Wired Art
2008's Best Contest Photos You Never Saw, Part 2
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With an average of over 500 submissions for each of our twice-monthly photo contests in 2008, a lot of great photos got overlooked. In celebration of the year coming to a close, we've gone back and pulled out some of our favorite contest photos that just didn't get the votes we think they deserved.
Click through the gallery to see these resurrected gems.
This is the second installment of missed photos. If you missed the first one, check it out here.
Left:
From Black-and-White contestColdplay Rock
by Jeff Kazansky
Photographer's comment:
"Silhouette of Coldplay's lead singer in a concert in Phoenix, Arizona, during the summer of 2006."
Reflections
by Andrew Lynch
Photographer's comment:
"Midtown Manhattan reflected in the U.N."
Dark City
by Kim Erlandsen
Photographer's comment:
"NYC shot from Hotel Kensington."
Double Moonbow in Lower Yosemite Falls
by Jeff Sullivan
Photographer's comment:
"This is a night shot of a double rainbow created by the light of the full moon in the mist at the bottom of Lower Yosemite Falls. I got soaked taking this picture. The waterfall creates its own strong gusts of wind that carry mist straight at you. I'm surprised that the shot wasn't ruined by water on the lens."
Pinto Bean
by D. Weisbrod
Photographer's comment:
"Photographed on glass above a black velvet background. I grew it for a week and photographed it every day."
Contemplating
by Kamila Wysocka
Photographer's comment:
"All dolled up."
What??
by Fernando Martinho
Photographer's comment:
"Analogic photography."
Like a Kid Again
by Joseph A. Sims
Stop Children
by Leafar
Photographer's comment:
"Shot in London on a rainy day. Yellow means help."
Busted
by Jane
Photographer's comment:
"Kemah Boardwalk."
Bananas on a Truck
by Jacob Maentz
Photographer's comment:
"Bananas on a truck, ready to eat. jacobimages.com."
Oh, Lucy!
by Mari Lowery
Photographer's comment:
"You got some 'splaining to do!"
Aymara
by Grafton Reed
Photographer's comment:
"Andes Mountains, 1998."
Categories: Digital Art
2008's Best Contest Photos You Never Saw
:
A lot of great photos were overlooked in 2008 in the slew images we received (an average of more than 500 submissions) for each of our twice-monthly photo contests. In celebration of the year coming to a close, we've gone back and pulled out some of our favorite contest photos that just didn't get the votes they deserved.
Click through the gallery to see these resurrected gems.
This is the first of a two-part series. Check back next week for more great photos.
Left:
Black-and-White contest
Home Sweet Home
by DSzwak
Photographer's comment:
"A view from the back patio of my childhood home outside of Limerick, Pennsylvania."
:New Slang
by Ron Coloma
Photographer's comment:
"A neighbor's child looks on as my family arrives in my mother's hometown of Sison, Philippines."
:Dust Bunny Thief
by Nick Wilson
Photographer's comment:
"Hey! That fly stole my dust bunny!"
:Cupcakes
by Kim Hino
Photographer's comment:
"A sweet, afternoon delight!"
:Summer Pastime
by Robby Petrullo (toolo on flickr)
Photographer's comment:
"Taken on June 5th, the big game when moustache Giambi crushed my dreams."
:Moonrise in St. Kitts
by Leon L. Sandall
Photographer's comment:
"Moonrise while the sun sank. April '06."
:JiaoZi
by MAB
Photographer's comment:
"Steamy JiaoZi served on every street corner."
:Laying down parking-space lines on rue du roi de Sicile
by David Henry
Photographer's comment:
"Workers in Paris lay down those yellow lines, indicating that a parking spot in front of the restaurant Le Jardin du Marais is in fact a delivery zone."
:Cow
by Meus McIntoshi
Photographer's comment:
"Hasselblad 503 CWD + Distagon CFi 4/50mm. 1/125s, f/4, ISO 100."
:Boy at the Fort: Amber, India
by Grant Olsen
Photographer's comment:
"I was traveling through India with my sister, when we came to the city of Amber. It was one of the most amazing places I've ever been. At the top of the city is a majestic fortress. We were walking through it when this boy called out to us and said hello. This is the only shot I took of him. There was no posing or anything."
Categories: Digital Art
'Art of Participation' Connects Viewers, Artists
: Photo: Brita d'Agostino/Wired.com
SAN FRANCISCO — The new S.F. Museum of Modern Art exhibit The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now turns the typically quiet gallery walk into a hands-on interactive experience. The pieces in the retrospective exhibit show how artists have dabbled in two-way communication with viewers over the past 60 years. The refreshingly self-reflexive exhibition draws on a rich history and examines the relationships among museums, artists and the public.
The show explores "how the public relates to the museum and vice versa," says Rudolf Frieling, the museum's curator of media arts. "Art frames you as a participant and art is framed by the museum."
Click though the slideshow to sample the historic and contemporary work in the show, along with visitors' interactive reactions to the exhibition or interactive art. The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now runs through Feb. 8 at SFMOMA.
Left: Museum visitors examine a contemporary version of German artist Hans Haacke's News, first shown in 1969. Haacke's original used a telex machine to print a news stream from German press agency DPA. In the updated work, a printer in the gallery spews out news reports obtained from RSS feeds of several online news sources, bringing events of the outside world into the gallery in real time. The printed news spills onto the gallery floor, creating a sculptural representation of virtual information — a tangible material archive of global news — throughout the duration of the exhibition.
