So, the other day I cranked through 145 websites in about 3 hours for the consultation demo and then I had a conversation with a magazine art director friend about how we look at photographers websites in obviously different ways (design vs. photo) and I realized something: Design and layout has a powerful effect on me. Right off the bat, before I even look at the first picture, the design is working on my brain.
Check it out here.
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Richard Barnes has three interesting projects on his website. I absolutely love Murmur, which I originally came across on Mrs. Deane. It reminds me of Nicolai Howalt and Trine Søndergaard’s series Dying Birds, but I like how Barnes has captured the mysterious patterns that the birds make.
Check it out here.
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Nikon today has announced three new lenses: the PC-E Nikkor 24mm f/3.5D ED Tilt/Shift, AF-S Micro Nikkor 60mm f/2.8G ED and AF-S DX Nikkor 16-85mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR. In addition, the company has said that two additional PC (perspective control) lenses are in the works: a PC-E Micro Nikkor 45mm f/2.8D ED and a PC-E Micro Nikkor 85mm f/2.8D ED.
Check it out here.
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I flew up to the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead to do the last bit of filming for Picture This, a Channel 4 series about six young photographers competing for the chance to mount a solo exhibition (I was one of three judges). The winner was Elizabeth Gordon, a former alcoholic who made a set of photographs re-enacting her days as a drinker. They’re a good example of what photography can do well: she shows great vulnerability, and that’s very engaging. I chatted to her about hanging her show at the top of Baltic and then caught a train to London, where I crashed in my office in Clerkenwell (I’ve got a bed there).
Extensis has released updates to its Portfolio suite of photo cataloging and web publishing applications. Portfolio v8.5.1 and Portfolio Server v8.5.1 for Windows and Mac add support for the RAW files from the Canon EOS 40D, EOS-1Ds Mark III, Nikon D300, D3 and other models, plus improved import and use of XMP-format metadata. The Mac version also introduces full compatibility with Mac OS X 10.5 and later.
Check it out here.
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For most people the word gypsy evokes a romantic image of a nomadic lifestyle. Although the traditional gypsy way of life was common all over Europe several decades ago, their number has dwindled during the past century and now they are mostly found in remote areas of Romania. Due to environmental and economic circumstances as well as governmental pressure, their way of life is threatened and facing inevitable extinction. The end of socialism marked the beginning of Roma/Gypsy decline from relative well being to extreme poverty. Low skills, discrimination, and the collapse of many state-owned industrial and agricultural enterprises during the transition period have contributed to their mass unemployment, along with rising illiteracy rates and deteriorating health, infrastructure, and housing conditions.
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Korengal Valley is among the deadliest pieces of terrain in the world for U.S forces. The six-mile long strategic passage is located in northeastern Afghanistan surrounded by treacherous mountain ridges, which are held desperately by the Taleban and al-Qaeda. Nearly one-fifth of all combat in Afghanistan occurs in this valley, and nearly three-quarters of all the bombs dropped by NATO planes target the surrounding area. The Valley is the first leg of a former mujahideen smuggling route that was used to bring in men and weapons from Pakistan during the 1980s
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For years she has photographed the rich and famous but kept her own life strictly private. Now a new film opens the shutter on Annie Leibovitz’s drug addiction, love life and delayed motherhood. Andrew Johnson report
Why can’t you make it through the checkout line without flipping through page after page of pregnant celebs in Us magazine? Alison Jackson knows why. In her work, she photographs the people you think you recognize doing what you really want to see. And in the process, she’s questioning our shared desire to get personal with celebrity culture. Funny and sometimes shocking, Jackson’s work contains some graphic images. (Recorded July 2005 in Oxford, UK. Duration: 17:36.)
Check it out here.
