James Mollison has been making simple portraits of people at rock concerts, which he then stitches together into panoramic images
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in Photography
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Shooting movie posters was something Michael Muller always wanted to do. Yet even his impeccable photographic credentials — ad campaigns for Speedo and Mercedes, magazine covers of Spider-Man Tobey Maguire for Premiere and Adrien Brody for Flaunt — hadn’t won him the chance to shoot those dazzling film promos we see on billboards and bus stops. It was a self-assigned, movie-themed art project that finally brought movie-poster opportunity knocking.
Muller’s project, called Superfamous, was a series of portraits of the superhero-costumed souls who parade around Hollywood’s famous Chinese Theatre, where for five bucks they pose for tourists’ cameras. “Most of the money goes to feed a drug habit,” says Muller, “and one of the key pictures is of Batman smoking crack in the alley.” The marketing head of Fox Studios saw a 4×6-foot print of that image at the home of Joaquin Phoenix, who Muller befriended when he was doing publicity photography for Walk the Line, in which the actor played Johnny Cash.
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in Photography
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Leica Camera, the German manufacturer of high-prestige but high-price photography equipment, has replaced its top executive, Steven Lee.
“The supervisory board of Leica Camera AG today removed Steven K. Lee as member and chairman of the board of management of Leica Camera AG with immediate effect,” the company said in a brief statement Friday.
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in Leica
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We have heard these reader concerns when we have published images of tattooed adults, or of a father letting his young son drive a lawn mower from his lap, or even a portrait of a homeless man (see links below). And now the Daily News is being criticized for publishing an image of teens dancing “inappropriately” at a Valentine’s Dance and fashion show. Readers think that by publishing these photos we are promoting whatever the image shows. They also say that we should focus on publishing images showing the “good” things in our community.
But focusing on only what these readers see as “good” would diminish the newspapers’ role in the community and conflict with one of the tenants of journalism — to present the truth.Check it out here.
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About six minutes into the judging, it dawned on me just how screwed most of these magazine companies really are. In their rush to cash in on web video, most seem to have convinced themselves that sloppily edited six-minute clips pass for must-see content. It’s as if the very act of creating something that moves and talks has blinded producers and editors to the dullness of their creations.
Take Playboy.com’s “Ask Hef Anything” series, in which the robe-encrusted octogenarian answers questions in a manner so stiff and stilted as to prompt concern about his well-being. Ignoring the obvious first issue — what kind of sick, misguided bastard would ask Hugh Hefner about a flag-burning amendment? — I have no clue how training a camera on an individual who has lived his entire adult life in the public eye qualifies as innovation, much less as something that could ultimately bolster the bottom line.
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One of my favorite new additions in Aperture 2.0 has to be the Vignette tool. Back in the days of darkroom printing I would always find myself burning down the corners of my prints to make them “pop” a little. You had to be careful not to over-do it, but it really made a big difference if done right.
Check it out here.
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Kevin Connolly has been getting such stares all his life. That’s because he was born without legs.
Connolly was used to drawing double takes in his hometown of Helena, Mont., but when he went to Europe and turned heads there, too, he decided he’d had enough. Connolly got out his camera in Vienna, Austria, and turned it on the people who were staring at him.
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The Raw File Workshop will give you 6 Days on Independent Media Production, Social Justice, and Activism.
Join Brenda Ann Kenneally and guest documentarians as well as prominent forces who work in multimedia production, social justice & activism, media ecology and visual anthropology for seminars covering funding, collaboration, multimedia production, publishing, and distribution of independent social documentary projects.
The workshop will be limited to 15 full-time participants.
Check it out here.
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Leading buyers, top designers and fashion media types converge here to see hundreds of garments from dozens of designers which then go on to help set the trends for the following season.
Among them are hundreds of photographers; some commissioned by high-end life-style magazines, who make their living out of traveling from country to country, and cat-walk to cat-walk for Vogue or Marie Claire; others from picture agencies and the London papers.
I’ve shot the last two London Fashion Weeks with journo Jacqueline Maley for the Sydney Morning Herald’s Essential section, and as someone who wears the same shirts until I put holes in them or the buttons fall off, working with this lot didn’t come naturally.
