June 2008 Archives

As my first day of blogging comes to a close, I'd like to leave you with one last nugget of Science Day tastiness. Ever since the dawn of time, man has been working tirelessly to increase the frame per second that could be captured by a camera. Actually, that's not true at all. Nevertheless, intrepid engineers haven't stopped trying to increase the frame rate to capture those brief moments in time that give us everything from "peak action" in sports to the most interesting scientific applications. So I ask you, how many frames per second do you need?

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I have a theory that I'd like to share with you. No matter what the skill, there is a Michael Jordan of that skill in the world. For example, somewhere there's a Michael Jordan of mopping. He/She can mop faster and better than anyone -- possibly even by leaps and bounds.

Therefore, it follows that there must be a Michael Jordan of ant photography. Possible? Is it possible that I found him?

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Photo by Alex Wild

Alex Wild is a biologist at the University of Arizona with a doctorate in entymology. You might know him from his research papers " Taxonomic revision of the ant genus Linepithema (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)" or the sleeper "Observations on larval cannibalism and other behaviors in a captive colony of Amblyopone oregonensis."

On a more serious note, someone has to photograph ants for textbooks, newspapers, magazines, websites, etc. And Alex Wild is your man running both AlexWild.com and Myrmecos.net (the ancient Greek word for "ant"), and before he hopped on a plane to South Africa, he consented to speak with me.

You are a biologist at the University of Arizona. At what point did you get interested in photography?

Like many digital photographers, I started as a hobbyist.  I was already a graduate student in entomology (the study of insects), and I photographed what I liked. So I was taking bug pictures in my back yard with a little digicam. This was several years ago when Nikon was still making those great swivel-body coolpix designs.

The timing was fortuitous for my photography career.  Flickr, Smugmug and the other photo-sharing sites weren?t around at the time, so I had to build my own site to have a place to display my photos.  The thought of licensing the photos hadn?t occurred to me, I was just a bug geek who wanted to put photos on the web. If I had started now instead of 2002, I would have just uploaded my pictures to FlickR and left it at that.  I didn?t realize it then, but having
an independent internet presence would be important.

When did you start licensing your photos? What kind of clients purchase these images?

In 2003, the first year of myrmecos.net, the internet was smaller. The stock agencies hadn?t yet figured out the importance of the internet.  I started getting emails from photo editors who found me through Google and wanted to license my images, a complete surprise, so I scrambled to figure out how to conduct business.

My clients are diverse.  Newspapers use my photos to accompany science
reporting, pest control companies use them for advertisements, science museums
use them in exhibits.  I get a lot of textbooks and field guides as well.

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Photo by Alex Wild

Did you determine there was a dearth of high quality ant photographs?

The issue with insect photographs is not that there aren't enough of them. The digital revolution has brought us a whole new generation of prolific insect photographers.  Rather, the issue is that much of the demand for insect photos is for particular species showing particular behaviors. The value comes from the technical information about the subject just as much as the aesthetics of the image, and most people taking insect photos lack the training to recognize what they're shooting, or to know what to shoot.

Entomology is a specialized discipline that requires a fair amount of training, and many of the top-tier of insect photographers- people like Piotr Naskrecki (The Smaller Majority) and Mark Moffett (National Geographic)- are Ph.D. scientists with a string of research publications.  Just as for fashion or sports photography, successful insect photographers need an insider's
knowledge of their field.

How did you determine your licensing prices?

Gosh, I'm still figuring that out.  It's trial and error.  Some clients express surprise at what a bargain they're getting while others tell me they can't meet my rates.  Between the two, one develops a sense of where the market is for a particular kind of use.  For example, newspapers are cash-strapped at the moment and generally have no budget for science images.

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Photo by Alex Wild


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At the front of each issue of Seed Magazine is your typical list of contributors, however, instead of using tiny headshots like most magazines, Seed commissions Bernd Shifferdecker to paint a portrait. They are so fabulous as to make you stop and pause and appreciate the craftsmanship of a true artist. And while his output isn't a photograph, there certainly is a photorealistic quality to the images.

He speaks good English too. Danke, Bernd!


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Illustrations by Bernd Schifferdecker

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Illustrations by Bernd Schifferdecker


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Photo by Noah Kalina


You live in Germany. How did Seed magazine find you?

Sagmeister Inc. made the redesign for Seed magazine. They suggested this style for the contributors section.

How do you create a portrait for the magazine?

They send me photos of very different quality and then I try to convert portraits into this style. Sometimes I have to make the illustrations in 2-3 days. I use acrylics to paint them.

The lighting for each portrait looks very similar. how closely do your portraits match the photo?

I use as many details as I can get. The lighting is sometimes too extreme and then I would try to adjust it for the series.


