Police in Benghazi has retrieved on Sunday a historic sculpture, which dates back to the the Italian colonization era, after it went missing for decades.
Police in Benghazi retrieve missing Capitoline Wolf sculpture
The Best Lens Kit for Landscape Photography
The 16-35mm lens is the standard workhorse of landscape photography, but it is far from the only lens you can use for the genre, and, in fact, you are probably doing yourself a disservice if you rely exclusively on those focal lengths. If you are new to the genre and wondering what makes for a good lens kit, check out this helpful video tutorial sure to put you on the right path.
Coming to you from Michael Shainblum, this fantastic video discusses the ideal lens kit for landscape photographers. I strongly agree with adding a superzoom or telephoto zoom lens to your kit. You might balk at the sharpness you will get from something like a 28-300mm lens, but such lenses have come a long way in recent years, and furthermore you will usually use them at the optimal apertures for sharpness. Furthermore, the weight and cost savings you get from such a lens make them extremely convenient and cost-efficient, and the focal length range will allow you to get far more varied images from each scene you encounter. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Shainblum.
And if you really want to dive into landscape photography, check out “Photographing The World 1: Landscape Photography and Post-Processing with Elia Locardi.”
An Offshore Wind Farm in England Hosts Hundreds of Potential Nests for Endangered Kittiwakes
All images © Ørsted and Red7Marine, shared with permission
The name kittiwake, which describes two related species of seabird that are common along the shores of Europe and North America, comes from its distinctively shrill call that sounds like, “kittee-wa-aaake, kitte-wa-aaake!” The coastal breeding birds are reliant on a steady diet of small fish and crustaceans, but overfishing and rising water temperatures due to climate change have contributed to shrinking colonies. As a result, scientists are rushing to research and monitor the remaining populations.
Kittiwakes typically nest on steep sea cliffs, while at least one colony has adapted to an unusual inland location in Newcastle, bedding down on the corners of buildings and under the Tyne Bridge. The RSPB estimates a global drop in the birds by more than 40% since 1970. Some of the most alarming decreases have been seen in the U.K., particularly in the northern archipelagos of Orkney and Shetland, where numbers have declined by 87% since 2000. St. Kilda, an island in Scotland’s Western Isles, has lost a staggering 96% of the breeding population.
With a little help from unique collaborators—wind farm maker Ørsted and marine engineer Red7Marine—the avians can now make use of three new structures installed just off of England’s East Coast. These installations, placed along one of the fastest eroding coastlines in Europe, provide shelter for the seabirds while simultaneously producing clean and renewable electricity.
Off the shores of South Beach, Lowestoft, and the Minsmere Nature Reserve, Suffolk, each of the artificial nesting structures provide hundreds of small ledges designed to mimic the birds’ steep cliff dwellings. Every year, a team will monitor how many nests are occupied and how productively the kittiwakes are able to breed. The studies will be shared with local wildlife trusts like the Lowestoft Kittiwake Partnership, which just opened a series of bird hotels. (via designboom)
Left: Underside view. Right: Interior wall view. Photo by NEUBAU
Photo by NEUBAU
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Take 5: Transparent Speakers, SPF Misters, a Designer-Filled Home + More
A brand that lives up to its name in design, sound, and business practices. Transparent hooked me from the moment I saw their award-winning speakers. Made with aluminum and tempered glass for long-lasting quality, its unique transparency allows it to blend seamlessly into any room. Designed for a circular economy, the modular design allows for repairs and upgrades as needed since technology is constantly evolving. If it’s less (electronic) waste, it’s a yes from me.
If I could explore anybody’s home, it would be @adenwang’s interior designer-filled space in San Francisco, California. Full of all the big names, his loft is ablaze with every color and shape that I can only imagine it feels like a hit of dopamine walking into the room. With all the craze surrounding the Barbie movie, I immediately gravitated towards the adorable pink donut pouf from Hem, but as I explored his Instagram page further, I found myself adding every piece to my wishlist.
Hot stone massages are a treat, but going to the spa routinely can add up to big bucks. As an alternative, this at-home tool has been something I’ve been eyeing for my overly tense shoulders. Made of porcelain and glazed with crushed tourmaline crystal, it’s like having a hot stone massage right in the palm of your hand. The tourmaline is what’s key, as it’s a special crystal that emits far-infrared heat energy when heat is applied, allowing you to experience a more penetrating, therapeutic type of heat to relieve your muscles.