The most sought-after picture in cat-walk photography is a long-lens shot, straight down the middle of the runway, sharp on the model, with the depth-of-field dropping the background slightly out of focus, with the clothes horse looking straight at or over you. It’s a vertical, tight picture that shows off the dress, as that’s what it’s all about – the dress.
Check it out here.
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Close to my home, the hooligans are in some pitched conflict with the police. Should I remove my name from my own door? No; when things really get bad in Serbia, the police arrive in company with the hooligans.
The American embassy is attacked right now, 7 00pm, no police around there; the reporter sounds really afraid as he reports the smashing and burning.
The German bank in downtown Belgrade is attacked too: gosh this is like during the NATO bombings, but in reverse.
Tonight at 2 am it will be a full moon eclipse — Earth Moon and Sun in alignment, a perfect excuse for madness.
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in News
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This may be a seriously good business for photographers to go into. Hot commercial/fine-art photographer Todd Eberle has taken private commissions. “We fetishize homes now, in a way we never did before,” he says. Even the famed architectural photographer Julius Schulman (seen here in a photo by Monica Almeida for the Times) takes private commissions. Above: A photo Schulman made for Los Angeles homeowners
Check it out here.
in Photography
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The Feb. 25 edition of the weekly magazine, with Lohan on the front cover, hit newsstands on Monday. That same morning, the magazine posted the photo portfolio on its NYmag.com Web site.
For a site that’s averaged around a million page views a day lately, the results were stunning. NYmag.com recorded a total of more than 40 million page views Monday and Tuesday, more than 34 million of which came from the Lohan portfolio, Starke said.
According to New York’s online rate card, the “super banner ad” of the type that appears on the Lohan photo slideshow has a CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) of $15. Multiply that by the number of views and the Lohan slideshow ads were valued at more than $500,000 over two days. NYmag.com probably charged far less than the rate-card rate, as is common in the industry. Starke said the magazine doesn’t disclose revenue details about advertising deals.
in Photography
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The Sigma DP1, a compact digital camera with a “full-frame” sensor, has had an even longer gestation period. It was first unveiled at Photokina 2006 in Germany to much buzz but has since been relegated to the mystical realms of the Sasquatch, Loch Ness Monster, and rumor-filled online photo forums.
Was the quest for a pocket camera that could produce low-noise images via a full-frame sensor really just so much vapor? Sigma continued to argue no.
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in Equipment
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Photos by Albrecht Tübke
As I usually do when people send me a link, I took a look. My immediate reaction was that the pictures were way too close to The Sartorialist’s work to be of any interest to me, but the surprising thing was the pictures were pretty good
Check it out here.
in Photography
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The MediaStorm Multimedia Workshops are intensive, hands-on educational experiences in advanced multimedia storytelling. The Workshops are designed to address three areas:
Original Multimedia Reporting
Post-Production
Multimedia TrainingCheck it out here.
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Cara Phillips is in the process of creating a body of work on the extreme end of the beauty industry, whose work usually is invisible: The plastic/cosmetic surgery business. Since I have always been quite baffled by the general acceptance of beauty ideals that only a tiny fraction of the population can easily conform to, I asked Cara whether she’d be willing to tell me a little bit about her work and about what’s behind it, and I’m glad she agreed to it.
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in Interviews
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The White House News Photographers Association has launched a Student Photographer of the Year contest, and the deadline for entering the inaugural competition is March 1, 2008.
Check it out here.
in Contests
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A bill that would have repealed Maryland’s ban on cameras in court during criminal sentencings was rejected by the Maryland House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.
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I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was intimidated by working down the hall from legendary Rolling Stone Director of Photography Jodi Peckman. She’s garnered every accolade the photo industry can hand out and her rolodex is the size of a parmesan cheese wheel
Check it out here.
in Interviews
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I think it’s time to take a constructive look at audio slideshows and review ways to make them better. One of the raps on audio slideshows is that they can be boring and predictable. I agree. I’ve watched hundreds of audio slideshows and it can be painful at times
Check it out here.