I thought this picture of a “pole-dancing” praying mantis of mine was unique in terms of composition and the insect’s posturing, never mind the out-of-focus eyes where the focus should really be.

Pole-dancing praying mantis

That is, until I read about a Telegraph report about a lucky shot which shows a similar species of mantis perched on top of curled fern shoots. Man, that was one hell of a capture.

By the way, the photographer of the lucky “cycling mantis” shot is Eco Suparman, aged 23, and the photo was taken in Indonesian part of Borneo Island.

“I was focusing on taking pictures of the mantis when I noticed the curled plants nearby,” he said in The Telegraph report, “Straightaway I thought it looked like a bike – but I couldn’t believe my luck when the mantis walked over and climbed onto the plant.”

My first digital camera was a Sony Mavica FD90, a 1.3 “interpolated” megapixel square brick that takes a floppy disk as a storage. I bought it at Akihabara in Tokyo in 2003. At that time, my knowledge about photography was virtually zero (not that I know very much today, just a little wiser, perhaps), but yeah, it served my purpose then.

Borneo Sea Gypsy huts. Taken with the Mavica. Too bad I no longer have the photo in its original resolution.

Today I was rummaging into the storeroom and stumbled upon it — too bad the battery no longer recharge. But I can still make it work by hooking it to the electric socket at home. Will try and see if I can find a 1.4MB, 3.5-inch floppy disk, and a computer which has a floppy disk drive. If I can have these, I would love to put the camera to pace again after eight years (and grown a bit wiser).

I didn’t shoot this picture myself but I have permission from the man who shot it to publish this and one or two of his other photographs in exchange for a pro Flickr account sponsorship. A fair deal, I would say.

Then someone took the picture and published it in a forum, and for what reason? To debunk the historic moon landing and to accuse NASA of lying about it.

Actually I have three problems with that, the first is that I believe in the moon landing and am not at all comfortable when an image in this blog was used to purportedly debunk what I myself believe in.

Secondly, the guy in the picture, the one said to the a “giant saxophonist” in the forum, is not at all a giant. He’s an average man, five feet seven or eight, give and take. And I don’t think he is comfortable to be called a giant though I’m sure he has nothing against giant people.

Thirdly, come on guys, it’s a matter of perspective and the lens and whatever you want to call it. Pictures can never be used to measure to compare size of distant objects unless the same camera, lens and setting and scenario is used to make the comparison; and to conclude that one picture — taken decades ago with a different camera in a different setting and in a different planet — can tell the lies of another is just plain out-of-the-world logic.

Come on, if the saxophonist guy can be mistaken for a giant when he is not, there is every reason to believe that the whole thing about comparing the NASA man and the saxophonist is either entirely mistaken or made deliberately with the intention to mislead, and I’m being polite here.

The forum site has taken the liberty to publish my picture (by way of hot linking, no less), so I guess it’s fair if I take the same liberty to publish his, here.

The original picture of the sax man is posted here, “How To Photograph The Moon If You Don’t Have A Telephoto Lens.”

A gang of six robbers drilled into a photography shop outside the Malaysian capital city of Kuala Lumpur but did not steal any photography equipment. Instead, the gang ignored the cameras — among them entry-level Canon and Nikon DSLRs as well as Sony and Samsung iLCs and a host of other compact cameras — and drilled another hole to break into an adjoining pawnshop, triggering the alarm in the incident at 3 a.m. on Thursday.

The alarm alerted personnel at a nearby police station who promptly rushed to the scene in time to nab the six men.

Police said the “Drill Ops” syndicate with many members typically use a high-tech drill to force entry into premises.

AP has issued an editorial advisory, asking subscribers to “kill” a photograph it obtained from North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KNCA), suspecting it of being digitally altered. It says that the photograph of people wading through floods “does not accurately reflect the scene.”

This is the photo in question, which does look somewhat suspicious, especially now that we know that the picture has been killed.

Now that the photo in question has been disowned, does that liberate it from any form of copyright encumbrance? Can I post it here and claim fair use?

Via Yonhap.

A video, uploaded on YouTube purportedly showing a UFO “mothership” and a fleet of several smaller craft, has gone viral, reports AFP. At the time of this writing, it has been viewed 835,520 times.

Not sure if the flying objects are actually extra-terrestrials though. This could very well be a case of people with camera falling prey to someone’s elaborate hoax.

Remember Bieber? No, not that Bieber, the other one who found a canister of lost film and went on an Internet quest to return it to its owner? Well, he finally finds the person.

It turns out that the film belong to a girl named Camille who lives in Paris. Bieber flew there to meet Camille but not before dropping by several European countries along the way, and documenting his journey to reunite the film with the owner.

Below is Part One and Two of the video series which document Bieber’s quest to find the owner of the lost film.

This maybe a long shot but this blog wants to do its part to help reunite a roll of film containing stunning pictures of the recent New York blizzard and the vacationing photographers who lost it.

The man, Todd Bieber, was skiing around Brooklyn’s Prospect Park after the blizzard when he stumbled on a canister containing a roll of film which he later developed, showing pictures of the blizzard. He now attempts to reach out to the those who took the pictures and return the film to them.

He has taken to YouTube in his attempt to locate the people behind the blizzard photographs. Below is the footage, showing the pictures from the film:

Via TIME‘s Newsfeed.

My brother who owns a Nikon D300 took this photo of ants working together to build their nest by stitching together several leaves. This is how they do it… amazing little ant universe.

Or vice-versa. Computerworld has listed eight surefire ways to internet unpopularity and among the instances cited is about Nikon and Canon.

For instance, its writer Christopher Breen said, “visit a Nikon forum and slam its cameras in favor of Canon.”

How true. I can imagine the reaction and the ensuing discussion thread.

But one thing is for sure; the debate will not be as intense if the slamming and favouring is made between, say, Olympus and Pentax or Sony and Panasonic but that is the thing with Nikon and Canon — both have become civilisations in the DSLR world.

Will there be a third force rising to challenge the two? I might as well post this to a Pentax or Sony forum.