I’m not sure why, but the photos from China that have been devastating. Disaster coverage is familiar to everyone–whether it’s twisted wreckage or a bloated corpse, long lines of refugees or supplies stacked on the tarmac, we’ve seen it before. And we’ve seen people crying over lost homes, villages, loved ones. But somehow not like this:
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With a cut-off time of 10am before the first race of the day, we set up five remote cameras under the inside rail of the track, and another on an observation post beyond the finish line with a high angle general view of the end of the race. Putting in place the gear – five EOS-1D Mark II cameras, an assortment of lenses from 16mm to 200mm, and their little mounting plates was a breeze, about 5 minutes in total, compared to the next step – getting them all to work!
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The question kept coming up. How do you explain the smile? What does it mean? Not only is she smiling, she is smiling with her thumbs-up – over a dead body. The photograph suggests that she may have killed the guy, and she looks proud of it. She looks happy.
I should back up a moment.
This is one of the central images in a rogue’s gallery of snapshots, a photograph taken at Abu Ghraib prison in the fall of 2003. It is a photograph taken by Chuck Graner of Sabrina Harman – posed and looking into the lens of the camera.
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If you’re not festivaled out, you’re going to want to head down to Charlottesville in June, because Look3 seems almost like a photographer’s utopian festival dream. From the 12th to the 14th, all of Charlottesville will be taken over by photography; even the trees (Flip Nicklin’s undersea whale images will be suspended high in the trees along Charlottesville’s outdoor pedestrian mall).
Check it out here.
Mona Reeder, a photographer with the Dallas Morning News, has won a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for domestic photography for her photo essay “The Bottom Line.” Through pictures, Reeder explored Texas’ poor rankings in a number of categories ranging from the poorest counties in the U.S. to environmental protection.
Earlier this year, the project won the Community Service Photojournalism Award from the American Society of Newspaper Editors. (It also was a Pulitzer finalist.)
Kenny Irby interviewed Reeder about the project for Best Newspaper Writing 2008-2009. In this excerpt, Reeder discusses the value of in-depth photo essays and how she developed this one.
Check it out here.
During his long career as a photographer, Flip Schulke covered wars, presidents, rocket launches and the great human drama of the civil rights movement in the American South. But people always asked about one picture in particular: Muhammad Ali standing underwater.
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Ryan McGeeney served seven years in the Marines, including a six-month deployment in Afghanistan, but 10 minutes of photographing the state high school track championships proved to be more dangerous to him.
Hours after his leg was pierced by a javelin at BYU’s Clarence Robison track stadium, McGeeney was fortunate to be able to appreciate the irony.
The Standard-Examiner photographer was struck below the knee by a javelin while shooting the discus event shortly after 9 a.m. Saturday, delaying the events while an ambulance pulled onto the track to take him to Utah Valley Regional Medical Center.
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From Reuters photographer Goran Tomasevic who is near Garmser in Helmand Province, Afghanistan with the U.S. 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit come these 4 frames from a sequence taken when the unit came under fire from Taliban fighters May 18, 2008.
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Simon Norfolk’s presentation was very smooth, this guy has a mind you don’t want to meet in a darkened alley. How this guy gets access to the places he does is a miracle. He basically makes you want to give up photography because the rigor of his ideas sucks all the oxygen out of the room faster than a fuel-air explosion. I think we all felt our innards leaving our mouths at the end
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Every time a new version Aperture or LightRoom gets released/announced you always have a big flurry of ‘which application should I choose?’ posts on all the digital photography forums, and the release of the LR2 beta has been no exception.
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My dad was stabbed to death when I was three years old. That is one of the reasons that I now carry a knife. It’s for protection. You never know who else will have one. This way, if someone is going to stab me, I will stab them first. It does not matter how tough the laws are. So many people are carrying knives, there’s always the risk that someone will pull one out on you. It’s purely protection. I wouldn’t pull mine out unless someone else pulls one on me first. I have slashed someone in the face, but I wouldn’t want to stab someone to kill them.
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In 1994, Jonathan Wells famously launched the film festival RESFest at a Christmas party in his San Francisco basement, when he showed a few friends some skate videos by a not-yet-mainstream director named Spike Jonze. RESFest quickly escalated into a global phenomenon — a decade later it had spawned the monthly culture magazine RES, a series of screenings in 18 countries a year, even a distinct and recognizable aesthetic that transcended film, bleeding into the tangential industries of music, art and design (people actually say “That is so RES”). After Wells sold RES in 2006, an entire generation of cool kids looked to Wells to tell them where to look next.
Check it out here.