During one of my late-night scrolls in April, I happened upon the Untitled Folder Wallet from @nikbentel and I thought it was so ingenious! Now he’s released three more designs for The Folder Wallet Collection and I don’t know which one I need. From each wallet’s design to the reels created to showcase them, I’ve really enjoyed how he’s executed it all. Whether you’re a PC or Mac user, there’s a folder wallet for everyone. There’s even a manila folder wallet for those who are more traditional with their folder preferences!
With summer in full effect, I’ve been extra adamant about applying my facial sunscreen every day. The problem with the fine print is that most people, myself included, forget to “reapply every 2 hours.” When it’s midday and I’ve already gotten myself done up for the day, the last thing I’m thinking of is to reapply my SPF. Luckily, these misters make it too easy that I end up feeling guilty for skipping this step! Designed for touchless application, all you have to do is spray and you’re good to go. I especially like to keep mine in the fridge for a cool, refreshing pick-me-up before I head out into the heat. Plus, they smell absolutely delicious!
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Augusta’s Mark Albertin revives film photography, chronicles history with video
Not far from Augusta’s old Powder Works, just off downtown proper and under a brilliantly shining sun, is a place of complete darkness. Within this darkness is the magic of creating something from nothing – creating something from what is less than nothing, a negative.
Mark Albertin’s darkroom is a rare outlier in this age of digital photography. There’s a plastic-y smell of the black-and-gray Kodak canister, and there’s a fridge well-stocked with both the edible (ginger ale, peanut butter pie) and the inedible (all that Kodak film).
An enlarged negative awaits exposure. Not that its image is visible, not until the lights go off and a low red glow is all that’s left. A faint depiction, almost sketch-like, now emerges in the darkness.
You have to find the grain, Albertin says, putting his eye to the scope and turning a knob a couple ticks counter clockwise.
He’s running through a series of test prints, trying to gauge the right amount of exposure and taking note of those areas he’ll have to further finesse either through “dodging” (blocking exposure to keep a section of the image lighter while the rest continues to darken), or “burning” (increasing the exposure for a darker effect while protecting the rest of the image).
“All it is, is light manipulation,” he says. “And how creative you want to get with it.”
“All it is, is light manipulation. And how creative you want to get with it,” said Mark Albertin of film photography.
A thousand-plus interviews: From stills to video
Albertin moved to Savannah in 1986 and then to Augusta in 1995. Before that, the Wisconsin-born Albertin was “a northern boy knowing nothing about the South; knowing only about bratwurst and sauerkraut and cheese and beer and frozen custard.”
But the tightly intimate nature of his professional work, both in film photography and video production, has since provided some edification of life here, and the man now calls Augusta home.
Albertin estimated he’s interviewed more than 1,000 people during his career with Morris Communications and, since 1999, through his own Scrapbook Video Productions company.
His freelance documentaries alone have brought him into the more personal folds of history in Augusta but also in Aiken. And Savannah. And Jacksonville. And St. Augustine and Topeka, Kan.
Each one of these films has involved interviews with 50 to 100 people.
“I think it’s really cool to preserve these oral histories, to preserve these stories and then put them into a format that people can really digest,” Albertin said.
Albertin’s documentary of Augusta from fin de siècle through the 1990s, “Finding Home – A Journey Through Augusta’s 20th Century Past,” is a work that’s been 20 years in the making.
The Fire of 1916. The Flood of 1929. The Cracker Party. Eisenhower’s visit. These are all segments of the 2-hour film and told through the voices of those who lived them or who knew closely someone who did.
“Those people are all gone, they’ve been gone for years, for 20 or 30 years now. I’ve got their stories,” said Albertin. “When the Augusta National was nothing, and the kids would go swim in the ponds there – there was no fence – and they were trying to get you to come…”
The documentary builds on the one he started with Morris in 1999 and called “Augusta Remembers.” That film had ended with 1940.
Albertin’s since expanded it to include the local histories of WWII, Vietnam, the Augusta Riots and the fading of downtown.
“It’s a century of oral history and memories. It is a 20th century time capsule; that was the whole intent,” he said.
Much of Mark Albertin’s photography is nature photography, and that interest in the outdoors has made its way into his video projects, too.
‘Something for the next generation’
The past 10 years have found Albertin more engaged with environmental topics, and his documentary on the Okefenokee Swamp and the nearby Twin Pines mining venture in southern Georgia has won him multiple honors, including the Humanitarian Award at the Beaufort International Film Festival.
Both Albertin’s “Finding Home” on 20th century Augusta and his more environmentally political work on the Okefenokee, “Sacred Waters,” will run in this month’s Black Cat Picture Show, the ninth annual Augusta film festival hosted by Le Chat Noir Aug. 17-20.
