Author: Trent

  • 4,000 U.S. Combat Deaths, and Just a Handful of Images – NYTimes.com

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    If the conflict in Vietnam was notable for open access given to journalists — too much, many critics said, as the war played out nightly in bloody newscasts — the Iraq war may mark an opposite extreme: after five years and more than 4,000 American combat deaths, searches and interviews turned up fewer than a half-dozen graphic photographs of dead American soldiers.

    It is a complex issue, with competing claims often difficult to weigh in an age of instant communication around the globe via the Internet, in which such images can add to the immediate grief of families and the anger of comrades still in the field.

    Check it out here.

  • Colin Finlay interview on liveBooks – MediaStorm: Blog

    liveBooks has an interesting series of interviews called Photographers in Focus on their site. The photographers chosen span a wide range of photography- from fashion to cars to journalism.  The most recent is an interview with renowned photojournalist Colin Finlay.

    Check it out here.

  • Professional photography websites from A Photo Folio. Portfolio websites designed for commercial and editorial photographers.

    From A Photo Editor Blog:

    I’m happy to announce the launch of my new website design company for photographers:

    APhotoFolio.com

    Check it out here.

  • BBtv: Aquabats! Supershow! sneak preview (animation, music) – Boing Boing

    The excerpt we are world-premiering on BBtv today is an animated portion of the show’s first episode, and includes angry mushrooms, vengeful unicorn princesses, and a subterranean paradise with lakes of hot pink lava. The AQUABATS! SUPERSHOW! also includes live performance and real-world hijinks. We think it’s pretty awesome.

    Check it out here.

  • Brad And Angelina's Guards Fight With Paparazzi On Chateau Grounds

    Freelance photographer Luc Goursolas said he broke a guard’s finger and bit another until he bled, and that they hit him with a walkie-talkie, punched and kicked him, leaving a head wound that required three stitches.

    “I was pouring blood. I threw myself at them, put blood all over them, and told them that I had HIV so they would stop hitting me,” Goursolas told The Associated Press on Friday.

    Check it out here.

  • Russia wages war on emo kids | Music | guardian.co.uk

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    First came the Chechens, then ethnic Georgians, and then maverick journalists. But now Russia’s cracking down on a different social group, a demographic they see threatening the very future of their country. These rebels have pierced lips, ridiculous haircuts and too much eyeshadow. They’re barbarians in bowler hats, leather jackets and torn-up tights. Yes, emo has come to Russia – and its leaders want no part of it.

    Last month the State Duma held a hearing on “Government Strategy in the Sphere of Spiritual and Ethical Education”, a piece of legislation aimed at curbing “dangerous teen trends”. There, without a clue in the world, social conservatives lumped “emos” together with skinheads, pushing for heavy regulation of emo websites and the banning of emo and goth fashion from schools and government buildings.

    Check it out here.

  • Is Afghanistan a Narco-State? – NYTimes.com

    Over the next two years I would discover how deeply the Afghan government was involved in protecting the opium trade — by shielding it from American-designed policies. While it is true that Karzai’s Taliban enemies finance themselves from the drug trade, so do many of his supporters. At the same time, some of our NATO allies have resisted the anti-opium offensive, as has our own Defense Department, which tends to see counternarcotics as other people’s business to be settled once the war-fighting is over. The trouble is that the fighting is unlikely to end as long as the Taliban can finance themselves through drugs — and as long as the Kabul government is dependent on opium to sustain its own hold on power.

    Check it out here.

  • State of the Art: Does This Photographer Look Dangerous?

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    In the can’t-make-this-up department, we came across a news story about Betty Robinson (left), an 82-year-old amateur photographer who was officially flagged down for shooting pictures of a British wading pool because she might be a pedophile. The pool was empty.

    Check it out here.

  • FLDS View: Who am I?

    Who am I? A Victim?

    I had an adorable wife, gorgeous little children, brothers, sisters, parents, load’s of extended family, almost innumerable amount of friends, a cozy home, and a job I loved. But in a matter of ten seconds, I lost them all. All of them. Everything. With the calmest and quietest of voices, a great man said to me “You have no Priesthood authority”; which I already knew. To describe the experience closest is to calmly walk up, have a cannon pointed at your chest, and fired. My ability to walk, and speak, stayed with me long enough to load some of my belongings in my little van, and drive away, barely.

    Am I a victim? Of a crime? Only if you call justice a crime; only if you call all choices that are painful, bad ones. I don’t, because I deserved it. I earned it. The loss that I feel, the absolute death of soul that I felt, the pain that hurt me the very most, is the loss of the confidence of my best friend, Warren Steed Jeffs.

