Cool Advert - Philips 'Wake Up The Town'

A cool advert here for Philips 'Wake Up The Town' experiment. At the end of October, they began an experiment where they took the Philips Wake-up Light to the northern most town on the planet to see what effects it would have on the residents there. In Longyearbyen, the sun doesn’t rise for 4 months, so if it can work for those living in perpetual darkness, it can work anywhere!

Philips worked with acclaimed director, Doug Pray on the project to produce a documentary following the experiment.

World's First 3d Advert - Stop Motion Origami

This is the world's first 3d TV advert. Origami sculptures tell a story of how innovative products develop starting with a blank sheet of paper. The latest advertising campaign of Toshiba Europe to promote the thin and light laptop Portégé R700 and the 3D-TV WL768 puts origami figures into the heart of the commercial.

Most big ideas start on a blank sheet of paper
Central to the spots that start with a blank sheet of paper is the origami work of Sipho Mabona, one of the best origami artists in Europe. Creating analogies, his marvellous paper figures – seemingly made alive by stop-motion technology - illustrate how one of Toshiba innovative devices evolves from a clean white piece of paper. At the end of the video the fascinating paper sculptures fold into a paper mock-up that finally unwraps to reveal the real product.

Leading innovations: world’s first 3D motion-stop commercial
The clips are captured with 3D technology without using any computer assisted animation. Within 16 days the paper artists folded many figures and sculptures that needed to be arranged for each single picture of the movies to create a smooth video experience. Folding and arrangement of the figures and sculptures needed between 30 and 60 minutes for each single picture. The commercials and a detailed ‘making-of’, that shows how the origami work was done can be found at www.leading-innovation.com.

Here's a cool video of the making of the stop motion origami video

Additional press materials and information
To download images please visit the Image Library at the Toshiba Press Lounge at http://eu.press.toshiba.eu. Videos related to the campaign can be found at http://www.leading-innovation.com or on our Youtube® channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/leadinginnovation.

Cool Pictures from above of London at night

These cool pictures of London skyline at night from a helicopter capture London's numerous landmarks with an almost ethereal quality. They are part of an amazing collection by Jason Hawkes which are showcased in his book London at Night

What Photography Equipment Was Used?
Jason shot these images with a camera attached to gyro-stabilized mounts from a Eurocopter AS355, hired out at around £1150 (GBP) per hour, using Nikon gear and either a 14-24mm or a 70-200mm lens. Even with that, the low light and heavy vibrations can make things difficult, Jason says "I often shoot tethered to my Apple MacBook Pro to check the sharpness of the images whilst I shoot."

Check out Jason Hawkes website to see more cool pictures from above.

Cool Pictures from above of New York at night

New York has one of the coolest skylines and most photographed on Earth as Jason Hawkes clearly demonstrates with these cool pictures. Cloaked in a blanket of darkness, New York's numerous landmarks take on an almost ethereal quality.  Jason Hawkes spent 15 weeks using state of the art technology to create these amazing photos for his new book, New York at Night.

Captured at night from around 1,000ft above the ground, these spectacular aerial images offer a striking portrait of one of the world's most vibrant cities, showing it as it has rarely been seen before. From the vantage point of a helicopter, familiar sights including the Statue of Liberty, Times Square and the Empire State Building appear to take on an almost abstract appearance. The collection of 130 images includes a host of instantly recognisable landmarks alongside some less familiar views of the city.

The stunning collection includes the world-famous Times Square, shot from 1,300ft, showing hundreds of party-goers far below enjoying an open-air music concert. Another mesmerising image shows a northward view of Madison Avenue in stunning detail - alive and packed with the glare of headlights. In his book, Hawkes describes the intense chill he felt while taking the pictures.

And he recalls one flight when he took a taxi driver up with him. He writes: 'Went flying last night in a Twin Star, with both doors off. By the time we landed I could not even feel my hands, never felt cold like it.

'I was chatting to my cab driver ( Eftakhar ) on the way down to the heliport, and asked if he wanted to come along for the ride. He had never been up in a helicopter before so jumped at the chance.

'I had plenty of cold weather gear to wear, as did the pilot, but Eftakhar was only wearing a jumper. Quite how he survived the flight I'm not sure. He said he enjoyed it and even gave me a free ride back to my hotel.'

'At college all I wanted to be was a studio photographer,' he said, 'but after a flight in a microlight, I realised that, with a little attitude, you see all these amazing patterns - even mundane things look intriguing.

'So I started using helicopters to take my pictures, I try to do as little planning as I can - I have in mind specific sights, but if there is enough budget left over from a book I'm doing, I'll fly a little further afield.'

Check out Jason Hawkes website to see more of his cool photography or buy his book 'New York at Night' here: