Unleash the Power of Your PowerShot

CHDK is a firmware enhancement for many digital point and shoot cameras made by Canon. After loading CHDK, you get access to a ton of features your PowerShot normally wouldn't have.

1. Enhanced ways of recording images: RAW, JPEG, increased video recording times, different compression options
2. Information Displays: live histograms, always on battery life indicator, depth of focus
3. Photographic Settings: longer exposure times (up to 65 seconds), faster shutter speeds (1/25,000 sec, and faster in some cases), automatic bracketing of exposure
4. Scripts: programmable through scripting for creating new features (i.e. trigger shot when movement sensed, change in brightness, automatic bracketing, games)
5. Tethered Shooting

The possibilities are seemingly endless. This is definitely a great hack and most importantly, it's non destructive to your camera. You aren't ever replacing the original firmware—just loading more things into memory on demand.

Gregory Crewdson TV Interview

I happened to catch part of an interview with surrealist photographer Gregory Crewdson, on CBS Sunday Morning. The interview, as of right now, is in their videos section titled "Portrait Of A Photographer (6:59)."

Highslide for Web Galleries and Blogs

So, you've got a few pictures you wanna add to your blog, or some other gallery, and you're going to use LightBox to display them in a nice way when a visitor clicks on them. Well, don't. Try Highslide. Let your visitors open up a few side by side and compare. Best of all, it's free for personal use (like all good software should be). (Note: I have nothing against LightBox, I just think this is cooler)

The Whale Hunt

I'm a huge fan of data visualization and unique interfaces (which I've probably mentioned before), so when I saw The Whale Hunt, my jaw dropped. Not only is it extremely innovative in the way it presents the story, it's also a great example of photography as documentary, or simply put, photojournalism.

TiltViewer

Airtight Interactive (makers of SimpleViewer), have a really great Flickr browser (photos are pulled from the Interesting) with lots of eyecandy called TiltViewer.

While it's definitely a very cool Flash application, I don't think it's going to revolutionize the way we look at photos, especially because most photos do not require that you look at them any other way but straight on. However, I could see Apple coming out with an extension to iPhoto which uses Core Graphics to do some sort of photo browser, or perhaps it'd fit better into Front Row. I think this is doubtful.

New technique to automatically fix ugly photos. I'd say this is cheating.

Trash the Dress: Alternative Wedding Photography

Trash the Dress, is quite the interesting project. Photographers take pictures of brides in an artful way that more often than not destroys the dress. There unfortunately isn't a gallery page, but the Photographer of the week page shares some shots.

“First and Foremost, Brides and Photographers that participate in TTD sessions do it for beautiful art. It is not an attempt to destroy the dress, but rather an attempt to create something memorable. To quote a good friend, we just want to let the bride enjoy herself and her gown, and get away from the “Don’t get a spot on my dress” mentality. ”

I haven't decided yet if this is the opposite of Wedding Photography, or if it should still be considered a subset of it. For one, it still involves a bride (and optionally a groom), in a wedding dress. It also shows off a brides commitment to the groom. "I won't ever need this dress again, might as well trash it." But, it still goes against traditional wedding photography in a big way. I love it.

Update: They've moved to http://www.trashthedress.com

Digital Images Coming to 911

The New York Times is reporting that New York City's 911, and 311 (a non emergency line) will be getting support to handle incoming digital images, which can be used to further assess an emergency situation (or a 311 call).

“If you see a crime in progress or a dangerous building condition, you’ll be able to transmit images to 911, or online to nyc.gov,” the mayor said in his annual State of the City address. “And we’ll start extending the same technology to 311 to allow New Yorkers to step forward and document nonemergency quality of life concerns, holding city agencies accountable for correcting them quickly and efficiently.”

Though I think it's a great idea, I am a bit skeptical about how aspects of it, might affect the emergency call system. What happens if the picture makes the situation seem less important, or less serious?