In celebration of the release of his latest book ‘GRUNGE‘ Michael Lavine is this weeks WTJ? sponsor. Michael took the pics and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore provides the text. Grunge is not only a collection of portraits of musicians synonymous with the 80’s punk scene and grunge explosion in Seattle but also documents the counter culture of the time. Michael had many personal relationships with many of the artists which lead to unparalleled access.
Link: Grunge
Mark Klett and Bryon Wolfe have been collaborating on a series, Charting the Canyon, since 2007. The photographers have been re-photographing a variety of iconic views of the Grand Canyon and using digital technology to present old images in new contexts. The old images, which include paintings and drawings as well as photographs, are superimposed on new photographs—and vice versa—with provocative results.
Krishnan Vasudevan is a multimedia intern at The New York Times. Vasudevan, a third semester graduate journalism student at New York University, will graduate in May 2010.
Link: The Visual Student » Intern Perspective: The New York Times
We parked our car and I positioned myself behind several protesters as Claudia asked two men to allow me to balance my camera on their shoulders, in order to make a long exposure without flash, of the lineup of Stasi and their dogs that were biting protesters. After making many images, I was suddenly swept off my feet by several undercover police officers. I was sure that I would lose this important film as I was taken to a paddy wagon and asked to surrender my film and cameras.
Link to story: 20th Anniversary: The Fall of the Iron Curtain – The Digital Journalist
Link to photo gallery: Digital Journalist Weblog » Peter Turnley – 20th Anniversary: The Fall of the Iron Curtain
There is way too much information — the number of tweets a day rose to 26 million a day in October from 2.4 million in January.
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/business/09link.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
Simply put, there is way too much information on Twitter — lately, it defies navigation. In January, there were 2.4 million tweets a day, according to Alessio Signorini, a researcher at the University of Iowa. By October, he reports, there were 26 million tweets a day.
The dpBestflow.org site will be going live on November 11. Everyone on the project team is excited and proud to bring this important resource to completion. We have high hopes that the information in dpBestflow will make your workflow easier and more efficient, lead to better cooperation within the larger graphic arts community, as well as, help the Library of Congress achieve its goal of preserving our digital cultural heritage far into the future.
Link to site: dpBestFlow
Link to announcement: Introducting dpBestflow at Strictly Business
I just made my first major trip to NYC, from Portland, OR, to show my portfolio around for a while. Alot of people were very curious to learn how the whole operation works, so I decided to write about the process on my flight back to the West coast last night.
Richard B. Stolley is one of the preeminent names in American journalism. Over his 56-year career at Time Inc., Stolley spent 19 years at the weekly Life, capturing the events and people of our time, and placing them in perspective for our history. “Life,” he once said, “wasn’t simply about taking great pictures that knocked your socks off, but taking pictures of human contrast and emotion. We saw violence beyond human comprehension and outstanding incidents of human compassion, and we recorded it all for the readers with such skill that pictures we’ve seen a hundred times still evoke exactly the same emotions as they did when they were first published.”
Vewd delivers OTT and hybrid TV solutions on nearly 40 million connected devices each year, with more than 300 million Vewd-enabled devices shipped to date.
via Vewd: http://vewd.org/index.php/photo/essay/brian_l_frank/
This photographic essay documents the violence due to the drug war in Mexico in 2008. The story, was completed over a period of 6 months, mostly in the notorious barrios of Tepito and Nezahualcoytl in Mexico City. However, in October, I also visited Juarez where, with the help of local journalists was able to document just a fraction of the rampant violence that has turned the border town into a war zone.
Staff photographers are getting laid off. Freelancers are seeing less work. The Nikon D3x, the Canon 1DMk4 and Leica M9 are beginning to look a little pricey. Thus, this month’s column is on the relatively cheap – oops – economical stuff.
Importantly, though, these fine art photographers also have a mission and a sense of purpose based on craft, ingenuity and often a desire to experiment. Their work and the techniques they use to achieve their goals are often different from photojournalists’. I saw photos reproduced in traditional silver prints, chromogenic prints, large-scale inkjet prints, electron microscopy, gum bichromate-cyanotype prints.
What makes the M9 an important development beyond providing long-term Leica stalwarts with a dream come true, is its size. It is no small feat of engineering to bring forth a full 35mm-frame digital camera in such a compact camera. I was struck by this image in a Leica training document comparing the M9 footprint to those of DSLRs.
In the end, one wonders how it’s possible to even put out a magazine anymore. When I think of what we used to do, the budgets we had – and they never felt extravagant at the time – were essentially an investment in excellence.
The horse has escaped the barn, but almost all the discussions over the years as newspapers began their downward slide failed to acknowledge, or even seemed to grasp in some cases, that “newspapers” are, in essence, really TWO businesses – the “front half” and the “back half.” The “front half” is the news operation, with reporters and photographers leaving the building to report and editors in the office who package that news, and the business office where ads and subscriptions are sold. The “back half” involves trade union workers – pressmen and such – who take the news operation’s pictures and ads into a production facility not that far removed from the 19th-century “hot-type” era of linotype machines and newsprint rolls weighing a ton or more each, printing inks and giant presses, where they manufacture the actual “product” that gets trucked away by union drivers (some making six-figure salaries) to distribution points.
Link: All the News That Fits the Horse-Drawn Cart – The Digital Journalist
For those who’ve never really understood the mystique and allure surrounding Leica’s retro-styled cameras (and their stratospheric price tags), here’s a galler…
via Engadget: http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/08/leica-x1-photo-gallery-proves-that-big-shots-do-come-in-little-p/
For those who’ve never really understood the mystique and allure surrounding Leica’s retro-styled cameras (and their stratospheric price tags), here’s a gallery of shots that might just lend a little insight into the fixation.
My strategy had two components in an attempt to create an image that had some sort of structure. The first was to explore and photograph every single inch of this place, from the top of the Ferris wheel to the bottom of the water slide. The second was to get a bit of height that would allow the viewer to look at this image without losing their bearings.
I was sweating out a prep football practice here in Florida when ESPN the Mag called with a cool last minute assignment. Always fun to see their name on the caller I.D. I was to jet off to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, for the weekend to cover the University of Alabama Crimson Tide take on their bitter rivals – the University of Tennessee Volunteers. It got even better. I didn’t need to cover every-down, game action – just wander the stadium making pictures of what a true megafootball college program is all about.
