Last week, we asked Glocalites to re-create this famous photo by Henri Cartier-Bresson. As usual, you were up to the task, and we received a number of excellent submissions. Our pick this week is from Flickr user lesbru, titled ‘descending’:

lesbru writes:

“[The photo] recreates the elements of spiral and motion out of frame and spirit of Bresson, without literally recreating the image itself…”

Thanks to everyone who participated in our photo challenge this week – stay tuned for GPC#4, coming up later this afternoon!

Last week we asked you to head out and take photos from a low-down perspective. We received a lot of good submissions, and have picked two favourites this week who will receive fabulous prizes, and, of course, fame. Here are our picks:

Spire of Dublin, by Remko van Dokkum:

Untitled, by 一庆:

Our two chosen photographers receive a free Digital Camera Hack Kit, which will let them set up a digital camera to take photos triggered by sound, or by an intervalometer. 

You can get involved in our photo challenges – we’ll be starting a new one later today. In the meantime, you can join our Flickr pool, which is getting larger every week.

This screenshot from Glocal’s Motion Sequence Application (MSA) is an anonymous portrait of a tree in Holland Park – one of the many trees that were being showcased at Surrey’s Fusion Festival!

 Hello Glocal Blog Readers!

This Summer season has become an extremely prolific one for the info-crew at Glocal… 

In addition to the Canada Day festivities, the Glocal project was also represented by the Fusion Festival in Surrey (July 19-20, 2008), another Cultural Capitals of Canada initiative.

Computers in the tent were used to allow visitors to get creative with a web-cam. An additional computer provided access to the glocal website and blog so that visitors could see first hand how to download the software applications and contribute to the project.

Here are some more pictures from this culturally diverse summer blockbuster event…

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Hacking your old digital camera just got easier! Last week we received 250 printed circuit boards – built to connect your digital camera to a sound sensor and an intervalometer (see our camera hack post for more details).

You can see a step-by-step GIF animation of the process here: trigger.gif (2.21MB)

We’ve packaged these custom-made Arduino-based boards boards together with the necessary parts so that you can assemble your own hacked digi-cam and take photos from brand new perspectives.

Since the hacked cameras are self-contained, they can be placed in virtually any location and can take shots from almost any angle – hands-free. So far, working with students at our Digital Summer Camp, we’ve prototyped bicycle cams, skateboard cams, hamster-ball cams, spray-paint cams, RC-cams, tree-cams – and more!

Want one? Here’s our first of a series of weekly photo challenges. We’ll pick some of our favourites submisions – they’ll be posted here and the artists will receive a FREE Camera Trigger Kit. Because this is our first photo challenge, we’re giving away 10 FREE KITS!

Instructions:

1) Take a photograph from a unique perspective. From beneath a car, on top of a bridge, underwater, in your sock drawer – we want to see your world from a new angle.

2) Upload the photo to Flickr and tag it with ‘glocalproject’ and ‘photochallenge’.

If your image is selected, we’ll mail you a camera kit right away. We’ll be giving all of our boards away over the next few months – so stay tuned!

Hello there GLOCAL blog readers!

Our info-booth presentation at Ottawa’s Canada Day celebration was a success!

The entire GLOCAL collective was chosen as an “artist” alongside the ceramicist Murray Sanders and the painter Deborah Putman to represent Surrey as the ambassadors on behalf of Surrey’s designation as a Cultural Capital of Canada for 2008.

We were all very grateful that the weather held up for this event as the evening before was pouring with rain and this horrendous weather reduced the grassy lawn of Major’s Hill Park to vast puddles of mud.

There was also some initial panic over the installation of GLOCAL’s main presentation monitor but this issue was also quickly resolved when the day arrived (scroll down for the juicy details).

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Experimenting with the Multiple Exposure application the other day, I had the pleasure of getting caught up in a beautiful moment of creation with a digital program totally unfamiliar to me. A lackluster photographer at best, I often arrive home from travels and adventures with a camera full of photos that do nothing for me aesthetically, while offering no justice whatsoever to the beauty of the adventure undertaken. Awkward landscapes, architectures misbehaving and out of focus, or the ever-popular photo taken about one-second after everyone is finished posing.  Rarely, even by accident, do I get a photo that captures light or movement in an interesting way.  Instead, I get a batch of outtakes, without the good images to precede them. So, the following posts by me are documentation of my experiments with the new software toolkits…

While flying to Victoria to meet for some consultation, we had the great opportunity to test the Motion Sequence Application in capturing some dizzying perspectives.

Its got us considering different ways we can create views from above. We’ve already started work on the Balloon Cams and we will soon be posting some tool kits that pass on tips on how to make your own.

Kite cams are next. Our initial research shows that many people are already doing this in cool and interesting ways. Check out both a modified disposable kite cam made by David Hunt and some little more sophisticated cradles that are used by kite cam photographers. Also the folks at Engadget have done a great job of explaining the hack of an old  digital cam to make a digital kite cam.

ML: My images are bound by the presence of the two motorbikes shot from above. The scene is animated by the different figures that pass through the frame. This series remains anchored because of the bikes repeating in each shot. This set of work was shot near Place de la Concorde in Paris.

What are your reasons to shot the scene from above?

ML: This perspective was inspired by the work of Rodcenko (see below) and his excitement at the new possibilities presented by the handheld camera to shoot city scenes and subjects from new
angles. Distance creates tension between forms and plays with what the eye can read.

What do you like best about the series?

ML: The last image in the sequence, as the girl exchanges a glance with the camera references my position perched on a level a few metres above, just outside the Musée de Jeu de Paume.

Where are you? And what are you recording?

ML: This series looks at the Paris underground. The metro is often associated with the humdrum of daily Parisian life, summed up by the expression métro, boulot, dodo (metro, work, sleep).



How do you describe these works?

ML: These images capture some of the peculiarities of the subterranean world of the metro. Some of them are reminiscent of Paris Mortel, Van der Keuken’s portrait of Paris in the sixties.

The repetition in form and placement of the figures is uncanny.

ML: For me the ability to observe surreal coincidences between people and location is another way to locate unusual forms and perspectives. In this work, this repetition provides a platform of stillness and reflection amid the apparent monotonous cycle of métro, boulot, dodo.