Never heard of Weegee? if not, you have likely seen his work at some point over the years. He was prominent from the late ’30s and into the early ’50s, and is known primarily for his gritty New York City shots from lower east side crime scenes. Looking at his photos it’s easy to imagine that his style no doubt influenced film noir. A new post in the New York Times, entitled Weegee’s Other Naked City, looks into the  lesser-known Los Angeles photographs the  tabloid photojournalist Arthur Fellig  took.

In 1938, he was the only New York newspaper photographer with a permit to have a police-band shortwave radio. Using the police broadcasts, he often beat the police and firefighters to the scene’s thus getting some of the rawest urban imagery for which he is best known. He had a full darkroom setup in the trunk of his car, allowing him to turn around his photos in record time.

MOCA L.A. is currently showing approximately 200 of his photographs taken after 1947, the year that he moved from New York City to Los Angeles. The show is called Naked Hollywood, and is on display until the end of February, 2012.

There is a brand new book collecting many of these photos called Naked Hollywood: Weegee in Los Angeles and is available from Amazon at a good discount.

Check out “Weegee’s World” at: http://museum.icp.org/museum/collections/special/weegee/

1968 NY Times article re: Weegee’s death in 1968: http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/73758206

Slowly finding its way around the web is some of the most stunning and incredible time-lapse photography you’ve ever seen, taken by one remarkable Dustin Farrell. Every frame of this video is a raw still taken with a Canon 5D2 DSLR and processed to create the breath-taking landscapes you see here. The quality of these videos is jaw-dropping. Full-screen them on your computer and you’ll see what I mean. WOW:

I recently discovered a Flickr pool entitled Looking into the Past, devoted to combining old B&W photos of locations and buildings from the past that then get dropped into the same location in the present day. This project was apparently inspired by one Jason Powell whose initial idea was to pay homage to another Flickr collection, Michael Hughes’ Souvenirs project. This has become now become something of a global phenomenon with over 50 photographers around the world contributing to the project. Below is a small selection of a few that I thought were particularly inspiring.

There are a few collections that curate a subset from the entire Flickr pool making it easier to see a quick “greatest hits” selection:

• Paulo Canabarro
• Wired UK
• Ed Rabbit

I barely even know what to say about this. My dear friend Sharon posted it to my Facebook in response to my Wayne Coyne architecture post and I was both humbled and blown away. This is a mosaic of 84 total photos combined to comprise this final majestic final image. This tree is over 1,500 years old, and is 300-feet tall. I continue to be floored by the power and grandeur of this photo, and have little doubt that it will be the longest photo to ever post on this blog. Stunning. Can you find all six people?

There are more photos, a video on the making of this photograph, and an interactive time-line tracing the history of the tree rings and what was going on historically in the world at various points on National Geographic. Their Explorer series will have an episode, Climbing Redwood Giants which will premiere September 29 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on the National Geographic Channel.