Author: Trent

  • Wandering Light: Dong Truong Son

    natcem1 1.jpg

    We drove for several hours today until we reached the Laos border. It was incredible to see a small checkpoint protecting the two borders. The people I was with told me there are many secret police in all of the border towns that report any suspicious activity along the border, such as illegal crossings.

    Check it out here.

  • Shutterbug: Kodak's Revised T-Max 400

    0508kodak01.jpg

    Existing devotees of Kodak’s T-Max 400 (TMY) will therefore have mixed feelings, but those who have not tried TMY, or have not tried it for years, are in for a pleasant surprise with 400-2TMY. Once they have adjusted to 400-2TMY (hereafter TMY2), existing TMY users should also be well pleased.

    In a nutshell, it seems to do all that Kodak claims, and more. It is both sharper and finer grained, as claimed, and in our tests, it delivered better tonality; was easier to print; and was less critical in both exposure and development. The only claim we could not easily test was that it is now the sharpest ISO 400 film in the world. We don’t have a microdensitometer, and besides, comparing TMY, TMY2, and Tri-X was time-consuming and expensive enough, without adding other ISO 400 films to the mix.

    Check it out here.

  • Camera Hacks: Turn Your Point-and-Shoot into a Super-Camera

    If you’re using a consumer grade point-and-shoot Canon digital camera, you’ve got hardware in hand that can support advanced features way beyond what shipped in the box. With the help of a free, open source project called CHDK, you can get features like RAW shooting mode, live RGB histograms, motion-detection, time-lapse, and even games on your existing camera. Let’s transform your point-and-shoot into a super camera just by adding a little special sauce to its firmware.

    Check it out here.

  • David Honl: USA Today does it Strobist style

    Strobist guru David Hobby was recently featured in a USA Today article, where he was photographed by USA Today staffer H. Darr Beiser (using SB800’s with 2 of my HonlPhoto 5″ Speed Snoots). There are also 2 very informative videos to go along with it, so if you have any interest in small lighting on-the-fly, start by watching David in action in the following 2 USA Today videos.

    Check it out here.

  • Mexican Drug Cartels Making Audacious Pitch for Recruits

    PH2008050602771.jpg

    The job offer was tempting.

    It was printed on a 16-foot-wide banner and strung above one of the busiest roads here, calling out to any “soldier or ex-soldier.”

    “We’re offering you a good salary, food and medical care for your families,” it said in block letters.

    But there was a catch: The employer was Los Zetas, a notorious Gulf cartel hit squad formed by elite Mexican army deserters. The group even included a phone number for job seekers that linked to a voice mailbox.

    Check it out here.

  • The World of Fashion: Pixel Perfect: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker

    080512_r17374_p465 1.jpg

    Pascal Dangin is the premier retoucher of fashion photographs. Art directors and admen call him when they want someone who looks less than great to look great, someone who looks great to look amazing, or someone who looks amazing already—whether by dint of DNA or M·A·C—to look, as is the mode, superhuman. (Christy Turlington, for the record, needs the least help.) In the March issue of Vogue Dangin tweaked a hundred and forty-four images: a hundred and seven advertisements (Estée Lauder, Gucci, Dior, etc.), thirty-six fashion pictures, and the cover, featuring Drew Barrymore.

    Check it out here. Via PDNPulse.

  • Robert Burley Buries Kodak at CONTACT Photo Festival – Shoot The Blog

    burley4 1.jpg

    Here are some images from the Burley series Disappearance of Darkness, which documents the final year of the Kodak Canada facility in Toronto. This facility, which was made up of 18 buildings on a 5 hectare site, had a one hundred year history of producing photographic films and papers. It was sold in 2006 and demolished in the summer of 2007.

    Check it out here.

  • The Convergence of Still Photography & Video

    Social adoption of technological change takes place for one of two reason…

    1 – A need is determined and someone then finds a way to fulfill it

    2 – A new technology evolves and people then discover what can be done with it

    Check it out here.

  • State of the Art: ICP Infinity Award Winners Announced

    picture_5.png

    Award season continues apace, and the next big show will occur one week from tonight when the International Center of Photography presents its coveted Infinity Awards for 2008. But the word is already out about who’ll be receiving prizes this year.

    Check it out here.