: Photo: Brita d'Agostino/Wired.comAmber Isbilen and Kevin Johnson, both of San Francisco, use their breath to create abstract, colorful images on a television set in this 1998 version of Nam June Paik's Participation TV. Known as the "founding father of video art," Paik designed a series of these manipulated televisions in the 1960s to be "played like instruments."
"It's like bringing a microorganism to life," Isbilen said.
:This image is a video still of American composer John Cage surrounded by onlookers in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as he performs what became his most famous and controversial conceptual composition, 4'33". The piece consists of four minutes and 33 seconds during which no notes are played. With the absence of music coming from the perceived performer, the ambient sound created by audience members and the environment becomes the music.
First performed in 1952 by pianist David Tudor at the Benefit Artists Welfare Fund concert in Woodstock, New York, the piece initially angered audience members who expected a conventional concert. "They haven't forgotten it 30 years later," Cage said. "They're still angry."
You can catch a live performance of this seminal work live at SFMOMA as part of the Art of Participation exhibition. Bring your sense of humor.
Image: Video still from Nam June Paik's A Tribute to John Cage (1973, 1976)/Courtesy San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Camille W. and William S. Broadbent Fund
:Another example of re-creating a historically innovative work, American artists Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz's black-and-white video projection Hole-in-Space uses documentary footage of their 1980 "public communication sculpture." The original, unannounced public event utilized satellite technology to connect pedestrians at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City with pedestrians at Century City Shopping Center in Los Angeles for two hours each day from Nov. 11 to 14, 1980.
People at each location could see and converse with pedestrians on the other side of the country in real time. Once word got out, friends and family members from the two cities were able to arrange meetings with loved ones on the opposite coast. In the museum installation, footage from the two locations is projected on two separate, parallel walls that face one another — "a formal reference to the windows at the original sites" that displayed the projections, according to the artists.
Photo courtesy Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz
: Photo: Brita d'Agostino/Wired.comCalifornians Diana Meehan (left) of Napa and Jann Nunn of Oakland eyeball each other in a re-creation of Brazilian artist Lygia Clark's Diálogo: Oculos, or "Dialogue: Goggles," originally created in 1968. One of Clark's "propositions," the piece invites viewers to try on goggles that have been modified with mirrors to alter perception. Meant to be shared with a partner, the goal is to rediscover the meaning of a routine gesture.
Other "propositions" by Clark featured in The Art of Participation include: Diálogo de Mãos or "Hand Dialogue," Rede de Elástico or "Elastic Net," and Máscaras Sensoriais or "Sensorial Masks."
:For Life2 (2006), San Francisco Bay Area artist Lynn Hershman Leeson worked with the Stanford Humanities Lab to create a virtual archive of her historic project The Dante Hotel that can be explored and altered by avatars in Second Life.
Hershman Leeson's historic project, which Life2 revisits, existed in a residence hotel room in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood. For a period of nine months from 1973 to1974, visitors could get a key from the front desk any time and check in on the fictional occupants.
The hotel room is re-created in Life2, along with artifacts from the original installation. Life2 can be viewed in the museum using pre-existing avatars on two different computers, and from your own computer.
Screenshot courtesy San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
:In Ant Farm Media Van v.08 (Time Capsule), a 1972 Chevy C-10 displays video and collects a digital archive of random media from visitors who share images, videos and music files from their personal electronic devices. The viewers' files, uploaded through a console called the media hookah, will become part of a digital time capsule available for access in 2030.
Chip Lord and Curtis Schreier of historic multimedia-art collective Ant Farm teamed up with Bruce Tomb to create the piece, which was commissioned by the museum. The piece is based on a 1971 journey that Ant Farm took across the United States in a van customized with media equipment, interacting with the public along the way. The video displayed in Ant Farm Media Van v.08 (Time Capsule) is documentation from the 1971 Media Van project.
Photo: Ian Reeves/Courtesy San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
: Photo: Brita d'Agostino/Wired.comPauline Andrie of Boston tries out Edwin Wurm's Keep a Cool Head, modeling her pose on the artist's instructional drawing. Wurm's One-Minute Sculptures, several of which are featured in The Art of Participation, invite the viewer to "perform" a temporary sculpture by following the artist's often-absurd instructions on how to use everyday objects — in this case, a modified refrigerator.
For Andrie, this piece was "all in the name of fun." Of the overall show, she said: "I've never seen anything like this before."
: Photo: Brita d'Agostino/Wired.comTomo Saito of Japan and Adrien Segal from Oakland, California, attempt large-scale origami using two sheets from Felix Gonzalez-Torres' mass-produced, poster-size prints stacked on the gallery floor (Untitled 1992-1993). The stack of prints is replenished by the museum as often as necessary, and visitors are welcome to take them home. In the background is John Baldessari's painting Terms Most Useful in Describing Creative Works of Art (1966-68).
Commenting on the unconventional dynamics of The Art of Participation, Saito said the "audience has more power than the artist."
:Like Edwin Wurm, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer also asks museum visitors to perform. His interactive installation Microphones (2008) uses modified 1930s Shure microphones that contain hidden speakers and circuit boards connected to a network of computers invisible to the participant.
A participant who speaks into the microphone is illuminated and audio-recorded. Immediately afterward, the microphone plays a recording of a previous participant.
Photo: Ian Reeves/Courtesy SFMOMA
: Photo: Brita d'Agostino/Wired.comGallery attendant Francisco Montero rocks the mike in Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's installation Microphones. An artist himself, Montero said he likes to encourage visitors who are timid to participate with show's interactive pieces.
