Yeva Tokarchuk is a Ukrainian photographer and retoucher with a passion for analog film photography and monochrome pictures. Her portfolio includes a range of sensual portraits with a particularly feminine touch. The analog shots in monochrome or muted colors on film convey some kind of sincerity with a dash of nostalgia. A small selection of photographs can be found below. For those who want to see more of Yeva Tokarchuk’s beautiful shots, feel free to have a look at her portfolio on Behance or follow this talented photographer on Instagram.
After a one-year hiatus, The Nature Conservancy has resumed its Global Photo Contest and revealed the winning images of this year’s competition.
The Nature Conservancy is a global conservation organization that works in 72 countries and is dedicated to conserving the lands and waters on which all life depends. The organization runs an annual photo contest that aims to “inspire both wonder and exploration of the amazing and incredible world around us.”
Although it had to temporarily suspend the competition due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the competition has now returned and has received entries from record-breaking 158 countries.
Our 2021 Photo Contest gave us a glimpse into nature around the world. Take a look at the unique views and read the stories behind the winning photos. Our judges’ picks are now LIVE
As part of its 2021 hardware announcements, Amazon unveiled both a camera drone that flies around your house as well as Astro, a robot that looks cute but is designed to observe and track you around your home, a new report alleges.
Astro is marketed by Amazon as a tiny wheeled assistant that realizes the science-fiction dream of a household robot that can help with daily tasks as well as provide some measure of home security. The company shows Astro acting as a combination of several of Amazon’s well-known devices, able to make calls and play music like an Echo Show, monitor a house as a security device like Ring cameras or the Ring Always Home Cam, or deliver items to specific users in a house.
But the The Verge’s James Vincent argues that many if not all the claims Amazon makes are “rubbish” and that it is instead just a “camera on wheels.”
Amazon disagrees and says that calling Astro just a “camera on wheels” doesn’t fully recognize everything it can do, and argues that it is much more than that.
“Astro is an entirely new type of robot, specifically designed with a fun, engaging persona all its own,” an Amazon representative told PetaPixel. “Astro uses movements, sounds, and visuals to help and interact with customers in totally new ways. Of course, we think customers will love that Astro lets you bring Alexa to every room you want, in addition to features that help you monitor your home and keep you connected with the people and things you care about. If you do not want Astro to hang out near you, you can disable the hang out feature in settings, and Astro will return to its charger until needed. Astro uses local processing of sensor data to detect people, objects, and pets that may be nearby, and for traveling room-to-room to hang out in areas where it can be helpful. No images or video are streamed when Astro is exploring or navigating through the home. When Astro does stream audio or video data to the cloud, like when you use live view, there is an indicator so customers know that feature has turned on.”
Even so, Vincent’s skepticism isn’t without cause. Vice published a report that cites leaked internal Amazon documents as well as sources at the company who claim that the robot relies heavily on facial recognition and user behavior. Additionally, they claim the $999 device is heavily flawed, fragile, and prone to self-destruction.
Amazon
Vice and The Verge state that Astro requires face and voices to be logged in order for it to function as a sort of mobile home security device. It uses that information to track specific people in a home and alert owners when an unrecognized individual is seen. According to Vice, users must “enroll” in the face and voice ID upon unboxing the expensive mobile robot.
The company clarifies that enrollment in the visual identification is not mandatory.
“Enrolling a visual ID is optional,” Amazon insists. “When you do create a visual ID, images of your face are used to build a numeric representation of your facial characteristics (called a vector). These images and vectors are securely stored on device. When the device detects a face in its field of view, the image is processed to create a vector of the facial features. Using on-device processing, that vector is compared to the vectors of enrolled customers stored on device to see if the face matches the visual ID of an enrolled person. Customers can also turn off all camera/microphones, set it to do-not-disturb and if they don’t want it to hang around with them, they can send it to the docking station or simple turn of the hang-out feature.”
Amazon also says that Astro can be configured to recognize a host of noises and visual cues.
“Customers can activate Alexa Guard to detect certain noises like breaking glass, smoke alarms, or carbon monoxide alarms,” the company says. “If customers enroll in visual ID, it can detect unrecognized people. Customers with a Ring Protect Pro subscription (a 6-month trial is offered with the introductory price of $999) can enable Patrol where it checks on certain areas of your home while you’re away.”
Amazon is generally perceived as a trustworthy company according to a 2020 Verge poll, so this using visual identification is unlikely to deter prospective buyers.
What might, however, is that the robot just might not work well for its marketed purpose and may end up being a household surveillance device.
“The person detection is unreliable at best, making the in-home security proposition laughable,” a source who worked on the project told Vice. “The device feels fragile for something with an absurd cost. The mast has broken on several devices, locking itself in the extended or retracted position, and there’s no way to ship it to Amazon when that happens.”