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Have you ever noticed that camera gear is expensive? When I think about all the I've spent on gear in my life, my body starts to shake a little like Ricky Martin on crack. There is also the matter of utility -- I don't use those two strip softboxes sitting under my bed...ever. So in attempt to keep cost and utility in mind, I present to you 10 pieces of gear under $50 that you should own...

Lumiquest Pocket Bounce $20

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There are a lot of variations of the flash-diffuser (like the Stofen Omni-Bounce or Gary Fong's weird light sphere), and depending on the quality of light you desire, you might find something better suited to your taste. For me, this $20 piece of plastic coated cardboard does pretty damn well. It's diffuse, but still directional, and when I drag my shutter to get a little ambient light going, the pictures look sweet like butter. Sweet butter, that is.

$22.95


Honl Speed Strap

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I love the Lumiquest, but I don't like the Velcro stickers you have to stick on the flash. So I was really happy to see that David Honl created a little velco strap to go with his set of flash attachments. Ah, no more stickiness on my flash. That should increase the eBay resale value by a couple bucks. And while you're at it, grab a couple of Honl flash snoots too.

$9.95

Lens Pen

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Lenspen makes it, and Nikon OEMs it. I don't really understand the physics behind this thing, but it sure keeps my lenses clean. Apparently carbon is pretty good at cleaning stuff, so why not stick some on a little microfiber nib and market it for a couple bucks. Add a little condensation from my hot breath, and voila, much better than spray on lens cleaner.

$9.95

Leatherman Juice C2
The smallest Leatherman model, appropriately called the "Keychain," doesn't have pliers, and you need pliers. You need them because things have a tendency to get stuck - little tiny things - that you're grubby fingers are too big and weak to move. Oh yeah, gotta have a bottle opener for the after shoot brewskie.

$41


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Conspiracy theorists might have reason to be skeptical of a chemical company that appeals to our humanity after selling Napalm to the US Military. But that was then and this is now (and silicone breast implants are back en vogue too). Last year, the Dow Chemical Company introduced "The Human Element" advertising campaign, which was developed by the ad agency Draft FCB.


The campaign has aged well, and more recently I've started to see some of Steve McCurry's (of National Geographic "Afghan Girl" fame) images from southeast Asia being used in various contexts (truth be told, I saw them in Seed Magazine!). Big props to Draft FCB and Dow for pushing magnificent photojournalistic images in their ad campaigns. When people complain about stock photos looking bad, a large part of blame goes to the image buyers for not "pushing" photography further.

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Photojournalist-turned-lifestyle photographer, Mark Richards started the Core Memory Project to skillfully photograph old computer equipment. Sounds mundane? In a society that juxtaposes Moore's Law with a disposable mentality, it's cool to see old equipment as art.

Love it? You can get an art print on his website, or buy the book.

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Your regularly scheduled host, Rachel "The Glove" Hulin is getting some well-deserved R&R this week, and she foolishly tapped me to fill the void to give you some photo blog crack. But before we get started, let's get a few things straight: Although I'm the CEO/Co-Founder of PhotoShelter, I am not nearly as cool nor as knowledgeable about photos as Rachel. So when I tell you that I've found a really great scenic photographer named Ansel Adams, don't let the tomatoes fly. I'm just trying to impart some photo love upon you.

Today is officially science day here on Shoot! The Blog, and truth be told, I'm a bit of a closet nerd. While I'm not particularly bright, I subscribe to three (count 'em) science magazines: 1) Scientific American, 2) Discover, and most recently 3) Seed Magazine.

Seed is a real departure from the density of most science magazines because of their superior graphic design and art direction, but also because of their mantra of "Science is Culture." They are very interested in science as it relates to humanity, and in that respect, they are hoping to make science more relevant to everyone. I can dig that.

When I hopped on my morning subway commute and opened up the August 2008 issue, I' was happily surprised to see a photo essay by PhotoShelter contributor Noah Kalina, who you might know better as the guy who took a picture of himself for six years. Noah's covered the rather prosaic topic of "Labs at Night." Let's take a little chat.

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Social Robotics Laboratory at Yale University. Photo by Noah Kalina.

I love Seed. How the heck did they find you? Was it because of your project to try to shoot every restaurant in NYC?


I got a call from the Art Director Jeffrey Docherty.  He told me he had been following my work on flickr for quite some time, back when he was working at the New York Times Magazine. He wasn't ever able to get me any work there, but when he took over the AD spot at SEED he gave me a ring. I initially did a series of portraits for their March/April issue and then this project came up and he thought I was perfect for it.

I think I need to clear up the "shoot every restaurant in NYC empty" project.  For about 4 years I was the primary photographer for AOL CityGuide, Zagat.com and Eater.com. I also contributed work to every other city guide or magazine you can imagine. I shot a lot of restaurant interiors.  Over 3,000. I always preferred to shoot the spaces empty, and since I have so many of them with that particular look, it seemed like it could have been an actual project. The fact of the matter is it was just my main job.

