- German EverywhereGirl?
By now you are all (too) familiar with the EverywhereGirl… but the Praegnanz.de blog in Germany seems to have found the German Everywhere Girl. All these stock photography business images are becoming all too familiar!
and TinEye‘s detective work finds her traveling beyond Germany! Stand out from the crowds and use TinEye next time you are considering that stock photography license! Happy searching.
- Will the real Obama Hope photograph stand up?
I am sure you are wondering what does image recognition have to do with Obama? Me too! A couple of days ago – this is super old news for the blogosphere! – James Danziger posted about how he spent months searching for the original photograph that Shepard Fairey used to create his Obama Hope image. I am sure you have all seen the Obama Hope work?Reading James’ post (which I linked to a couple of days ago) I thought boy if only he had access to the image recognition we take for granted within the Ideeplex walls, his months of research could have been shortened to minutes (James, meet TinEye. TinEye meet James. Now be nice)! But I digress: upon hitting publish on my short post, I received a comment from Waldir who pointed me to a series of Flickr photograph where Stevesimula identifies another photograph as the original. Bam! Would the real Obama Hope photograph please please stand up? No really! Sometimes the most obvious things are the ones that escape you: well, champion how about using our image recognition technology and comparing all the contenders? I mean we can surely spot the fakers? That’s what we ended up doing yesterday but unfortunately I did not have time to post about it. So the results are in and the winner is: Mannie Garcia who shot Obama for the Associated Press.
Stevesimula was the first one to complete his own analysis and came to the above conclusion before we did, we basically took our sophisticated image recognition technology and confirmed his finding.
Tom over at Phillynews did an awesome detective job to locate the original Obama photograph. Read his sleuthing!
Here is what we did: we took the Obama Hope poster and matched it against the two potential source candidate images. For this we used the image comparison engine of TinEye‘s bigger, more powerful brother: PixID. If you thought TinEye can compare images, you should see what PixID can do! PixID takes a detailed look at the patterns of the pixels images, creating digital fingerprints of the source and target images. It can find a small partial match in the fingerprints, even if the images have been heavily transformed. Edits can include crops, flips, rotation, skews or as in this case – literal posterization of the image.
PixID can also calculate a sub-pixel accurate transformation matrix that shows how the images best align to each other. We used that to produce the images shown below. Basically Mannie Garcia’s photograph was the best match.
Below you can view the results. As you mouse over each poster, it will swap to the best possible alignment of the source image we compared it to. If you toggle the images back and forth, you can see the real winner is obvious.
This is the Reuters images which was initially identified by James as the correct match for the Obama Hope poster.
As you mouse over the image to the right, to toggle between the poster and the aligned photograph, you will see that the alignment seems a bit off. Clearly Obama’s head and ears do not line up well at all! So what’s going on? It turns out that the mathematically best alignment possible was to have the lips and nose line up properly (take a look and you will see that they do). If you force the head and ears to line up, then the nose and mouth will be way off. Either way this is not looking like a good match to us.
Now mousing over this image shows a different story. The alignment is near perfect. No question this is a better match. Ladies and gentlemen we have a winner. Unless of course there is an even better match out there!
- Mystery solved without TinEye’s help!
James Danziger over at The Daily Beast chronicles his search for the photographer who took the initial photograph that Shepard Fairey used to create the Obama Hope image we are now all familiar with. Great little article, and all this without TinEye‘s help!
- Shepard Obama!
From Rene Wanner: In 1989, Shepard Fairey (b. 1970) began to paste stickers all over town with a face and the mysterious message “Andre the Giant Has a Posse” or “Obey Giant” . Since then, his palette, geographic range and activities have increased enormously, and when he offered to support Barack Obama’s campaign with some posters in January 2008, he readily got permission from Obama to do so. Within a day, he had finished a design, one with the text “PROGRESS”, and another with “HOPE”.And I am sure you are very familiar with the Hope poster and Shepard’s work! But have you seen Rene’s compilation of imitation posters? Try using TinEye on some of the posters for additional fun.
- Beijing and sport in photos
If, like me, you missed the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics, fear not. The Big Picture has a stunning selection of images that almost transport you there.
There are some fantastic images of the ceremonies on flickr too.