Albertin’s environmental oeuvre also includes a film on the suspended, 360-mile Kinder Morgan Palmetto Pipeline that was to run from Belton, S. Car. through Georgia and down to Jacksonville. The pipeline had come under fire after an oil leak near Belton that eventually prompted the Georgia state legislature to place a moratorium on approving the necessary permits for those parts of the project that would come through Georgia.
“My passion behind these documentaries is to try to help people learn and to try to educate them and to try to show people through my eyes why we need to protect this planet, why we need to slow down,” Albertin said. “We need to not develop and destroy these places that are so unbelievable and so beautiful – leave something behind, leave something for the next generation.”
“We don’t think this planet has any value except for ‘how can we make money from it, how we can gain from it?’ Yet, to me, getting away from that – getting away from all the noise – is really what’s good for us – mentally, physically, and in our soul; everything,” he said.
Then, with a laugh, “Not saying throw all that [man-made tech] away and hug trees for the rest of our life. But anytime I feel like my compass is out of whack, I go someplace and I camp or I get away.”
Mark Albertin uses a loupe to look for imperfections in a finished print. If he finds any, he can correct them with a daub of monochrome paint mixed to the exact tone he needs.
The ‘Christmas morning effect’
More often than not, that camping and getting away involves a secondary getting away: the many hours it takes Albertin in that edge-of-downtown darkroom to develop the photographs he takes.
“It’s that Christmas morning effect. You take a picture, and you don’t know if you’ve got something good or not and you don’t know if it’s going to be really wonderful, if it’s going to be really beautiful,” he said. “When you go to the dark room and start processing those negatives, it’s an exciting event when you go down there, and you find something.”
Albertin said it can take him a full day just to get one image right.
From the first shutter of the lens to the last drops of hand coloring (a delicate process of mixing monochrome paints to the correct shade and daubing it onto the finished image), film photography is a means for “slowing way down.”
He said he hopes to expand his studio in the future to better accommodate the four photography aficionados who’ve regularly been coming there to develop their own skills over the past year.
At least two of them, mother and daughter and bringing with them that peanut butter pie, have already allowed the art to take hold of them in a way that has them chasing down the perfect shot (still elusive, the mother confides).
The final print, painstakingly created hour after hour in the darkroom.
“You start looking at the details, the textures, the bark,” Albertin said of how this analog form of art has connected him more to the natural world.
That’s what he’s spent so many hours doing, getting those details to reflect on paper as close to exact the image his own eyes had seen.
The print is a 20×24. The image, captured outside his his other darkroom, Preservation Studios in Harrisburg, Ga. shows a rare occurrence: the roots of two trees have grown toward each other and begun to combine, something that normally wouldn’t be seen for a layer of soil or water.
The Winners of the 2023 iPhone Photography Awards
The winners of the 2023 iPhone Photography Awards (IPPAWARDS) have been announced, headlined by the Grand Prize Winner, Ivan Silva of Mexico, for his image, Heroe, showing a boy standing up in a heroic pose on the back of a truck.
The 16th edition of the iPhone Photography Awards includes winners across 14 categories, selected from thousands of submissions.
“Many of this year’s winning shots celebrate photography’s power to capture the power and the joy of what comes next, whether a frond preparing to unfurl, a morning mist hovering over a sleepy farm, or a flock of gulls heading to their next destination,” explains the iPhone Photography Awards.
Founded in 2007, the IPPAWARDS is the first and longest-running iPhone photography competition. In its 16 years, IPPAWARDS has showcased the narrative power of the iPhone and highlighted the incredible photos that talented photographers can take with mobile devices.
In addition to the Grand Prize Winner, the competition also names First Place, Second Place, and Third Place Overall Winners.
This year, the First Place Photographer of the Year Award goes to Thea Mihu of Germany for her image, Soy Sauce Village, which uses a top-down perspective and repeating patterns to incredible effect.
The Second Place Photographer of the Year is Sasa Borozan from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Borozan’s image, Taming Waves, shows a boy working alongside the ocean.
Rounding out the overall winners is American photographer David Hager for his image Tuscon Morning. The monochrome photo delivers fantastic dynamic range, shadows, and texture.
Alongside these overall awards, the winners of each of the 14 categories are featured below.
Abstract
Animals
Architecture
Children
Cityscape
Landscape
Lifestyle
Nature
Other
People
Portrait
Series
Still Life
Travel
Second and third-place winners for each category and honorable mentions can be viewed on the IPPAWARDS website.
Image credits: All photos are individually credited and provided courtesy of the IPPAWARDS.
