camera lens calender

For all you camera lovers out there who needs a way to keep track of dates, like me, you're in luck. Photographer Sharad Haksar has created something that's going to blow your mind. This isn't a regular camera lens but a Camera Lens Calendar! Each ring represents an aspect of the calendar—the year, month, day, and date! This little baby will last you from last year (2008) to 2032. I want myself one of these! (Source)

3191, b&w,150

Now that I am back home in Toronto, I have been out a lot more often, and, thus, have a lot less time to explore the World Wide Web. Hopefully I will be able to find time to myself and do what I love most soon—finding other great stuff to inspire me and sharing it with the world. Here are three things that have been sitting on my browser for the last three days:

1) 3191 A Year of Evenings is a visual blog by Maria Alexandra Vettese and Stephanie Congdon Barnes. Living 3191 miles apart, these two women have only met once in their lives and communicate with each other through photography. Almost every evening, they take a photograph every Monday to Friday and combine them to make beautiful diptychs on their website. A year ago, they took photographs every morning and have since turned those into a book which I just purchased yesterday at Indigo. What a beautiful concept, one I would love to try with a distant someone!


2) Found on the streets of Moscow by The Satorialist is a lady dressed in black and white. Her perfectly matched assembly reminded me of my love for form-fitting leather jackets, black boots, cowl-neck sweaters, and of course, tulle dresses. She makes looking good look so easy! (Source)


3) Last but not least, Christiaan Postma entitled Clock. Consider this a follow up to a post I made two weeks ago where I featured a project by Nadine Grenie. She had formed a French message with the hands of 500 clocks. And now, a different, and perhaps even more fascinating, project of a clock that spells the time out for you.

The starting point with this project was a personal study about form & time. I put together more than 150 individual clockworks and made them work together to become one clock. I show the progress of time by letting the numbers be written in words by the clockworks. Reading clockwise, the time being is visible through a word and readable by the completeness of the word, 12 words from “one” to “twelve”. The size of the clock is 1,4 by 1,4 meter.

There is also an animated sample on her website that you must see!

lover of

I am a lover of photographs. Visuals move me. Visuals that move are not as appealing to me as ones that require my concentration, my own interpretation of each of their preceding and following. I adore still life, found objects and scenery. I love distance (and hate it when it takes part in my romantic relationship) but absolutely crave intimacy. Everyone has their own perspective of art, whether it is what art means to them or what they make into art. Photographs frame one's view, capture one's environment or give birth to one's vision.

1) A photograph I cannot seem to let go of...
(Found in the LiveJournal community the_polaroids by user thelittlestbear)


2) The Cat Cam by Michael Benjamin...

Cooper has been taking his own pictures for over a year now! Once a week he wears this light weight digital camera fastened to his collar, which snaps a new photo every 2 minutes. Thanks for your help assembling the camera, Pierson!

3) Roland Bello's photography that hits me with nostalgia... (Source)

greenland, iceland, toronto

I only just discovered A Cup of Jo very recently, a blog by Joanna Goddard, a magazine writer based in New York. Seriously, a brilliant woman with words in the Big Apple, has she the dream life or what? Within the week of reading her blog, I'm head over heels in love. In a recent post, I encountered some beautiful photography that I could not wait to share.

First is the work of Joel Tettamanti. He is a Swiss man with a breathtaking perspective and the good fortunes of traveling around the world with his camera. The photographs from Greenland are what caught my attention. His works from France are also unreal. Wouldn't I love to travel, not to mention have his skills! (Source)




And then there are these photographs from Iceland (has no ice) from Glamour.com where Joanna is a blogger. She wrote about Bob O'Connor's dreamy photographs of Iceland. Absolutely astounding to say the least. My boyfriend's always wanted to go to Reykjavik. I think I'm siding with him on this one; must start saving!




And last but not least, not found on Joanna's blog but through my visit to the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO)'s website. If you aren't Torontonian, you are probably unaware that the AGO recently re-opened with a large transformation designed by the world renown Frank Gehry. Go ahead and Flickr search some photos because you will be shocked at its magnificence. Upon reading the AGO home page, I learned that Edward Burtynsky's photographs of the AGO's transformation is currently on view at the art gallery. His work has always focused on capturing the landscapes of the world in both the nature and manufactured terms. A lot of his work involve our interaction with natural resources such as oil, mines, factories, and much more. His photographs will really open your mind in how we as humans affect the world. So, if you live in the GTA or will be visiting Toronto, try and take a peek at his AGO collection. I would say it is a must-see. And the great thing is, it's free! (Source)

cloud nine

I have one short of ten tabs on my browser that I need to be rid of. They have been sitting here, some for days, because I can't seem to group them with other similar-topic items. So here they are, one to nine of goodies.