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That said, my experience shooting empty spaces was probably the reason Jeff thought I was a good fit for this assignment.

This was the last issue Jeff worked on for Seed, he is now the AD at Visionaire. Jeff is awesome. Jeff and I are currently working on a book of my photographs together.:

Since it is a science magazine, let's get a little geeky. The light in the Stanford Linear Accelerator and the Hetzer Laboratory looks really white, whereas I would imagine that sodium vapor lights would be more common. Did you do some crazy white balancing?

The corridor shot that was published is actually a new tunnel that they are building and it is currently under construction. They had those construction type lights running the length of the tunnel. They weren't Sodium Vapor, I think they were just florescent bulbs. So to the eyes, they were white. But yes, I do color correct my photos and probably shifted it a little bluer than it actually appeared.

labs2.jpgPhotos by Noah Kalina.


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Folks, I have an announcement: It's time for me to take a week off to recharge my blogging batteries. I'm flying off to the great beyond to find some extraordinary photo inspiration. I shall document it all with my Pentax 67 (or Mamiya 7II, I can't decide) and share my enlightenment when I return.

In the meantime, you are going to have a very special blog week with guest blogger Allen Murabayashi. THE CEO. This dude's in charge and is ready to roll as your blog steward. He, like me, will fluff your pillows and provide you peanuts if you need them. We're taking this change-over very seriously; I even forced a blog-baton hand off ceremony:

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Be nice to Allen next week; he knows more about Nikon DSLRs than I ever will in a lifetime, so use his knowledge to your benefit.


Here are some rare clouds to look at over the weekend. I'll see you back here on Monday, July 7th.

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Mammatus are pouch-like cloud structures and a rare example of clouds in sinking air.

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A roll cloud is a low, horizontal tube-shaped arcus cloud associated with a thunderstorm gust front, or sometimes a cold front. Roll clouds can also be a sign of possible microburst activity.

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A shelf cloud is a low, horizontal wedge-shaped arcus cloud, associated with a thunderstorm gust front (or occasionally with a cold front, even in the absence of thunderstorms).


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Nacreous clouds shine brightly in high altitude sunlight up to two hours after ground level sunset or before dawn. Their unbelievably bright iridescent colors and slow movement relative to any lower clouds make them an unmistakable and unforgettable sight.

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Noctilucent clouds appear to be luminous yet they reflect the sunlight from the other side of the earth at night, giving them a glowing appearance.


See more rare clouds here.



Arrivederci, i miei amici!
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Richard Mosse has been one of my favorite photographers for some time now, and I've been waiting for an applicable time to feature his Air Disaster project. Since I'm flying off across the ocean tomorrow (more on this later), it seems appropriate to look at imagery of planes on fire.

Mosse, a recent graduate of the Yale MFA program, shoots both disaster simulations and actual crashes with a view camera. I find the results stunning and otherworldy, and strangely comforting the day before I get on a long flight. I mean, what are the odds I would blog about a plane disaster and then die in a plane disaster? And then if I DID, wouldn't it be fantastic irony?!

Ok, moving on (where's the xanax and white wine when you need it?)


Below are some excerpts from an interview with Mosse from the great bldgblog.


"I spotted my first air disaster simulator on the tarmac at JFK," Mosse wrote. "You can see it yourself next time you fly into that airport. It's an intimidating black oblong structure situated dangerously close to one of the runways. Ever since, I have hunted for air trainers while taxi-ing across each new airport that I've had the chance to fly into."

When I asked him about the actual photographic process - setting himself up near burning, abstract airplanes in order to get the right shot - Mosse replied: "They are extremely difficult to photograph. First the water jets are turned on to douse the fuselage in water. This is in order to stop the metal warping under the intense heat of the flames. Then a pilot light comes on - and the spectacle begins."

"But before you've had a chance to cock your shutter and take the photo," Mosse continued, "it is all finished."


air-disaster-002.jpgUntitled (Heathrow), air disaster simulator, London, UK, August 2007


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Untitled (Blackpool), air disaster simulator, Blackpool, UK, December 2007


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Untitled (Schiphol), air disaster simulator, Amsterdam, Netherlands, June 2007


*rainbow. fire*

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Untitled (San Bernardino), air disaster simulator, California, USA, October 2007


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Untitled (San Bernardino), air disaster simulator, California, USA, June 2007


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Untitled (Teeside), air disaster simulator, Yorkshire, UK, December 2007


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Untitled (Grammatiko), Helios air disaster near Marathon, Greece, August 2005


"As for the actual plane crashes, these are also difficult to photograph. You must be prepared to travel immediately in order to photograph one, and you don't know if you will even be able to get a photograph of it when you get there. For very good reasons, press photographers are always corralled into a pen at a great distance from the disaster. Most photographers take out their longest lens and zoom right in - but I don't have a zoom lens. I shoot with a wooden field camera, and so I am forced to shoot the disaster in its context, as a landscape photograph. The results end up looking like something approaching early war photography from the 19th century."


