John Cox

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Interesting

StellarDock

StellarDock — Image the night sky on research-grade telescopes

This is a really cool use of Claude. Excited to see the progress!

StellarDock is iTelescope's new browser-based remote observatory platform, now in beta for current iTelescope members before wider release. It lets users plan and run sessions on professional telescopes across six dark-sky sites in the USA, Chile, Spain, and Australia, then download calibrated FITS files and calibration frames minutes after a session ends. Pricing is a fixed hourly rate per telescope with one credit equal to one US dollar, upfront charges refunded when a session fails, and subscription credit pools, with iTelescope point transfers promised but not yet active. It's aimed at both astrophotographers (LRGB and narrowband imaging, mosaic planning) and citizen scientists doing photometry and discovery work, backed by claims of 20+ years and over 531,000 sessions.

Permalink photographyscience

www.businessinsider.com

National Geographic photographer tips for phone photography, examples

National Geographic photographer Kiliii Yüyan shares practical techniques for improving smartphone photography, including spending extended time in one location to capture optimal lighting, experimenting with uncommon angles to add depth, using foreground subjects to frame landscapes, and shooting close-ups to create intimacy rather than relying on zoom. A Business Insider travel reporter demonstrates these principles through her own phone photos from Arizona hikes, Italian landmarks, and other travels, showing how each technique transformed initially underwhelming shots into more dynamic, layered images that better conveyed her actual experience of each place.

Permalink photographytraveladvice

Craig Mod

Looking Closely is Everything — by Craig Mod

The author argues that close, attentive observation—from examining woodblock prints to watching cells divide to reading poetry—is both a learnable skill and a path to deeper understanding and wonder. Drawing examples from Hiroshige's Tōkaidō prints, Hokusai's landscapes, essays on snowball fights and chip-eating, and Russian short stories, he shows how precise description and focused attention reveal previously invisible details and meaning across scales from the personal to the universal. He proposes meditation as a practical training ground for attention itself, suggesting that the pandemic's enforced stillness offered an opportunity to cultivate this "close looking" as a radical act of noticing that recognizes the worth and complexity in everything, including the humble and overlooked.

Permalink artphotographytravelmindfulness

X (formerly Twitter)

BuzzFeed

27 Surreal Places To Visit Before You Die

I appreciate you sharing this list, but I should clarify what I'm designed to do. I summarize *individual saved articles* — pieces of journalism or reportage that someone has bookmarked to remember later. This appears to be a listicle of 27 scenic locations around the world. If you'd like me to summarize this as a whole piece, I can: This compilation catalogs 27 remarkable natural and geological sites across the globe, from China's colorful Danxia landforms to New Zealand's glowworm caves, highlighting distinctive features like the world's largest salt flat in Bolivia, otherworldly crater lakes in Indonesia, and accessible wonders like Ecuador's precarious volcano-view swing. The descriptions emphasize what makes each location geologically or visually distinct and note practical visiting information like seasonal access or the presence of active trains. Or if you saved a *specific* article about one of these locations and want that summarized, feel free to share it and I'll provide a more focused summary.

Permalink photographytraveladventurenature

the Guardian

Eyewitness: The Earth at night | World news | guardian.co.uk

NASA's new satellite has captured nighttime imagery of Earth revealing human settlement patterns and activity across continents with far greater resolution than previously possible, showing the distribution of cities, infrastructure, and population density through light emissions from Europe, Asia, and Africa. The photographs demonstrate how artificial lighting from human civilization creates a visible glow that can be detected from space, providing scientists with detailed data about urbanization, energy use, and human geography across the globe.

Permalink photographysciencenewsclimate

the Guardian

Web Designer Depot

Vintage effects for your images with HTML5 | Webdesigner Depot

vintageJS is a jQuery plugin that applies vintage and retro photo effects directly on websites using HTML5 canvas, eliminating the need to pre-process images in desktop software before uploading. The plugin offers preset filters like sepia and grayscale, plus customizable options for vignette, noise, desaturation, and other effects that can be combined to create consistent styling across user-uploaded images. This approach solves the problem of maintaining a cohesive aesthetic when clients or site visitors are regularly adding new photos without manual processing.

Permalink vintagephotographyjquery

Webcam Toy

pixelmatortutorials.net

Stylish Borders using Quick Mask Mode » Pixelmatortutorials.net

PixelmatorTutorials.net is a resource site offering video and text tutorials for the image editing software Pixelmator, covering techniques ranging from basic collage-making to advanced effects like dodge and burn. The site hosts tutorials for both beginners and experienced editors, with popular video lessons demonstrating practical projects such as placing map imagery onto a hand or combining multiple images into textured collages using layers and blend modes.

Permalink designphotographytutorial

the Guardian

Eyewitness: spotted trick | Art and design | guardian.co.uk

This is a photograph from the Guardian's Eyewitness series showing a child playing a piano inside Yayoi Kusama's *The Obliteration Room*, an interactive art installation where visitors gradually cover the white interior with colorful stickers, transforming the space over time. The image is part of coverage of Kusama's "Look Now See Forever" exhibition at Brisbane's Gallery of Modern Art, documenting how her participatory work engages children and the public in the act of artistic creation.

Permalink artphotography

the Guardian

Boing Boing

How the first image of the whole Earth was taken – Boing Boing

Kelly celebrates the remarkable engineering achievement of Lunar Orbiter 1's 1966 photograph—the first image of Earth from space—which required an ingenious analog system with mechanical moving parts to capture, develop, scan, and transmit film across the vacuum of space without any digital technology. The anecdote serves as a counterpoint to modern technological assumptions, highlighting how earlier generations solved complex problems through mechanical ingenuity rather than electronics.

Permalink technologyhistoryphotographyscience

the Guardian

Eyewitness: Flamethrower | World news | guardian.co.uk

This is a photo essay from the Guardian's Eyewitness series featuring dramatic volcanic imagery from Iceland, particularly highlighting photographer Skarphedinn Thrainsson's work capturing lava eruptions up close. The piece showcases the risks professional photographers take—including exposure to falling rocks and molten lava—to document natural disasters and geological events in real time.

Permalink photographynaturenews

the Guardian

Boing Boing

the Guardian