whats the jackanory ?: London calling: “I did a shoot for Sunday Times on the 3rd Jan. The wold champion female track cyclist. A Brit. Big hopes for the Olympics. Great ! A job immediately after the new year – it gets your confidence up and your new year is out the traps. I got £250 fee. One of my very first commissions ever was for The Sunday Times in 1993. My fee was £250. In 15 years they have held down their costs 100%. What an amazing achievement. The chief picture editor of the whole newspaper – a man I’ve never even heard of or met – so the boss over and above the PE’s in all the sections/magazines – was so impressed with my picture that he got his p.a. to call me and ‘ask’ me if it was alright if they could hold on to the pictures for a little bit longer as they were so good he felt that they were very syndicatable. How long for? Not long, just a while, well until after the Olympics. Is there going to be a split in it for me? We’d give you 10%. The institutional disrespect for photographers and photography cannot be over emphasised.”
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Rob Walker – Consumed – Marketing and Advertising – Yo Gabba Gabba – Nickelodeon – Television – New York Times: “With a host in a crazy orange outfit called DJ Lance Rock (‘equal parts Jimmie Walker and Bootsy Collins’ as OC Weekly put it), ‘Yo Gabba Gabba!’ stars five cute creatures and features dancing children, animation and upbeat messages in a somewhat campy and surreal setting. If the title reminds you of, say, ‘Yo! MTV Raps’ and the Ramones’ chant ‘Gabba gabba hey,’ that may not be a coincidence. The show was created by Christian Jacobs and Scott Schultz; each has young children and each is in his mid-30s. ‘They were thinking, What would inspire our generation of dads?’ Rivkin says. The answer included recurring segments in which rapper Biz Markie offers kids a human-beatbox rhythm of the day and Mark Mothersbaugh, a founder of Devo who also composed the music for ‘Rugrats,’ gives drawing lessons. Musical guests have included current indie rock heroes like the Shins and Cornelius.”
in Film & TV
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redlights and redeyes: portland or bust: “Portland has always been one of those cities which I knew I’d love the second I set foot in. I got an invite from Sol Neelman to join him for a little shindig with some of The Oregonian crew and a few who made the trip from the newspaper-lands. While I didn’t get to wander as much as I wanted to for photos, this trip was more about seeing old friends and meeting some new ones. One of those friends, the infamous Scott Strazzante, got hitched while I was there. It was a disgustingly cute ceremony in a small courthouse in Hillsboro, Oregon, witnessed by only a few photographers who only saw the ceremony through a darkened rectangle in the viewfinder with vows recited through a chorus of shutters.”
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Navel gazing – Reuters Photographers: “At various times some of our photographers and picture editors have talked about how the eyes, hands and even feet can be used as the subject of pictures. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I give you the ‘middle way’ – the human belly as a means of self expression.”
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China: “citizen journalist” beaten to death – Boing Boing: “Wei Wenhua was beaten to death after he snapped photos of a confrontation on the street between village residents and authorities. His death has sparked controversy in Chinese media, and the blogosphere:
Wei Wenhua was a model communist and is now a bloggers’ hero — a ‘citizen journalist’ turned martyr. The construction company manager was driving his car when he witnessed an ugly scene: a team of about 50 city inspectors beating villagers who tried to block trucks from unloading trash near their homes.
Wei took out his cell phone and began taking pictures. The city inspectors saw Wei and then attacked him in a beating that lasted five minutes. By the time it was over, the 41-year-old Wei was slumped unconscious. He was rushed to the hospital but was dead on arrival.”
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SUPERFICIALsnapshots: ye olde’ yashica: “I have been scanning some photos from the past..1999-2001. mmmm..The days of trying to focus my Yashica A ( I still can’t remember who I loaned it to.)”
in Photography
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larrylivermore.com: At Gilman Street: “The MTX song pokes gentle fun at the Gilman purists, of whom I was undeniably one. ‘And if you’ve got nothing better to do, there’s a meeting every Sunday afternoon, you can talk about skinheads at the show, you can vote on whether you’re gonna vote, and you can make a speech, you can rant, you can rave, you can preach…’ Anyone who ever sat through one of those seemingly interminable meetings – sometimes they’d have to postpone the show for an hour because we were still voting on whether we were gonna vote’ – will recognize that picture.
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The Year in Pictures: Stormy Weather: “Extreme weather is a category of photography we don’t think much about here in New York City, but it has its fans, publishers, and practitioners just like any other genre. Top amongst these is probably Jim Reed, a 56 year old former writer and film-maker who moved from Los Angeles to Wichita, Kansas 16 years ago in order to be
near the strongest hurricanes and tornadoes in the country.”