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Untitled (Staffordshire), light plane crash, Midlands, UK, December 2007





top: Untitled (San Bernardino), air disaster simulator, California, USA, June 2007
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At the end of each school year, the International Center of Photography holds a career day for its graduating students to meet editors and buyers in the industry. It's a fantastic way to see and be seen, and PhotoShelter's fabulous Director of Photography Meagan Ziegler-Haynes bravely represented us at the event on Wednesday.

Here's the way it works; each industry professional sits at a table, and a student slides in with their portfolio every half hour or so and tries to impress. It can be nerve-wracking for both entities, as I'm keenly aware-- I've been to this event as a student as well as an editor, and I even organized it for two years while an administrator at ICP.

It's a blast, and sometimes there are lemon squares.


Here's who Meagan encountered at the cool-kids table:

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A. Phil Bicker, Creative Director at The FADER
B. Amani Olu from Humble Arts Foundation
C. Stephen Schuster, Director of Photography at Mass Appeal
D. Jon Feinstein from Humble Arts Foundation
E. Katie Constans, Creative Director at TRACE Magazine



I asked Meagan to choose the most impressive student she met so I could feature him or her on the blog, and she enthusiastically nominated Mario Valentino Tozzi. Mario just completed the one-year General Studies program, and shoots a lot of fashion. For his final project he worked to find a connection between fashion and fine art.

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Mario is acquainted with a lot of folks in the fashion industry, so he chose to make large format portraits of some of these folks crying.

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The idea came about because Mario wanted to humanize these people, who are so often considered glamorous due to the nature of their jobs. I questioned Mario about the similarities between this work and Sam Taylor-Wood's Crying Men and Jill Greenberg's Crying Babies, which was obviously something he'd heard a lot; he said "the purpose of my images is different than the others. I think my casting stands out; you do sort of expect babies to cry."

Touché.

How do you get someone to cry on cue, anyway? Mario says his most effective question is:

How do your parents feel about what you do?

I told Mario that if his photo career doesn't work out, maybe he could replace Barbara Walters. She must be getting tired.


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Natalie

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Jermaine

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Ann

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Les

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Jimmy

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Beth

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Pam


See more of Mario's work here.
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We gently and calmly tell our photographers time and again how to correctly keyword and caption their photos, but some bravely persevere and ignore each and every piece of sound advice. Never has this been done to more hilarious effect than by Argentinian photographer Martin Korben; I feel like he has a much better chance of writing a bestselling graphic novel than selling loads of stock.

And that is a compliment! Take a look-- I dare you not to become engrossed.


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Maria is an Argentinian actress and this is a backstage shot from a small fashion campaign i shot for a friend of hers.


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This I shot during a weekend getaway with my good friend Luciano. A month after this his boyfriend saw the picture and sent me the stupidest e-mail ever.


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This we shot at a friend's country house with some rented neon lights. The boy's called German and up till the last minute we all thought he was gay. And the girl's name is Caro, she won the Elite Model Look contest here in Argentina.


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Luciana is a glamour model and she's always glad and willing to take off her clothes for my personal portfolio. I love her because whenever she calls me on my mobile phone the first thing she says is: "Hola Gay."


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Andrea is friends with my friend (and makeup artist) Cecilia. After meeting her I realized she starred on a kid's soap I used to watch. She's VERY easy going and fun.


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I shot this during a weekend getaway to Mar Del Plata; the closest, most popular beach to Buenos Aires. My friend Agustina lives there and she owns a collection of these so I just borrowed them and spent a whole morning playing with them. And yes, people did stare.


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I saw this while coming back home one night-- a terrible one.


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Her name is Azul, spanish for the color "blue." She asked me to take her portrait once and this turned out to be my favorite. She was very nice and collaborative.


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I dated David for less than two months. This was shot during month one.



Our in-house linguist and captioning guru Kate Thomas weighs in here about captioning (she's not-so-secretly amused by Martin, though):


"Personal moments can make for fantastic, genuine stock imagery with a broad appeal. Even so, a great stock photo /caption/ should be informative, brief, and professional-- not personalized.

News captions are written to provide contextual information that's essential for understanding the larger importance of an image.

In general, captions for creative images don't need to provide a lot of background info. They need to specify and explain only what you can actually see in the image. It's not helpful to a buyer to know that the woman in the picture is your mother, or that she's wearing her favorite hat that you bought for her last year on vacation. The lives and opinions of photographers and their subjects are simply not relevant for creative captions.