Pepón Osorio Pushes the Bounds of Public Art
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Pepón Osorio, El Chandelier, 1988
Smithsonian American Art Museum © 1988, Pepón Osorio
Puerto Rican artist Pepón Osorio’s large-scale multimedia installations have catapulted him to the upper echelons of the art world. But his beginnings were modest. Born into a middle-class family of African descent in 1955, he began making art as a child in the San Juan neighborhood of Santurce, where he drew constantly and constructed simple pieces with found objects.
Like many Afro-Latino creatives, the young Osorio couldn’t envision himself as an artist in the traditional sense, in large part due to the overwhelming whiteness of the art industry. He felt a calling to help his community, so in 1973, he enrolled in the social work program at the Interamerican University of Puerto Rico.
Two years later, in 1975, Osorio immigrated to the South Bronx in New York City and registered at Herbert H. Lehman College, where he majored in sociology. He received a master’s degree in that same subject from Columbia University in 1985, while working as a social worker in the Bronx. Initially, Osorio practiced art alongside his social work. But he eventually grew disillusioned with the field and decided to focus on art full time.
Osorio’s experiences as a social worker exerted a profound influence on his art, and his projects ever since have engaged with Latin and Afro-Latino communities. “My principal commitment as an artist is to return art to the community,” the artist has said.
“My experience as a caseworker became my artistic practice. All that I learned became my methodology—making real artwork with real experiences and people.” — Pepón Osorio pic.twitter.com/5teIyKuP8I
— MoMA The Museum of Modern Art (@MuseumModernArt) January 21, 2022
Osorio is best known for his big, bold installations, such as No Crying Allowed in the Barbershop, a 1994 work about Latino masculinity and vulnerability. The installation references the artist’s visit to a barbershop when he was 5 years old. “What was meant to be a celebration became a disastrous event” because the barber was unaccustomed to working with curly hair, Osorio recalled in a 2001 episode of the television series “Art in the 21st Century.” He added that the experience represented “a combination of race and rite of passage into becoming a little man, and … both came together simultaneously.”
Another large-scale piece, Las Twines, a 1998 installation whose name is slang for “Twin Girls” in Spanish, featured two mannequins, one white and one Black, that represented the duality of the Afro-Latino experience. The Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) in Washington, D.C. acquired the mixed-media work last year.
Throughout his career, Osorio has developed a form of participatory art in which a given community becomes involved, both materially and conceptually, in the artistic process. From the start, he engages locals in conversations about issues they want to address and works to select materials that are meaningful to the community. Osorio’s experience of practicing art with the community led him to view installation work as the fullest way of honoring his roots. “The only way that I can connect [is] by doing installation work,” he said in the 2001 episode, “because I [felt] that I needed to say something that had to be beyond something on the wall. … I need to create a space that is overpowering.”
“My principal commitment as an artist is to return art to the community” —#CTSummit presenter Pepón Osorio pic.twitter.com/gEG6b6L0FG
— Creative Time (@creativetime) November 6, 2015
In 1988, Osorio created what may be his signature work: El Chandelier, a crystal chandelier decorated with baby dolls, plastic palm trees, tropical ferns, dominoes and pearls, as well as sculptures of saints and coquís (a rainforest tree frog native to Puerto Rico). Part of SAAM’s collection since 1995, it pays homage to the artist’s roots and his Afro-Latino conception of beauty, spirituality and culture. As the museum notes, “The illusion of abundance masks the realities of life in poor urban communities. Osorio saw this kind of making-do aesthetic—creating something wonderful out of nothing—in the apartments he visited when he worked as a social worker.”
Osorio’s careful choice of materials in El Chandelier tells a story of longing and loss, of the struggles and exclusions experienced by the Afro-Latino community. Within the constraints of poverty, he suggests, beauty comes from the reality of the materials at hand, rescued from mass production and daily use, and elevated to a conceptual plane. The artwork also evokes Afro-Latino people’s connection with nature—one that many immigrants must leave behind when they emigrate to other lands.
With its mix of kitsch Americana, natural Puerto Rican imagery and quotidian objects, El Chandelier establishes a dialogue between what different cultures regard as art and serves as a vivid embodiment of Osorio’s artistic philosophy.
The artist’s work is deeply rooted in the Bronx, where he often installs informal exhibitions in streets, stores and public places. In this way, he evokes beauty in places where beauty must contend with poverty and social marginalization. Osorio insists on making art public and accessible to everyone: “My art is for people who go to museums and for people who don’t go to museums,” he told the New York Times in 1999. “It’s an old notion that people go to the museum. It should really be the museum going to the people.”
