Aquila Online

The Official White House Photostream

// April 30th, 2009 // No Comments » // Photos

Much has been said about the masterful use of social media by the Obama campaign. Now you can track President Barak Obama’s daily life in pictures on The Official White House Photostream.

Most if not all the photos are by Pete Souza, Chief Official White House Photographer and Director of the White House photo office. This man is brilliant.

One day when I’m grown up, I’d also like to be a photojournalist.

Human landscapes from above

// April 30th, 2009 // No Comments » // Photos

Jason Hawkes is probably one of the masters of aerial photography. His catalogue spans over 100,000 landscapes and over 35 aerial photographic books.

Lately he took to the sky in a helicopter, hanging out the doorway and capturing some stunning landscapes around the world. Most of these landscapes have been affected by humans, with some interesting patterns emerging. Go check out the collection of 26 pictures.

Voted with an inked thumb to prove it

// April 22nd, 2009 // No Comments » // General, News, Photos

Hey, have you voted yet? We have. Go exercise your democratic right and vote today. If you’re into all things social, tag your posts, pics, tweets, etc with #saelections and if you have pictures of your inked thumb then use #inkedthumb. The BBC is also collecting tweets, texts and pictures of the South African Elections.

Update: The BBC used my pic above to show the indelible ink after voting – check it out.

Develop film using coffee & vitamin C

// March 24th, 2009 // No Comments » // Interesting, Photos

When I read the post on how to use coffee, vitamin C and some washing soda to develop your film I thought it was crazy, but on further inspection this might actually work.

Okay, first things first: using coffee to develop film is not something Ansel Adams would do. But it works, it gives your film a distinctive look, and it has a certain MacGuyver-ish flair. Think of it like using a plastic camera- it’s more about having fun than getting technically flawless results.

With most film types, the results will be more contrasty and grainy than regular developer. If you do this with color film (negatives or transparencies), you’ll end up with black-and-white negatives.

The steps seem quite easy and you could have your own coffee infused developed film in 12 minutes. If Tom Overton’s caffenol experiments and the Caffenol Flickr pool are anything to go by, the I’d like to try this for myself. Will keep you posted when I find all the material.

And if it doesn’t work out? Well there’s always coffee and donuts.

While we’re on the topic of photography. Do you want some vintage goodness for your iPhone? Then check out the Shorpy Vintange iPhone wallpaper gallery. All free for your downloading pleasure.

JPG Magazine closes down

// January 2nd, 2009 // 1 Comment » // News, Photos

On 5 January 2009, JPG Magazine will be no more. In an email sent to site users it was announced that the publication and website will shut down for good. JPG weren’t able to raise the money needed to keep the business model afloat in these extraordinary economic times.

Unfortunately even the site will be taken down, which means you have only have until the 5th of January 2009 to download PDF’s of back issues, outtakes, and photo challenge selections.

The news came as a bit of a shock for me and I must admit that I’m quite sad. I submitted a few photographs to JPG Magazine in the hope of getting published. Although this never happened, the site has proven an invaluable source of inspiration for me.

So, with a sadness I bid JPG Magazine adieu.

Update: It appears that the JPG community pulled together and voila, JPG magazine is back! Yup on 27 February 2009, they announced that the magazine has a new owner and will not be shutting down. Yay!