BUT- it must be said- some people's lives are just more entertaining than others."




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cover photo of Fugazi by Bob Conrad


You PROBABLY noticed that PhotoShelter kicked serious punk ass in the July 2008 issue of Alternative Press; our photographers were responsible for nearly all of the imagery. The theme? 23 bands who shaped punk. This was a team effort by many PS members, but most notably by Aleksandra Flora-McMillen in sales, and photo editors Amber Sexton and Ashley Macknica.

Let me tell you how it went down.


1. Aleks gets an email from the pe at AP, whom she knew previously from her days at Retna:

April 22, 2008

Hi Aleksandra,
do you know which of the artists below that you have?  keeping in mind that i need images of them during their youth, i.e husker du, black flag and buzzcocks from the early 80's and do you have an ETA? THANK YOU!

BAD BRAINS- BIKINI KILL- BLACK FLAG- BUZZCOCKS- CAP'N JAZZ- CHRISTIE FRONT DRIVE- CRASS- CRO-MAGS- DESCENDENTS- DRIVE LIKE JEHU- EARTH CRISIS- FUEL- FUGAZI- GRADE- HEROIN- HUSKER DU- INTEGRITY- MOSS ICON- OPERATION IVY- THE SCREAMERS- SUNNY DAY REAL ESTATE- UNBROKEN-YOUTH OF TODAY

*Norman Wonderly
Alternative Press Magazine*


2. Aleks goes to Amber Sexton to discuss the imagery. Amber is much cooler than the rest of us and basically partied with all the folks above, so she knows what to do. She goes to longtime contributors Trent Nelson and Innis McAllister to see what they have and is hooked up with Bob Conrad through Theresa Kereakes, who also has rad music imagery in the collection.

3.
Photo Editor Ashley Macknica gets into the mix. There are still a few unrepresented bands, so she takes to flickr and finds David Sine. Thank god, or there would be no Drive Like Jehu!

4. The issue is mocked up, and the rest is punk publishing history.


Here's the result:

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Fugazi
Photo by Trent Nelson


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Crass
Photo by Innis McAllister


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Youth of Today
Photo by Trent Nelson


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Operation Ivy
Photo by Trent Nelson


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Cro-Mags
Photo by Trent Nelson

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Earth Crisis
Photo by Trent Nelson


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Heroin
Photo by Bob Conrad



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Drive Like a Jehu
Photo by David Sine



Other notable PS music folks include Kevin Salk and Jill Furmanovsky.



Rawk.




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And she will trump your shemale controversy! In the latest *shocking" fashion industry news, Vivienne Westwood cast her Milan runway show with "real gypsies". From the Telegraph:

"A member of the Milan council criticised the show, saying that she has a 'romantic' image of the Roma that "no longer corresponds to reality'.

The models, dressed as "rough, stylish and hardened" Roma, were part of Ms Westwood's show's theme of 'tolerance'.

Council member Tiziano Maiolo said "I think the designer has a romantic notion about gypsies that is one hundred years out of date."


I don't know what to think about all this business, but I DO know what to think about this image: it is awesome.


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photos by AFP/Getty


You can model for me anytime, my gypsy friend. I love your teeth. They are so... authentic! Grrrr.


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Talk about a clever melding! Google and Shorpy! Almost beats bunnies and rainbows. Consider me distracted.



View Larger Map

My Favorite? "Elephant Walk, 1920"

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photo by Mandy Schoch

Couldn't resist posting this image, which was just added to the collection this week. That baby is hugging its mother, my friends. Rivals Christian the Lion and Steve the Chicken, if you ask me.

And even if you didn't.
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Since we're talking a bit about the marketplace this morning, I thought I'd crib something interesting from the School of Stock blog; we asked several successful stock photographers which images of their sold like hotcakes, and here are their answers:


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photo by Andrea Wyner


"A picture of a woman walking on a ledge near some water. I think this has sold a lot because it has a sense of freedom-- it's escapist, she's in a world of her own. It also makes you use your imagination, you don't know exactly what's going on."

- Andrea Wyner


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photo by Eric O'Connell


"A picture I took of the Brooklyn Bridge in a blizzard. I literally picked up my hat and camera, clicked one shot, and walked home. It was freezing! It took a few seconds and I've sold it for as much as $10k."

- Eric O'Connell



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photo by Nancy Ney


 "Just a simple shot of a young woman with corn rows flipping her hair with blue sky behind it - that has sold constantly, like once a month."

- Nancy Ney



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photo by Inti St. Clair


"It's actually a picture of myself - I set it all up and had my husband press the button. It's ridiculous, but it's a photo of me in Thailand in a pool with my arms outstretched, and taken from behind. It sells again and again - because the viewer wants to be in the photo. It sells luxury and vacation and relaxation and free time - concepts that appeal to all of us. It's funny because we did the same picture with my husband, and that hasn't sold nearly as much. I think women sell more than men because they are easier to identify with."