1. Clever creative bench advertisements! These have been around for a long time. I've seen some but not others. If I were to guess, I would say you have already laid your eyes on the Istanbul book bench. But the rest are quite unique, such as the Kit Kat bench! The Denver Water one made me laugh. There are more on other blogs, so feel free to go on a hunt! (Source)


2. Riitta Ikonen (I love her name, by the way) has an very strange but brilliant way of implementing her own costumes and inserting them into "natural" places. She would dress up as an earthworm in the forest or a leaf in a tree. She's also been a herring, seaweed, snowflake and icebergs. I will leave it up to you to check them out—just be careful of the roadkill page, please. I was not blessed with the same warning. Skip that and jump to the Bonus page for some fantastical non-bloody joy.



3. Ah, photographs by Alexandra Carr. She is all sorts of fantastic and I adore all of her works! I especially love the "in the evening" set, crave the haircut of the girl in "paul," and don't get me started on the "white rabbit" series! Cecilia is a pure beauty and the nostalgia in "vivre sa vie!" OH MY. I couldn't really bear to show you only one sample, so two will do... Uh, let's move on before I change my mind. (Source)



4. The satire of Pepe Smit's work absolutely kills me. (And the fact that she shoots in D300, AH!) Her photographs are filled with semiotics that are hilarious and cynical and beg for you to take a longer look and read the message behind the imagery. As Margriet Kruijver writes about Pepe, "With pleasure Smit explores the clichés and [taboos] of our society. Clichés as the innocence of children, feminine beauty, motherhood and art itself are all being tackled." Her work is so clever and will have you questioning the arbitrariness of our lives. (Source)


5. Matthew Genitempo is another brilliant photographer I discovered this week. I just added him to Flickr and cannot wait to see more of the stuff I adore. The following are from his Big Winds set (shot in 120) and are just two of the 200+ photographs he has. He shoots in film (35mm AND medium format!) and Polaroids. You gotta see for yourself. (Source)



6. Words cannot describe the beauty of Mua. This hanging design is made of steel and wrapped in wicker. They say it "was designed with lovers in mind. The organic shape invokes the idea of two people intertwined, embracing each other." I wasn't sure, but they reassured me that at a certain perspective, Mua will look like a big heart. I have always dreamt of hammocks when I was young, but this is my new dream. (Source)


7. This Fill-in-the-Blank [If you...] note card is hilarious. I was so close to purchasing it until I realized it only comes with one. I can just think of all the lovely or naughty things that would fit those blanks. (And as I am writing this, I realize that I am sure my boyfriend will read this [hi, boyfriend] and write me tomorrow to comment on it.) Supermarket also has lots of other great stuff that would be well for the holidays as gifts. Check it out! (Source)


8. What do you think of guitar strings bracelets? WearYourMusic.org has them for sale anywhere from $9.99 to $500.00! What is with the ridiculous price, you ask? Well, they have collected celebrity guitar strings from some of your favourite artists! I actually learn about this from the Try JM Blog. Yes, John Mayer's strings definitely go for $200.00. Among others on the site are Ani Difranco, Keith Richards, and Eric Clapton, and Carlos Santana, just to name a few. They look cool, and some of them are engraved and customizable with diamonds or other gems and such. I think I'll just stick with my Tiffany! (Source)


9. Finally, a melting man in Buenos Aires. WTF? I know. To bring awareness to climate change and global warming, a man in Argentina situated himself in Plaza Francia and created the effect of him melting all over the pavement. I still don't understand how he did it, but I am told there are probably multiple layers in the grounding. I hope so... Strange but effective! (Source)


PHEW. That is ALL! Thanks for catching up with me. It's time for me to work on my readings now and study away for my exam in three days. Best of luck on your finals should you have any!

iceland & sweden

My boyfriend has been raving to be about Blue Lagoon for a while now, but despite seeing some marvelous pictures of it, the beauty was never etched into my mind as these pictures by Peter Baker have. He isn't just any American on vacation in Iceland with a decent SLR; Baker is the founder of a design company named Elevated Works and each of his captivating photographs will no doubt have a hold on you. He also has a Flickr in addition to his site for you to feast your eyes on. Enjoy! (Source)