    Check it out here.

  • International Crisis Group – James Lyon in Tribunal Update (IWPR)

    What does a war crimes indictee on the lam do in his spare time? Well if your name is Radovan Karadzic, you grow your beard, wear your hair bundled in a ponytail atop your head and become a doctor specialising in alternative medicine. And along the way he found – according to Serbian media – the love of his life, a mysterious dark-haired woman.

    That’s quite a life journey for one man, to go from destroyer of a country, cities and entire ethnic groups, to bio-energy healer and lover. Evidently, Karadzic wasn’t bad at his new job – testimonials from some former patients claim he healed them.

    Under the name of Dr Dragan David Dabic, Karadzic worked at a private clinic in Belgrade’s city centre. He openly lectured throughout Serbia – in Novi Sad, Smederevo, Kikinda and Sombor – and contributed to the magazine Zdrav Zivot (Healthy Life).

    Check it out here.

  • Red Sweater Blog – MarsEdit 2.2

    I’m pleased to announce the immediate availability of MarsEdit 2.2, a free update to MarsEdit 2.

    Check it out here.

  • Nikon D700 What and Why

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    The Nikon D700, announced on 1 July, ’08, and scheduled to ship by the end of this month, is a bit of a shocker, and indicative of a new, much more aggressive Nikon than we have been accustomed to during this digital decade.

    In brief, it is a full-frame (FX) camera using the same 12 MP sensor and image processing electronics as in the Nikon D3, except in a body closer in size and weight to the Nikon D300. Remarkably, the D700 has as much as 95% of the goodness of the D3 in a camera that costs some $2,000 less. If that isn’t aggressive, I don’t know what is.

    Check it out here.

  • Why your images are worthless – Nikonian Martin Joergensen

    Trying to make money from your photography is a very long shot. The market is so saturated with quality pictures with extremely high availability and extremely low prices that getting a foothold is close to impossible.  

    Check it out here.

  • Police warn UK man that taking photos of "hooded teenagers" is illegal – Boing Boing

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    The Daily Mail reports that a 64-year-old London man who took photos of teenagers raising a ruckus in front of his apartment could be charged with assault.

    Check it out here.

  • Land of the Lost Remake Photo – MoviesOnline

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    From Universal we have your first look at a new Comic Con photo for the remake of Land of the Lost. Will Ferrell is going to star in the remake of Land of the Lost, according to Amazon.com  Land of the Lost was a staple of Saturday morning television in the 1970s, LAND OF THE LOST has subsequently achieved cult status, largely due to a strong word-of-mouth campaign.

    Check it out here.

  • The Young Women of the F.L.D.S. – NYTimes.com

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    Photos by Stephanie Sinclair

    On a humid Wednesday in late June, as she waited to be summoned by a grand jury, 16-year-old Teresa Jeffs hitched up her navy blue prairie dress and hoisted herself into the crooked arms of a live oak tree that sits in front of the Schleicher County Courthouse in Eldorado, Tex. For a few minutes, she was not — as has been speculated about many of the young women of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or F.L.D.S. — a possible child bride, or a sexual-abuse victim, or a member of an out-of-touch, polygamous religious sect. She was just a kid in a tree, perched serenely above the heads of all the lawyers, reporters and sheriff’s deputies — a moon-faced girl with an auburn coxcomb of hair and a mischievous grin.

    Check it out here.

  • Africa as you've never seen it

    Pieter Hugo is a young South African photographer causing a stir and winning prizes for his unsettling images of the continent’s marginal people

    Check it out here.

  • Bosnian Serb Captured; Sought for War Crimes – washingtonpost.com

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    Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader indicted by a U.N. war crimes tribunal on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity during the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia, was captured in Serbia on Monday. The arrest ends a decade-long manhunt that had repeatedly frustrated his Western pursuers and left festering one of the most murderous chapters in Europe’s post-World War II history.

    Check it out here.

  • Newspapers: Why Newspapers Shouldn't Allow Comments

    Comments are thought to be an added value to a newspaper’s site—providing another reason to read. You come for the article, and stay for the interesting discussion. The only problem is, there is no interesting discussion. Almost never. Not even from the mythical supersmart New York Times readers.

    Check it out here.

  • Panasonic focuses on advanced shooters with Lumix LX3

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    In a much-anticipated move, Panasonic rolled out the latest version of its flagship advanced compact this morning, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3.

    Replacing the LX2, the latest 10-megapixel comes packing some serious hardware, including a new wide-angle, a fast-aperture Leica lens and a completely redesigned sensor.

    Check it out here.