Category: Photography

Gallery Beaugeste is considered by the Shanghai photographers and gallerists I met on my trip to be perhaps the most “pure” and traditional of the venues exhibiting photography in Shanghai. Curator Jean Loh tends to show work by the quiet masters who have been pursuing their craft and story-telling for years with little regard to what is fashionable. I had several enjoyable conversations with Jean about photography, and wanted to share the work of three of his artists with a wider audience.

Link: lenscratch: Focus on China: Gallery Beaugeste Part 2

When clients call for photography, they don’t always know what they want, or what their budget is, and figuring it out can pose a challenge. Sacramento photographer Bill Foster recently encountered one such client he’d never worked with before. He used a combination of problem solving and negotiating skills that not only won him the job, but earned him a steady client, too.

Link: The Estimate Doctor: Improvising from a Vague Brief and Unspecified Budget

The picture was made with the Canon 5D mark II and a 400mm-lens. It consists of 1.665 full format pictures with 21.4 megapixel, which was recorded by a photo-robot in 172 minutes. The converting of 102 GB raw data by a computer with a main memory cache of 48 GB and 16 processors took 94 hours. With a resolution of 297.500 x 87.500 pixel (26 gigapixel) the picture is the largest in the world. (stand December 2009)

Link: Gigapixel-Dresden.de – Large Size Panoramas

French newspaper le Monde just announced that collective photo agency, L’oeil Public, was filing for bankruptcy.  For those who only care about what is happening in their own country, or even backward, that might mean nothing. However, like a upcoming storm, events that will soon be over your head tend to start somewhere else

Link: Thoughts of a Bohemian » Blog Archive » A blind eye

a collectors’ edition…

dreams, fantasies, and idealizations….all ethereal in nature….and hardly anything one can grasp or hold onto…yet, this is what i live for and form the basic building blocks for an…

via burn magazine: http://www.burnmagazine.org/dialogue/2009/12/a-collectors-edition/

I recently talked about this with a friend of mine who has been taking photographs for thirty years now (incl. large-format). I asked him why so many photographers formerly well known for their beautiful analog prints end up with bad, oversharpened digital prints, which often even have colours bordering on the gaudy. My friend suggested it was because these photographers typically hand off the work to be done by the various professional digital labs, and they accept what they get back, thinking that that’s just as good as it gets.

Link: About 20/2 vision – Conscientious

Garry Winogrand’s one of my biggest personal heroes. The ultimate street photographer, Garry was a non-stop photographic machine. His were the pre-digital days. He devoured film with an appetite previously unmatched. He shot film like many photographers shoot digital today. Frenetic, non-stop, with only an occasional break to reload. He shot almost every day and while he crisscrossed the country shooting the best of America, he always remained a quintessential New Yorker at heart.

Link: Thinking About Garry Winogrand | Thomas Hawk Digital Connection

These images (or any others you want from Pangea photographers) are available in high-quality archival prints.

Link: Pangea Print Sale | Pangea Photo Blog

My friend and fellow photographer, Marian Crostic, recently attended Paris Photo, and having never attended myself, I asked her to be the Lenscratch reporter and share her insights. This will be a two-part article.

Link: lenscratch: Paris Photo 2009

Looking at assisting as a good way to break in? Good choice. You get paid (usually), earn valuable experience and afford yourself a chance to learn without paying tuition. Think it is going to be easy? Fun? Not always. Just ask anyone who has ever worked for me.

Link: So You Wanna To Be An Assistant?

Jacqueline Bovaird from Glasshouse Assignment raises this question in her latest email newsletter and  also her website. She posed this to Jason Lau at Team One USA, Manuel Oprea at Adweek, her excellent photographers Ryan Schude and Evan Kafka, and also asked me to weigh-in on the matter because Wonderful Machine has photographers in so many different locations. And it turns out to be a more complex issue than I thought.

Link: Wonderful Machine Photography Blog » How Important Is A Photographer’s Location, Career-Wise?

Over at the Getty Images Contributor Group on Flickr (it’s private and you have to be an accepted Flickr/Getty photographer in order to see it) there have been a number of threads started over the past few months where Getty/Flickr contributors have posted and shared basic information about how their sales are going through the Flickr/Getty partnership thus far. While it is probably far too early to accurately ascertain a lot of the statistics on how things are truly going, I thought I’d compile some of this information as anecdotal.

Link: Some Purely Anectdotal and Totally Unscientific Data on Flickr Images Being Sold by Getty Images | Thomas Hawk Digital Connection

Last week I received a fun instant message from my pal Vincent Laforet (who until 6 months ago was my neighbor on the UWS of Manhattan) letting me know he was on a plane cross-country to JFK for one of his infamous helicopter shoots over NYC. He asked if I wanted to fly along. I accepted….it was a no-brainer.

Link: Robert Caplin’s Photography Blog: High Flyin’ with Vincent Laforet

Predictions for 2010 – A Photo Editor

Folio Magazine has their annual Magazine and Media Predictions for 2010 (here) and there are a few choice quotes I’ve highlighted below. I’ve got a few of my own predictions: Slightly down is the new up. We will see fire sale buyouts (a la Business Week)

via A Photo Editor: http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2009/12/18/predictions-for-2010/

CPA Robyn Cohn has run an independent tax practice in New York City since 1991. She serves a diverse base of clients, including photographers, throughout the US.

Link: Expert Advice on Taxes