Author: Trent

  • Voilà (Sort Of)!

    To people who work in television, this development is known as “the viewer plunge.” Last spring at the upfronts, a chilling number was widely whispered: 2.5 million fewer people were watching NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox than had in spring 2006. TV executives repeatedly reassured ad buyers that everything was A-O.K., but they also took to kitchen-sinking to explain away the plunge. Daylight Savings Time had come too early. Everyone was using TiVo and the Internet. The rating system is unfair. The war. The economy. The toxins. The bees. But things were going to be great in ’08.

    And then came the writers’ strike. Combined with the viewer plunge, it was like the Depression and the Dust Bowl — a double whammy for television and its audience. The strike “orphaned” viewers (as the jargon has it) without their favorite shows, which gave viewers a reason to leave network television entirely. And they did. Sayonara. According to The Hollywood Reporter, most returning shows lost between 10 and 30 percent of the viewers they had before the strike, when ratings for the networks were already low.

    It’s not immediately clear what all this means for the upfronts. How do you celebrate your wedding anniversary the year that divorce is imminent? Do you drink alone? Toast to old times?

    Check it out here.

  • This Joke’s for You

    04wwln_consumed_190.jpg

    The video ads on the Brawndo site, commissioned by Hottelet, feature members of Picnicface, a Canadian comedy troop, shouting hilariously over-the-top pitches: “It’s like a monster truck you pour into your face!” (The pitches actually owe quite a bit to videos Picnicface has made for a drink called Powerthirst — which doesn’t exist. I don’t think.)

    Check it out here.

  • "Guest of Cindy Sherman" | Salon Arts & Entertainment

    story.jpg

    In fact, “Guest of Cindy Sherman,” which was co-directed by Tom Donahue, feels more like three or four docs fused into one entertaining (and sometimes squirm-inducing) concoction. We get a sidelong view of the art world and its symbiotic relationship with commerce and celebrity, as well as an exploration of the awkward life of a famous person’s “plus one.” (H-O’s own complaints are bulked up by an amusing interview with Elton John’s companion, David Furnish.) At the center of it all is Sherman, in a fragmented portrait of a woman H-O calls “the most famous mystery girl of art,” a photographer who has used her own image as the basis for a hugely influential body of work.

    Check it out here.

  • Anatomy of a Hillary Clinton photo op — the pictures and the reality

    clintongas.jpg

    The photo op.

    Sen. Hillary Clinton had another one Wednesday. They’re usually staged before 1 or 2 p.m. to give crews time to edit the film and prepare their stories for the dinnertime news.

    What TV viewers eventually saw was Clinton at a South Bend, Ind., gas pump with high prices. (See how she’s perfectly positioned so you can also see the prices? No accident. Although, truth be told, $3.75 a gallon looks pretty good to many Californians).

    Clinton had along as a human prop commuter Jason Wilfing, allegedly on his way to work at a sheet metal factory. A real normal guy, no doubt, recruited by a Clinton advance worker for 12 of his 15 minutes of fame.

    Check it out here.

  • B: Diana Camera

    6.jpg

    After years of being out of production, the Diana camera has recently been reintroduced to the market, this time with pinhole and 6 x 6 format capabilities

    Check it out here.

  • Madonna and Kristen Ashburn – A Pictures Worth

    ashburn1.jpg

    I met Kristen Ashburn in 2002 when she guest lectured at a class I was taking at the International Center for Photography with Andre Lambertson. She had been self-financing trips to Africa to photograph the effects of poverty and HIV/AIDS in Zimbabwe in black-and-white with her Rollei, and the images were stunning.

    Check it out here.

  • 5B4: Secrets of Real Estate by John Gossage

    gossagesecretscomp1 1.jpg

    If you were to invite John Gossage to photograph your neighborhood he could probably create an entire book’s worth of work within a few city blocks (or rural lanes). He is a photographer who could probably work anywhere more so than most in that the small details that he asks us to pay attention to are common in our landscape where ever we live.

    Check it out here.

  • Baltimore teen arrested in Examiner photographer's assault

    A Baltimore teenager was arrested early Wednesday morning and accused of assaulting a photographer from the Baltimore Examiner working on a story about school violence outside Reginald F. Lewis High School.

    The 18-year-old male is being processed at Baltimore City’s Central Booking facility on charges stemming from the April 24 incident involving photographer Arianne Starnes, 24.

