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    Today, May 15th, is the 50th anniversary of the day Robert Frank’s The Americans was first published by Robert Delpire in Paris. That was 1958. Today we realize that The Americans has more in common with beat poetry and club jazz than it has with many other kinds of photography; it’s one of the high water marks of 1950s culture. And throughout an era when photographers communicated with each other and with their audiences mainly through the vehicle of published books, The Americans has had only a handful of competitors (Walker Evans’ American Photographs, Henri Cartier-Bresson’s The Decisive Moment, a few others) for the title of the most important single photography book ever published. For thirty years after its publication it was deeply influential. And although photography has moved on now, the echoes of its impact reverberate still.

    Check it out here.

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  • Hugh Grant, Liz Hurley and her husband Arun Nayar have accepted £58,000 damages for invasion of privacy over photographs taken of them on holiday reports Reuters.

    The images taken by Big Pictures (UK) Ltd and Eliot Press SARL were taken covertly whilst the three were on holiday in the Maldives it was claimed.

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  • The subject of copyright is always high in photographers’ minds, especially in light of Orphan Works legislation & rampant image “borrowing” online. Consequently there’s an ongoing burning desire for secure metadata that can’t be stripped away from images.

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    The images of the earthquake relief effort in China have been horrifying and deeply moving and remind me what has always been so compelling about my job – the ease and speed with which still pictures can impart so much readily understood information to so many people.  

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  • Freelance photographers who shoot for the Associated Press will now get a 25 percent cut of the fees the AP collects for licensing their images beyond the AP’s regular photo wire.

    But the AP is also asking freelancers to do more work than in the past – to file their entire take with the AP, including caption information, within five days of their assignment.

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  • New FLDS site, a letter from Sam Roundy

    Dear Governor and Madam Judge:
     
    I am eighty years old. I’ve lived in Texas for almost a year and have been a member of the FLDS Church for fifty-six years. My purpose in writing this letter is to counter the false propaganda that has spewed forth from the Texas authorities.

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  • I’m a professional stock photographer, and just this morning, I was greeted by two FBI antiterrorism agents who wanted to question me regarding shooting in the Port of Los Angeles two weeks ago. When I was down there, a private security guard in a pickup truck chased me out of the area and onto the freeway. After he stopped following me, apparently he filed a report with the FBI.

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    Rochester Institute of Technology, and Leica Camera, proclaimed May 6, 2008 as Leica Day. The daylong event, hosted by RIT, was celebrated with speeches, lectures, tours, slide shows, seminars and parties. Andreas Kaufmann, the CEO of Leica Camera in Solms, Germany was there do donate 20 classic Leica M4-2 and M4-P cameras, each fitted with a brand new Leica Summarit-M lens (valued at $50,000), to RIT’s School of Photographic Arts and Sciences “to assure that analog photography continues to be a key element of photographic education at the highest levels.” Eastman Kodak Company also donated 400 rolls of their new Portra 400NC film to help support the program.

    At the event, Kaufmann took the time to give us some insight about what’s happening at Leic

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  • It was one of the most arresting images of last year. A majestic male mountain gorilla, his body flecked with blood, splayed out lifeless on a stretcher that 15 park rangers were struggling to bear through the jungle of eastern Congo.

    The massacre of the silverback Senkekwe, along with five other rare apes, made the cover of US magazine Newsweek under the headline “Gorilla Warfare”. In Britain, the “Murders In The Mist” prompted The Sun to launch its own campaign, and around the globe people wrote in to media outlets, telling of the sleepless nights and trauma the images had caused.

    For Anneke van Woudenberg, the Congo specialist for Human Rights Watch, it was a case of gritting one’s teeth. “Kill a mountain gorilla in Congo and it gets much more coverage than five million dead,” she says. “It irks me every time.”

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  • Keith tried to take a picture on the Red Line in LA, and was told that he was breaking the “9/11 Law” by a metro worker who swore at him and threatened him with arrest when he asked what the “9/11 Law” was.

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    If you’re well connected, you would’ve received an invite yesterday to RSVP for a private preview on Friday for Dalek’s only exhibit this year, Overweight, at Washington D.C.’s Irvine Contemporary.

    Check it out here.

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  • Meanwhile, the Gigapan continued to take photos. They’d ruined the panorama, of course; the first guard got in front of the camera at one point and obstructed the view. They reiterated that we were going to be arrested, so I finally tried to shut off the camera. But the damn thing wouldn’t stop taking pictures. It never occurred to me that I’d have to learn how to abort a panorama under pain of arrest, so I fumbled for about a minute as it kept shooting pictures. (I think I heard Wright laughing at this point.)

    I managed to shut the camera, and started to disassemble the Gigapan from the tripod as a fourth security person arrived. He was dressed differently than the other three people, and had a former-marine-turned-middle-management air about him.

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    The included RF remote-control is ideal for easy, stealth-style photo shooting.

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  • Here are the GOLD winners from last weekends SPD awards in Photography.

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  • The idea behind Nik Software’s Viveza is quite simple. It implements what they call the U Point technology that allows for really easy and fast as well as precise and smooth color refinement, light adjustment and image enhancement that was previously possible only through a somewhat difficult and tedious editing process that involves a lot of layer masking or complicated selections. The U Point technology in Viveza now makes it painless to absolutely control certain portions of an image.

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  • It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. At the risk of sounding terribly cliche, I have to say that my understanding of war, the pain of war, the humanity that is able to rise above war, the valiant spirit of mothers and children caught in the midst of war….were ever so slight until I stumbled upon the miraculous work of the award-winning war photographer called Zoriah.

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  • These days, authors, artists, and photographers are likely to find one or more of their creative works used without permission. One defense to the purported infringement is often that it is a “fair use.” The challenge then is determining whether the unauthorized use is an infringement or fair use. While only a court of law can make that decision, understanding what makes a use “fair” will help you protect your work.

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  • Sometimes you only have a split second to take a famous photograph. One of my favorite stories that Michael shared with me about his father was when Ansel made perhaps his most famous photograph Moonrise, Hernandez, NM. This photograph is the highest sold at auction to date having sold at at Sotheby’s for $609,600 in 2006.

    According to Michael, Ansel saw this wonderful scene and pulled the car over to take the photograph (Michael was with him). Ansel then put his glass plate into his camera to make his exposure. Before Ansel even had time to pull the plate out and shoot a second exposure on the reverse side, the moment was lost. A one shot opportunity.

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    “How do I become a working photographer, and where do I get started?” I get asked that a lot. Turns out, there are as many answers as there are professional photographers. Here’s how John did it. Not John Doe, but John W. McDonough, one of the premier staff photographers at Sports Illustrated.

    If you’re not familiar with his name, you know his work. For more than 25 years, “Johnny Mac’s” photography has graced the pages of SI (including 70-some covers), each one depicting his vision, dedication and talent. From Super Bowls and Final Fours to the Olympics and the World Series, he’s lived a sports shooter’s dream. And it all began here in Arizona. Sort of.

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  • Software updates for almost all of its digital SLR software has been posted by Canon. Among the programs updated are Digital Photo Professional (DPP), EOS Utility and Picture Style Editor.

    Check it out here.

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