Public domain images are often either of poor quality or so esoteric as to be without any real interest. So hats off to The Public Domain Review, a not-for-profit project dedicated to showcasing interesting and unusual out-of-copyright works that are also of high quality. One of the notable aspects of this site is its curated collections of films, audio and images, spanning visions of the future from the late19th century to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fairy photographs, accompanied by text placing them in a historical perspective.

Hyper-lapse videos — made by combining time-lapse photography with camera movements — have been popular for a while now. But digital experience builder Teehan+Lax has now released a free tool that makes it possible to create these using shots from Google Street View. Appropriately dubbed Google Street View Hyperlapse, it can be used as-is or the open source code can be tweaked to manipulate such things as frame rate, image quality and camera movement. The clip below shows what it’s capable of.

It’s certainly an experience familiar to New Yorkers, who live in what serves as the setting for countless movies — that sense of suddenly feeling that your locale is familiar, without quite being able to place it. When in fact you’ve previously only experienced your current location within a movie. Christopher Moloney had the inspired idea to take photos of locales used in movies in New York and around the world. He then superimposed on them stills from the movies themselves, while right on location, as it were.

The result provides a surreal but not unpleasing effect, a sampling of which is shown below, with many more displayed on the FILMography site. The above is taken from the 2008 film Ghost Town.

The Boondock Saints (1999)

Doctor Who: The Angels Take Manhattan (2012)

The French Connection (1971)

The Fisher King (1991)

Spider-Man 3 (2007)

The Family Man (2000)

Roseanne: Disney World War II (1996)

There’s just something compelling about panoramic images. And while there’s certainly no shortage of tools to create these, newcomers are always welcome that manage to combine simplicity and image quality with a low price point. Enter Occipital’s 360 Panorama for iOS and Android. This dumbs things down nicely by simply requiring the user to tap the screen and pan, with the app creating a panorama in real time. Once complete you can save or share it, with viewing possible as a photo or an immersive experience. Fun stuff.

The Marquis de Sade once pointed out that, ‘Those who define are the masters.’ And it’s hard to argue with the fact that those who make the rules, run the game. In commerce, this shows up when firms coin a new term that they hope will redefine the marketplace, thus providing a competitive advantage. I thought of this recently after receiving a press release from StockFood.com, which describes itself as ‘the worldâ€s largest food media agency.’

In that regard it perhaps doesn’t have much competition but the firm clearly does offer a solid collection of stock photography and footage dedicated to food, comprised of images from more than 1,000 photographers. Beyond that, StockFood has a history of identifying ‘trends’ such as Blue Light, Shabby Chic, Berry Colors and ‘the strong pastel style known as Passion Fruits.’

Mystic Light is the latest of these and supposedly ‘shows the influence of the Scandinavian photographers who first exploited light effects of northern Europe, where Mystic Light originated. Cool Nordic lighting makes an effective contrast with much darker background colors, which are sometimes almost black. The minimalist arrangements of food and drink in these shots are reminiscent of the classic still life. Props are kept simple and frill free. Overall, the images create an impression of mystery, even fantasy, an effect often associated with the white nights of midsummer in the far North. The photographs evoke ancient myths and conjure new stories.’

The ancient myths angle may be a bit of a stretch but I can’t argue that the images, which include many shot by noted Scandinavian photographers, do stand out from current food photography, which is for the most part pretty banal. You can check out the images in the Mystic Light collection and decide for yourself. Personally, I remain unconvinced about Passion Fruits.

I’ve included a few more of their promotional clips below for no better reason than they’re fun to watch.

Hungry yet?

A study on the body-object, ephemeral sculptures of the human form. Instant bas reliefs recalling of the classic imagery. Via