Art News: Chinese Museum Pulls Exhibit Comparing Animals to Black People
The Hubei Provincial Museum in Wuhan, China, recently removed a photography exhibit that juxtaposed images of wild African animals with black African people, reports The New York Times. The museum closed the exhibition, titled “This Is Africa,” after complaints that the display was racist. One pairing included a young boy and a howling chimpanzee, each photographed with their mouths agape. “Casual racism is common in China, a diverse country of more than one billion people that after decades of relative isolation is now a world power,” notes The Times. Read the full Story >>
Dept of Ideas: Focus Stacking Turns Discarded Flowers Into Art
Inspired by his florist wife Basia, Australia-based photographer Isamu Sawa began shooting dying flowers and plants as a technical exercise in early 2015. In order to capture his subjects’ decaying beauty, he uses focus stacking — a digital technique combing multiple images taken at different focus distances to give a resulting image with a greater depth of field. (The same technique, notes LensCulture, is used by NASA’s Curiosity rover is able to take microscopic images of Martian geology.) Read the full Story >>
State of the Art: Shutterstock's New Search Tool Uses Deep Learning Tech
Shutterstock has announced a new powerful photo search tool called Composition Aware Search that, notes PetaPixel, uses advanced deep learning technology to let you search for photos containing certain objects in certain locations. After typing in one or more search terms for the objects you’d like in the frame, you can specify where in the photo you’d like those objects to appear. Everything is done in a small “layout” box that has circles representing the objects you’re searching for. DIY Photography’s verdict: Not there yet. Read the full Story >>