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Gang Leader for a Day – Sudhir Venkatesh – Book Review – New York Times: “On a hot summer day in 1989, Sudhir Venkatesh, a callow sociology student with a ponytail and tie-dyed T-shirt, walked into one of Chicago’s toughest housing projects, clipboard in hand, ready to ask residents about their lives. Sample question: ‘How does it feel to be black and poor?’ Suggested answers: ‘very bad, somewhat bad, neither bad nor good, somewhat good, very good.’ Actual answers: unprintable.
Mr. Venkatesh got rid of the clipboard and the questionnaire, but not his fascination with life in the Chicago housing projects. He stuck around, befriended a gang leader and for the next decade lived a curious insider-outsider life at the notorious Robert Taylor Homes on the city’s South Side, an eye-opening experience he documents in the high-octane ‘Gang Leader for a Day.’
In a bit of bravado Mr. Venkatesh, who now teaches at Columbia, styles himself a ‘rogue sociologist.’ Dissatisfied with opinion surveys and statistical analysis as ways to describe the life of the poor, he reverted to the methods of his predecessors at the University of Chicago, who took an ethnographic approach to the study of hobos, hustlers and politicians. Much like a journalist, he observed, asked questions and drew conclusions as he accumulated raw data.”
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CLAM$ CA$INO: I’m loaded, don’t know where to point this thing.: “from pr to bk Clam$ CaSino brings the fishiest flicks
from the first half of the first month of oh eight. ah ite?”
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dustin franz photography: leisa.: “leisa came to visit me this week. it was very exciting and i wish she didnt have to leave.”
(Via A Visual Journey.)
in Photography
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The Passion of Steve Jobs – Bits – Technology – New York Times Blog: “Even more than when he’s performing on stage, Steven P. Jobs’s passion for personal computing comes through when he talks about the years he spent cajoling his designers to build what he presented today as the world’s ‘thinnest’ computer.
Along with David Pogue, the Times technology columnist, I spent a half-hour with Mr. Jobs after he introduced the MacBook Air this morning at the Macworld Expo. And as is frequently the case with Apple products, he pronounced the three-pound aluminum-clad portable to be one of the best things his company has ever designed.
‘I’m going to be the first one in line to buy one of these,’ he said. ‘I’ve been lusting after this.’”
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Smithsonian Magazine | Arts & Culture | Danger Zones: “David Maisel doesn’t consider himself an environmental activist. Yet his large-scale aerial photographs of strip mines, a bone-dry lake bed and man-made evaporation ponds can be viewed as indictments of our indifference to the planet that sustains us. Once you figure them out, that is. The photographs call to mind everything from blood vessels to stained-glass windows. ‘They might be mirrors into who we are as a society and who we are in our psyches,’ Maisel says.”
(Via Boing Boing.)
in Photography
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Pacifica Tribune Online – Through the lens of the camera: “‘First time I went out, I took pictures at the beach and came back with really good pictures. I hit it off from the very first time. I never pictured myself as a photographer until I got my camera and people told me I was good. It went from there,’ he said,
Now Hudson, 15, a sophomore at Terra Nova High School, plans to pursue a career in photojournalism.”
in Photography
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State of the Art: Marilyn Wars: The Empire Strikes Back: “The law firm of Loeb & Loeb didn’t waste any time in striking back at the heirs of photographers who once photographed Marilyn Monroe.
Loeb & Loeb represents the company called Marilyn Monroe LLC, which over the past couple of decades has claimed ownership of the late actress’s ‘rights of publicity.’”
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Apple Unveils Movie Rentals and Thin Notebook – New York Times: “Mr. Jobs also announced a new version of Apple TV that does not require a cable for users to play movies from iTunes directly on the television.”
in Film & TV
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RRD Photo: Photoshop “Revisit and Retouch” Challenge #1: “Ryan Goodman took this photograph a few years ago in Grand Cayman and produced a nice image (after some editing) which you can see on his site.
Interested to see what other folks would do to this in the digital darkroom, he’s inviting those interested to download the RAW files and give it their best shot.
In this post…
In this post I’ll give a detailed look at my steps for completing this retouch and at the end I’ll link to some books and podcasts that will help teach you these techniques in more detail.”
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House kicks up an investigation : Updates : The Rocky Mountain News: “By resolution, the House said: ‘The special committee will investigate the circumstances surrounding the incident that occurred between Rep. Douglas Bruce and a member of the press on the floor of the House of Representatives on Jan. 14, 2008.’
House Republicans on Monday had condemned Bruce for kicking the photographer and promised a tight rein on their new colleague to ensure such an outburst ‘never happens again.’”