:Set up on a computer in the gallery and accessible from anywhere you can get online, Communimage is a web-based piece by c a l c (the pan-European collective casquiero atlantico labortorio cultural). The work encourages participants to upload an image of their choice along with basic meta-information to a grid system to create a "virtual, collective sculpture." Communimage was created in 1999, before the explosion of sites like Flickr and YouTube that thrive on user-generated content.
Screenshot courtesy c a l c and Johannes Gees
:Recognize your picture in this detail from Communimage?
Communimage and Life2 aren't the only internet-based works featured in the show: SFMOMA's website has a full list of online artwork from The Art of Participation.
If you are artistically inclined and itching to exhibit at SFMOMA, you can bid on eBay for the chance to exhibit in a designated room in the museum as a part of the 1st Public White Cube, conceived by artists Blank & Jeron and Gerrit Gohlke. Reflecting the collaborative spirit of The Art of Participation, you must contend with an artist's work that is already set up in the gallery. The next auction starts Jan. 1.
Screenshot courtesy c a l c and Johannes Gees
:In his piece The Gift, German conceptual artist Jochen Gerz utilizes the museum as both exhibition space and production studio. His work invites the public to sit, with an open expression, for a digital photographic portrait taken by a young artist. The portraits are then printed and framed in the museum and displayed in rotation along a wall in the gallery.
The whole creative process is on view: the subjects, the production (including the printing and framing), the exhibition and finally the distribution of the work. The portraits can also be viewed online at The Examiner. The studio is open Mondays, and Thursday through Saturday.
Screenshot: The Examiner
:On the last day of the show, the artist will randomly redistribute portraits from The Gift to participants. The expectation is that the portrait each participant receives, most likely of a stranger, will be exhibited as a work of art "on permanent loan" from the museum. This image is from the end of a previous installation of the piece at Le Fresnoy, Studio National des Arts Contemporain in Tourcoing, France.
"Reality is a great teacher," artist Jochen Gerz said in an interview. "Art should distribute itself.... The artist should disappear."
Photo courtesy Gerz Studio
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For more information on the show, check out the excellent book The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now that accompanies the SFMOMA show. The exhibit runs through Feb. 8, 2009.
Categories: Digital Art
Wired.com Photo Contest: Animals
This week we want to see your best animal photo. Whether they be furry, feathery or freaky, we want to see what the animal kingdom has to offer.
Use the Reddit widget below to submit your best animal photo and vote for your favorite among the other submissions. The 10 highest-ranked photos will appear in a gallery on the Wired.com homepage. Show us giraffes walking down city streets, panda bears with parasols, arctic sled dogs, swarms of squirrels and cheeky monkeys. Sure, pets are cute and we love ours too, but show us something we've never seen. If you do, we'll give you a treat ...
The photo must be your own, and by submitting it you are giving us permission to use it on Wired.com and in Wired magazine. Please submit images that are relatively large, the ideal size being 800 to 1200 pixels or larger on the longest side. Please include a description of your photo, which may include exposure information, equipment used, etc.
We don't host the photos, so you'll have to upload it somewhere else and submit a link to it. If you're using Flickr, Picasa or another photo-sharing site to host your image, please provide a link to the image directly and not just to the photo page where it's displayed. Using an online photo service that requires that you log in will not work. If your photo doesn't show up, it's because the URL you have entered is incorrect. Check it and make sure it ends with the image file name (XXXXXX.jpg).
Please bookmark this page and check back periodically over the next two weeks to vote on new submissions!
Also, check out the winner's galleries from our previous contests: Fall, Holga, Red, Self-Portrait, Night, Macro, Transportation, and Black and White.
Vote on animal photos submitted by other readers.
Show entries that are: hot | new | top-rated. Submit your animal photo.
Submit your animal photo.
(No more than one every 30 minutes. No HTML allowed.)
Categories: Digital Art
Gallery: Top 10 Wired.com Heat Photos, Decided by You
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After weeks of sweaty submissions in our heat photo contest, we're ready for a frosty winter to cool us down. Here are the 10 highest reader-voted submissions. Steve Dahlgren takes home the gold with his photo "Stairway to Hell" at left. Mr. Dahlgren will be receiving a subscription to Wired magazine and a digital picture frame for his desk.
Since we had so many great photos that we thought should've received more votes, and because we love to anger readers with our selections, we've also compiled a Wired.com Editor's Choice Heat Photo Gallery.
Our next twice-monthly photo contest theme is animals. We want to see your craziest, scariest and funniest photos of the animal kingdom. Check out the contest page for more information.
Left:
Stairway to Hell
Submitted by Steve Dahlgren
Photographer's comment:
"Firefighters ascend a stairway.”
: Vibrations
Submitted by mr_magoo_icu
Photographer's comment:
"A crazed fire-twirling junkie unleashes his skills inside an old red brick storm-water tunnel."
: Fire
Submitted by pixie
Photographer's comment:
"Shot with a canon EOS 5D in the summer of 2007."
: Drink for the Devil
Submitted by Rob Heath
Photographer's comment:
"A pic I took when I first got my new Nikon D50 camera a few years back."
: Painting With Fire
Submitted by Derek H
Photographer's comment:
"Painting with fire in White Lake, Ontario, Canada. Shot with a Sony DSC-W1 on a 30 sec. exposure."
: Festa Mayor — Terrassa, Spain
Submitted by ryan opaz
Photographer's comment:
"Dancing with the devil in a Catalan Festa Mayor."
