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Of course trade sources have been saying that Nikon will have a 24MP camera this year to follow up on their recently released D3 camera. Since Sony is almost certainly their fabricator (if not co-designer) this is all starting to make perfect sense.
Check it out here.
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“When I woke up after several hours, I felt a pain in my right side,” Saleem recalled, sitting on a metal cot in a city hospital ward. “The men said, ‘We have removed your kidney, and you better not breathe a word about it.’ My life broke into pieces when I heard that.”
Saleem was the latest in a long list of poor laborers who had come to Gurgaon to work and lost their kidneys as a result. Police say they were victims of a major organ-trafficking racket based in this city for nearly a decade.
The scam was discovered last week after police, acting on a tip from a middleman, raided the bungalow where Saleem had been held. They said they found a labyrinthine kidney bazaar run by a group of men posing as doctors. Five suspects were arrested.
Check it out here.
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I officially approved zine two today! The zine has 34 photos all shot with my lomo LC+A. Printed on 80-lb cover stock paper which really gives it a flip book feel. The photos I consider to be my travel snapshots. My dad said it well as he looked through the mocked up zine last week, “this isn’t your best work.” I explained that they are throw away photos. I haven’t sleeved or archived any of the film, I see them as sketches. I’ll put up a paypal button next week when the zines are here. They’ll be 22.50 this time. I can’t wait for you to see it!
Check it out here.
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Something is fishy over at Reuters. The news wire has been caught distributing what appear to be staged photographs of Gaza power outages. Check out the two photographs above, taken by Gaza-based Reuters photographer Mohammed Salem.
The captions for the pictures read “Palestinian lawmakers attend a parliament session in candlelight during a power cut in Gaza January 22, 2008.”
Except… look closely at the pictures. Is that sunlight steaming in through the windows? Yes. Yes it is. They’re holding a parliamentary session by candlelight during the daytime.
Check it out here.
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When does photographer/blogger John Harrington sleep? We are not sure. Sometime between last night (when he covered the State of the Union address) and this afternoon, he produced an extremely informative 12-minute video about how photographers cover the president’s annual applause-fest. (Take note of Dennis Brack’s spot-on prediction that the Obama-Clinton cold shoulder would be the most important photo of the night.)
Check it out here.
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Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris
29 January – 13 April 2008
Photography project on world power inspired by the history of classical painting. Each part refers to painting by its subject and format and tries to explore in a conceptual way the mechanisms of power and history.
Most things come in three. A trinity structure has occurred during many reigns, empires and organized religion. 1. The leaders or gods, 2. the army or avenging creatures and 3. the people or representatives.
Figurative painting or drawing was for a long time the source for historical reflection and reporting. Format, color, glorification, imposing frames, mise en scene were elements of persuasion to create an overwhelming feeling of history and testimony.
Now, television and printed media have taken over this concept. 30 images per second and millions of pictures per day determine and influence in a direct or indirect way the global opinion and give a thin notion of reality and opinion. World leaders like CNN are the perfect example.
By going back to the idea of one large image representing a situation I try to reintroduce the element of time in dealing with images of reality. The viewer, in the museum, is forced by the sheer size of the image to look at it in a way some people do with paintings. Standing still, sitting or even kneeling in front of an image is encouraged like in less abundant media times.
The world ‘order’ changed after the atomic ‘Trinity’ project of the US.
Check it out here.
So, the other day I cranked through 145 websites in about 3 hours for the consultation demo and then I had a conversation with a magazine art director friend about how we look at photographers websites in obviously different ways (design vs. photo) and I realized something: Design and layout has a powerful effect on me. Right off the bat, before I even look at the first picture, the design is working on my brain.
Check it out here.
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Richard Barnes has three interesting projects on his website. I absolutely love Murmur, which I originally came across on Mrs. Deane. It reminds me of Nicolai Howalt and Trine Søndergaard’s series Dying Birds, but I like how Barnes has captured the mysterious patterns that the birds make.
Check it out here.
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Nikon today has announced three new lenses: the PC-E Nikkor 24mm f/3.5D ED Tilt/Shift, AF-S Micro Nikkor 60mm f/2.8G ED and AF-S DX Nikkor 16-85mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR. In addition, the company has said that two additional PC (perspective control) lenses are in the works: a PC-E Micro Nikkor 45mm f/2.8D ED and a PC-E Micro Nikkor 85mm f/2.8D ED.
Check it out here.
