Illustrating quantity

A bar chart is empty of emotion, with the number 3 delivering the same impact as 300 million. That isn't true of this series of images by Chris Jordan called "Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait":

This series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 410,000 paper cups used every fifteen minutes. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. The underlying desire is to emphasize the role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming.

How to make your audio slideshows better

... as explained by Mastering Multimedia.

10 Places to Find Free Images Online and Make Your Content More Linkable

... from the Search Engine Journal.

Image is everything

Would you rather read the thoughts of this guy:

This guy:

Or this guy?

Tell me your impression of the author of Notes from a Teacher doesn't change based on which photo of him appears on his blog. Incidentally, I retrieved the old photos from the Internet Archive. The author, Mark Hamilton, a journalism instructor in Vancouver, explains that the latter is "as close to reality as it gets," but clearly reality is what you make it.

A "jaw-dropping" visual demonstration

I've seen a lot of presentations and it's rare that one generates spontaneous applause, as did this demonstration of Microsoft software called Photosynth:

morgueFile

morgueFile is a "public image reference archive":

The term "morgue file" is popular in the newspaper business to describe the file that holds past issues flats. Although the term has been used by illustrators, comic book artist, designers and teachers as well. The purpose of this site is to provide free image reference material for use in all creative pursuits. This is the world wide web's morguefile.

pic2color

Feed pic2color the URL of an image and it will return the color scheme.

Dermatology Image Atlas

Ewwwww. You gotta admire the devotion to craft evident in the Dermatolgy Image Atlas, which offers 9,517 pictures like this one. "Tender plaque with central crust and surrounding erythema," indeed.

Photoshop tutorials

Good-Tutorials.com links to more than 13,000 tutorials on using Photoshop.

ASCII-O-Matic

The t.y.p.o.r.g.a.n.i.s.m ASCII-O-Matic will convert an image into a text-only reproduction.

Hard-to-find digital resources search

The goal of OAIster ("...find the pearls"), a project of the University of Michigan Digital Library Production Service, is "to create a collection of previously difficult-to-access, academically-oriented digital resources ... that are easily searchable by anyone." The site says it has nearly 10 million records from 706 institutions. I searched on Kentucky horse racing and found 13 records, including a nice panoramic shot of the 1942 Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs now in the Library of Congress that OIAster says is no longer under copyright.

Everystockphoto.com

everystockphoto.com is a search engine for photos offered under the Creative Commons license. That's an increasingly popular licensing scheme that governs how intellectual property may be used. The creator may grant free use of the photos for any purpose, or allow free non-commercial use but ask for payment if used in a commercial context. "We aim to be a community for designers, developers, photographers and other media publishers who want better, easier access to license-specific media on the web," the site says. ResearchBuzz wrote about it.

Public domain photos from an early news picture agency

The George Grantham Bain Collection at the Library of Congress "represents the photographic files of one of America's earliest news picture agencies":

The collection richly documents sports events, theater, celebrities, crime, strikes, disasters, political activities including the woman suffrage campaign, conventions and public celebrations. The photographs Bain produced and gathered for distribution through his news service were worldwide in their coverage, but there was a special emphasis on life in New York City. The bulk of the collection dates from the 1900s to the mid-1920s, but scattered images can be found as early as the 1860s and as late as the 1930s.

You are free to publish the photographs as you wish.

Face recognition photo search

Riya wants to use "face recognition technology" that "automatically tags people in photos so you can search for just the photo you want." "We started this company after realizing that we had 1000's of digital photos on our computer all labeled DSC0009.jpg, that our friends just never remembered to send us the photos we wanted from them, and that searching for images on the web just doesn't work very well," the founders say. They want to engage their "charter" users in a "conversation" about how it will work. I gave it a try and got almost no results for searches on such things as "vacation," "children" and "dog," so I guess they mean it when they say it's beta.

Free dictionary of photography terms

Database maker askSam offers a dictionary of photography terms. You can use it online and they offer the option of downloading it to your computer and using their software or a free viewer to use it. Doing so "offers you more more power and flexibility than the on-line version," they say. They are also continually adding to their free collection of databases, which can be found on this page.

Permission-free photos, music and text search

Creative Commons Search "helps you find photos, music, text, and other works whose authors want you to re-use it for some uses -- without having to pay or ask permission."

Editorial Photographers

Editorial Photographers "is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the health and profitability of editorial photography. Our mission is to educate photographers and photography buyers about business issues affecting our industry, and in the process raise the level of business practices in the profession."

Photoshop tutorials

Here's a list of Photoshop tutorials.

Photoshop lover

"Photoshop lover is your 1 stop photoshop tutorials and resource site. We have a huge collection of photoshop tutorials for photoshop users of all skill levels." Don't know why they can't be bothered to capitalize Photoshop.

Masters of Photography collects examples of photos by history's best - or at least most famous - photographers.

The AMEDEO Literature Guide was created so people in the health care industry can "easily access timely, relevant information within their respective fields." Its offerings "include weekly emails with bibliographic lists about new scientific publications, personal Web pages for one-time download of available abstracts ... and an overview of the medical literature published in relevant journals over the past 12 to 24 months. All these new information resources are free of charge."

There's also the related Golden Links for Doctors, Amedeo´s collection of "Outstanding Medical Websites."

Political Memorabilia showcases political buttons, medalets, pins and watch fobs, postcards, ribbons and sheet music from campaigns past.