: Let the Sparks Fly
Submitted by Josh V
Photographer's comment:
"Taken with a cheap point-and-shoot Fuji Finepix A350 set to 'Night' mode."
: Fahrenheit 451
Submitted by Bye by Tan
Photographer's comment:
"'The number "451" refers to the temperature (in Fahrenheit) at which the books burn when the "firemen" burn them "for the good of humanity." Written in the early years of the Cold War, the novel is a critique of what Ray Bradbury saw as an increasingly dysfunctional American society.' (Wikipedia) Photo was made with Canon EOS 300D."
: Fanning the Flames of the Great Debate
Submitted by fotomy
Photographer's comment:
"I hope Earth won't end up like Mars."
: Mammoth Hot Springs
Submitted by Rubin
Photographer's comment:
"A cold day at a very hot pool, Yellowstone National Park."
Categories: Digital Art
Gallery: Top 10 Wired.com Heat Photos, Decided by Us
:
Though Wired.com readers selected 10 excellent photos in our heat photo contest, we here at the photo department like to fight for the underdog. Here are our 10 favorite submissions that we think deserved more attention.
Our next twice-monthly photo contest is Animals. We want to see your craziest, scariest and funniest photos of the animal kingdom. Check out the contest page for more information.
Left:
A street demonstration in Place de la Bastille
Submitted by David Henry
Photographer's comment:
"The National Front, the far-right political party in France, came in second place in the first round of voting in the presidential elections on April 21, 2002. The results of this vote set off a series of demonstrations in the streets, one almost every day.”
:hold fire
Submitted by anonymous
Photographer's comment:
"A Key West, Florida, street performer who juggles fire. Heat."
: The livin's easy...
Submitted by Ryanwiz
Photographer's comment:
"summertimes..."
: Sesnon Fire
Submitted by NDM
Photographer's comment:
"Sesnon Fire."
:Kalahari Sun Shade
Submitted by Nick
Photographer's comment:
”Ground squirrel beating the heat in the Kalahari.”
:Empty Quarter, Saudi Arabia
Submitted by Matt Thistle
Photographer's comment:
"Road to Sharoura, southern KSA near Yemeni border ... just before my car broke down ...."
: Sugarcane Fields
Submitted by Nayan Sthankiya
Photographer's comment:
"Recently harvested sugarcane fields are set on fire to enrich the soil and promote the canes regrowth outside Mysore, India."
: Our Heat Source
Submitted by Martin Cathrae
Photographer's comment:
" We see it every day, and it's shaped our entire world.”
:Escaping the Heat
Submitted by Christie Hemm
Photographer's comment:
"... or trying to at least. It was almost as hot here when Pvt. Eric Williams was home on leave as it has been for him where he serves as a medic in Iraq."
:Camels in Heat
Submitted by Joakim Lloyd Raboff
Photographer's comment:
"Female camels in waiting."
Categories: Digital Art
How to Turn a Desktop Scanner Into a Camera
Got an old scanner kicking around? You can easily repurpose it for use as an
artistic and experimental digital camera using some black foam-core board, a
roll of light-proof tape and a cheap lens. Learn how in Wired.com's How-To Wiki.
Categories: Digital Art
Wired.com Photo Contest: Heat
This photo contest, Heat, is inspired by San Francisco's unexpected November heat wave. And since fall hasn't been shining so brightly on other cities, we figure the rest of the country could use some heating up as well.
As a special treat, Canon is sponsoring this photo contest. Enter to win a Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS.
Use the Reddit widget below to submit your best Heat photo and vote for your favorite among the other submissions. The 10 highest-ranked photos will appear in a gallery on the Wired.com homepage. Show us sweaty glasses of ice water, oasis mirages in the middle of a baking desert, and flaming foundries filled with molten metal. Make us sweat on the doorstep of winter as we face the months of rain and snow ahead.
The photo must be your own, and by submitting it you are giving us permission to use it on Wired.com and in Wired magazine. Please submit images that are relatively large, the ideal size being 800 to 1200 pixels or larger on the longest side. Please include a description of your photo, which may include exposure information, equipment used, etc.
We don't host the photos, so you'll have to upload it somewhere else and submit a link to it. If you're using Flickr, Picasa or another photo-sharing site to host your image, please provide a link to the image directly and not just to the photo page where it's displayed. Using an online photo service that requires that you log in will not work. If your photo doesn't show up, it's because the URL you have entered is incorrect. Check it and make sure it ends with the image file name (XXXXXX.jpg).
Please bookmark this page and check back periodically over the next two weeks to vote on new submissions!
Also, check out the winner's galleries from our previous contests: Fall, Holga, Red, Self-Portrait, Night, Macro, Transportation, and Black and White.
Vote on heat photos submitted by other readers.
Show entries that are: hot | new | top-rated. Submit your heat photo.
Submit your heat photo.
(No more than one every 30 minutes. No HTML allowed.)
Categories: Digital Art
Top 10 Wired.com Music Photos, Decided by You
:
Conveying the excitement people feel about music in a still image can be like describing sight to the blind. The 10 reader-elected finalists of our music photo contest may not make you hear music, but they expertly capture a musical moment. Blair takes home the gold with his photo "The Horn Player" at left. Click through the gallery to see the contestants who were nipping at his heels.
Since we had so many great photos that we thought should've received more votes, and because we love to anger readers with our selections, we've also compiled a Wired.com Editor's Choice Music Photo Gallery.
