CNN Monday January 27, 2025
Seoul-based photographer Kim Seunggu has spent almost 15 years capturing what he calls “leisure culture” — vacationing, poolside unwinding and communal gatherings — in contemporary South Korea. The focus of his ongoing series, “Better Days,” is all the more striking in a country that ranks fourth globally for the longest working hours and where the phenomenon of “gwarosa” (death by overwork) is thought to claim numerous lives annually, notes CNN. His upcoming book Better Days features almost 50 photos from the series.
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COLOSSAL Monday January 27, 2025
OK Go has a history of making boundary-breaking music video, and their latest is no exception. In fact, notes Colossal, it is exceptionally innovative, in a meta sort of way—“a music video using phones about videos made with phones.” The video for the song “A Stone Only Rolls Downhill” features 64 iPhones, each of which captured one unique take. All 64 videos were filmed in slightly different sequences or at different angles. The phones were then laid out next to each other to form a very lively visual mosaic. Read the full Story >>
Los Angeles Times Monday January 27, 2025
Last week PPD noted that a new documentary set to premier at the Sundance Film Festival was claiming that the famous Vietnam War photo “Napalm Girl,” long credited to AP photographer Nick Ut, was in fact made by someone else. With the film’s premier last week, the name of that other photographer has been revealed: Thanh Nghe, a driver for an NBC News crew. The film’s director, Bao Nguyen, says that Nghe, an immigrant, has been unable to tell his story until now, notes the LA Times. As we noted, Associated Press did its own exhaustive investigation and concluded there was “no reason to believe anyone other than Ut took the photo.” See also: PetaPixel.
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Bloomberg Friday January 24, 2025
As tech companies search for more data with which to train their AI model, YouTubers and other digital content creators are finding an unexpected revenue stream: Bloomberg reports that AI companies including OpenAI and Google’s Alphabet are paying content creators for access to their unpublished videos. Such content, which has not been posted elsewhere online, is considered valuable for training artificial intelligence systems since it is unique, adds the South China Morning Post. AI companies are currently paying between $1 and $4 per minute of footage, with prices increasing depending on video quality or format.
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