When posing for photos, especially Instagram photos, people often forget about good taste and respect. Because of this, Auschwitz Museum is publicly urging its visitors to stop posing on the railway tracks that carried hundreds of thousands of victims to their deaths.
Facebook censors images of two ancient Roman statues for nudity
Many cultural institutions use social networks nowadays to promote their events. Geneva’s Museum of Art and History is no exception, but Facebook’s photo policy ruined its campaign. The museum posted images of two ancient statues that will be exhibited in an upcoming show. However, Facebook apparently thinks they’re porn, so it banned the museum’s ad.
You can now access and download 30,000 images from The Cleveland Museum of Art’s collection
It’s becoming more and more common for museums to digitize their collections. The latest one to join the trend is The Cleveland Museum of Art. After digitizing its collection, it made it publicly accessible online, with 30,000 images free for download and remix.
Museum visitors damaged a Salvador Dalí painting while taking selfies
We have seen people destroying works of art, nature, and their own lives while taking selfies. A few days ago, a visitor of an exhibition in Russia managed to ruin two works of iconic artists: Salvador Dalí and Francisco Goya. While the Goya painting only had the glass and the frame damaged, in Dalí’s case, the painting itself suffered the damage as well.
These film photos of wildlife are stunning – but they’re not quite what they seem
Lucus Landers is a film photographer and camera maker. He has recently captured some pretty unique black and white wildlife photos with his Canon 1N. His series shows zebras, buffalos, elephants and many other animals in their natural habitat. But there’s a catch – these photos weren’t made in the wild at all! They were all taken in the Museum of Natural History in New York. Would you ever figure it out?
The Selfie Museum is Los Angeles’ latest attraction
While some museums are banning selfies, there is now a museum that does exactly the opposite. The Museum of Selfies is a real thing and opened recently in Los Angeles. As the museum’s website reads, this isn’t just a museum of selfies, but a museum about them. So, what is there to know about selfies, anyway?
The Museum of Selfies is a pop-up museum described as “an interactive museum that explores the history and cultural phenomenon of the selfie.” In this context, the selfie is explained as “an image of oneself taken by oneself.” And as the description reads, is roots date back 40,000 years.
Photographer waits for hours to capture museum visitors who match the artworks
Paris-based photographer Stefan Draschan has found the second best way to spend time in a museum. He visits museums and takes photos of people who match the artworks. Sometimes it’s the color palette of their clothes that matches one of the paintings. Other times, it’s the color and texture of their hair. There are cases when even the pattern of the clothes is strikingly similar to the one in the artwork!
But regardless of the type of similarity, all these photos have something in common: they are all fun and clever. And for each of them, Stefan stands still and waits for the perfect moment to capture them.
800-year-old coffin damaged after parents put their kid in it for a photo
On August 4, a family who visited Prittlewell Priory Museum in Southend, UK damaged an 800-year-old sandstone coffin. I bet you can guess why – to take a photo. The parents lifted their child over the barrier so he could reach the coffin. This is when a part of the artifact fell from its stand and a chunk of it broke off.
To make things worse, the visitors didn’t report the damage to the staff. Instead, they tried to sneak away from the museum, but they were caught on security cameras.
The Met Museum digitizes the entire collection and releases over 375,000 images for free
The Met Museum in New York recently published over 375,000 images under Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license. In other words, this is 375,000 images to use as you like, free of charge and without any restrictions.
There are photos of artworks and different historical items in the collection. But what will make photographers especially happy is a vast number of photographs under CC0 license. They were taken in various techniques, depicting all sorts of events, people, and objects. And they are all recorded in different periods of photographic history.
The complete photography guide to shooting in museums and galleries
I dropped into the British Museum on Monday and spent a few hours in the Mesopotamian galleries with a brief flit through the Greek and Roman rooms, too. I don’t often take photos in museums—that’s mostly the subject of another article—but there were plenty of people using their phones to take photos of the artefacts on display. Getting the best out of a museum with an iPhone might not be the easiest, but there certainly are some techniques that any photographer can apply in order to improve their exhibition photography.
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