Archives for the month of: February, 2011

by Chris Kotsiopoulos – click the pic for a page where you can rollover the photo to see details of what’s what

I began the shooting the morning of December 30, 2010, taking photos with my camera on a tripod facing east. The day portion of this shoot is composed of a dozen shots covering the landscape from east to west as well as the Sun’s course across the sky, from sunrise to sunset. I recorded the Sun’s position exactly every 15 minutes using an intervalometer, with an astrosolar filter adjusted to the camera lens. In one of the shots, when the Sun was near its maximum altitude, I removed the filter in order to capture a more dramatic shot that showed the Sun’s “glare.” After sunset, I took various shots with the camera facing west-northwest in order to achieve a more smooth transition from the day portion to the night portion of the image. The night portion is also composed of a dozen landscape shots but this time from west to east. After the transition” shots, I took a short star trail sequence of approximately half an hour duration, with the camera facing northwest. At 7:30, I turned the camera to the north and started taking the “all-night” star trail shots — lasting almost 11 hours. After accomplishing this, I then turned the camera to northeast and shot another short half an hour star trail sequence, and then finally, with the camera now facing east-northeast, I took a series of night-to-day transition shots.

More info

via Buzzfeed

…the use of tilt for selective focus, often for simulating a miniature scene…

Wikipedia

Some fantastic examples!


More amazing photos at Buzzfeed.

I held a koala!!

Her name was Pelita, she was 4.5 years old, and she was surprisingly heavy. Her info card listed her characteristics as “curious, independent, restless”. She latched on and slowly squeezed tighter and tighter with her very long and sharp claws. It was painful, but worth it to cuddle a little fuzzy koala, even if it was just for a few minutes.

Maru introduces his body to his adoring audience. SFW! 😀

The main image at K Company is totally amazing. I suggest we all take their motto to heart.

More Alopaca here…Choco Paco looks a little high.

update: Ok, so I examined that Alopaca page a little more closely, and there is a video towards the bottom, right under the comic.

kara: omg did you watch the video

eric: no where is it?

kara: it’s on the alopaca page at the bottom under the comic

eric: hm it’s not loading

kara: it’s pretty amazing

kara: there is a bee that is following the alopaca

kara: vanilla alopaca is having none of it

kara: but the bee just wants to be friends!

kara: he brings them all flowers and then they cuddle and it is ok

kara: i can’t believe i just typed those sentences

Also, there is a blog. There are so many glorious things happening there that I can’t even begin to elaborate. You’ll have to see for yourself.

This dovetails well with the conversation Meghan and I had last night werein I confided that I had always wanted a pet mouse. It could ride around on my shoulder!

via Cameron

This kind of reminds me of the time my friend Cecile, who is sweet and kind and totally inoffensive (and smaller than me, even!) got smacked across the face so hard her glasses flew off, on the El, by a guy to whom she’d just innocently offered a spare plastic bag to put his copious (and gross) food trash into. Her glasses clattered down the aisle of the car, the jerk got off at the next station (left his chicken wing bones everywhere), and no one helped her or said a word.

One of my biggest fears is random violence, exactly because it is random. It’s a big fear, but I actually don’t stress about it too much, because, I mean…there’s no point in that, is there? But I’ll have fleeting moments of ‘oh my God that guy is totally going to drive right into me’ (which has happened before) and ‘holy fucking crap that dude is going to knife me’ (which hasn’t).

20 Life Lessons From “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead”. I loved this movie so much when I first saw it. I think the last time I watched it was…wow, years ago. Anyway, Josh Charles is also in it as the adorable nice guy who has to clean out the fatty fat vats. And David Duchovny plays a really slimy co-worker of Swell’s. Highly recommend.

via angie

Yes.

Captain America: The First Avenger Movie Poster

via io9

Really amazing maps over the New York Times. I’m particularly surprised by just how many people in LA are ‘foreign-born’: Mapping America — Census Bureau 2005–9. You can view income, race, population, income, change in property value, etc!