Our next twice-monthly photo contest is Heat. It's cold outside this winter and we need to warm our feet by your photographic fire. Check out the contest page for more information.
Left:
The Horn Player
Submitted by Blair
Photographer's comment:
"Covent Garden, London.”
:DreadHead
Submitted by Amaiia
Photographer's comment:
"Guitarist of the famous French ska band Fizcus live @ Seasplash Festival, Croatia."
:Jeff Locke
Submitted by Christie Hemm
Photographer's comment:
”He's good.”
:Fizcus
Submitted by Podi
Photographer's comment:
"French ska band Fizcus on concert
"13/1 sec, f/3.5, flash on, second curtain"
:The Underbelly
Submitted by Elizabeth Kovach
Photographer's comment:
"Messing around with the organ."
:On the Outside
Submitted by Ross Gilmore
Photographer's comment:
"Old busker plays his banjo, against a 14-foot-high security fence, at an outdoor rock concert."
:Tickling Ivory
Submitted by Bob
Photographer's comment:
"Hands playing piano."
:My Stepfather's Piano
Submitted by Tin Man
Photographer's comment:
"I'm no photographer, I'm a musician, and this is my art. My stepfather left me this piano when he died in 1998, and I use it to compose. Its sound is not great by traditional standards, but to me it is wonderful.”
:Tandoori Tunes
Submitted by Joakim Lloyd Raboff
Photographer's comment:
”A musician sat down and played a tune while I tried to listen to a podcast on the beach in Goa, India."
:Yaya
Submitted by amaiia
Photographer's comment:
"Jadranka Bastajic Yaya, lead singer of Croatian band Jinx.
"Canon EOS 350d, f/4.0, 1/200, 50mm"
Categories: Digital Art
Top 10 Wired.com Music Photos, Decided by Us
:
Though Wired.com readers selected 10 excellent photos in our music photo contest, we here at the photo department like to fight for the underdog. Here are our 10 favorite submissions that we think deserved more attention.
Our next twice-monthly photo contest is Heat. It's cold outside this winter, and we need to warm our feet by your photographic fire. Check out the contest page for more information.
Left:
Arcade Fire Encore
Submitted by Ryan Muir
Photographer's comment:
"The Arcade Fire set up their in-crowd encore right in front of my face. Spotlights shining on them from a distance — thousands of people scattered around thinking the show was over. Took me by surprise as much as anybody else.... This was pretty much the most memorable concert-going experience of my life. So glad to have had my camera.”
:Gospel Groove
Submitted by Anonymous
Photographer's comment:
"A group of young South Africans perform a special gospel set for me and a group of visitors to their school in the Cape Flats."
:1898 Piano
Submitted by Dan Snyder
Photographer's comment:
"In my backyard."
:Stephen Malkmus of Pavement — Houston, 1999
Submitted by Scot Ferguson
Photographer's comment:
"Stephen Malkmus of Pavement — Houston, 1999, their last tour."
:Adding to the Noise
Submitted by throughHislens
Photographer's comment:
"Music means a lot to me, so that's why it was saddening to see this on the ground. But, you can see this transition in music, in that the different mediums that make it up are slowly transitioning into something that was not available at the start. Bittersweet.”
:Barefoot Rock
Submitted by Casey Moore
Photographer's comment:
"Land of Talk — SXSW 2008."
:Bunny Surf
Submitted by M. Young
Photographer's comment:
"Taken at the Vans Warped Tour, Mansfield, Massachusetts, August 2008."
:Achtung Accordion!
Submitted by Fritz Speilemann
Photographer's comment:
"Although far from my favorite instrument, this young dude played his instrument like a god!”
:Drum
Submitted by Casey Cramer
Photographer's comment:
"Drum in empty prayer room in Hunder Gompa, Nubra Valley, Ladakh, India"
:One-Man Band
Submitted by Elias
Photographer's comment:
"Took this photo in Bath, England. This man was playing on the sidewalk, with both a violin and a guitar simultaneously. He had hooked up the guitar to a foot pedal that played certain notes as he turned the crank."
Categories: Digital Art
Wired.com Photo Contest: Music
Your assignment for this photo contest is both simple and difficult: music. Move beyond the band and concert cliches and show us what music means to you.
Use the Reddit widget below to submit your best music photo and vote for your favorite among the other submissions. The 10 highest-ranked photos will appear in a gallery on the Wired.com homepage. Show us your grandpa's old dusty stacks of shellac, the piano in the backyard overgrown with moss and ivy, an exotic minstrel in the heart of a Mediterranean bazaar. Deliver us to psychedelic synesthesia by making us hear your vivid photos with our eyes.
The photo must be your own, and by submitting it you are giving us permission to use it on Wired.com and in Wired magazine. Please submit images that are relatively large, the ideal size being 800 to 1200 pixels or larger on the longest side. Please include a description of your photo, which may include exposure information, equipment used, etc.
We don't host the photos, so you'll have to upload it somewhere else and submit a link to it. If you're using Flickr, Picasa or another photo-sharing site to host your image, please provide a link to the image directly and not just to the photo page where it's displayed. Using an online photo service that requires that you log in will not work. If your photo doesn't show up, it's because the URL you have entered is incorrect. Check it and make sure it ends with the image file name (XXXXXX.jpg).
Please bookmark this page and check back periodically over the next two weeks to vote on new submissions!
Also, check out the winner's galleries from our previous contests: Fall, Holga, Red, Self-Portrait, Night, Macro, Transportation, and Black and White.
Vote on music photos submitted by other readers.
Show entries that are: hot | new | top-rated. Submit your music photo.
