Jean Malek’s website shows that great visual impact doesn’t have to be at the expense of simple usability. In fact I think the useability vs design debate is really a bit old hat now, they should just go hand in hand. (Designers and developers unite, it’s a love in!) Anyway, we really like the way they collide on this site. It’s a striking way for him to display his work and the way the menu icon follows your cursor round the screen means you never get lost.

There is also the thoughtful inclusion of quick links to get directly to the previous/next piece of work. Very nice…

Photography, Website

The Stranger Project by Benoit Paillé, a 24 year-old photographer, is incredible. There is a richness and intensity in this project that I find compelling, a great body of work I could return to again and again. View the full set here on flickr.

“To question the modern world and to try to break the individualism and the anonymity of the big city”

Portraits

Damon Winter, a staff photographer for the New York Times, has been working on a photo column called The Lens Project which allows the photographers to make their own commentary through images. He created a series called Neighbors which utilizes double exposures created with a large format camera to make interesting juxtapositions of images. Click through for more…

Double exposure

How about ‘gigapixels’? All seventeen of them!

This image of Glacier Point is, apparently, the largest known stitched image. Made from 2046 images, it weighs in at a whopping 96.5GB, and covers 59ft x 22ft when printed at 300dpi.

Check out the images and be sure to use the ‘zoomify’ mode to view them. It’s just amazing how much detail has been captured. I could spend all day looking at them!

gigapixel, Photography

‘An autumn’s tale’ by Leonardo Dalessandri

This is just one of many many videos appearing, as digital SLR’s are rapidly gaining the technology to efficiently save enough data to make video production possible. More and more these cameras are able to record in full HD, at qualities much higher than similarly priced video cameras. For around £1500 there’s the 7D, which makes video cameras at twice, three times the price look terrible. The only drawback so far seems that they can only record for relatively short segments. But just look at the quality, and segments can always be shot in pieces and edited together. These cameras not only take an awesome shot, but they feel intuitive, more human than a video camera often can, and with the ability to relatively easily change lenses and their overall better sensitivity to light,  they add a whole extra dimension to what usually can look pretty cheap and flat. I know what’s on my christmas list for next near, thing is, can I really wait that long…?!

It really feels like we’re finally going to be able to get something much more resembling ‘real’ film, for a smaller budget. I had the fortune to ‘have a go’ on the 7D, which Mr Hepper in studio has bought himself, and now I’m hooked…

For other videos showing this kinda thing, search for vimeo canon 5D or canon 7D. there’s some really really nice film being made with stills cameras….just be sure to watch n HD.

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Empire magazine celebrates its 20 years by organizing a photoshoot with the actors/celebrities in scenes representative of their icon roles. Interesting which roles they’ve picked and how much/little you need to bring to mind a character they’ve played.

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A detailed Christmas campaign for Ebay – “Christmas is happening” – by agency BETC Euro RSCG Paris,  photographs by Gregoire Alexandre. See more bigger images here.

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Urbanears – ‘the new colour in sound’ – is a collective out of Scandinavia, motivated by a common interest in global relationships and share involvement in the relevance of the living brand. Urbanears promotes a deeper connection to colour, form and people while providing the freedom to transcend individuality and unify the sound experience.
Check out the press images here at full size – beautiful examples of product photography.

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We’ve seen lots of examples recently of the ‘depth-of-field’ shots that make real life look like small scale models, but I’ve never seen it as a time-lapse animation before… and it’s amazing! See it in fullscreen here

Photography, Time lapse, Uniqlo

A big thank you to Nick Dunmur for coming in and hosting the last Creative Forum – the experienced photographer had a very interesting take on where the modern photographer fits in to this ever-changing world of stock images and CGI. We touched on some subject matters that provoked a great deal of discussion and could have easily carried on all morning, unfortunately there was work to be done! Find out more about Nick here

Nick Dunmur, Photography