- Inti St. Clair


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photo by Jon Ragel

"The stuff selling the most for me is super spontaneous 'life is good' youth having fun stuff." - Jon Ragel


What about you, reader? Had any real doozies that keep selling?



ps- see the full article on SOS for many practical stock advices!


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I was reading the trusty New Yorker last night, and came across this ad for the Condé Nast store. I knew about the existence of said store, primarily because of that cool limited edition Vignelli subway diagram Men's Vogue was selling a few months ago.

But I didn't realize the trove that was available here. The copy from the ad says:

  • Thousands of iconic photographs, classic covers and illustrations from Vanity Fair, Vogue, Gourmet, Golf Digest, and other magazines.
  • Customize your archival print with a variety of premium matting and hardwood frames.

So then I went to take a look. I was skeptical, because this seems like a nice way to make a buck from the masses. And Condé Nast is already doing a fair bit of that. But I immediately got lost in the Vogue photography section. Aside from being a store, this place is a nice little research library. There's some amazing stuff in here, including my beloved Toni Frissell. I learned things!

Here are some of my favorites:


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A Sun Shade      
Artist: Erwin Blumenfeld

Though he began his photographic career with politically themed work, Erwin Blumenfeld broke fashion ground, particularly with his clean, iconic beauty portraits. His elegantly simple picture focuses the viewer's eye on the perfect fuchsia-hued lips of a flaxen-haired model wearing a sunshade. The image appeared in the May 1, 1945, Vogue.



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On the Prow      
Artist: Toni Frissell

Like a heroine of the sea, a beautifully figured model stands on the prow of a ship wearing a long, covered-up jersey of lisle in the reddish hue of a Brittany fisherman's and a scanty black swimsuit from Peck & Peck. Photographed against an expansive sky with very little of the ship, this image stimulates the senses and true sensation of limitlessness. Toni Frissell's photograph appeared in the July 1, 1940, Vogue.


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Funny Pages     
Artist: Louis Faurer

A comic-reading model in a confetti-print girdle is the subject of this Louis Faurer photograph, which appeared in the February 15, 1963, Vogue. The color scheme--and quirky attitude--found in the girdle are nicely mimicked in the newspaper, lending a sense of hilarity to this otherwise ordinary product shot.




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Gloria Vanderbilt    
Artist: Gianni Penati

Designer and socialite Gloria Vanderbilt is the subject of this Gianni Penati portrait, which appeared in the October 15, 1968, Vogue. Vanderbilt wears a lavender blouse, with the collar popped for dramatic effect. In the background is wallpaper depicting various purple violets, accented with green leaves. The extreme close-up nature of this shot is unusual for the era, which makes this piece feel very intimate.




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Veruschka in Arizona
Artist: Franco Rubartelli

Model Veruschka became a muse for an entire line during this shoot in the Arizona desert, which was photographed by her then boyfriend, Franco Rubartelli, and which appeared in the July 1, 1968, Vogue. Stylist Giorgio di Sant'Angelo--a dear friend of Veruschka's--became a veritable designer with a hallowed place in fashion history when he enveloped his friend in a honey-colored wrap with a fur hood and leather straps. A collection was born, as was this now legendary image.



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Flowered Hat      
Artist: John Rawlings

A model applies lipstick in a most unconventional manner in this John Rawlings photograph, which appeared in the March 15, 1943, Vogue. Her head and forearms are portruding from what appears to be a wall, and she is impeccably attired in bracelets, gloves, and even a flower-studded hat. This piece is quite surreal, and it's a rare example of a high-concept, offbeat photograph from the era.



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Model Surrounded by Satin Slippers   
Artist: Horst P. Horst  

A model reclines on a satin pillow while confronted with a feast of footwear. She wears misty blue crushed-back evening gloves that match her strapless gown while she decides among the array of candy-colored satin slippers. Horst P. Horst's photograph appeared in the October 1, 1941, Vogue.



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Two Ladies and Their Poodles      
Artist: John Rawlings

Two poodle-flanked models appear in this John Rawlings photograph, which appeared in the April 15, 1945, Vogue. They wear contrasting ensembles from Sophie of Saks Fifth Avenue. The woman on the left wears a traditional dress and floral bonnet. Her more progressive companion wears a suit dress and fedora. Even the chairs mimic the fashion choices, with the antique style on the left contrasting with the contemporary chair on the right. This attention to detail suggests that Rawlings intended to document a period of changing styles, and that such transformation was a serious matter.


