Category — photography

Much to my surprise, many Europeans* seem blissfully unaware of the constant flow of illegal African immigrants that every month try to reach the coasts of the Canary Islands, southern Spain or Malta. In overcrowded crumbling rowboats, with heavily pregnant women and sometimes even children, they try to make it into the European Union, hoping to find better lives there.

Levels of illegal immigration to the Canary Islands alone dropped to 13,424 last year, down from a peak of nearly 32,000 in 2006. Authorities in southern European nations are still struggling however, to patrol for, care for, to process and repatriate this continuing flow of immigrants.

The Big Picture published yesterday a moving collection of pictures that illustrate the issue. For the Spaniards in my (teeny weeny) audience, these images are nothing new. For the rest of you, enjoy: African Immigration to Europe – The Big Picture

* I suspect most North Americans are unaware of this problem too. But they have their own southern border to worry about.

Google is hosting LIFE’s photo archive online: http://images.google.com/hosted/life. The majority of the photos were never published, but the archive also contains some well-known pictures.

I just paid 1.45 Swiss Francs for this one beauty of a tomato. That is 88 Euro cents, or $1.20.

And yes, I mean just this *one* tomato. And no, I wasn’t at a delicatessen store, it was just your run-of-the-mill supermarket. I am scared of eating it now.

Maybe it deserves some special recipe. Any suggestions?

The Online Photographer: Feet Are Optional:

What these straight-A kids wanted was for me to set the terms of their success for them. They wanted me to set up the hoop so they could jump through it for me. They wanted to be told how they could be certain of success. It was what they encountered everywhere else. But what I wanted was for them to set up their own hoop, or, better yet, look askance at the hoop and go, “Nah, not today,” and wander off somewhere and see what they could find. The fact is, you need to fail a lot if you want to succeed as an artist. That’s why the kids who were used to failing weren’t fazed by my classes: they weren’t threatened by the idea of falling flat on their faces 90% of the time. The good students definitely were.

I would go further: you need to fail a lot if you want to succeed. Not just as an artist.

Just a picture I took some time ago in London.

Reminds me of Agent Provocateur when I see it.

My Flickr schwag arrived today. It consists of three Flickr badges and two stickers.

Now I just have to figure out a cool way to show them off! Yay!

Just a quick note to point you, gentle reader, to this magnificent showcase of the very cr?ɬ®me of Catchy Colors, one of my favourite Flickr groups.

Go and have a look at the Catchy Colors Photoblog.

There’s this guy I found on Flickr. His name is Steffe, he lives somewhere in a small Swedish town and he does the most amazing pictures. Lots of winter pictures, naturally. And other kinds of pictures, too. For example, vertical panoramas like this one. Totally awesome, as you can see.

There are many more great pictures by Steffe at Flickr, and his personal blog is here (and is in Swedish).

(Photo: I give you… by Steffe)

Today we took a walk on the island of Styrs?ɬ?, in the Gothenburg archipelago. I have uploaded the pictures I did to my Flickr.

The most interesting, I think, is the collection of painted mailboxes. They do that in the archipelago, they paint their mailboxes by hand.

You have a color palette and a brightness control. Then you click on a color and Color Fields Colr Pickr finds for you Flickr images matching that color. Amazingly cool toy, and very useful tool for finding pictures to match a certain design.

(via jurgen.ca)

In my del.icio.us inbox I found today a link to Aaron Ruell Photography. Apart from doing great pictures, he also has written and directed two films at Sundance 2005.

A picture from the “People” series on his website:

David Hogsholt is this year’s winner of the Ian Parry photography award. His pictures are visually appealing, even if the subject of his award-winning series is a dramatic one.

(found via BBC News)