‘Secret Wars’ is a world wide art competition where talented urban artists represent their individual countries. The competition travels from one destination to another where the artists render their creations side by side in front of a large audience, from the pics on the ‘Secret Wars’ website it looks to be quite the traveling party + seems like good clean competitive fun. More pics and videos via the link below:

Visit -> http://www.secretwars.co.uk/

With digital photography being such a healthy industry these days, you have a ton of people buying up new equipment and fueling new innovation. To me, this is both a good thing as well as a challenging reality to keep up with. I’ve spent the last year and a half trying to determine what camera I would like to upgrade from my trusty G10 with, in seek of a larger sensor size and possibly some of the HD capabilities that are now available. The Noktor 50mm lens may have helped me to decide. Boasting a max aperture of F0.95 this lens can pretty much see in the dark! It’s also the fastest lens designed for Micro Four Thirds cameras, of which I like because the sensor size is larger than what I have in my G10, but they are still pretty compact. I may get that Olympus after all… I’ll let you know what I decide.

Visit -> http://noktor.com

Visit -> Olympus Micro Four Thirds

Noktor – Shoot Wide Open from Noktor on Vimeo.

I first discovered Dabe Alan’s work on http://www.flickriver.com while browsing the many mind blowing photos that appear on the ‘interesting today’ feed. Dabe Alan takes amazing photos of some of my favorite things e.g., Rock Bands, skateboarders and artists. You can really tell from his shots that he’s having a lot of fun experimenting with unique lighting techniques and making the most of the environment that he’s shooting in. I really like how he shows off some of his post work technique on his Flickr stream, he’s got me taking notes for sure. Dabe Alan is part of a very talented 5 artist photography team called ‘Five Giants’ based in the mid west. Check out their site via the link below.

Visit -> http://www.dabealan.com/

Visit -> http://www.fivegiantsstudio.com/

Visit -> http://www.flickr.com/

If the name ‘PlasticBionic’ doesn’t have you intrigued then maybe the visuals above will pull you in. 27 year old Nantes, France based designer Julien Brisson has some seriously interesting work percolating on his super tight grid based portfolio site. His typography and graphic design skills are extremely refined and tend to skew a bit on the sci-fi/hi-tech end of the spectrum, which I like. Kinda geeky, super cerebral and well crafted. Very inspiring works beyond the link below. He’s one to keep an eye on.

Visit -> http://www.plasticbionic.com

‘Friends of Type’ is a group of typography loving friends who decided to share their creative passion and exploration with the rest of the world, via their website. Aaron Carambula, Erik Marinovich, Dennis Payongayong and Jason Wong all contribute their designs to the site where you can browse, comment, rate and even purchase a few prints. The site itself is nice and clean, seems to be updated fairly often and is fun to browse. Makes for an interesting source for typography inspiration.

Visit -> http://friendsoftype.com/

Amazing things are coming from designer, artist and musician Will Etling + his band ‘The Deadly Syndrome’ (Chris Richard, William Etling, Mike Hughes, and Jesse Hoy). I really dig the above album cover yarn installation that was built near the band’s practice space and shot during the day (for the front cover) and again at night (for the back). So simple, but at the same time the photos have a nice level of complexity and deepness to them. ‘The Deadly Syndrome’ is slated to release their new album on March 23rd, called ‘Nolens Volens’, which by definition means “Whether unwilling or willing.”. I was fortunate enough to have a preview listen of the entire album. Without saying too much, it’s perfectly moody, garnished with nice/subtle digital accents and absolutely magical from beginning to end… sure to be one of my personal favorites for 2010. I’ll post a more in depth description along with another reminder for you all to pick it up on the 23rd. You can download the debut single called “Wingwalker” now, via the link below.

Visit -> http://www.thedeadlysyndrome.com/

Older Posts -> http://circuitbreaks.com/?s=will+etling

These are new works that are part of a nine piece series called ‘urban cartography’ created by talented artist, typographer and designer Alex Varnese. I first posted about his stuff a couple months ago here. He’s definitely taken his design work to the next level, this time focusing on a nice blend of 3d rendered architecture, typography and robustly lit squares (that seem reminiscent of those back-lit tiles that Micheal Jackson made famous in his video for ‘Billie Jean’… to me anyway). Super nice renderings. You should take some time to check out his new works via the link below.

