Via Rhizome.org:

In 1955, French director, Henri-Georges Clouzot had the most amazing idea. He would film Pablo Picasso as he painted 20 artworks, ranging from quick sketches to widescreen color oil paintings.

Time-lapse video of Picasso making a painting, from start to finish

It’s amazing to watch this, and watch the painting develop, along with the ideas.  Pay attention to the bull, and how it changes from a more literal one to a cubist one over the course of the painting.

Neatorama has a post up on 13 Photographs That Changed The World that is an interesting read. Most of the photos are your standard canonical famous photographs, but considering licensing rights, you don’t see most of these together in print ever.

I do like this entry, about Philippe Halsman’s photograph, “Dalí Atomicus” (the emphasis is mine)

But before settling on the “Atomicus” we know today, Halsman rejected a number of other concepts for the shot. One was the idea of throwing milk instead of water, but that was abandoned for fear that viewers, fresh from the privations of World War II, would condemn it as a waste of milk. Another involved exploding a cat in order to capture it “in suspension,” though that arguably would have been a waste of cats.

A friend of mine, as one of her New Year’s Resolutions, said that she wants to take better photos, so I thought that I would make a post about how to get the most out of your crappy digital point and shoot. Now, I am no digital guru by any stretch of the imagination, so this is not comprehensive, but I have been shooting digital for a while and have learned a few tricks about how to make due with what you have. And here we go:

1. If your camera has an Auto ISO setting, disable it. The ISO settings tell your camera how sensitive to light to make it. So the higher the number, the more sensitive to light it is. But the catch is, the algorithms that make it more sensitive to light also make it more susceptible to noise. So a good rule of thumb is to disable the Auto ISO and keep it on the lowest numbers possible. (The lowest on my camera is 50, and I usually keep it on there or 100) Most cameras will compensate for it in the shutter and aperture settings, so you don’t have to worry about it. Noise is a pain, and there is really nothing you can really do to get rid of it that leaves your photo looking nice.

2. Turn the flash off. Unless you need it, turn the flash off. In a lot of cases, I see shots with people way too close to the subject, and the flash blows out the shot (meaning the flash is so bright that you can’t see any detail) or they are so far away that it’s ineffective. And natural light looks good. So turn off the flash.
Just check the LCD and see what the shutter speed is at. (Most decent cameras will display this along with the aperture, which is usually 2.8, 4.5, 5.6, 8, etc) If it is at 1/24 to 1/60 or higher, you are money. Anything slower, like 1/8 (by the way, these are fractions of a second, for anyone really starting from scratch) you will want to rest the camera on something, because otherwise you are going to get shaking and blurring in the shot from holding the camera.

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One of the interesting outcomes of my recent portfolio organization that I have undertaken recently is that it has given me a perspective on my work that I don’t think that I have had before. Looking back over ten plus years of work, I am able to see common threads and themes throughout my work that I didn’t or couldn’t see at the time. I am really discovering the old maxim of “You don’t know where you are going unless you know where you have been” to be very true these days, because the individual points in your life only begin to make sense and take shape given time, when the connection between them is made and a trajectory becomes apparent.

I find this kind of amazing. Angelina as the Virgin Mary, Wal Mart as Hell. Via Boing Boing