Amazon
On that self-destruction note, just like with the Always Home Cam, Astro reportedly struggles with stairs. While household robots like Roomba vacuums have been able to deal with household “cliffs” for years, Astro will reportedly “almost certainly throw itself down a flight of stairs if presented the opportunity.”
The issue with self-destruction was echoed by multiple sources, and another argues that the device is not anywhere near ready for public release.
Amazon takes issue with this particular set of reports, and argues that Astro is indeed ready for public deployment.
“These characterizations of Astro’s performance, mast, and safety systems are simply inaccurate,” the company says. “Astro went through rigorous testing on both quality and safety, including tens of thousands of hours of testing with beta participants. This includes comprehensive testing on Astro’s advanced safety system, which is designed to avoid objects, detect stairs, and stop the device where and when necessary.”
Amazon
Despite what Amazon has said, Vice’s report still raises questions. For example, if Astro isn’t great at navigation, can break itself, and isn’t particularly good at most of the tasks that Amazon markets it, what does it do? According to those leaked internal documents, it just watches — all the time.
With a stated goal of making Astro an “intelligent” robot, it needs to observe subjects in a house constantly. It needs to fully map a home and track where it might get stuck and also know where high-traffic areas are that might cause it to collide with the human occupants. The device is supposed to learn over time, but to do so it must constantly surveil its surroundings and its owners. Typically, that means that it needs to be as close to one to one and a half meters away — somewhere between about three and five feet.
Vincent says that Amazon has a shaky history with its lack of care and honesty in how it develops this kind of technology, with racially biased facial recognition systems, hackable cameras, aggressive partnership with law enforcement, and its use of scare tactics to sell products. He argues that with that knowledge, he’s not sure why anyone can or should trust Astro to be any different.
He argues that it, like Facebook’s Ray-Ban sunglasses, isn’t to actually provide a service that is needed but rather serves to get people used to having a camera on them all the time.
Update: Amazon reached out to provide statements that clarify certain points brought up by The Verge and Vice. Those statements have been added above.
Nick Oza, a staff photographer for the Arizona Republic and two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, has passed away after he was hospitalized on September 3 when a single-vehicle car accident left him seriously injured. He was 56.
Oza suffered a car accident on the morning of Friday, September 3 while traveling on Loop 202 near the Vee Quiva casino and resort, which is south of the town of Laveen. Bart Graves, a spokesman for the Arizona Department of Public Safety said that Oza’s vehicle “veered” across all lanes of traffic on the highway before hitting the center median wall. The cause of the accident has not been made public.
He was described as conscious but unresponsive and was taken to a hospital. Oza died of his injuries early on Monday according to a report from AZCentral.
Oza joined The Arizona Republic’s photo staff in 2006 and was a well-known and respected documentarian whose works focused on immigration and the southern border of the United States.
“Oza has been at the center of some of The Republic and AZCentral.com’s most important work since he joined the newspaper in 2006,” Russ Wiles of the Arizona Republic writes. “He has brought life to coverage of neglected children, immigrants, protesters for social justice, migrants seeking asylum, and the everyday experiences of countless Arizonans.”
“All of us at The Republic are focused on supporting Nick and his family as they navigate the days and weeks ahead,” The Republic’s executive editor Greg Burton said.
Nick Oza with photojournalist John H. White.
“He has given so much to the people of Arizona — it’s there in the photos of a BLM protester in downtown Phoenix and players at football practice at Perry High School; of a junkyard worker in Wittmann and a cowboy at West World in Scottsdale.
“Few people see like Nick sees. If he’s captured you with his camera, he’s captured you with grace and dignity, with empathy and kindness. That’s especially true of his work with migrants, immigrants, refugees and neglected children. His photos give faces and names to people so many others have reduced to labels.”
In his early career, Oza — who was working for The Telegraph of Macon, Georgia — won his first Pulitzer for images that were part of the Biloxi Sun Herald’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina’s destruction in Biloxi, Mississippi.
Oza’s second Pulitzer would come from his work which was included in the Arizona Republic’s 2017 project titled “The Wall” that examined President Donald Trump’s planned border wall. It would go on to win the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting.
Oza is survived by his wife Jacquelyn, and daughter, Shanti, as well as family in India.
Image credits: Photos courtesy of JJ Westgate and used with permission.
Browsing through an antique shop, I stumbled upon a Kodak slide projector with a very peculiar attachment: a large lens. This particular lens caught my eye as it was an absolute behemoth. It was heavy and had “ISCO GERMANY” engraved into it.
After seeing the price of only $10, I had no choice but to bring it home with me. My intentions were realized but not well thought out; remove the lens and convert it to fit on my DSLR.
After poking and prodding the projector, I assumed the lens was removable and went at it with a screwdriver. Thankfully this assumption was right, and it was removed easily. The lens is nearly a foot long, the front glass has a diameter of four inches and it is HEAVY. The aperture is fixed at f/3.5 and the focal range is an adjustable 300-400mm.
