Happy Holidays From Jess Peterson Photography

It's that time of the year, so thought I would share this cute Sainsbury's Christmas commercial. Sainsbury's is a popular grocery store in England, for those who might not know.

The season is all about sharing and caring, and this Sainsbury's ad cleverly uses Mog the cat to make that point.

A little background on Mog and the advertisement. Using live action and animation it will have you tearing at the end.  At least it had me.

This year, we worked in partnership with HarperCollins Children's Books and world renowned author and illustrator Judith Kerr to create a Christmas story based on her much loved character Mog. We hope that families will come together this Christmas to enjoy this very special story #ChristmasIsForSharing

If you enjoyed the story, you can buy the beautifully illustrated book here: http://bit.ly/Mogs-Christmas-Calamity

Every penny of the profit from sales of the book will be donated to Save the Children to be used towards improving child literacy in the UK

Take a look behind the scenes of our 2015 Christmas advert: https://youtu.be/_TKU7U6jkY8

Brit Singer Tom Fletcher's Touching Time-Lapse Video Of His Wife's Pregnancy

Brit singer-songwriter and children's author Tom Fletcher (of McFly) took a photo every day throughout his wife Giovanna's pregnancy. He then wrote a lovely song called "Something New" to go with it. The end result is a touching 3 minute time-lapse video they call 'From Bump to Buzz."  Buzz is the name of the wee boy Giovanna gave birth to. 


It's lovely, and not surprising it's gone viral.

Google India's Powerful Search Ad Touches On The India/Pakistan Partition

Google India has created a powerful and very touching ad for its search engine that has had quite a positive impact on both Indian and Pakistani viewers, considering the contentious relations between the two countries since the 1947 partition.

“Reunion” portrays two childhood friends, now elderly men, who haven’t seen each other since they were separated by the 1947 partition that created India and Pakistan from the old British empire in South Asia. Partition sparked a mass exodus as millions of Muslims and Hindus fled across the new borders amid religious violence.

In the ad, one of the men reminisces to his granddaughter about his happy childhood in Lahore and how he used to steal sweets from a shop with his best friend, who the ad implies is Muslim. His granddaughter uses the search engine to track down the childhood friend in the Pakistani city. Then, with the help of the Pakistani man’s grandson (and naturally, Google), she arranges a journey to New Delhi for a surprise reunion.

Kudos to Google for using this ad campaign to actually humanize the issue. 

Advertising with a heart.

See if you can watch this without getting misty eyed.

The beautiful haunting music was created by Clinton Cerejo, sung by Piyush Mishra, with lyrics by Neelesh Jain, a creative director at Ogilvy and Mather.



For more on this story and the troubles between the two countries: Gulf News

This version translates the song as well. It's beneath the Hindi subtitles.

The Strange and Alien Worlds Created Through Microscope Photography.

Is this some exotic plant, or some fancy spaghetti? Nope, it's a microscopy photo of a toothbrush. It's quite amazing what things look like through a microscope.

The following is of the leaf of a Virginia Spiderwort.

Here are some more strange, wonderful and icky images.

"Fallen Princesses"- Dina Goldstein's Photos Take a Darker Look At Disney Characters

Born in Israel, Canadian conceptual photographer Dina Goldstein looks at things a little differently. In her Fallen Princesses series she shares the darker side of  Disney Fairy Tale characters. Reversing the "happily ever after" theme that is part and parcel of the Fairy Tales we have come to love, we see what happens to these 'princesses' when they actually have to deal with real life issues including eating disorders, addictions, aging and mental issues and poverty.

So we see Snow White with a brood of kids living in suburbia with her jobless prince, Little Red Riding Hood with a penchant for fast food, Belle getting botox, Pocahontas as an agoraphobic cat lady, an alcoholic Cinderella who couldn't conceive, Jasmine's as a soldier somewhere in the Middle East, Ariel is on display in an aquarium, The Princess and the Pea lives in a landfill, Sleeping Beauty never wakes up while her prince waited and is now old and  Rapunzel getting chemo.

Her inspiration:

“My daughter was very small and getting into the whole Disney princesses culture, and at the same time my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer (she’s totally fine now). I started to think: what if these princesses had to deal with cancer, or financial discourse, or any of the real-life problems people have to go through?”

“I began to imagine Disney’s perfect Princesses juxtaposed with real issues that were affecting women around me, such as illness, addiction and self-image issues,” says Dina. “With limited funds, I began to assemble my series.”

She has published a book called Fallen Princesses.

She also has a Barbie series, called In The Doll House.

Demilked has all of the photos, and The Daily Beast has more information on Dina.

Photographer Richard Renaldi Gets Strangers To Pose As Friends, Family or Lovers

Here's an interesting take on portrait photography. New York photographer Richard Renaldi finds random people on the streets of NYC, none of whom know each other, and he poses them as if they were intimately involved as couples, good friends or family. It's quite fascinating what he comes up with.