Helen Stickler might be the girl next door. She lives in a perfectly appointed vintage-modern cottage in Echo Park, complete with a beautiful view, charismatic neighbors and a visiting cat. The only thing missing is the white picket fence. But as they say, looks are deceiving.
Observe more closely, and you’ll notice that the art on her walls is mostly of the street-inspired ilk, paired with editions of her movie posters. That would be as-written-and-directed-by-her: Andre the Giant Has a Posse, a 1997 documentary on Shepard Fairey’s sticker campaign; and Stoked: the Rise and Fall of Gator, a 2003 Sundance Festival screener on the life and murderous times of ’80s vert-skater icon Mark “Gator” Rogowski. Get to talking and you’ll find out she’s just completed direction on an extreme-stunts show for the BBC (Smash Lab) and is about to dig into a hush-hush project with yet another skater, the subversive Jason Jessee.
Check it out here.
For the past 18 months, Lia Halloran has taken her skateboard and wandered the city late at night, looking for the strangest, darkest skate spots she can find. Sometimes alone and sometimes with a photographer, Halloran spends nights haunting the L.A. riverbed, evading the cops in Bronson Canyon or lurking in East L.A. parking lots. She’ll hop fences or crawl through holes to get into a closed park.
Though she’s a bit of a rebel and a daredevil, these outings aren’t just for the kicks of finding a forbidden or foreboding spot to grind. Halloran, who has an MFA in painting and printing from Yale, is a fast-rising local artist, and herDark Skate series combines many of her passions — skateboarding, physics and light. The pieces are half-painting, half-picture — the latter taken in the dead of night, when Halloran attaches a bike light to her wrist or head and skates while photographer Meredyth Wilson captures the action with time-lapse photography. Halloran doesn’t show up in the pictures, but her skate lines do, looking like a light saber cutting through the dark, urban backgrounds.
Check it out here.
Sam Cherry sits in the living room of his Fairfax District home, staring at a photograph of Charles Bukowski on the toilet. “Wow, look at that!” Cherry laughs at the look on the writer’s face — one that suggests Buk is struggling through a rather troublesome bowel movement. “He’s really pushing!” A longtime friend of Bukowski’s, Cherry took the bathroom shot, which was never published, as well as countless others that were. In fact, if you’ve ever seen a shot of Bukowski and considered it iconic, it was probably Cherry’s. But Cherry didn’t just photograph Buk — legend has it the writer’s tough-guy literary persona was largely bolstered by Cherry’s true-life hard-luck tales.
“Oh, I have no doubt about that,” Cherry says. “He always used to tell me, ‘Sam, I killed 10 men.’ But he was a sweet guy. I don’t think he ever intentionally hurt a soul in his life.”
Cherry, on the other hand: “I was born tough.”
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Those “Berds” you may have seen dangling from power lines at various intersections throughout our otherwise dreadfully unaccessorized city weren’t tossed skyward to make a buck. When Venice Beach native Dave Browne lobbed his first handpainted slab of plywood a few years back, neither fame nor fortune figured into the agenda, only folly.
(Click to enlarge)
“My main reason for doing anything is because it’s fun,” declares the slight-yet-fiery 26-year-old artist.
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I’m now fairly convinced Texas will never see any successful criminal prosecutions from the Great Eldorado Polygamist Roundup. They’ve just screwed it up too badly. Whether the child seizures will stick on the civil side is another matter, but nearly all their evidence for possible criminal prosecutions appears tainted.
I’ve argued previously why I think the search warrant was based on bogus information, and evidence keeps trickling out that confirms law enforcement knew or should have known the original complaint call was a hoax before they went in.
Check it out here.
The much buzzed about forthcoming camcorder from RED called Scarlet isn’t actually red or scarlet at all but – yes, you guessed it – black. The Scarlet isn’t cool just because of the way it looks – though it’s rugged, Alien/Terminator exterior is certainly eye-catching– it’s cool because of what it can do. First, some background.
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The files contain e-mails and other documents that show how Venezuela’s populist leader had formed such a tight bond with guerrilla commanders that his key lieutenants had offered help in obtaining sophisticated weaponry such as surface-to-air missiles while delivering lighter arms. The files also document links between the FARC and Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, a close ally of Chávez.
At a news conference in Caracas, Chávez questioned Interpol’s impartiality, called the report “ridiculous” and mocked Noble as “ignoble” and a “gringo policeman,” referring to his American citizenship. Chávez also called the Interpol chief corrupt and an “international bum.”
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One June 1, photographers throughout Los Angeles will gather at the Hollywood and Highland Metro Station to peacefully protest against the unnecessary treatment they have received from security guards (particularly the white shirts), LAPD, and LASD while photographing in public places, and on the Metro.
Check it out here.