Submit your music photo.
(No more than one every 30 minutes. No HTML allowed.)
Categories: Digital Art
Top 10 Wired.com Yellow Photos, Decided by You
:
After weeks of excellent submissions in our yellow photo contest we at the Wired.com photo desk have a new favorite color. Here are the 10 highest reader-voted submissions. Mikage Rinoa takes home the gold (ahem) with his photo "Yellow Dew Drop" at left. Mr. Rinoa will be receiving a subscription to Wired magazine and a digital picture frame for his desk.
Since we had so many great photos that we thought should've received more votes, and because we love to anger readers with our selections, we've also compiled a Wired.com Editor's Choice Yellow Photo Gallery.
Our next twice-monthly photo contest theme is music. Show us photos so vivid they make us hear with our eyes. Check out the contest page for more information.
Left:
Yellow Dew Drop
Submitted by mikage14
Photographer's comment:
"Experimenting with refraction."
:Broken Window
Submitted by Paul Scrafton
Photographer's comment:
"Broken window on train awaiting refurb at Tanfield Railway, County Durham, United Kingdom."
:Walkway Tunnel
Submitted by HK
Photographer's comment:
"Taken in Lodalen Valley, Oslo, with a Canon XSi. 20mm, F/3,5, ISO 1600."
:The Yellow Umbrella
Submitted by Kreego
Photographer's comment:
"A yellow umbrella travels in France and Switzerland, inspired by the American adventures of a famous red velour sofa in the 1970s … "
:Jin Mao
Submitted by Dana Underwood
Photographer's comment:
"Looking up 56 stories in Shanghai's Grand Hyatt lounge."
:Blue Sky Yellow Wall
Submitted by Paul Scrafton
Photographer's comment:
"The Centre For Life, Newcastle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom."
:Caboose
Submitted by MojoPhotoCo
Photographer's comment:
"The historic Heber Creeper's yellow caboose reflected in a lot of melted snow."
:Ulica Kanonicza
Submitted by parisa.tabriz
Photographer's comment:
"An especially yellow alley in Kraków, Poland.”
:Duck Race
Submitted by Anonymous
Photographer's comment:
"Trondheim, Norway"
:Golden Fog
Submitted by Franc
Photographer's comment:
"Early morning soccer warmups in the Houston area."
Categories: Digital Art
Top 10 Wired.com Yellow Photos, Decided by Us
:
Though Wired.com readers selected 10 excellent photos in our yellow photo contest, we here at the photo department like to fight for the underdog. Here are our 10 favorite submissions that we think deserved more attention.
Our next twice-monthly photo contest theme is music. Show us photos so vivid they make us hear with our eyes. Check out the contest page for more information.
Left:
Yellow Menace
Submitted by Damir Ivankovic
Photographer's comment:
"Fićo. Legendary ex-Yugoslav car. In a mountain village."
:Aerial Photo of Sulfur Plant at the Port of Stockton, Stockton, CA
Submitted by Adrian Mendoza
Photographer's comment:
"Aerial photograph of a large sulfur pile at the Port of Stockton in Stockton, California, in June 2008."
:Coney Island Buses
Submitted by brie987
Photographer's comment:
"Buses at Coney Island. Lumix FX35."
:Beach House
Submitted by Steven Kamenar
Photographer's comment:
"On a beach off of Marco Island, FL."
:Young Ducks @ the Market
Submitted by J.S Labrie
Photographer's comment:
"Young ducks at the Chilean market in Chile."
:The Sea Night
Submitted by turoturok
Photographer's comment:
"Los Cabos yellow night."
:Trondsvej
Submitted by Klaus C
Photographer's comment:
"From Skagen, Denmark, summer 2008."
:Treasure Island
Submitted by Drew Halley
Photographer's comment:
"Old Minolta SRT-201, 35mm 400-speed film (expired), and sunglasses for a filter."
:Blue Tarp...Green Tarp...Yellow Tarp...
Submitted by Casey Cramer
Photographer's comment:
"High above Leh, Ladakh."
:Cruisin'
Submitted by cruisin'
Photographer's comment:
"A day at the Montgomery County (Texas) fair."
Categories: Digital Art
Gallery: Mutant Mods and Anarchy at Bike Kill
: Photo: Bryan Derballa/Wired.com
NEW YORK -- In a sport dominated by carbon fiber and spandex, Bike Kill is a big, fat stick in the spokes. Imagine the Tour de France taking place in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, then add plenty of broken glass, beer, blood and vomit.
It begins as a celebration of punk rock, DIY and mutant bike creations, like the tall bikes championed by the Black Label Bicycle Club. But after a Beerelay Race, the Six-Pack Attack, a food fight and dodging foam skulls in the gauntlet, the event deteriorates into anarchy.
Black Label has hosted the Bike Kill event for the last six years on a dead-end street in the heart of Brooklyn. This year's event was possibly the most heinous ever. Click through the gallery to peep the mods and mayhem.
Left:
A festival-goer rides one of the mutant bikes. It’s not the fastest steed in the stable but it utilizes an intuitive technology. Whether it’s bikes, boots or both, it’s getting there that counts.
: Photo: Bryan Derballa/Wired.comA mini tall-bike leans against the wall waiting for the next brave rider. Black Label builders use whatever scrapped parts they can find for their two-wheeled concoctions. Here, they've welded a vintage step-through road bike frame to a children’s bike.
