the state I'm living in

“On Thursday, Mars’s Gale Crater was treated to a fantastic sight: a partial solar eclipse. An eclipse very similar to the kind we’re used to seeing from here on Earth, but with the sun blocked, in this case, by a different moon: Phobos, one of the two moons that orbit Mars. Fortunately for us, Curiosity was there to take a picture of Phobos’s transit. Fortunately for us, as well, Curiosity took precautions to protect its vision as the transit took place. (As NBC’s Alan Boyle put it: “You wouldn’t want Curiosity to blow out its camera on Mars.”) So, to capture the image above, the rover’s Mastcam used a neutral density filter that protected Curiosity’s imaging system in the same way that a pinhole projector protects human eyes during an eclipse. In Curiosity’s case, the filter reduced the Mars-seen sunlight to a thousandth of its natural intensity” (via What a Solar Eclipse Looks Like (When You’re Seeing It From Mars) - Megan Garber - The Atlantic).

(via Cycle Chic®: Monumental Motion)

I’m looking forward to our trip to Alaska in August! Anchorage for the conference, then Kenai, Homer and maybe Denali, time permitting (via Anchorage by Winter - BOOOOOOOM!)

(via Technology - Rebecca J. Rosen - Picture of the Day: The Bright, Burning Sun - The Atlantic)

“The story of this nanny who has now wowed the world with her photography, and who incidentally recorded some of the most interesting marvels and peculiarities of Urban America in the second half of the twentieth century is seemingly beyond belief.” (via Picture 168 « Unknown | Vivian Maier Photographer)

Our photos are filled with gobs of metadata, but it’s mostly useless stuff to anyone but pro photographers. It identifies the camera the photo was taken on and all of its settings, but it can’t tell us anything else. Was it raining in the photo? Was it taken on the beach? This is all mineable data for search engines that it’s up to us to categorize. The Descriptive Camera is a project by Matt Richardson, and it’s essentially a webcam glued to a printer and some additional processing equipment. But when it takes a photo, rather than printing an image, it prints out text descriptions, such as: “Looks like a cupboard that is ugly and old. having some plates on it with a lamp attached to it.” (via Camera Describes Pictures Instead Of Taking Them, Using Crowdsourcing | Co.Design: business innovation design)

“paris-born, london-based artist noemie goudal’s photography is rooted firmly in the creation of what many have coined ‘conception volumique’, a phrase borrowed from design production to refer to site-specific sculptural installations that render unclear whether it is the location, installation, or image that is the artwork itself. across various photographic series, goudal frequently works with largescale paper backdrops, juxtaposed closely with the existing landscape and blurring the bounds of the real and the fictional.” (via noemie goudal photography)

“Jeff Harris has taken a self-portrait everyday for the past 12 years. Now I have to admit when I first saw heard about this project I dismissed it as there are a lot of these projects going on, but when I finally got around to watching this video I was floored. The photos document his battle with cancer, the loss of use of his leg, run-ins with celebrities (where he has them take his portrait), all the incredible highs and lows of his life.” (via 4,748 Self-Portraits and Counting by Jeff Harris - BOOOOOOOM!) *Follow the link for the video*