David Guttenfelder Photography

I came across the photography of David Guttenfelder today in the article Lost world: Scenes from North Korea’s closed society, published on the theindependent.co.uk. North Korea is a place that is as fascinating as it is frightening to me, and like many people my interest in the country has as much to do with the rarity of photos and knowledge of their way of life as it does the hope that someday people there can have a better life than they do under their current leader.

Guttenfelder is the chief Asia photographer for the Associated Press, and the photos found within the article provide a new glimpse into life in North Korea. I was glad to find more of his photography on the web, and he has an impressive collection of photos from locations in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, many of which capture conflict in some of the most dangerous locations in the world. A few of my favorite pictures of his  after the jump below.

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Richard Mosse Photography

Richard Mosse’s infrared photographs made the rounds recently on several blogs, and I was really impressed with them, as well as other photos on his site, especially The Fall series, which is filled with the beautifully decaying wrecks of aircraft. The Infra series includes many images like the first one above taken in Eastern Congo, and is discussed in an interview by The New Yorker here. To take the photos, he used Aerochrome, an obsolete technology, to create an alternative image of the complex social and political dynamics of the country. The film, designed in connection with the United States military during the Cold War, reveals a spectrum of light beyond what the human eye can perceive. As discussed in the article, he aims “to shock the viewer with this surprising bubblegum palette, and provoke questions about how we tend to see, and don’t see, this conflict.”

Visit Richard Mosse’s Website

Instagrams Of Old Photos

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I often pick up old books around town; there’s a good used bookstore down the street that puts out their excess books on the sidewalk for free. I grabbed one last year called America The Beautiful, published by Reader’s Digest in 1970. Many of the photos have a look that is common these days, though produced with Photoshop filters and settings to produce an older saturated film appearance. I’m a big fan of this but find the irony in owning a DSLR to take 10+ megapixel photos only to make them look old.

I used the Instagram iPhone app to take photos of some of my favorite pictures in this book, and I’m really pleased with the outcome. The photos in the book are already very old and somewhat degraded to begin with as you’d expect from a book that’s 41 years old. The Instagram filters really brought out the best in these pictures.

Star Wars AT-AT, 20+ Years Later

A great Flickr gallery was posted over at qbn.com that includes all sorts of photos of an AT-AT at the beach, walking around the house, and various other situations. Suffice to say, seeing this was a great way to start my day and it’s all downhill from here.

View the full gallery here.

Life Magazine & Google Parter For Gallery of Historic Photos

Life Magazine and Google recently launched a section of the Google Image Gallery dedicated to showcasing Life’s archive of millions of photos dating back to the 1750s. I am seriously afraid of the amount of time I could spend here; they’ve covered an amazing amount of historical events and, I can’t help but think this is an incredible window into the past for young kids who don’t know a world before computers, video games, and text messages.

This is one of the best photos I came across, taken of a ski jumper at the 1972 Winter Olympics.

Visit the full image gallery here.