: Photo: Bryan Derballa/Wired.comWhile surf bikes are popular, helmets are not. This bike features a flat board for riders to surf while another pedals. It’s also great for picking up pizzas.
: Photo: Bryan Derballa/Wired.comBike Kill always occurs around Halloween and sometimes the bikes need costumes, too — like this Top Gun tandem complete with "Danger Zone" cassette tape.
: Photo: Bryan Derballa/Wired.comAlthough Bike Kill is about creation, there is always a fair amount of destruction. This BK attendee decided an impromptu bike toss was in order. Last year, visitors flipped a car and bashed in the windows with skateboards and BMX bikes.
: Photo: Bryan Derballa/Wired.comThis is one of the more elaborate cycle creations. If both riders pedal forward, the contraption spins in circles. If one rider pedals backwards it's propelled forward. There’s always room for bystanders to hitch a ride if they don’t mind being upside down half the time.
: Photo: Bryan Derballa/Wired.comYou'll hear the barrel tandem bike before you see it. It’s the loudest bike in the Bike Kill arsenal with empty barrels rolling across the asphalt. Sure, it’s not fast, but it is intimidating.
: Photo: Bryan Derballa/Wired.comWith a couple garbage bags of day-old bread as ammo, a full-fledged food fight breaks out, with pitas being tossed like ninja stars. A bag of flour is used as a smoke shield.
After a few hours of light rain, the discarded food created a slick sludge that added to the dangers of actually riding a bike at Bike Kill.
: Photo: Bryan Derballa/Wired.comSomehow Bike Kill always manages to secure a permit from the city. But they don’t do much beyond that and no bathrooms were available. The beer store around the corner actually ran out of beer.
: Photo: Bryan Derballa/Wired.comA favorite Bike Kill event is Dirty Mattress, in which a rider pedals a passenger as fast as he can on a surf bike, which is tethered to a pole. When the bike reaches the end of its rope, the passenger is flung headfirst into a very dirty mattress to the delight of onlookers.
: Photo: Bryan Derballa/Wired.comThe front half of this pedal-powered chopper is made of tubing with tiny holes. A butane tank mounted to the frame provides fuel for the flame that passes through the tube. Visibility is a very important tenant of bicycle safety.
: Photo: Bryan Derballa/Wired.comThis beast of a bike is motor-powered and sports a butane-powered flamethrower on the front. It has one small tube for the pilot flame and a larger second tube with a regulator that controls the size of the torch. Just another reminder for cars to respect their two-wheeled compatriots.
Categories: Digital Art
Gallery: Vintage Pics Capture 'Halloween in the Time of Cholera'
:
An obsessive-compulsive collector shares his fascination with vintage Halloween photographs, using Flickr to impart these haunting images.
"My theme is 'Halloween in the Time of Cholera,'" collector Steven Martin told Wired.com in an e-mail interview. "The idea being that people back then were probably on a more intimate level with death — and that would have affected the way they celebrated Halloween."
Martin, who has amassed a vast collection of vintage images through eBay, said he's using pictures from 1940 and earlier for the Flickr countdown.
Photos courtesy Steven Martin
:"I guess my reason for collecting old Halloween photos stems from a nostalgia for my childhood," said Martin, who grew up in San Diego but now lives in Southeast Asia. "Unlike most Americans ... I don't get an annual Halloween fix, so collecting photos is a way to resurrect old memories."
:"I am really fascinated by how these photographs of people dressed in primitive, homemade costumes and memorialized in faded, black-and-white photos often seem to have a real sinister aspect to them," Martin said. "I'm not sure if it was intentional or not, but to me Halloween a century ago looks much scarier than it does now in digitalized color."
:"I've been collecting vintage Halloween images since 2004, and what I am using now for my Halloween countdown [on Flickr] are photos that I've collected since then," Martin said. "I've got about 200 of them but I am only uploading the ones that date to the first half of the 20th century."
:"Halloween was always my favorite holiday as a kid," Martin said. "Growing up in San Diego was probably not the most traditional place to celebrate Halloween. I remember in elementary school we used to be given construction paper in yellow, orange, red and brown and instructed to cut out leaf shapes to tape up on the classroom windows — this because the trees in San Diego don't change color in autumn. Still, I have wonderful memories of Halloween there."
:"I started my Flickr account as a low-key way of promoting my Opium Museum website, which is in turn a low-key way of promoting my book [The Art of Opium Antiques]," Martin said.
:"I didn't want to look like a one-trick pony with nothing but opium-related images on my Flickr account," Martin said.
"As it happens, I've been collecting vintage photos and images for years now, so I started uploading those, too. Before I knew it, I was scanning old snapshots of my travels throughout Asia as well as bits of ephemera that I have been collecting for years. So my Flickr account is a real mixed bag."
:What tips does Martin have for amateur photo collectors?
"One word: eBay," Martin said. "Although the site has really gone to hell in the last year or so (sorry, eBay) there are still lots of sellers that specialize in 'found photographs.'"
:Found photographs usually sell for just a few dollars on eBay, Martin said, "although the really oddball photos can go for hundreds. Some of the sellers are generous and upload large scans of their photos, so it's also possible to just download them and collect that way."
:Martin has lived in Southeast Asia for more than two decades. He works as a freelance writer and translator to pay the bills. When it comes to hobbies, it's all about collecting things — like the photos he shares on Flickr.
:"I'm an obsessive-compulsive collector," Martin said. "It's something I've been doing since I was a kid."
:See also:
Categories: Digital Art
Coolest Costumes From a Geek Masquerade
:
Brace for shame multiplication, all you procrastinators struggling to pull together the perfect Halloween costume.