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Dining with a Cheetah   
Artist: Leombruno-Bodi
 
This striking, imaginative image features a most unusual dining experience. A model in a black crepe dress and large feather hat by Lilly Daché gazes intently at a cheetah. The jungle cat appears quite civilized, given the napkin tied around its neck and the champagne bucket next to its place setting. Leombruno-Bodi's elaborately staged photograph appeared in the November 1, 1960, Vogue.



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Model & Lincoln Continental     
Artist: John Rawlings

A model stands before a slide of a blue 1960 Lincoln Continental Mark V. She wears a black sweater and a leopard-fur hat with a squared crown and brim turned down over her left eye. She and the Lincoln compete for the viewer's attention. John Rawlings's photograph appeared in the November 1, 1959, Vogue.


Yeah, so I don't know what's up with Gloria Vanderbilt's makeup, but I thought those were pretty rad. The pricing seems standardized for prints, ranging from $180 for an unframed 12x15 print to $1500 for a framed 32x40 print. Not outrageous. But hearty.

I wonder if any of the artists see a cut?


In any case, I was almost done with my perusing when it occurred to me (I don't know why) to go look at the prints Golf Digest had for sale. Holy crow; Dom Furore!

A golf course has never been so beautiful.

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Photo by Dom Furore


Formerly the Lenox Hills Country Club, the land was purchased by the state and Bethpage State Park was created in the 1930s. Three of the park's courses were designed by A.W. Tillinghast, including the Black Course. When the 2002 U.S. Open was played at Bethpage, it marked the first time the championship ever had been played on a municipal facility. This image of the bunkers at night on the 17th hole was taken by Golf Digest Senior Staff Photographer Dom Furore. The Black Course was ranked No. 5 in Golf Digest's 100 Greatest Public Golf Courses 2007-08.


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Photo by Dom Furore


Also make sure to check out the Vanity Fair portraits.


Update: Just found this John Rawlings image in the Glamour database ( from 1947!!!) Um, can we please bring back the rear projection in fashion photography? Change the outfit up, and this one's positively contemporary.

kthnx.

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Wanted by Uncle Sam
Artist: John Rawlings

An omnipresent Uncle Sam looms even larger in this photograph. A model in a red checked dress made of spun rayon stands in front of his image, regarding the icon intently. His face--and her dress--are the only things to fully emerge from the shadows, which suggests the photographer might have had more than one motive. John Rawlings's work appeared in the September 1947 Glamour.


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I'm a little under the weather today, so I thought I'd post Vincent Fournier's cozy ads for detergent. Because if it weren't 80 degrees in here, I'd want to be doing the above.

But THEN, I came upon his Space Project in his personal work, so obviously I had to post some of those.

Maybe we should immortalize this feature:

three commissioned pictures/
three personal pictures.

See more here, his work's great.


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Z.

I have this thing about planets and dinosaurs; I feel like my knowledge of them peaked at age eight, and now I'm always trying to catch up. It confuses me that we lost Pluto. In any case, I was lying in bed last night, thinking of blogging (I have blog dreams you wouldn't believe) and I thought I should post planet pictures and see if you visual folks can identify them by sight.

Because, I really could only get the most obvious ones. These images are all from NASA, and accompany the planet pages on Wikipedia. That seemed like the most basic place to find a representative planet portrait, but let me know if I am wrong.

OK- so this is actually a quiz. Be the first to match up the numbers with the letters correctly, and get a prize. Please don't cheat, that's lame.

Here are your planet choices, closest to farthest from the sun. Go!

1. Mercury
2. Venus
3. Earth
4. Mars
5. Jupiter
6. Saturn
7. Uranus
8. Neptune



A.
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B.
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C.
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D.
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E.
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F.
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G.
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Back to our Juergen Teller discussion. I knew it would only be a matter of time. Now he and Marc have used male model Cole Mohr to don women's clothes for the Fall '08/ Winter '09 collection ads.

Whatcha think about THAT?

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What's behind your lovely purple bag, my friend?

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I wonder if they made him shave his legs.

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From Thomas Holton, whom we interviewed a few months ago about his excellent project, The Lams of Ludlow.

Hello Friends, Family and Colleagues,

As you may or may not know, I photographed a Chinese family from 2002-2005 for a project called 'The Lams of Ludlow Street'.  Beyond the remarkable publicity the work has gotten the past year or so, the Lams mean so much more tome than any professional accomplishments.  I learned a lot about myself both personally and creatively and see the Lams as family. 

On June 14th, there was an electrical fire in the walls and the stairwell and the roof of their building on Ludlow Street caught on fire.  The family made it out of the building via the fire escape and are now safe and sound, if not a little shaken up. The fire was caught early but their apartment, the 5th floor and the roof took a lot of structural, water and smoke damage.  The space is not completely destroyed but the building is currently closed for inspection and the Lams are in a Red Cross secured apartment on West 129th street.  