The subjects are only asked to look like they are showing a brief amount of affection, but the facial expressions and body language within the photos make it seem like these strangers not only know each other, but also share some sort of genuine bond.

Steve Hartman from "On The Road" films Renaldi at work.

3-D Photo Booth That Prints Figurines To Open In Japan

The Japanese are so clever, creative, innovative and stylish.  Check out this new take on the Photo Booth.  Remember squeezing into those old Photo Booths with a friend, and getting those thin strips of film with 4 goofy photos per strip? Well, a Japanese company Omote 3D is creating a  pop-up photo booth where people will fork over from $261 to $511 (depending on size) for a 3-D likeness of themselves. 

Pretty darn amazing, since I can't even begin to imagine how that works.

From November 24 through January 14 people will be able to make reservations to have their photo taken and receive one of these mini-thems.  The booth will be set up at Eye of Gyre exhibition space in the tony district of Harajuku in Tokyo.

The customer is first 3D scanned in a process that requires them to stand still for 15 minutes. A 3D model of the customer is then refined on a computer before output to a 3D printer. The figurines are available in sizes ranging from 4 to 8 inches.

The pop-up photo booth is a creation of Party, a company based in Japan and NY.

Source: Spoon-Tamago

Jack Long's Breathtaking Paint Splash Flower Photos

Another in my series of  'thinking outside the box' artists is Wisconsin photographer Jack Long, who has created some splash-paint photos called "Vessels and Blooms" that are exquisitely beautiful. Using high-speed photographic techniques along with different colored paints (dye, pigment and thickener mixed with water)  he has created these breathtaking creations that look like flowers you might find in outer space.

They remind me of Markus Reugel's work, though Reugels' is more delicate, and Heinz Maier.

He won't reveal his actual process, but he  says it takes months of prep and experimentation to get it just right, and then just a second with a flash to capture the images.

And no photoshop.

They look like glass sculptures.

Admirable. Incredible. Enviable.

More on his Flickr account.

From Love To Bingo In 873 Images- Getty Images Promo

Getty Images is one of the premier stock photography companies in the world, with over 38 million (and counting) photos in their archives. So as a means of showcasing their incredible inventory, Getty had a Brazilian company (AlmapBBDO) produce a 1 minute video to do just that. They wanted people to see that you can find anything you could ever want at Getty.

But it wasn't easy. It took six months of incredible patience and over 5,000 images for the filmmakers to find exactly what they wanted.  They finally settled on 873 images. Using 15 images per second they came up with a wonderful video entitled 'From Love To Bingo in 873 Images', which takes us from love at first sight, to the first kiss, to marriage, to birth, to family, to the golden years, to death, through grief and finally to bingo exclusively using Getty images.  No text, no narration, no dialogue, just music and some sound effects. Not quite sure about the meaning of the whole bingo thing, but I guess that's what they figured old people do.

It's very beautifully and cleverly put together. Enjoy!




Credits -- Film

Advertiser: Getty Images
Title: From love to bingo in 873 images
Product: Getty Images
General Creative Director: Marcello Serpa, Luiz Sanches
Creative Director: André Kassu, Marcos Medeiros, Renato Simões
Art Director: Marcos Kotlhar
Copywriter: Sophie Schoenburg
Producer: Paranoid BR
Executive producer: Egisto Betti
Direction: Cisma, Marcos Kotlhar
Animation: Split Filmes, Marcos Kotlhar
Rtvc: Vera Jacinto, Gabriel Dagostini, Diego Villas Bôas
Soundtrack / Voice-Over Artist: Kito Siqueira
Editor / Assembler: Marcos Kotlhar, Jonas Brandão
Finishing Editor: Split Filmes
Service: Cristina Chacon, Marina Leal
Media: Paulo Camossa Jr
Approval: Renata Simões

Source: DailyMailUK

Up Greek Tourism Project- Video

This is a beautiful Greek tourism ad that utilizes portraits of people in an animated mosaic of famous landmarks and symbols of Greece.  A must see.  Very cleverly done. 

What's even more interesting is that it was produced by the Up Greek Tourism, a voluntary collective of Greeks around the world who funded the project through crowdfunding to promote Greek tourism. The electronic billboard will remain in Times Square, NYC for 30 days.  They wanted to raise a minimum of $15,000 for the campaign, but managed to make $20,352 from over 330 private individuals, many of whom were from outside Greece.

Not all the artistic team are Greeks, however, but apparently they are all volunteers.

Credits:
Art direction, visual design by Charis Tsevis, Animation by Despo Potamou, Music by Ted Reglis
Photos by the hundreds of the UGT supporters

The Amazing Liquid Art Photography of Markus Reugels

Here's another in my 'thinking outside the box' series.

