34th Street, NYC

Shot on a short walk from 8th to 6th Avenue, and in the subway at Herald Square.

Leap and T(ether): Our Minority Report Future Draws Ever Nearer

Interesting things are happening on the gestural/spatial computer interaction front. First up, Leap Motion garnered a lot of buzz a week or two ago. This little brick hangs out next to your computer and allows you to interact with it by tracking your gestures. It seems to be tracking movements at an incredibly high-resolution, too, as seen in this demo:

An SDK and app store are in the works, promising lots of fun stuff will be readily available when the Leap Motion ships at the end of the year.

T(ether), from the MIT Media Lab is an iPad-based 3D object manipulation and animation tool. Using motion capture and the built-in cameras on the iPad, it offers immersive interaction with the 3D data, and even allows multiple people to collaboratively edit the same virtual environment. The video explains it better than I ever could:

While you can pre-order the Leap Motion for the grand sum of $70, the T(ether) appears to be still in the concept phase. The future is here, man.

Scenes from the Commute

This week's commute includes a bit of anti-consumerist graffiti, a sleepy Yankees fan and an in-passing shot of the Manhattan bridge.

One World Trade Center

 One World Trade Center, aka the Freedom Tower

Here’s a vertical pano of the still-under-construction World Trade Center building that I shot a few weeks ago. I had rented a 100-400mm zoom lens from Adorama over the weekend, and wanted to get in a few last shots before returning it, so I could get the most possible bang for my buck out of it. I decided that a good way to do that would be to get up early and walk across the Brooklyn Bridge before work, and get some shots that I normally wouldn’t be able to with my own stable of lenses.

This shot is a vertical panorama stitched together from three shots, and at full size, it’s a whopping 3403 x 9236 pixels. I scaled it down to a more respectable 6000 pixels tall before uploading it to Flickr, but even at that size you can still see some construction workers if you look closely.

The development has had its share of problems (consider that the Burj Khalifa was started after and completed years sooner than One WTC), but I think it’s shaping up to be a gorgeous building. It recently achieved the milestone of surpassing the Empire State Building in height, becoming the tallest building in New York City in the process, and will ultimately top out at a very symbolic 1776 feet when construction is complete.

The Shelby

Classic ‘67 Shelby GT500

Classic ‘67 Shelby GT500 

I spent some time visiting a friend of mine up in Massachussetts on Memorial Day Weekend. This is his baby, a ‘67 Shelby Cobra GT500, much like the one Nic Cage drove in Gone in 60 Seconds:

More photos over on 500px.