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Also in 1999, the MacArthur Foundation awarded Osorio one of its “genius” grants. Though his reputation is now global—he has exhibited at the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, the Alejandro Otero Museum in Venezuela and the Kathmandu Contemporary Arts Center in Nepal, among other institutions—he remains deeply committed to communities closer to home, too. Today, he splits his time between San Juan and Philadelphia.
For the ongoing project Convalescence, Osorio consulted cancer patients, first responders and healers, creating a three-part installation that offers powerful commentary on illness and the for-profit medical industry. The work is now on view in a major exhibition of Osorio’s works: “My Beating Heart/Mi corazón latiente” at the New Museum in New York City.
As Osorio tells Smithsonian magazine, “Nowadays, I am very concerned with finding new ways of closing the gap between museums and communities. I keep searching for ways to make art real.” A lecturer at Temple University in Philadelphia, he encourages his student-artists to create projects in their communities—projects that defy dominant notions of beauty and who deserves to live surrounded by it.
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Daredevil Photographer Dies After Falling Off Skyscraper in Hong Kong
French photographer and extreme sports athlete Remi Lucidi has died after falling off the 68th floor of a building in Hong Kong.
Lucidi, 30, was climbing the Trengunter Tower complex when he slipped and fell to his death. He was known online as Remi Enigma and traveled the world scaling tall structures and taking incredible photos and selfies.
Police in China are investigating what happened with officers visiting the Tsim Sha Tsui hostel where he checked in on July 17.
According to the South China Morning Post, he was last seen alive knocking on a penthouse window on the Tregunter Tower on Thursday. A domestic worker inside the flat saw him and called the police but he fell before officers arrived. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
The newspaper also reports that a source familiar with the case says it is possible Lucidi has gotten into difficulties while climbing and had been knocking on the window for help before he fell.
Lucidi had last updated his Instagram page with a photo showing a view far above the city with the caption “Hong Kong.” That post is now filled with messages of condolences as friends and fans come to terms with what happened.
“Rip brother. Sad news no one ever wants to hear about a fellow explorer,” writes one person.
Photographer
Lucidi was an unusual photographer in that he fearlessly scaled high buildings with no safety equipment — even train surfing while holding aloft a selfie stick for epic photos of himself.
Leading such an extraordinary life gave him photo opportunities that most photographers can only dream of. He captured stunning portraits of travel companions sitting in freight trains as well as stomach-churning selfies of himself hanging off terrifyingly high buildings.
He would also bring a drone with him on his adventures to capture mesmeric shots of himself in his high-up surroundings.
Lucidi was from Montpellier, France, and began posting updates of his exploits in 2016 when he began climbing cranes, bridges, and Ferris wheels.
The French consulate has been informed of Lucidi’s death as a police investigation into the incident continues.
Image credits: All photos by Remi Lucidi.
This leading Dubai photography studio captures the most precious family moments
When it comes to capturing precious family moments, this Dubai-based photography studio knows how to do it best.
You+Baby Studio has been a leader in the photography space since it launched in 2018, specialising in creative newborn photography, maternity photo shoots, family portraits and more.
The unique photography space is truly one-of-a-kind in the emirate under the vision of the studio’s founder, Natalia Leanca.
With a keen passion for creativity and photography, Leanca saw an opportunity to capture the most important moments in the lives of families, creating a dedicated space to focus solely on baby and family photography.
Now, four years on, the founder now has an all-female team of six photographers and offers a wide range of services including maternity photography, newborn photography, cake smash sessions, capturing a baby’s first year, family photography, mommy and me photo sessions and more.
With their premium studio located in Al Safa 1 on Sheikh Zayed Road, the You+Baby Studio team ensure the entire photo shoot process is seamless.
From an easy access venue, to an inviting space for guests, the space is equipped with state-of-the-art air purifiers, sterilizers and other tools to ensure your little ones are comfortable and safe. & Toys & Props Sterilizer
Each session is bespoke to the individual client and there are a range of props and an adorable range of costumes to choose from including chef attire, ballerina and baby boss attire, just to name a few.
The studio space is also home to You Baby Store, a premium mother and baby shop with pieces made from organic materials for optimum breathability and comfort. Designed from bamboo, the buttery soft clothes come in a variety of prints and in matching co-ord sets for both the mother and baby.
Having photographed over 1,000 babies, the experts at You+Baby Studio are more than ready to welcome you and your little one to create memories that will last a lifetime.
For more information youbabystudio.com
Weelsby Woods: Uncertain future for damaged two-tonne lion statue
There is no promise the Weelsby Woods lion smashed in a car crash will be replaced, councillors say.