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Every photographer is limited by certain constraints—the subject of a story, an art director’s vision, a client’s directives—so the images he produces are not truly his own. You might say, then, that his most genuine work, the work that best reveals the clarity of his eye, is that which he produces just for himself. In this spirit we approached longtime Texas Monthly contributor Dan Winters—a California native and Hill Country transplant whose portraits of marquee-name celebrities also appear in such publications as the New York Times Magazine, Esquire, and Rolling Stone—and gave him an assignment unlike the dozens of others he’s completed for us since his haunting photo of a Huntsville prisoner graced our cover in August 1991: We asked him to sift through a career’s worth of unpublished shots (last year he processed 250 rolls of film he’d accumulated over some twenty years) and select a few of his favorites. The ten assembled here, most of which Winters had not even printed until now, were all taken with a handheld camera, available light, and for no other reason than to capture the beauty of a particular moment. “Even when I’m doing a color assignment and it’s a big dog-and-pony show with a lot of lighting and a lot of crew members, I’ll just take people aside and do a little bit for myself,” he says. The results are as intimate as they are revealing. Jordan Breal
Check it out here. Via A Photo a Day.
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OK. It’s a massive call, but this intro for Lakai’s, Fully Flared skate video is f*cking awesome. The perfect blend of pyrotechnics, skate skills and photography. Respect.
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No, this dispute is not about high commerce. It is instead about principle. We believe it is within our absolute right to cover, publish and, yes, occasionally even sell, content that we create – particularly from highly public events involving tax-supported institutions and occurring at taxpayer-owned venues.
It is unfortunate that we are at loggerheads with the IHSA, which has already restricted our photo access to one major state championship event. It’s all related to this dispute. We have never previously viewed the organization as a foe. If anything, quite the opposite is true. Like the IHSA, we believe it’s in all of our best interests to draw attention to and celebrate youth achievement, whether it be on the basketball court, the football field, the concert hall or the scholastic bowl.
Check it out here.
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Potentially, the worst television show ever. I love it! The Christian disclaimer at the start is fascinating, and after watching the program, it seems ridiculous to hold on to the concept that this pair must stay together. I mean, really, who wants to be with a guy who wishes he were Red Skelton!?
Check it out here.
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If Beverly Hills has a Main Street, it’s Rodeo Drive—three blocks of palm trees and designer boutiques with names like Armani, Gucci, and Louis Vuitton. Impossibly expensive cars—Ferraris, Rolls-Royces, Lamborghinis—cruise down the strip. Paparazzi stalk red carpets and limousines.
From the balcony of a brand new Chanel Boutique one evening this past December, Minneapolis photographer Alec Soth, an invited guest at the store’s glamorous opening party, surveys this scene, clad in a black blazer and black slacks he bought with the help of an former intern—”a real fashionable dude.”
Inside, in an oversized dressing room intended for the private shopping of the elite, hang three large photographs of a Paris fashion show snapped by Soth. Mingling throughout the store are Hollywood starlets (Hilary Duff, Angie Harmon) with flawless bodies wrapped tight in extravagant clothes. Standing near Soth on the balcony is the young actor Chris Klein (American Pie). It occurs to Soth that Klein’s suit looks much better than his own does.
Check it out here. Via Tim Gruber via APAD.
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TO the small group of photography experts aware of its existence, it was known simply as “the Mexican suitcase.” And in the pantheon of lost modern cultural treasures, it was surrounded by the same mythical aura as Hemingway’s early manuscripts, which vanished from a train station in 1922.
The suitcase — actually three flimsy cardboard valises — contained thousands of negatives of pictures that Robert Capa, one of the pioneers of modern war photography, took during the Spanish Civil War before he fled Europe for America in 1939, leaving behind the contents of his Paris darkroom.
Capa assumed that the work had been lost during the Nazi invasion, and he died in 1954 on assignment in Vietnam still thinking so. But in 1995 word began to spread that the negatives had somehow survived, after taking a journey worthy of a John le Carré novel: Paris to Marseille and then, in the hands of a Mexican general and
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PicLens instantly transforms your browser into a full-screen slideshow experience. With just one click, PicLens makes photos come to life via a cinematic presentation that goes beyond the confines of the traditional browser window. With PicLens, browsing and viewing images on the web will never be the same again.
Immerse Yourself.
Why mundanely flip through online photo galleries or squint at thumbnails from Google Image Search when you can sit back and get an immersive, full-screen experience instead? Come on and let yourself “be transported to a wonderful and magical world.” (Review by Lifehacker)
Check it out here.
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Several times now I’ve expressed my appreciation for PicLens, a beautiful (and free) little browser plug-in that enables full-screen, hardware-accelerated slideshows from Google Images, Flickr, MySpace, deviantART, and other sites. It’s changed my whole online photo viewing experience.
Check it out here.
