacher, Azad Maaruf, lives there, instructing scores of students.
