Leontjew takes minimalistic photos that is just in the borderland between design and photography.

Based in Oldenburg, Germany, Leontjew aka Klaus (last name unknown) has a great sense of colour and symmetric composition.

Via iGNANT

Stand Your Ground is a disturbing video of the harassment suffered by photographers at the hands of private security guards all in the name of prevention of terrorism.

Hat tip: Very Short List.

Cake Sprinkles

Terra Cibus is a set of beautiful photographs by Caren Alpert of every day food – even brussel sprouts can look beautiful – I still can’t abide their taste though!

Brussel Sprout

Hat Tip: Very Short List.

I’m a great fan of paint.net but I don’t really do a lot work with photos outside cropping and resizing. If you want something simpler and perhaps more creative then Photoscape might well be for you.

The menu system is unusual but it’s intuitive and contains a wealth of additional features like “page” which allows a photo-collage to be created in seconds – it’ll take longer to decide on the photos you want to use!

In fact Photoscape contains all the features most amateur photographers are ever likely to need and like paint.net it’s free to for non-commercial users although the developer would welcome a donation.

My advice is give Photoscape a try I don’t believe you’ll regret it.

Hat Tip: Lynda Giddens.

Have a look at the photo below click on any part of the photo and see it come into focus.

Intrigued I am. Lytro will debut the first light field camera – what it looks like or how well it performs I’ve no idea but it promises:

No more fighting with dials and settings and modes. No more flat, boring, static photographs. With a Lytro, you unleash the light. No fuss focus. Click away. Shoot first, focus after. That’s right, after. You can’t miss.
You can reserve a camera – no price though – so let’s wait and see.

Hat Tip: Business & Technology Related Musings.

Hong Kong #9

The colours of Thomas Birke’s photos make the mundane seem otherworldly it’s as if we’re seeing the world afresh through different eyes which are saying to a jaded viewer look the city it’s a wonderful place, yes it really is.

Hong Kong #9

Hat Tip: Bumbumbum.

Paris #21

Photographer Irina Werning takes old photographs and get’s the subjects to re-enact them with fascinating results.

FLOR, MALE, SIL IN 1983 & 2010

La Negra 1980 and 2010, Buenos Aire

Lulu & G in 1980 & 2010, Buenos Aire

Photographs form Werning’s Back to the Future project.

Hat Tip: bumbumbum.

Untitled, October 1998

Hannah Starkey’s photographs have a cinematic aspect that I find particularly appealing and something that reminds me of an Edward Hopper painting.

The Saatchi Gallery writes:

Using actors within carefully considered settings, Hannah Starkey’s photographs reconstruct scenes from everyday life with the concentrated stylisation of film. Starkey’s images picture women engaged in regular routines such as loitering in the street, sitting in cafes, or passively shopping. Starkey captures these generic ‘in between’ moments of daily life with a sense of relational detachment. Her still images operate as discomforting ‘pauses’; where the banality of existence is freeze-framed in crisis point, creating reflective instances of inner contemplation, isolation, and conflicting emotion.

Through the staging of her scenes, Starkey’s images evoke suggestive narratives through their appropriation of cultural templates: issues of class, race, gender, and identity are implied through the physical appearance of her models or places. Adopting the devices of filmography, Starkey’s images are intensified with a pervasive voyeuristic intrusion, framing moments of intimacy for unapologetic consumption. Starkey often uses composition to heighten this sense of personal and emotional disconnection, with arrangements of lone figures separated from a group, or segregated with metaphoric physical divides such as tables or mirrors.

Often titling her work as Untitled, followed by a generalised date of creation, her photographs parallel the interconnected vagueness of memory, recalling suggestions of events and emotions without fixed location or context. Her work presents a platform where fiction and reality are blurred, illustrating the gap between personal fragility and social construction, and merging the experiences of strangers with our own.

Untitled, June 2007

Hat Tip: The Observer.

Todd McLellan takes apart everyday objects and photographs the pieces to make these fascinating photographs – here we have what was once a radio alarm clock.

Hat Tip: My Random Stuff.

The Guardian’s year in pictures has one photo that stands above the rest Daniel Berehulak’s photo of a New Delhi rag-picker. The photos richness of colour is at odds with the depiction of the awful job the pickers have to do to feed themselves and the colossal amount of waste supposedly developed societies generate.