Whoever you are, Sannah Kvist, I think I'm in love with you. I am a complete sucker for using negative space to emphasize a single object. It sounds easy to achieve a beautiful composition by way of nothingness, but it's difficult to make the photograph—in addition to being aesthetically pleasing—interesting. These take my breath away. I actually have to breathe as I'm scrolling so I can take advantage of the two seconds before my eyes yearn to move onto the next photo. See for yourself. These are my favourites from the singles on her website. There are series and commissioned works too. Too much for me to handle. Source

buildings

This batch of inspirations today is a collection of variants of buildings. We have photographs of buildings, and we have buildings, essentially on buildings. Let me explain.

Thomas Kneubühler is an absolutely brilliant photographer from Montréal who explores themes of space, privacy and appearances in his photographs. He reminds us of the things we encounter everyday and often neglect to acknowledge or completely miss. Amongst all his fabulous series, this is my favourite. Office 2000 presents a series of office buildings lit in the dark. His detailed captures allow us to peer into the office spaces of various floors with various levels of clarity, depending on how open the blinds are. This is fascinating yet voyeuristic and perverse at the same time. The large, repetitive urban façade is reminiscent of Andreas Gursky's work. (Source)



A series of what seems like window blinds or items solely for decoration purposes, IUKBOX (who makes some of my favourite things in the world—recall the pine lumen candles?—which would make a great holiday gift, by the way) has created negative cutout of drawings. These stenciled items are of various major cities in the world: Paris, Stockholm, Toyko and Helsinki. Available for purchase, they are not exactly on the cheap side, at a minimum of €345 per screen. (Source)

123 & 60

My biggest, biggest love for the day goes to Hakan's Room 123. Words cannot begin to describe how much my adoration for the photographs themselves. When I visited the actual Room 123 website, I was in another world. The photographs speak for themselves and the music accompaniment is incredibly fitting. You will regret missing out on this.

Warning: Room 123's website contains nudity.


An ingenious campaign for the Nikon S60. It detects up to 12 faces! And how do they communicate that idea? With these brilliant photography. So clever! (By Euro RSCG Singapore.)



on DesignYouTrust // on Fubiz

double takes

There are two photographer/artists who caught my attention today and had me doing double takes. A second look is more than necessary when you are faced with their art. The details and concepts will make you go "wow." Without further ado...

Recall crop circles that were suspected to be left as markings by aliens who visited earth? Recall the movie Signs, where crop circles were used as signs that aliens were invading? Try sand circles. The following are the work of Jim Denevan, and they are incredible. Words cannot began to describe how I feel about his work. Can you imagine the time it took to create these pieces of art? These are just a small sample; his other works are just as, and probably more, impressive.



on DesignYouTrust // his Website // more Photos

In a series called Hope & Fear by Phillip Toledano, photographs of models are manipulated for their bodies to be covered by repetition of one item. The following are a few examples. There is one on his website where a girl is covered by female breasts. My emotions are quite mixed on that one; I cannot decide for the life of me whether it intrigued, disturbed, shocked, or scared me. I suppose that would be the idea. Another series titled America the Gift Shop is just as controversial. Extensive analysis of his work could result in some very interesting finds. A quote from Toledano:

I believe that everything should start with an idea, whether it be a single image, or a series. I also believe that a photograph should be like an unfinished sentence. There should be space for questions.

on Scene 360 Illusion // his Website

whimsicality & tranquility

There are two photographers I want to share today. Both of whom I read about on DesignYouTrust.com. I am so inspired by both: one for the way she captures the everyday, the tones of her photographs and the tranquility of her photographs, and the other for his ...ridiculous abstract and creativity in personifying everyday objects. I use the word "ridiculous" because I just have not an idea how else to describe him!

We'll start with Rune Guneriussen, a Norwegian photographer who juxtaposes household items and places them on beaches, in forests, in places you would not imagine. The photographs are incredibly fairy-like and give off a supernatural, whimsical feel. The irony of some of these photographs, especially the one with globes, is fascinating. I do these no justice; you must visit his site to take a look for yourself.




on DesignYouTrust // his Website // more Photos...

The second is Erika Svensson, who I am now head over heels in love with. Her photographs have a tranquil hue that relaxes the soul and a feeling of softness, clarity and spaciousness. It's incredible how she works with texture and negative space. Take a look:



on DesignYouTrust // her Website // more Photos...