On Digital Photography, Stephen Johnson, and...Space

O'Reilly author Stephen Johnson did a lively, compelling presentation based on his book Stephen Johnson on Digital Photography Tuesday night at the SFDIG meeting. At the outset, Steve told the audience of 100 or so photographer-types he was going to base his two-hour talk on the book. (I admitted to Steve later that this made me a little anxious at first; I'm extremely proud of that book but it was an intense six months getting it out to the world, and I wasn't sure I was ready to relive the entire experience compressed into one evening.) It proved, however, to be a terrific whirlwind tour of digital photography and a great chance for Steve to speak with great energy and enthusiasm about his passion. (Photo courtesy of O'Reilly Author Ken Milburn)

One of my favorite sections of the book, and of the talk, was on the evolution of digital imaging technology. Steve covered everything from spy pigeons with cameras around their necks in the early 20th century to the amazing photos being sent back today from NASA's space-traveling devices.

Steve left for a workshop at Mono Lake yesterday, so I couldn't hit him up for one of the cool space photos he uses in his presentation to post here. So I did a little sleuthing on the NASA images website (seriously DO NOT go there if you've used up your procrastination budget for the day and you find space imagery even the slightest bit compelling). NASA makes a ton of amazing photographs and video available for public use; you can even contact them for hi-res versions like Steve did for the book. The guidelines posted on the site are simple:

"NASA still images, audio files and video generally are not copyrighted. You may use NASA imagery, video and audio material for educational or informational purposes, including photo collections, textbooks, public exhibits and Internet Web pages. This general permission extends to personal Web pages."

Just for fun, here's an image of Saturn from February 2006 taken by the Cassini Orbiter that was just posted today. This spectrally interpreted image was produced by the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer team at the University of Arizona. The blue line across the equator is a head-on view of the rings. (Image Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)