Visit -> http://www.alexvaranese.com/work/uc

Older Post -> http://circuitbreaks.com

Neurosonics Live from Chris Cairns on Vimeo.

On the intro notes you’ll read that the above was a live filming and that there were no post production enhancements made, “what you see is what the audience saw”. Chris Cairns has been working with beatbox musician Beardyman to produce live version of his short called ‘Neurosonics’ that I posted about here a few months back. Using interactive holograms this project of his transcends just being a fun viral video idea to becoming a serious bleeding edge entertainment technology. Pretty amazing test footage.

Visit -> http://chriscairns.tv/

There is something wonderful about the contrast of tilt-shift, which makes everything look smaller or ‘toy like’, being applied to BIG NYC scenery. Sam O’Hare has captured some really fantastic HD NYC footage, from multiple vantage points with his Nikon D3. His shoot locations really resonate with me, I actually lived in those blurry buildings across the Hudson in the above ferry pic (Hoboken, NJ)… and took those same ferry boats to work every day. This video makes me want to go back to visit my friends out east. Every scene is very well captured and fun to watch. As a side note: you should see the view from the other side of the Hudson looking on to Manhattan…

Shoot Details -> http://aerofilm.blogspot.com

The Sandpit from Sam O’Hare on Vimeo.

Nicola Roman is a fantastic fashion/editorial/art photographer based in Germany who happens to have an amazing portfolio site as well. Her shots feel very genuine + fresh and her composition, texture and color sensibilities are nothing short of amazing. All around this site is a must see. The simple grid-style presentation is enhanced by nice page spin transitions and some clever zoom-in, zoom-out functionality that is super clean and has got me taking some notes. Great work! Be sure to view the site full screen to get the full effect.

Visit -> http://www.nicolawalbeck.com/#

This is a smart campaign coming from New Balance. Tagging on to the whole ‘Lifetracking 365′ trend, they’ll be posting daily content for an entire year for people to check in and check out. I’m totally aware of what a huge undertaking this will be for them after watching my wife go through her own 365 project last year on Flickr. It’s not easy to come up with interesting stuff day after day, I’m guessing a lot of it won’t be that earth shattering… but I like the stickiness here, and at the end of the day it becomes a rich year long campaign that surfaces new product for New Balance. People will most likely check back on it much more often than any other typical year long corporate campaign. + They also make it easy to follow with the iPhone app extension… kinda the cherry on top.

Visit -> http://newbalance365.com

I really enjoy the artwork of artist, skater and designer known as Haroshi. Having grown up a skater and a Super Mario Bros addict I naturally gravitate towards these works in a big way. Each iconic wall mural and piece of sculpture is created from recycled skateboard decks. Glued together, cut and shaped these decks have been smoothed to perfection to create everything from moose heads to teddy bears. Great example of recycled artwork… These images were taken by Brandon Shigeta at PLSMIS Gallery in Tokyo. Many more pics on his site. I first saw this on diskursdisko.de.

Visit -> http://www.haroshi.com/

Origin -> http://www.diskursdisko.de

The above paper cut-out pin-hole camera design called ‘Rubikon2′ is available here as a nicely designed and detailed 7 page .pdf to download and build for free. Designed by Jaroslav Juřica, the camera folds up to be 98 x 70 x 68 mm and can take some pretty impressive textured shots as seen on his site. What a great way to learn the basics of photography, I’m just waiting for that next rainy day to try it out.

Visit -> http://huberokororo.com

Lumitectura from barno on Vimeo.

This is a pretty interesting technique. There are up to 50 different masks applied to the image of this building that are switched off and on revealing different lighting events that occurred during the shoot time. The natural light changes become an overtly refreshing effect that keeps time with the music (music by Saltillo “The Opening” from the album Ganglion).

Updated:

In response to a few comments that I’ve received in regard to my earlier post on Amy Stein’s work, it seems that I was under the wrong impression that her photos were not staged… As it turns out, they are in fact staged! Sorry about that folks, I completely overlooked that key detail while reading up on her work late last night. Here’s a good article on how she pulls them together by Boston.com. Many more amazing shots via the link below.

Visit -> http://www.amysteinphoto.com