Oh, Snap! Photography Blog: Jeremy & Claire Weiss Portraits.

Some outstanding Polaroid portraits.

FFFFOUND!: The longer you look, the weirder it gets.

Yep..

Chicago Tribune: Does a book’s popularity guarantee its movie’s success?

”The film version of ‘Eat Pray Love’ took in $24 million its opening weekend — a tally AdAge calls ‘satisfactory’ — but it was bested by ‘The Expendables,’ the over-the-hill tough-guy action movie. In the weeks since, the book ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ has stayed in the top three — respectable but not stunning. Meanwhile, the paperback of ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ is back at the top of our nonfiction bestseller list.”

BBC News: Musician Nick Franglen creates bridge symphony.

”Nick Franglen is using London Bridge and its human traffic to create a 24-hour piece of music — armed only with a theremin and an espresso machine.”

NY Times: Print or Pixels? Publishers Strive to Advance Both.

”Auriane and Sebastien de Halleux are at sharp odds over ‘The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,’ but not about the plot. The problem is that she prefers the book version, while he reads it on his iPad. And in this literary dispute, the couple says, it’s ne’er the twain shall meet.”

RogerEbert: The American.

High praise. I’ll see this one in the theatre.

Chronicle of Higher Ed: Will the Book Survive Generation Text?

”I don’t mean the already overwrought debate over the crisis of the book as codex — the daily New York Times announcement that electronic readers stand primed to eliminate paper books. [snip] The issue isn’t the decline in book sales, though it, too, remains an element of the big picture. I am talking about the growing feeling among humanities professors — intuitive and anecdotal, shared over lunch like an embarrassing tale about a colleague — that for too many of today’s undergraduates, reading a whole book, from A to Z, feels like a marathon unfairly imposed on a jogger.” This sadly makes me think of graphic design, where ‘negative space’ is as important as ‘positive space’.  And the risk of losing context.

Partizan.com: The Bike Song.

Great.

Vimeo: Columbus - Lovemachine.

Like early MTV let loose in Cinema4D.

Anton Corbijn Books.

Fantastic photography within. Via Jake Sutton’s Twitter.

Workman Publishing: Leonardo’s Notebooks.

Want.

Chronicle of Higher Ed: Revalorizing the Trades.

“Having taught in art schools for most of my four decades in the classroom, I am used to having students who work with their hands—ceramicists, weavers, woodworkers, metal smiths, jazz drummers. There is a calm, centered, Zen-like engagement with the physical world in their lives. In contrast, I see glib, cynical, neurotic elite-school graduates roiling everywhere in journalism and the media. They have been ill-served by their trendy, word-centered educations.” Look around, you’ll see this generalization is rather true.

CBC News: Titian painting damaged by water in Venice fire.

No, no, NO!

The Atlantic: What Ernest Hemingway, Toni Morrison, and R. Crumb Have in Common.

”What made these interviews radical was their method.  In the first place, the method is slow. [snip] In the second place, the interviews are collaborative.” Interesting.

NY Times: Ansel Adams Photo Dispute Has a Reversal.

Raises a question. If the Earl Brooks photographs are so hard to distinguish from Adams’ famous ones ... is Adams as special as we deem?  Over time, this may impact the value of his Yosemite works.

Discover Magazine: When the ancients were wise.

“The Renaissance had been an efflorescence of learning, but it had been retarded in its progress in some ways because of the reverence for ancient precedents. This is most evident in medicine and physics, where Galen and Aristotle led scientists astray.  There are some domains where the ancients still hold sway today. Religion is one.”

ephemera: save the bunny …

don’t use Comic Sans.

Cartype: Emblems by number.

So, a Trabant 601 beats an Olds 442? Not quite.

YouTube: Sketchy Duel.

Yep. That’s about right.

Vimeo: AICP Southwest Sponsor Reel.

Enjoyable mix of reality and digital.

NY Times Art Review: ‘Samurai in New York’ at Museum of the City of New York.

“Ever since our arrival at the American capital we have frequently been asked by photographers to allow our photographs to be taken, but we have hitherto refused, as it is not the custom in our country. Today, however, we had to submit, in deference to the President’s wishes. We therefore, for the first time, faced the photograph machine.” I like that ... ‘photograph machine’.  I’ll reuse that.

TrendLand: Bleu de Chanel, by Martin Scorsese.

The man knows how to build expectation. A significant cut above the video dreck we see lately.

Fubiz™: History Channel.

Do I detect a bit of Old Spice video technique here?

The Coolist: Serge Mendzhiyskogo Collage Photography.

This is a very welcome fresh take on collage photography.  I like it.

Guardian.UK: Noises off: Pros and cons in the job of theatre.

“"Is art a living that people should be able to support themselves on — and thus, the poverty that attends to it is a social justice problem — or is art a luxury and the people who work on it hobbyists?” It’s a good question and one that is particularly acute in theatrical terms.” Expressing creativity is a reflex, to me, like breathing. Necessary on a daily basis.