For the past two weeks, Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi has been beaming down photographs of Earth from the International Space Station using his TwitPic account. The photographs, taken with a Nikon D2Xs, show various cities and landmarks around the world as the ISS flies roughly 200 miles overhead at an average of 17,227 mph.

Golden Gate Bridge, San Fransisco, CA. Beautiful shadow :-)

Flew over Port_Au_Prince of Haiti this afternoon. Our thoughts and prayers to Haiti people, from ISS.

Mount Fuji, Japan. 3,776m. The highest mountain in Japan.

Moscow, Russia. Star City is far back on the right upper corner. #spacetweet

KSC, Florida. Space Shuttle Endeavour STS-130 is ready to launch on Sunday!!!

For more of this amazing photography, check out his Twitter or Twitpic page.

(via PopPhoto Flash)

The Shorty Awards now have a prize dedicated to Twitter photography: The Shorty Award for Real-Time Photo of the Year. The winner of the award will be invited to the special awards ceremony on March 3rd, 2010 in New York City.

Candidate photographs are nominated through the website, and must be cameraphone photos shot in 2009 and distributed on Twitter through one of the popular social media channels (i.e. Twitpic, Flickr, etc…). The nomination phase ends on February 5th, 2010.

An obvious favorite to win is the following photograph by Janis Krums of US Airways Flight 1549’s successful ditch in the Hudson River on January 15, 2009:

Krums was on the ferry sent to pick up the passengers, and sent the tweeted the photo via Twitpic from his cameraphone. Here’s a screenshot:

What made the tweet and story particularly noteworthy was that the real-time nature of Twitter allowed the photograph to circulate widely before any mainstream news sources were able to obtain photographs. We’re guessing this is exactly the type of photo the new Shorty award would like to honor.

The ubiquity of cameraphones combined with real-time distribution offered by Twitter has changed the world of photography. When something happens in one part of the world, people can now see it all over the world almost instantly — if someone with a cameraphone and Twitter account is nearby.

Can you think of any other candidate photograph for the new award?

Twitter has rolled out its new Lists feature, and PetaPixel was among “limited number of users” that were given early access, so we decided to take advantage of that by starting some photography-related lists.

Here are the lists we’re currently curating:

• Best of Photography – The ultimate list of photography-related tweeters. If you’re interested at all in photography, you should follow this list.
• Best Photography Blogs – The twitter accounts of the best photography-related blogs on the web.
• Top Photobloggers – People who maintain some of the best photoblogs with the highest quality photographs.
• Top Photographers – The best professional photographers who often share their experience and advice.
• Best Photographs – If you need your daily dose of amazing, funny, interesting, informative, and/or inspirational photography, follow this list.
• Photography News – If you want to stay up to date with all the latest news regarding photography, this is the list for you.

We’re still adding tweeters to each of the lists, so if you have a suggestion for a notable account that’s currently missing from our lists, please leave a comment and let us know!