Smartphone Suck: Photos depict evil screens that are stealing your soul!

from Dangerous Minds:

Perhaps the disparaging “Smartphones and IPhones are ruining our society and slowly turning us into zombies” fad is getting a bit stale. I do understand why many people see phones as a brainsuck (and if you text while you drive, you’re a supreme asshole who might as well be drunk driving). But as I’ve said before, I love my iPhone. I just use it in moderation. That’s the key. It’s not rocket science. If I’m having dinner with someone, I put my damn phone away and concentrate on the person or people I’m sitting with. I don’t check my phone. Not even once. (My husband refuses to carry one to begin with, which is taking it to an extreme probably…).

Now on to the “SUR-FACE”  the photo series by French photographer, Antoine Geiger. What you see are seemly casual photos of people using their smartphones that turn somewhat sinister once the face is stretched and pulled into the phone. Like our phones own us, not the other way around.

“It [places] the screen as an object of ‘mass subculture,’ alienating the relation to our own body, and more generally to the physical world,” Geiger writes in his description of the series.

 



 



 



 



 



 



 

Via Nerdcore and The Creators Project

By composing pieces from photos find online, Jim Kazanjian creates “hyper-collages”

from Domus:

By composing pieces from photos find online, Jim Kazanjian creates “hyper-collages” inspired by classic horror literature, disputing the idea that photography has a sort of built-in objectivity.

My images are digitally manipulated composites built from photographs I find online.

The technique I use could be considered "hyper-collage". I cobble together pieces from photos I find interesting and feed them into Photoshop. Through a palimpsest-like layering process of adding and subtracting, I gradually blend the various parts together. I am basically manipulating and assembling a disparate array of multiple photographic elements (sometimes more than 50) to produce a single homogenized image. I do not use a camera at any stage in the process.

My method of construction has an improvisational and random quality to it, since it is largely driven by the source material I have available. I wade through my archive constantly and search for interesting combinations and relationships. Each new piece I bring to the composition informs the image's potential direction. It is an iterative and organic process where the end result is many times removed from its origin. I think of the work as a type of mutation which can haphazardly spawn in numerous and unpredictable directions.

I’ve chosen photography as a medium because of the cultural misunderstanding that it has a sort of built-in objectivity. This allows me to set up a visual tension within the work, to make it resonate and lure the viewer further inside. My current series is inspired by the classic horror literature of H.P. Lovecraft, Algernon Blackwood and similar authors. I am intrigued with the narrative archetypes these writers utilize to transform the commonplace into something sinister and foreboding. In my work, I prefer to use these devices as a means to generate entry points for the viewer. I'm interested in occupying a space where the mundane intersects the strange, and the familiar becomes alien. In a sense, I am attempting to render the sublime.

(Must click on images to see larger with incredible details and go to original article for more)

Phenomenal Planet Photography

Planet (Stereographic Projections) Photography is simply crazy and fun! The technique is not only all about skilful digital manipulations, there are a few really good programs that can help you out there, but the raw photography side is very technical. The use of wide angle lenses help to overcome the need for multiple photographs to get the entire scene, but then there is the mapping of your photographs to ensure that you capture all of the surroundings and not to later find a gap in your equirectangular panorama. However, you can avoid the stitching altogether by making do with a single photo and stretch it around in a circle!











Please have a deeper look into this mind twisting technique by clicking HERE

From http://www.inspiration.scottphotographics.com/

Related: How to make a Globe/Planet photo manipulation in GIMP

"Artificial Coloring"

Thanks, Doug!

I originally found this image saying it was where the royals were going for their honeymoon, but have since discovered the creators website http://www.janoliehoek.com/ check out more of the work.