Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
In the summer of past few years, I have been leading a photography workshop in Disco Bay, in collaboration with Iceland Photo Tours. Disko Bay is a bay in the Western coast of Greenland, with Ilulissat Icefjord located adjacent to it.
Ilulissat Icefjord, the UNESCO World Heritage Site, is the most productive glacier in the Northern Hemisphere, with the glacier flows rate of 20 to 35 m per day, resulting in around 20 billion tons of icebergs calved off and many of them drifting around Disko Bay.
Thwaites Glacier is a huge glacier in Antarctica, often referred to as “Doomsday Glacier.” Why “doomsday?” Well, if it melts away, researchers say that it could raise the sea levels more than 10 feet. This is why it’s important for scientists to understand the behavior of his glacier – and a recent video from Icefin Robot will help them in this mission.
The video was recently published on YouTube, but it’s not only a tool for scientists to study the glacier. It’s also the first-ever video recorder under the ice of Thwaites Glacier, and it’s absolutely mesmerizing to watch.
We have all done reckless, stupid or plain silly things for the sake of a photo. A 77-year-old Judith Streng from Texas is no exception. She sat on an “ice throne” in Iceland to pose for a fun vacation snapshot. But when a wave dislodged the chunk of ice, it started drifting away from the shore and the lady almost got washed out to sea.
There’s something magical about soap bubbles, but watching them freeze raises the magic to a whole new level. In his timelapse Winter’s Magic, photographer Don Komarechka captured the process of soap bubbles getting frozen. And watching the ice crystals as they form on the delicate bubbles’ surface is as wonderful to watch, as it is difficult to film.
Photographer and filmmaker Mathieu Stern enjoys buying, modifying and even making his own weird lenses. He dreamt of his latest project for two years and now he’s finally made it – a lens made of ice. He traveled all the way to Iceland to be able to turn his idea into reality.
Making the ice lens came with a lot of challenges, but Mathieu managed to overcome them. He kindly shares with DIYP some photos and videos he took with this ice lens, as well as the story of how he made it. And it’s all really cool (no pun intended)!
Sometimes Mother Nature creates such incredible scenes that seeing them photographed makes us think: “This can’t be real!” Daniel Kordan captured one of these photos that will make you look twice before you realize: no, it isn’t a photo manipulation. It’s nature’s creation lit by a flare and photographed in a single frame. In this image, the fire meets water and ice, and Daniel told us a bit about how and where he captured it.
It seems that crowdsourcing is not beyond intelligence agencies. At least, according to a leaked memo from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In it, they say that the Special Agent in Charge Intelligence Program (SIP) Los Angeles have “moderate confidence” that DJI is providing critical infrastructure and law enforcement data to China.
They also say that they have “high confidence” that they are “selectively targeting government and privately owned entities within these sectors to expand its ability to collect and exploit sensitive U.S. data”. It all sounds a bit James Bond to me, but this isn’t the first time DJI’s been in the middle of security controversy. Nor even the first time this year.
Speed riding is a terrifying combination of freestyle skiing and paragliding. Described by those who participate as “staggeringly difficult and dangerous as hell“, it’s very impressive to watch. When Swiss speedriding pioneer and Olympic snowboarding medalist, Ueli Kestenholz discovered a massive natural ice tunnel, he knew he had to go through it. So, he contacted photographer Marc Weiler.
An insane location, 3,000m (around 10,000ft) above sea level in the snow and ice. The shoot presented a rather unique set of challenges for Marc. He needed to pack as light as possible, but have plenty of power and speed to be able to capture both inside the tunnel with the outside sky. With a pack that weighed 20kg, it can’t have been easy, but well worth it from looking at the results.
As important as the shoot itself is, as well as post-production, an oft-overlooked aspect of shooting an image is the pre-production. Specifically, the process of creating the set upon which the model will be posing for the entirety of the shoot.
Today though, we get a behind-the-scenes look at what exactly it takes to set up a scene for one of the best in the business, Vogue.[Read More…]
How do you go about shooting a portrait of a woman trapped in ice? Of course I could not actually sink a model under a frozen lake, so we took a short cut. I shot my model in a kiddie pool and applied an ice texture from the Image Manipulation Store. Hit the jump to see the full tutorial.
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You can find out more about John on his website and follow his adventures on YouTube and Facebook.
His videos have over a hundred million views, have been extensively published by news outlets, and has even received recognition from a few film festivals, such as International Ocean Festival
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