Live Photoshop Prank

Erik Johansson and his Photoshop prank have been the talk of the town over the past week.  Johansson composited actual persons into apparent advertisements live while they waited at a bus stop, and put the results before their eyes!  Johansson blogged about it on 7th June after which Photo Websites like Imaging Resource ran stories about it.

The prank may seem like intrusion but such a viewpoint would be overly harsh, given the nature and motivations behind the exercise.  In a

ny case, judging from the reactions of the subjects, as reported in Ad Week, they actually liked it all!  Wouldn’t you love seeing yourself “transformed into a city-smashing monster” before your eyes?

Wedding Party Gag

Often a photo goes viral but sometimes a gag goes viral.

You may recall seeing a T-Rex chasing a freaked out wedding party.  Well, now Star Wars’s AT-AT Walkers have gone after another terrified wedding party, reports The Guardian.

The Imperial AT-AT Walkers at the Battle of Hoth were created using go motion photography. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Kudos to photographer Quinn Miller who seems to have set off this smart gag cum fad.

This fad will continue for a few months until one of the maids of honour or – perish the thought! – the pretty bride herself twists her foot running in those high heels and . . . splat!

O, Kodak!

We close with a story that is at the opposite end on the Seriousness Spectrum.  We have run a few posts on the continuing saga of Kodak.  Kenny Suleimanagich has authored a fascinating, lengthy and extremely detailed article, Kodak’s Problem Child: How the Blue-chip Company Was Bankrupted by One of Its Own Innovations.

It is a well-known fact that the digital camera came into being at Kodak where this “innovation” was disregarded and deprecated by the corporate brass in favour of its be-all, end-all, film.  Suleimanagich takes us into the hows and whys behind that decision, using a few first person accounts.

We get to learn some interesting titbits.  For example, Kodak used to sell a roll of film at a staggering 800 percent profit margin.  Directors and officers got addicted to this easy cash and corporate greed became a barrier to innovation and evolution.  Other first person accounts disclose that Kodak’s directors and officers were profoundly anti-computer.

You’ll also read someone’s opinion that Kodak’s demise was “inevitable:” “‘Even if Kodak went into [digital] wholeheartedly, things would remain the same,’ says Anderson. ‘It’s a fact that they were too early, and inevitably doomed.'”  But Fujifilm was in more or less the same boat as Kodak except for the fact that that company was/is in Japan, land of CaNikon.  Look where they are now.

This article is a top read.