The Global Syndicator - photo

Donate Your Used Digital Camera to LA's Skid Row Photo Club

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 20:35:56 +0000

Los Angeles-based photographer and blogger Dave Bullock says: The Skid Row Photography Club's first show, The Beauty of the Street, premiered last Thursday during the Downtown Art Walk. The participants were ecstatic to see their beautiful work on the walls and the hundreds of people who came into the gallery loved what they saw. The SPRC started as an idea I "borrowed" from the movie Born Into Brothels . I wrote a proposal to the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council to buy digital cameras which we then gave to people living in Skid Row. I gave the participants brief lessons in composition and turned them loose. For the last six months we've met every Tuesday at UCEPP in Skid Row. During that time they shot over 20,000 photos between them. An amazing body of work ranging from flowers to architecture to a man defecating in the middle of the street. Dave asks if any Boing Boing readers might want to donate digital cameras to folks living in Skid Row, so they might extend the project. "The cameras we've been using are about $200 each," he explains. "We're just a club, not a non-profit as of yet." More info here on how you can participate. The short version: if you would like to donate digital cameras please email Dave directly at eecue@eecue.com. Skid Row, in case you don't know, is a massive, permanent homeless encampment in downtown Los Angeles -- the largest such community in the United States. About 8-9,000 homeless people live there. This "heat map animation" provides a compelling visualization of the site, though data hasn't been updated in a while....

This Isn't Happiness

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 01:04:40 +0000

I like tumblelogs. Do you? I tumble myself. But my favorite tumblelog is Peter Nidzgorski's This Isn't Happiness. It's mostly images, sometimes quotes or words or videos or music, and the one thing I can say for sure about it in sum total is that it's always beautiful, whether the subject is politics or poverty, women or zombies, life or death. Also, you may want to check out Nevver, where Nidzgorski mashes movie stills and MP3's daily to delightful effect. (Photo credit: Raul Gutierrez, original photo, Flickr stream.)...

Coop's photos of Mexico

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 22:23:10 +0000

Our pal Coop is in the La Carrera Panamericana 2008 car race, and has been taking wonderful photos along the way. He says: "Folks have to reset their safe search filters since Flickr decided to censor all my photos, even the non-naughty ones." La Carrera Panamericana 2008...

Photos of facepalming financiers

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 04:32:53 +0000

The Brokers With Hands on Their Faces blog collects news-pictures of bankers, brokers and other finance types caught mid-face-palm. A sign of the times. THE BROKERS WITH HANDS ON THEIR FACES BLOG (via Making Light) See also: Sad Guys On Trading Floors...

Physical Graffiti -- return to the scene

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 05:19:03 +0000

From World of Wonder's WOW Report: Artist Lou Cannizzaro went back to 96 St Marks Place in Manhattan 33 years after that location starred on the cover of Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti album. Physical Graffiti -- return to the scene...

Pee... if you Dare!

Sat, 18 Oct 2008 04:15:29 +0000

Photo by Whole Wheat Toast. (Thanks Tara McGinley! Via Neatorama)...

Best microscopic photos of 2008

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 14:24:23 +0000

National Geographic Nikon's picked its best microscopic images for 2008 and there's some stunners this year -- like this high-mag view of the antibiotic powder mitomycin. Best Microscopic Images of 2008 Announced (Thanks, Marilyn!)...

One million freely licensed photos of the British Isles

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 09:54:42 +0000

Paul sez, "Geograph British Isles got its millionth image this morning! The Geograph British Isles project aims to collect geographically representative photographs and information for every square kilometre of Great Britain and Ireland. All the images are CC licensed and we think we're building a useful educational and historical document which will be freely available forever." Geograph hits one million photographs! (Thanks, Paul!) (Image: Minor road near Aberuchill, a Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike photo by Dr Richard Murray)...

Bad Photoshop work on dental product website

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 23:26:53 +0000

The website for DenSheild contains a lot of information about the product, but I can't stop staring at the unusual photo of the model on its website. I wonder how much they paid the designer for this? DenShield on Photoshop disasters...