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I flew up to the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead to do the last bit of filming for Picture This, a Channel 4 series about six young photographers competing for the chance to mount a solo exhibition (I was one of three judges). The winner was Elizabeth Gordon, a former alcoholic who made a set of photographs re-enacting her days as a drinker. They’re a good example of what photography can do well: she shows great vulnerability, and that’s very engaging. I chatted to her about hanging her show at the top of Baltic and then caught a train to London, where I crashed in my office in Clerkenwell (I’ve got a bed there).
Extensis has released updates to its Portfolio suite of photo cataloging and web publishing applications. Portfolio v8.5.1 and Portfolio Server v8.5.1 for Windows and Mac add support for the RAW files from the Canon EOS 40D, EOS-1Ds Mark III, Nikon D300, D3 and other models, plus improved import and use of XMP-format metadata. The Mac version also introduces full compatibility with Mac OS X 10.5 and later.
Check it out here.
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For most people the word gypsy evokes a romantic image of a nomadic lifestyle. Although the traditional gypsy way of life was common all over Europe several decades ago, their number has dwindled during the past century and now they are mostly found in remote areas of Romania. Due to environmental and economic circumstances as well as governmental pressure, their way of life is threatened and facing inevitable extinction. The end of socialism marked the beginning of Roma/Gypsy decline from relative well being to extreme poverty. Low skills, discrimination, and the collapse of many state-owned industrial and agricultural enterprises during the transition period have contributed to their mass unemployment, along with rising illiteracy rates and deteriorating health, infrastructure, and housing conditions.
Check it out here.
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Korengal Valley is among the deadliest pieces of terrain in the world for U.S forces. The six-mile long strategic passage is located in northeastern Afghanistan surrounded by treacherous mountain ridges, which are held desperately by the Taleban and al-Qaeda. Nearly one-fifth of all combat in Afghanistan occurs in this valley, and nearly three-quarters of all the bombs dropped by NATO planes target the surrounding area. The Valley is the first leg of a former mujahideen smuggling route that was used to bring in men and weapons from Pakistan during the 1980s
Check it out here.
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For years she has photographed the rich and famous but kept her own life strictly private. Now a new film opens the shutter on Annie Leibovitz’s drug addiction, love life and delayed motherhood. Andrew Johnson report
Why can’t you make it through the checkout line without flipping through page after page of pregnant celebs in Us magazine? Alison Jackson knows why. In her work, she photographs the people you think you recognize doing what you really want to see. And in the process, she’s questioning our shared desire to get personal with celebrity culture. Funny and sometimes shocking, Jackson’s work contains some graphic images. (Recorded July 2005 in Oxford, UK. Duration: 17:36.)
Check it out here.
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Every photographer is limited by certain constraints—the subject of a story, an art director’s vision, a client’s directives—so the images he produces are not truly his own. You might say, then, that his most genuine work, the work that best reveals the clarity of his eye, is that which he produces just for himself. In this spirit we approached longtime Texas Monthly contributor Dan Winters—a California native and Hill Country transplant whose portraits of marquee-name celebrities also appear in such publications as the New York Times Magazine, Esquire, and Rolling Stone—and gave him an assignment unlike the dozens of others he’s completed for us since his haunting photo of a Huntsville prisoner graced our cover in August 1991: We asked him to sift through a career’s worth of unpublished shots (last year he processed 250 rolls of film he’d accumulated over some twenty years) and select a few of his favorites. The ten assembled here, most of which Winters had not even printed until now, were all taken with a handheld camera, available light, and for no other reason than to capture the beauty of a particular moment. “Even when I’m doing a color assignment and it’s a big dog-and-pony show with a lot of lighting and a lot of crew members, I’ll just take people aside and do a little bit for myself,” he says. The results are as intimate as they are revealing. Jordan Breal
Check it out here. Via A Photo a Day.
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OK. It’s a massive call, but this intro for Lakai’s, Fully Flared skate video is f*cking awesome. The perfect blend of pyrotechnics, skate skills and photography. Respect.
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No, this dispute is not about high commerce. It is instead about principle. We believe it is within our absolute right to cover, publish and, yes, occasionally even sell, content that we create – particularly from highly public events involving tax-supported institutions and occurring at taxpayer-owned venues.
It is unfortunate that we are at loggerheads with the IHSA, which has already restricted our photo access to one major state championship event. It’s all related to this dispute. We have never previously viewed the organization as a foe. If anything, quite the opposite is true. Like the IHSA, we believe it’s in all of our best interests to draw attention to and celebrate youth achievement, whether it be on the basketball court, the football field, the concert hall or the scholastic bowl.
Check it out here.
