An estimated 450,000 unsold copies of Time’s special April 22 Earth Day issue were trucked Monday from the magazine’s New Jersey distribution center to the Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island.
The discarded copies of the issue–which features articles about conservation, biodiversity, and recycling, as well as guest editorials by President Clinton and Leonardo DiCaprio–are expected to decompose slowly over the next 175 years.
Check it out here.
Yesterday I took a trip to the Deutshes Technikmuseum Berlin, an oddity of a place containing all manner of weird and wonderful German technology, from a yard full of locomotives to an exhibition on cutlery and plates from railway dining cars. Unlike many science museums, the DTB doesn’t have a whole lot of interactive exhibits — just a few push buttons here and there — but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t full of screaming kids on a Sunday.
What it does have, though, is an amazing collection of historical German camera gear. The exhibit is full of retro gadgets, as you’ll see below, but the most interesting to me were the bisected lenses and cameras, the insides of which show the precision of a CAD drawing. Read on to see sawn-off gadgets, the origin of digital cameras and a secret doorway just for horses.
Check it out here.
Nikon has filled in the gap between its midrange and pro digital SLRs. The D700, announced today and slated to ship in late July 2008, looks like a D300, acts like a D3 and promises to be as big a hit as each of them. Nikon has taken the full-frame 12.05 million image pixel CMOS sensor from the D3, placed it inside a body that is similar to the D300, weaved in capabilities from both and put a U.S. price tag of US$2999.95 on the result.
Check it out here.
Completing Nikon’s announcements today are two perspective control lenses, the PC-E Micro Nikkor 45mm f2.8D ED and PC-E Micro Nikkor 85mm f2.8D ED, which Nikon had indicated were in development back in January 2008.
Check it out here.
We’ve heard the names of the new Magnum Photos members who were elected at the cooperative’s meeting in Paris last week:
Jonas Bendiksen, Antoine D’Agata and Alec Soth have been elected full members.
Olivia Arthur and Peter Van Agtmael are new Magnum nominees.
Check it out here.
Eric Bouvet covered the Second Chechen War from October to December of 1999, and returned in February 2000. Bouvet traveled with three Russian officers during his second visit to the region and witnessed up-close the destruction and decay of a country ravaged by war. In Grozny, Chechnya’s capital city, buildings were all but leveled, tens of thousands were dead, and radioactive material polluted the area in the wake of storage facility bombings. “Nothing remained,” Bouvet recounted, “just a huge, imposing void.” When he returned in March 2008, Bouvet found Grozny as a city in the process of rebirth. Civilians, totaling only about 5,000 in number, were carrying on with daily life and were starting the task of rebuilding a once magnificent city. As he revisited places he had photographed in his earlier trips to the region, Bouvet not only documented the modernization of a city, but the will and determination of a people rising from the ashes of war.
Check it out here.
Whoever beat Trent Keegan to death probably wanted his computer. But why would robbers leave money in his pockets?
Questions like this trouble the friends and family of Keegan, 33, a New Zealand photojournalist who was murdered while working in Nairobi, Kenya last month.
Check it out here.
For today, Amazon is selling the digital version of the Ramones’ classic Rocket to Russia for just $1.99.
Check it out here.
A baby boy had both legs broken by supporters of President Robert Mugabe to punish his father for being an opposition councillor in Zimbabwe.
Blessing Mabhena, aged 11 months, was seized from a bed and flung down with force as his mother, Agnes, hid from the thugs, convinced that they were about to murder her.
She heard one of them say, “Let’s kill the baby”, before Blessing was hurled on to a bare concrete floor.
Check it out here.
Here’s a site (Andreas Wolkerstorfer :: cameras) where the photographer runs film through all types of cameras so you can see what kind of pictures they take and although the general theme seems to be vignette with the older cameras, I still enjoy seeing images that aren’t perfect.
Check it out here.
This group of pictures from Saturday’s New York Times showed Zimbabweans on their election day where they were forced to vote for the only candidate, President Robert Mugabe, for fear of punishment unless they could produce a finger colored by red ink as evidence they had cast their ballot.
According to the newspaper, the subjects agreed to be photographed and interviewed on the condition that their faces not be fully visible while the pictures ran uncredited for fear of reprisal against the photographer.
Check it out here.
If we don’t take action now, my daughters Kimmy and Jenna may not be able to blow-dry their hair for 45 minutes to an hour each morning, nor may my future sons-in-law cut their grass atop enormous, diesel-powered riding mowers. In fact, they may not even have lawns—at least not the lush, verdant kind that requires constant watering and pesticide treatment. It’s conceivable that one day my five children’s spacious yards may be entirely composed of synthetic Astroturf, or—God forbid—those tacky wood chips my sister in Arizona uses.
Check it out here.
The photograph was a stunner. Displayed across four columns at the top of Page One of Thursdays New York Times, the image showed a baby boy with casts on both legs, the apparent victim of the violence marking the presidential election in Zimbabwe.
In these times of mass video delivery and saturation of visual messages, this still image offered cause to pause. It demanded attention, insisting that readers and viewers not look away.
Check it out here.
I had an opportunity to spend a week working with the new Phase One 645 camera and a P45+ back on a shoot in Newfoundland. The camera I used was the first off the assembly line with final production firmware, and was provided for testing by Kevin Raber, Phase One’s Marketing VP for North America.
Check it out here.
Look At Me is an online archive of found photographs that attempts to preserve a legion forgotten photographic moments.
Check it out here.
Photos by Sol Neelman
EUGENE, ORE. — Day 2 from the U.S. Olympic Track & Field Trials.
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Here’s what I saw while sitting on my ass all day.
Check it out here.
This is a piece on the atmosphere of the lower downtown Denver club scene following a fatal shooting last weekend
Check it out here.
Evil Dead: The Musical last Thursday proved the show has legs. And fangs. And lots of blood left. After 300 shows and 140 gallons of fake blood, the Toronto production is still going strong, building a loyal cult following.
Check it out here.
Watch the London community support officers (they’re not real cops, but deputied volunteers who fancy themselves real ones) as they confront a videographer who has the temerity to take footage of a public street.
Check it out here.
Julie Blackmon’s new book “Domestic Vacations” is filled with conceptual images taken from her everyday life as a mother of three.
Check it out here.