Making a BMW commercial

The commercial (From BMWBlog):




The camera platform:

Click on the post's title to read the story at BMWBlog.

Henri Cartier-Bresson - The Modern Century

By HOLLAND COTTER
Published: April 8, 2010

Rarely has the phrase “man of the world” been more aptly applied than to the protean photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, the subject of a handsome and large — though surely not anywhere near large enough — retrospective opening at the Museum of Modern Art on Sunday. ...

... “Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century” runs from Sunday through June 28 at the Museum of Modern Art; moma.org. It travels to the Art Institute of Chicago (July 24 to Oct. 3); the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (Oct. 30 to Jan. 30); and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta (Feb. 19 to May 15).

Click on the post's title to read the entire article at The NY Times.

The exhibit will also appear in Chicago, San Francisco and Atlanta.

Call of the Small

From a New York Times report: CHRISTINE FERRARA, a 39-year-old public affairs director for the Institute for Advanced Study, a research center in Princeton, N.J., has a passion for modern architecture and design. It began in 2008, when her husband, Steven Birnbaum, a technology consultant, bought her an airy modern home with floor-to-ceiling windows. [more ...]

Ms. Ferrara's blog is Call of the Small.

The Ides of March

Today! March 15.

From The New York Times' "Et Tu, British Museum? Coin Commemorating Caesar's Murder Goes on Display"

... On Monday — the Ides of March, naturally — the British Museum put on display a gold coin given to one of Caesar’s assassins, which may have been worn as a memento by the boastful killer, The Guardian reported. ...

NY Times' Photo

The Guardian's article uses a photo of a different coin, also attributed to the British Museum, which makes it clear how the coin could have been "worn":

The Guardian's Photo

The Times' story indicates that the coin they have depicted is believed by experts to be a fake. The Guardian's story makes clear that such coins existed:

The swaggering imagery displayed on the coin was already famous in antiquity. In the second century AD, the Roman historian Cassius Dio wrote: "Brutus stamped upon the coins which were being minted in his own likeness and a cap and two daggers, indicating by this and by the inscription that he and Cassius had liberated the fatherland."

The Times' story does state: "The Guardian said that some 60 silver versions of the coin have survived, but only two were believed to exist in gold — one of which is now believed by experts to be a fake." So, we have photos of all the gold versions, if the experts are correct.

Interestingly, in The Guardian's photo, the coin's image is cropped. Was that to make it difficult for counterfeiters?

COINLINK's "Possibly Unique 'Ides Of March' Gold Coin to be Displayed at British Museum" has another interesting story.

Driving Dioramas -- Redo

Car & House

The Set

Michael Paul Smith builds scale models. His collection of 1/24 scale scenes from mid-20th century America can be seen at his Flickr, where he wrote:

Our past is a powerful draw and in so many ways we try to capture it in order to explain it to ourselves.

What started out as an exercise in model building and photography, ended up as a dream-like reconstruction of the town I grew up in. It's not an exact recreation, but it does capture the mood of my memories.

And like a dream, many of the buildings show up in different configurations throughout the photos. Or sometimes, the buildings stay put and the backgrounds change.

There is also a New York Times' story, "Lots of Web Traffic in such a Tiny Town," about his work.

Photos from Paris - Outside and Inside a Restaurant

Nomiya is a temporary installation atop the Palais de Tokyo contemporary-art museum. Like an exhibition, the restaurant has a corporate sponsor and a limited run, ending in December.

Photo: Laurent Grasso

Floor-to-ceiling windows display a view of the Eiffel Tower.
Photo: Ed Alcock for The New York Times

From The New York Times' "Where Art and Haute Cuisine Meet in Paris"

Photoshop and Photography: When is it real?

From David Pogue's column, Photoshop and Photography: When is it real?

In the March issue of Popular Photography magazine, the editor's note, by Miriam Leuchter, is called "What Is a Photograph?" ...

... But meanwhile, we live in an age where Photoshop jobs are commonplace, reality TV shows dominate the airwaves, and news bites are taken out of context and manipulated. Maybe, these days, the question isn’t “What is a photograph?”; it’s “What is reality?”