After a quick clean of the glass, I began to think “how the hell am I going to attach this thing to my camera?”.
With the lens now removed, cleaned, and still the same gargantuan hunk of glass and metal it was beforehand, it was time to see if it could even work on a modern DSLR. The rear diameter of the lens and element looked similar in size to that of my Helios 44/2, which uses an M42 mount.
The Helios 44/2 is a vintage Soviet lens and M42 is a lens screw mount that was common on older film SLRs, and it is easily adapted to most modern DSLRs. Measuring and comparing the rear elements and lens diameters with calipers confirmed that they were nearly identical to each other.
Fueled by curiosity, I removed the M42 to EOS adapter from the Helios lens and attempted to attach it to the rear of the Isco lens with tape, which didn’t work (surprise, surprise). I don’t give up very easily (yes, I do) so I decided to keep going.
Screwing just the M42 adapter into my DSLR allowed me to use live mode with no lens attached. With the camera now in live mode, I held the Isco lens about an inch or so in front of the hole where a lens should be attached. To my surprise, I could see, and I could vary the focus by changing the distance between the lens and the camera. It was crude, unsafe, and dumb but it worked!
Now I needed to design an adapter that would be a little less crude than this setup.
My initial design was a simple barrel focusing system, so I began by modeling a few tubes in CAD; easy, right? The first tube was 40mm long, and the inner diameter was only a hair larger than the rear outer diameter of the lens barrel. This allowed the tube to be pressed over the rear of the lens, about 8mm down, and held in place via friction.
The female adapter.
With what I’ll call the male side complete, I began work on its female counterpart. Fortunately, it was just another tube with an inner diameter slightly larger than the male tube’s outer diameter, allowing it to slide freely when inserted. I also added a base to the bottom outer diameter, which would allow me to glue an M42 to EOS adapter to it, so it could be mounted to the camera.
The male adapter.
I exported the models and 3D printed them in black PLA. After a bit of sanding and cleanup, I glued the M42 adapter to the outer female base, pressed the male side of the adapter over the rear of the lens, and then slid over the female side of the adapter. To my surprise, everything fit well and worked!
Focus was obtained by sliding the lens further or closer to the camera, like using a handheld telescope. The focal range was correct for just a guess, and I was able to take plenty of interesting photos with it. However, it was difficult to obtain accurate focus as it was tedious to use.
Taken with the barrel adapter.
Moving a heavy, awkward-shaped lens just the right amount to get an image in focus was difficult, as I found I would pull the lens too far out of the barrel or push too far inward. This led me to rely on moving myself rather than the lens to get images in focus. I also had a fear that the glue at the base and the M42 adapter would fail and sheer the lens from the camera.
To solve these problems, I adopted a helicoid design for the focusing barrel and integrated the EOS mount, so there was no need to glue one on. Helicoid focusing barrels make use of a simple spiral or thread to guide the lens in the barrel. This threaded barrel allows you to screw or unscrew to bring the lens closer or further away from the camera’s sensor to focus the image.
The updated helicoid design was a simple one, sticking with the initial barrel adapter premise, I just added some threads, and changed a few dimensions. The female end of the adapter was extended, totaling 48mm, and I incorporated a receiving thread to the inner diameter. The receiving thread is 1.5mm wide and deep, essentially a half-circle, with a pitch of 40mm.
The helicoid female adapter.
Since the pitch was so great, I was able to add another thread of the same dimensions directly across, forming something similar to a double helix, for more stable threading. I then modeled an EOS adapter where the outer base was in the previous design, so there was no need to glue one on.
The male end of the adapter was also extended, and I added threads to the outer diameter of the barrel. The threads were made 1mm wide and deep for clearance, with the same pitch of 40mm.
The helicoid male adapter.
The overall length of the barrel is 50mm, but I only modeled threads on the first 10mm. This allows the adapter to be screwed fully in and able to travel the entire focal range without the threaded male section exiting the barrel.
I was able to add a “stop” to the end of the female barrel, so the lens could not be unscrewed so much that it would fall out. This stop was a simple ring with the same inner and outer diameter of the female barrel that had no threads on the inner diameter. Once the male end was threaded in, the stop was glued in place.
The stop.
Phew, that was a lot. However, after exporting the files from CAD, printing in the same black PLA, and assembling everything together, the results were in!
It worked better than the initial design. It’s much easier to focus and there’s no fear of the adapter breaking; plus, it’s a little more “refined” looking. All in all, this was a fun project to follow through and I can’t wait to take more photos with this setup.
About the author: Nicholas Morganti is a photographer and tinkerer who always has too many projects to finish. He is currently a student studying electrical engineering, and his passions outside of his studies include photography, filming, writing, and the arts. You can find more of his work on his website and Instagram. This article was also published here.