  • In the Congo – The Digital Journalist

    02.jpg


    by Andrew McConnell

    I was on my way to visit members of the Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda (FDLR) at a jungle camp deep in the rain forests of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The FDLR is comprised of Hutu extremists who fled Rwanda after their involvement in the 1994 genocide, as well as Hutu members of the former Rwandan army and a mix of displaced Rwandan Hutus. The people number approximately 10,000; they have lived in the jungles of Congo for the past 14 years and have been one of the fundamental causes of the Congo conflict.

    Check it out here.

  • The photo is dead. Long live the photo

    Toronto artist Robert Burley is currently documenting the fate of chemical photography, recording the abandonment and demolition of various Kodak plants. The films, papers and processing chemicals these factories produced will soon be obsolete, although Burley himself is still physically printing images from negatives, albeit ones he edits digitally. The most notable of Burley’s large, highly detailed colour photographs shows the implosion of buildings 65 and 69 at Kodak Park in Rochester, N.Y., where a crowd that includes people who worked in the plant busily snap pictures of its demise on their digital cameras. Whatever sacrifices it may demand, technology is irresistible.

    Check it out here. Via PDNPulse.

  • The Backlash Against Magazine Airbrushing

    Airbrushing celebrity and model photos has become so common that it’s a popular pastime for magazine readers to spot the digital manipulations. But have photo editors gone too far?

    Check it out here. Via PDNPulse.

  • What's New at NAB 2008 – The Digital Journalist

    It’s the biggest toy store in the world. But this one is for adults who won’t blink an eye at dropping a couple of million bucks on the latest satellite truck or news helicopter. PF Bentley and Dirck Halstead spent four days trudging the miles between the four huge halls at the Las Vegas Convention Center looking for the newest, the most impressive, and even the most bizarre items on display. Here is our report:

    Check it out here.

  • I Just Got Laid Off and I Need a Job – The Digital Journalist

    10.65 GB.

    That’s what I have to show after being laid off after five years at The Gazette in Colorado Springs, Colo.

    While transferring files from the newspaper’s archive system to a 500 GB external hard drive it became painfully clear that only a fraction of the hard drive would be used to store my work that appeared in print.

    Check it out here.

  • Photo Attorney: Photography Not Allowed – 6

    Mark-Harmel-703256.jpg

    Mark Harmel reports that he was detained last Friday by the Beverly Hills Police Department after taking the above photo while standing on a public sidewalk

    Check it out here.

  • The Exposure Project: New Photographs By Adam Marcinek

    Lucielle's_Bed 1.jpg

    Here are some new images the I recently shot in my family’s now closed business. Comments always welcome.

    Images © Adam Marcinek

    Check it out here.

  • Probe of USS Cole Bombing Unravels

    Almost eight years after al-Qaeda nearly sank the USS Cole with an explosives-stuffed motorboat, killing 17 sailors, all the defendants convicted in the attack have escaped from prison or been freed by Yemeni officials.

    Check it out here.

  • Kimberly Brooks: Photography's Sex Change: The Art Of Tom Chambers

    2008-05-02-2 1.jpg

    Over the last ten years, the art of photography has undergone a sex change. The rather masculine act of capturing or “shooting” a moment (“the hunt”) with a sound subject and composition has evolved into one where the real art comes in the editing, not the capturing. The initial “kill” gets skinned, dressed and prepared for a meal by the wonderful witchy post production tool known as Photoshop. The photographer, like a woman putting on make up at her vanity before going out for the evening, edits reality: the best features and colors are enhanced and sharpened, and a new, hyper-realistic art form, with a nod to surrealism of last century, is born.

    Check it out here.

  • Cute Hunter.

    CuteHunterAscends+copy 1.jpg

    so tonight is the Cute Hunter show at Secret Headquarters. you must come to it! or view it virtually..

    Check it out here.

  • The Travel Photographer: John Stanmeyer: Malaria: NG Award

    stanmeyer_malaria.jpg

    The photojournalism award, which honors John Stanmeyer’s photographs in the “Bedlam in the Blood: Malaria also names Senior Editor David Griffin, Deputy Director Susan A. Smith, Design Director David C. Whitmore and Senior Photo Editor Sarah Leen. The article ran in the July 2007 NGM.

    Check it out here.