If you were impressed by newcomer Heinz Maier's water droplet photography, take a look at the work of Markus Reugels who happens to be the father of the genre. A fellow German living in Scheinfurt, Reugel's spends his days laying parquet flooring for a living, and playing with his photography in his spare time.

With elaborate setups, a lot of patience, an enviable imagination, and his Sony A700 and 300 cameras, Reugels uses high-speed photographic techniques to take exquisite photos of everything from soapfilm, to colorful liquid sculptures.  He creates these 'sculptures' by placing a black balloon over a bass reflex tube and places it on a speaker.  He then places a spoonful of water in the middle of the balloon, adds acrylic paints to the water, switches on some technomusic (bass only) and the music does the work.  He's still experimenting, but what he has so far is phenomenal. Here is his setup. I'm sure the process is a messy one, but well worth the results.

His latest endeavour is capturing planets in water droplets.

Most of his work can be seen on his Flickr stream, and his photography website where you can purchase his colorful work.

If you want to try your hand at high-speed photography, here's a great site that explains what it's all about, and how you can create your own.

Amazing Examples of Toroidal Vortex Rings

The video below is an amazing example of toroidal vortices.

What is a toroidal vortex, you might ask:

A toroidal vortex, also called a vortex ring, is a region of rotating fluid moving through the same or different fluid where the flow pattern takes on a toroidal (doughnut) shape. The movement of the fluid is about the poloidal or circular axis of the doughnut, in a twisting vortex motion. Examples of this phenomenon are a smoke ring or a microburst. Vortex rings were first mathematically analysed by the German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz, in his paper of 1867 On Integrals of the Hydrodynamical Equations which Express Vortex-motion Smoke rings have probably been observed since antiquity since they can easily be blown from the mouth.

Don't worry, I had no clue what they were either, but surprisingly it's something whales, dolphins, volcanoes, hydrogen bombs and man can do, and it's a pretty fascinating phenomenon.

If you want to learn how to make your own, the Surfing Scientist tells you how. All you need is a glass, water and some food coloring.

I need to do some shopping!  This would be a fun photography project.  I'm trying to think outside the box. And here.

Grover Schrayer's Amazing Candle Smoke Photography

I just came across this article on Pittsburgh photo artist Grover Schrayer who takes spectacular photos of the smoke from blown out candles. Armed with his Fujifilm Finepix S8100fd 10MP Digital Point and Shoot, 18x Wide Angle Dual Image Stabilized Optical Zoomcamera, along with a snap on Raynox M-250 macro lens, he demonstrates what one can do with simple and not terribly costly equipment, imagination, patience and the ability to think outside the box. Although both the camera and the Raynox lens are discontinued, you can still find the camera on Amazon, for now, and the replacement for the M-250 is the DCR-250 Super Macro Snap-On Lens, also available on Amazon for under $80.00 and compatible with most cameras.
Although it apparently took Schrayer 25 attempts before he finally got what he wanted, what he got was worth the effort.

'I focused on the wick, or the edge of the flame, had the shutter button half-pressed and ready, and blew out the candle and snapped very quickly.

'The built-in flash gave me head-on illumination of the smoke, and that head-on lighting allowed me to pick up the refraction through the droplets of wax.

'Any other angle of illumination would not produce the rainbow effect.

'Even with all that planning, it still took 25 attempts to get a decent shot of the effect.' Grover used a Fuji Finepix S8100fd, with a Raynox M-250 macro lens attached. Each image is shot at 1/1000th or higher.

'The camera's built-in flash provided the perfect head-on illumination that made the light refract through the wax droplets and back towards the camera in exactly the way that sunlight refracts through raindrops to make a rainbow.
'I only noticed the effect afterwards when looking through the images I had taken.

'But once I saw it show up on a number of photos, I decided to capture as many instances of it as I could for good measure.'

I truly admire those who know how to manipulate their cameras to create these fabulous abstract works of art.  I recently posted about German photographer Heinz Maier, another amazing artist, and his incredible water photography. They're an inspiration to us all, and a reminder that it's not the equipment that makes a good photographer, it's the imagination and artistry that lies within.  And at less than $80.00 a pop, I think I might add that Raynox to my list of equipment, though I'll stick to Canons.

The Incredible Water Droplet Photography Of Heinz Maier

Amazing photos by German amateur photographer Heinz Maier, who captures water droplets with high speed photography. During the day he works in a factory and plays with his art at night.  He's apparently only been at it for a year, but his beautiful macro photos certainly demonstrate that sometimes talent and ingenuity trumps experience. 

Most look like colorful, decorative blown glass. Just beautiful. The burgeoning, global recognition of his art is well deserved.

More of his work on Flickr.