These amazing getups were finished in time to flaunt this summer during the Comic-Con International Masquerade, the annual costume ball at San Diego's massive geekfest.
Hundreds of costumed wonders strutted their stuff, singly and in groups, showing off the fruits of their labors and their dedication to sci-fi, comics and other geekish obsessions.
Can you compete? Show us your own geeky Halloween costume.
Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :See also:
- Comic-Con's Costumed Crusaders
- Japanese Cosplayers Keep Fantasies Fresh (With Febreze)
- Gallery: Scenes From Comic-Con 2008
Categories: Digital Art
Show Us Your Best Geeky Halloween Costume
To celebrate this year's Halloween we want to see what Wired.com readers are wearing around their neighborhoods and to costume parties. For inspiration, we've compiled a gallery of the Coolest Costumes From a Geek Masquerade.
Use the Reddit widget below to submit your best geek costume photo and vote for your favorite among the other submissions. If we like your photo, we'll include it in a gallery on Wired.com.
The photo must be your own, and by submitting it you are giving us permission to use it on Wired.com and in Wired magazine. Please submit images that are relatively large, the ideal size being 800 to 1200 pixels or larger on the longest side. Please include a description of your photo so that other readers know what they're looking at.
We don't host the photos, so you'll have to upload it somewhere else and submit a link to it. If you're using Flickr, Picasa or another photo-sharing site to host your image, please provide a link to the image directly and not just to the photo page where it's displayed. Using an online photo service that requires that you log in will not work. If your photo doesn't show up, it's because the URL you have entered is incorrect. Check it and make sure it ends with the image file name (XXXXXX.jpg).
Please bookmark this page, send it to your friends and check back periodically over the next two weeks to vote on new submissions!
Vote on costume photos submitted by other readers.
Show entries that are: hot | new | top-rated. Submit your costume photo.
Submit your costume photo.
(No more than one every 30 minutes. No HTML allowed.)
Categories: Digital Art
Gallery: Computer Kittehs Pounce on Art World
:
LOLcats are invading the art scene. Thirty artists took inspiration from the syntactically challenged kitties (or is that kittehs?) to create sculptures, digital paintings and pen-and-ink sketches for a sold-out art show in San Francisco.
The artwork — including a tribute to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (pictured), a digitally rendered painting created from thousands of LOLcat images and an homage to the neon-suited Tron Guy — will be auctioned off Thursday during a one-night-only LOL Arts show in San Francisco, to benefit an adult-literacy program.
Here are some of Wired.com's favorite LOLcat artworks from the show.
Left:
2001 — A LOLcats Odyssey by Brian K. MacDonough
Acrylic on canvas
I Does It by Amanda Siska
Etched glass
LOLcat whiteboard by Josh Zubkoff
Paint on white board
LOLcat Fractal Generator by Robert Burke
Silverlight-based application
Nu & Improofed - Nao Wiff 50% mor fluff by Dana Armstrong
Digital painting
I'm Hit by Allyn M. Cowan
Acrylic on gallery-wrapped canvas
Best in Shoe by Allyn M. Cowan
Acrylic on gallery wrapped canvas
The Amazing Lolcat by Nina Kempf
Acrylic on canvas
I Can Has Chainburger? by Emily M. Cox
Papier mâché (glue, water) and bags from six famous fast-food chain restaurants
Neeyon Harblz by Dino Ignacio
Digital painting
Dumb Icarus by Kinoko
Gouache on illustration board
LOLHyoominz at Play by Jeremy Natividad
Digital painting
Categories: Digital Art
LOLcats R in Ur Gallery, Pimpin 4 Adult Literacy
Those crazy slang-talkin' felines pounce from the internet to a sold-out art show, with a silent auction to benefit a worthy cause.
Categories: Digital Art
Wired.com Photo Contest: Yellow
We see you there, Wired.com readers, shaking in your black Filas in fear of this week's photo contest. What's the matter, feeling a little yellow? Good, then you've already started.
Use the Reddit widget below to submit your best yellow photo and vote for your favorite among the other submissions. The 10 highest-ranked photos will appear in a gallery on the Wired.com homepage. Show us sunflower fields, hay mazes and Scotch broom. Gold fish, gold teeth and gold bullion. We want to see rubber gloves in a sink of dishes, lemon-meringue-pie-eating contests and armies of rubber ducks. You get the point, now get shooting.
The photo must be your own, and by submitting it you are giving us permission to use it on Wired.com and in Wired magazine. Please submit images that are relatively large, the ideal size being 800 to 1200 pixels or larger on the longest side. Please include a description of your photo, which may include exposure information, equipment used, etc.
We don't host the photos, so you'll have to upload it somewhere else and submit a link to it. If you're using Flickr, Picasa or another photo-sharing site to host your image, please provide a link to the image directly and not just to the photo page where it's displayed. Using an online photo service that requires that you log in will not work. If your photo doesn't show up, it's because the URL you have entered is incorrect. Check it and make sure it ends with the image file name (XXXXXX.jpg).
Please bookmark this page and check back periodically over the next two weeks to vote on new submissions!
Also, check out the winner's galleries from our previous contests: Fall Holga, Red, Self-Portrait, Night, Macro, Transportation, and Black and White.
Vote on yellow photos submitted by other readers.
Show entries that are: hot | new | top-rated. Submit your yellow photo.
Submit your yellow photo.
(No more than one every 30 minutes. No HTML allowed.)
Categories: Digital Art