San Francisco Typographic Map

San Francisco Typographic Map Overview

San Francisco Typographic Map Detail

Axis Maps is custom cartography company located in Hewitt, Texas. Among a variety of other services, they’ve also made some super-cool maps made entirely of type. They’ve had typographic maps for Boston and Chicago, and they just recently released one for San Francisco. It looks very cool!

The map is available through Zazzle.com. There’s four sizes to choose from, ranging from 16″ x 11″ ($14.95) to a colossal 78″ x 52″ ($195.25).

via Laughing Squid

Type-Face Portrait of Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs type-face portrait

Here’s an amazing portrait of Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, done almost entirely in type. It was created by Dylan Roscover. The portrait is formed by the text from Apple’s, Here’s to the Crazy One’s ad campaign of the 90’s, and it uses fonts found in Apple branding and products. The image above is just a slice of the portrait, I recommend checking out the full size version to really appreciate it.

If you like this style of typographic-portraiture, here’s 45 more portraits to look at.

via YayEveryday

Sally Jupiter Pinup Poster from The Watchmen

Watchmen: Sally Jupiter Pinup Poster
Image © James Jean. All Rights Reserved.

If you read my previous post, you know I wasn’t terribly impressed with The Watchmen movie. But, being a big fan of pinup art, there was one thing that caught my eye early in the film… the poster of Sally Jupiter (aka Silk Spectre) hanging on the wall in The Comedian’s apartment.

As it turns out, the image was created by one of my favorite illustrators, James Jean, first mentioned here back in September of 2006. And, that poster is available for sale on James’ website. It’s slightly smaller than the version used in the movie, and it’s not too cheap at $85, but it is pretty darn cool.

The Photographic Work of Johannes Schwab

Habitual Grace by Jo Schwab
Images © Jo Schwab

The images above are from a series called, Habitual Grace, by Johannes Schwab. I really love his work, and this series. One of the things that really attracts me to these images, is the tonal range that Jo is able to pull into his photographs, making seemingly simple images visually rich.

You can see more of Jo’s work on his portfolio site, and his Deviant Art site.

One in 8 Million

Loop iPhone Application

One in 8 Million is a wonderful set of stories over at the New York Times, from everyday people in New York. It’s simple in format… recorded voice with accompanying photographs, but the stories are very engaging.

The series is produced by Sarah Kramer and Alexis Mainland, with photographs by Todd Heisler, and Interactive Development by Tom Jackson.

A new story is added each week. I highly recommend checking it out.

via swissmiss

The Photography of Erwin Olaf

Hope, by Erwin Olaf
© Erwin Olaf

One of my all-time favorite photographers is, Erwin Olaf. His images are simply amazing. He primarily shoots people, and although he shoots most of his models with little to no facial expression, his images convey quite a lot of emotion. The image above is from a series called, Hope.

I have to admit, part of why I like his work so much is he has quite a few series that are set in the 40’s and 50’s, a time period I find visually fascinating.

His website is all Flash, so I can’t link directly to the various series I like the best, but I highly recommend checking out Hope, Grief, Rain, and Mature.

Photowalking with Miss Aniela in San Francisco

The smothering, by Miss Aniela
©2008 Miss Aniela

For a long time now I’ve been a big fan of the photographic work of Natalie Dybisz, better known on the internet as, Miss Aniela (pronounced ‘Ann-yella’). She’s a fine-art photographer based in South East UK, who originally received a lot of notoriety on Flickr for her self-portraitrs. She took multiple shots of herself in the same space and then combined them. Since then she’s primarily stayed in the self-portrait genre, but has expanded her work quite a bit.

I just read on her blog that she’s coming to Seattle (Jan 31st), San Francisco (Feb 2rd & 3rd), and Los Angeles (Feb 4th), and she’s inviting all who want to come, to a studio shoot and some photowalks. She’s posted her full schedule, here. Although I’m not normally one for group photography, I’m going to try and make one of the photowalks here in San Francisco. It would be great to get the opportunity to meet her.

If you live in the Bay Area, and you’re into photography, you should try to make it out. Maybe I’ll even see you there.

If you’d like to know what other photographers I like, I have a long list over at my photoblog.

Miss Aniela: Website | Flickr

Homer Every Day

This is another one of those things that I totally forgot to blog about when I first saw it. In this episode of the Simpsons, they parodied a video called, Everyday, by one of my favorite photographers, Noah Kalina.

Noah took a picture of himself everyday for 6 years to make his video. It’s actually a work in progress, so he’s continued to take his daily photos. He’s now up to 9 years. Since then I’ve seen several other photographers take on projects like this. I’ve considered doing one of these myself, but I would probably lose interest after the first week.