    Check it out here.

  • Rob Galbraith DPI: Microsoft releases Expression Media 2, Pro Photo Tools

    Microsoft has today released Expression Media 2 for Mac and Windows, an update of the program formerly known as iView MediaPro, as well as a metadata editing and geotagging application called Pro Photo Tools for Windows.

    Check it out here.

  • Real Life Real News | April 30, 2008

    20080430220750_court_01bw 1.jpg


    Christopher Onstott

    was back in court today working on my Drug Court series and I finally managed to get this shot that I was wanting. I spent the afternoon with the judge, and after court I talked the transport cops into letting me follow them back to the van

    Check it out here.

  • dustin franz photography: marion

    torra.jpg

    it was a beautiful day on the last day of april. clear skies, sunny, perfect temperature, and i was inside prison.

    Check it out here.

  • Dying Newspaper Trend Buys Nation's Newspapers Three More Weeks | The Onion – America's Finest News Source

    A recent glut of feature stories on the death of the American newspaper has temporarily made the outmoded form of media appealing enough to stave off its inevitable demise for an additional 21 days, sources reported Monday. “People really seem to identify with these moving, ‘end-of-an-era’-type pieces,” Washington Post editor-in-chief Leonard Downie, Jr. said. “It’s nice to see that the printed word is still, at least for now, the most powerful medium for reporting on the death of the printed word.” Downie added that the poignant farewell Op-Ed he recently penned was so well received that he will be able to hold onto his job for up to six more days

    Check it out here.

  • GETTY PHOTOGRAPHERS EXPLAIN THEIR IMAGES

    Stock library Getty Images has released the first in an ongoing series of podcasts featuring its award-winning team of photographers. In the podcasts, snappers such as John Moore talk over the story behind their most striking images.

    Check it out here.

  • State of the Art: Venessa Winship Named Sony's First Photographer of the Year

    picture_1.png

    Clearly I should already have known who Vanessa Winship is. I mean, she won the first World Press Photo award ever given in the arts category; she’s exhibited at Visa pour l’Image, Les Recontres d’Arles, and the Leica Gallery; oh, and did I mention…she makes beautiful, beautiful images.

    Check it out here.

  • Burning Desire

    Kim Komenich:

    Which brings us to the reason for this piece. Recent reports of overzealous edge-burning and the removal of extraneous limbs in backgrounds caused the editors of Sports Shooter to put out a call for opinions. Here’s mine: I think that directing the reader’s eye “in the moment”, like Cartier-Bresson, is always preferable to doing it after the fact in the darkroom, like Smith.

    So, the “burn rule” as I see it is: The more you screw with it the more it becomes about you. In the worst cases it can be a downright lie. Photojournalists who use technology after the moment to “polish” a moment usually end up having a column written about them.

    Check it out here.

  • 'Thou shall not over-tone!'

    The bottom line is this, if you are presenting work as the truth when in reality, it is not; you have only yourself to blame. Former Photojournalism sequence chair at Western Kentucky Mike Morse said it best, “you are either in the truth business… or you are in the entertainment business.”

    Check it out here.

  • Photographer Discusses His Decision To Make 'The Switch'

    “The cover image doesn’t look in focus.”

    My decision to switch camera systems from Canon to Nikon was cemented when I heard those words from an art director.

    Check it out here.

  • Rob Galbraith DPI: The Age features A Century of Pictures

    Melbourne’s The Age had its team of photographers compile the best photography from the past 100 years in a Century of Pictures.

    Check it out here.

  • SLC Monk: The Browns

    I spent some more time with Russ and some with his family this evening. Russ was rummaging through his burnt down house for a while trying to find anything that survived the flames. A couple things of interest made it. The bible, Book of Mormon, Sim City CDs and some wedding photos.

    Check it out here.

  • Behind the Lens with Preston Gannaway – – PopPhotoApril 2008

    4292008113237.jpg

    This month we focus on Preston Gannaway, a staff photographer at the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Colorado. While driving from New Hampshire to Colorado earlier this month, Gannaway learned that she had been named the recipient of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Photography. The 30-year-old photographer was recognized for her picture story, “Remember Me,” which she created while on staff at the Concord Monitor. In April’s installment of “Behind the Lens,” Gannaway talks about her career as a newspaper photographer, and the hard work and dedication that went into her Pulitzer-winning picture story.

    Check it out here.