For more celebration of sports photography head over to The Digital Journalist and the Walter Iooss Jr. gallery.
Iooss is regarded as one of the finest sports photographers of our time. His new book, Athlete, published by Sports Illustrated, presents portraits of the top figures in sports.
- The revival of the Polaroid
Well, sort of. Earlier this year Petters Group Worldwide, the company that owns Polaroid Corp., announced that it would stop producing instant photography film. They were open to anyone that was interested in picking up the technology in order to continue to produce the film, and as it turns out, they found a couple of takers.Polaroid artist John Reuter and philanthropist Daniel H. Stern have joined forces with their new firm 20X24 Holdings LLC to keep Polaroid alive… but only for the Polaroid 20×24 format. This huge but lovely contraption stands 5-feet high and weighs 235 pounds, not exactly the Polaroid we’ve all come to know and love, but it’s a Polaroid none the less. Only six 20x24s were made, five are left in use today. The prints? Stunning instant color or black & white images that are 20×24 inches big. Film cost averages $65 per exposure, so working with the 20×24 requires skilled operation and perfect timing to avoid costly mistakes.
Developed to accurately reproduce works of art, especially paintings and tapestries, the camera was soon used as a creative tool to make original photographs. At 20×24 studios in New York City, Boston, Cambridge, Prague, and, most recently, San Francisco, talented artists explore the large-format system for personal and commercial expression.– Polaroid Corp.Besides the one-of-a-kind nature of the Polaroid 20×24, photographers appreciate the format for its stunning results and the commitment to the process that is required in order to produce a quality print.
Mr. Reuter calls it the “king of all Polaroids,” because “it amplifies every aspect of the process.” Size. Near-instant results. The seductive steps needed to produce a picture. The sheer beauty of the prints themselves. — WSJ
And Polaroid is the only type of photography that ensures that the image produced is exactly as it was taken. No retouching, no editing. There’s certainly something to be said for the purity of the Polaroid art.
Here’s a look at the work of some of the most well known 20×24 photographers: William Wegman, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders and Douglas Kirkland via the Polaroid Studio. Enjoy.
- Celebrity photograph record: $14 million
Publication rights to photographs of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt‘s newborn twins sold to People and Hello! magazines for the reported sum of $14 million.
- Metadata crookery
We all know digital photos can be modified. So much so that, at least in the popular lexicon, Photoshop is synonymous with turning fact into fiction. But at least one facet of a digital photo, a variety of metadata called EXIF, is supposed to be secure. Not so! Deke McClelland has an awesome presentation about that.
- The Worldwide Photo Walk
On Saturday, August 23rd join organizers Scott Kelby and Matt Kloskowski and folks from around the world in a two hour walk and photo-taking experience.
The photo walk is a free social photography event in celebration of the launch of Kelby’s newly updated Lightroom book and is open to photographers of all skill levels. All they ask is that you sign up in advance as space is limited.
See your city. Take some snaps. Socialize and share your photos afterward.
Interested but can’t find your city? If you’ve got the chops, you can request to be a guide in your home town.
And while it’s not a competition there are some snazzy prizes. Happy shooting!
- Eastman House Images Join Flickr’s “The Commons”
Delightful! The folks over at Flickr just announced that the George Eastman House has joined The Commons with three initial sets of images including the Chusseau-Flaviens collection, Southworth & Hawes and Autochromes.
George Eastman House is the oldest photography museum in the world, housed in the former home of Mr. George Eastman, the so-called father of modern photography and founder of Eastman Kodak company. The Museum is also one of the premiere centres of photographic conservation in the world.
The Chusseau-Flaviens collection depicts “social and political figures and events throughout Europe and the colonial empires in the Near East and the Far East” from the 1890s to just before World War I.
Messrs. Southworth & Hawes were partners in commercial studio in Boston, primarily shooting daguerreotype portraits. The studio opened in 1843, and closed twenty years later.
Auguste and Louis Lumière’s 1904 invention of the autochrome process produced the lovely images in the third gallery, Autochromes.
Can you imagine?
Auguste to Lumière: “Let’s dust some tiny potato starch grains dyed orange-red, green and violet onto a glass plate and then cover them with a layer of panchromatic silver bromide emulsion.”
Lumière: “Oh, that’s brilliant!”
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