Dr. Julius T. Roundbottom, Steampunk Naturalist: photos, fiction and podcasts

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 20:42:42 +0000

Jeremiah Tolbert sez, "Dr. Julius T. Roundbottom, Steampunk Naturalist is a combination photography, fiction, and podcast project. Roundbottom is a naturalist studying the faeries and other creatures that dwell within the City Park. He documents them with photographs, recordings, and stories, as well as more supernatural events, such as the Steam Wraith and the Bird Queen. "It's a little fantasy, a little steampunk, a little clockpunk, and I hope a hell of a lot of fun. The comment community that has grown up around the site respond to the stories in their own characters, and the characters of the site have a dialog with them. The audience, through comments, influence the direction of the story, often introducing new concepts to the world building." Dr. Roundbottom: Scientist & Philosopher (Thanks, Jeremiah)...

Over-surveilled Brits build giant picture of their leader out of CCTV cameras

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 21:36:39 +0000

Becky Hogge from the Open Rights Group sez, I've just come back from Parliament Square in London, where about 30 of us have spent the morning building a giant picture of Prime Minister Gordon Brown out of photos of CCTV cameras and other surveillance state ephemera. Take a look at some of the photos of the day (http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=FnFBigPicture&m=tags) - it looks fantastic (and the great weather helped!) Last week, Boing Boing helped us put out a call for people to capture the database state on their cameras. Today, to celebrate an international day of action for democracy, privacy and free speech, we put those images together into a huge 4m x 6m collage, depicting a very Big-Brother-esque Gordon Brown against a background of barbed wire, handcuffs and double helices. Our message was that although as individuals we only see incremental invasions of our privacy, put together, these creeping changes constitute a wholesale shift towards a society predicated not on freedom, but on fear. As you can see from the photos of the event, despite the seriousness of our message, we had a lot of fun delivering it to Parliament. Thanks to Christopher Scally for artwork and Tom Ackers for coordinating the collage, and to everyone who contributed photos of surveillance state ephemera, or turned up the day to help us build the "Big Picture". Freedom Not Fear: the Big Picture unveiled on Parliament Square (Thanks, Becky!)...

Kids who photograph themselves naked are child pornographers and sex offenders in Ohio

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 22:07:27 +0000

A fifteen year old girl in Newark, OH faces being labelled a "sex offender" for sending naked cellphone photos of herself (a minor) to other minors. If convicted, she'll spend the next ten years on public registries, classed as a producer of child pornography. No word on what compensation she (as the victim of the crime) will be able to get from herself (as the perp). According to Ohio law, 2907.323(A)(3) states anyone possessing material that shows a minor in a state of nudity is guilty of a fifth-degree felony. The violation also might qualify the juvenile as a Tier I sexual offender, which requires annual registration for a decade. The section of the law the girl, who is a foster child, was charged with allows parents or guardians to take photos of their unclothed children for a list of acceptable purposes but does not provide an exemption for the child themselves. Law didn't anticipate cell phone photo case...

Russian cops hassling bathtub chopper driver

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 19:35:17 +0000

Russian biker busted for driving a non street legal bathtub. Shots from the life of Road police service from Russia and other post Soviet countries....

Cool photoblog: elders with style

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 02:11:00 +0000

Ari Cohen says: "We have started a blog of our own that documents street style and fashion of the mature and wizened. Our aim is to take photos of elders with a unique sense of personal style that has developed with age. We noticed so many amazingly dressed older people in New York and are having a great time getting to know them, hearing their stories and capturing a bit of their style to share with others." Advanced Style...

Lamps of Walt Disney World

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 06:28:50 +0000

Tavie sez, "Having been to Disney World so many times, I wanted a way to keep the magic fresh, some detail to focus on that would allow me to look at this beloved place in a new way. So a few trips ago, I started snapping photos of lamps and light fixtures. Disney does detail like no other, and the sheer variety and beauty of these ordinary objects continues to amaze me. My collection only comprises a fraction of the lamps in Walt Disney World (with a few from a trip to Disneyland and Tokyo Disney thrown in.) Each time I visit I add more to the collection." Lamps of Disney (Thanks, Tavie!)...