The next step is between the landlord and the NYC Building Inspectors as they assess the building to see if its needs to be completely rebuilt or if only the5th floor apartments and roof should be repaired. This is not a new building and this will probably takes years judging by how long these things seem to take. In the meantime, The Lams have this Red Cross space for only six months before they need to find a new home for themselves. Regardless of what happens with the Ludlow Street building, the likelihood that they will ever live there again is pretty small since they will need a new home soon and perhaps permanently. 

I am contacting you today to let you know that I will be selling a limited 'benefit' edition print of the project with all the proceeds going to the Lams as they rebuild their lives. The print will be a color 11x14 C-Print for $175 for one with discount rates increasing as the number of prints bought increases. Please contact me directly at thomas@thomasholton.com or call me at
(917) 364-8044 to buy some prints the help the Lams. 


Images available:

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Vector Portraits 1989-1997
Photographs made while travelling 50 to 70 mph in Los Angeles and other parts of the Southwestern United States.


There are a whole lotta these, check them out.
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My favorite:

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No, maybe this one.

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I can't decide.

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See more of Andrew Bush's work here. Warning: the dude likes repetition.
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photo by Renhui Zhao

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photo by Renhui Zhao

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photo by Renhui Zhao


There's a beautiful photo essay on Foto 8 of Renhui Zhao's Chinese tiger images. About the project:


"In China wild tigers are close to extinction, it is estimated that just 50 remain. In captivity, however, their numbers are flourishing with tiger farms and reserves attracting thousands of tourists every year. Several large parks, including Xiongsen Bear and Tiger Mountain Village in Guilin and The Siberian Tiger Forest Park in Harbin, claim to be struggling to support themselves on their current funding and visitor fees alone.

The Chinese government, under pressure from these farms, is pushing to legalise the trade of tiger parts, in a seemingly ironic gesture to save the species from extinction. Tiger parts have been used in traditional Chinese medicine for over 5000 years, but the practice was banned 14 years ago in a global attempt to preserve this endangered species. If the ban is lifted, it will only apply to farmed tigers, not wild tigers and the profits generated will, supposedly support the 'rewilding' efforts China is currently undertaking.

Xiongsen, one of the most controversial farms, houses nearly 1700 tigers and has been declared as an official centre for captive breeding and reintroduction to the wild. Animals are trained to perform in spectacles including "Grand Meeting of Bear and Tiger" and "Theatre of Dreams" and visitors can buy live chickens, turkeys, ducks or even cows to feed the tigers.

It is said the live prey will encourage the re-wilding of the farmed tigers, but many feel this is a pointless and barbaric act as these tigers will never be ready to be released into the wild. Indeed, farmed tigers, without natural hunting experience have difficulties in killing and devouring a live cow and the farm workers usually remove the injured cow for slaughter after fifteen minutes.

The first re-wilded tiger is due to be re-introduced back to the wild during the Beijing Olympics 2008."


See many more images here, and check out Foto 8's other offerings; they've got some beautiful things going on over there.


And don't forget to meet Christian the Lion. Really.
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Like the rest of the country, we were saddened to hear about the news of George Carlin's passing, and felt that we should honor him in some way. We thought and thought, and then came upon an idea; why not research stock repositories for Carlin's "seven words you can never say on television"? Researchers, you know you like to type outrageous words into the search field when you're bored. This time we do it for you. To fairly represent the breadth of the industry, we searched both PhotoShelter and Getty.

The only rule: I had to choose an image from the first page of results. If you don't trust my findings, search for yourself! Some results make sense, some clearly do not. Number 5 is just amazing.

Ok! Here we go:


1.
Sh&t

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Hunting cabin outhouse.


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Businessman holding construction plan, showing thumbs up sign, portrait, close-up.

 

2.
P*ss

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Three boys show bottles of urine samples during a Saturday morning session run by the LA County sheriff's department.


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Person in bull costume using urinal, rear view.



3. F%ck

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Ling Ling and Hsing Hsing, Panda bears in Washington, DC National Zoo, in act of mating.


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Gay couple flirting while washing a car together.


 
4. C#nt
(only 1 result each)

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A man in shirt and tie stood in front of a garage door with an obscene insult.


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ISTANBUL, TURKEY: Besiktas Istanbul`s player Federico Cunti (R) fights for the control of the ball with Galatasaray Istanbul`s player Ayhan Akman.

 


5. C@cks*cker


PSC000145953-comp.jpgAnildo the steelworker smokes a cigar.


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A fighting-cock breeder sucks the blood out of his bird's head after it received several wounds during a fight 26 February at a Mexico City cockfight arena.




6. M!therf*cker

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Gold painted fire extinguisher on wall with funny sign



**NO GETTY IMAGE RESULTS



7. T$ts

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Sexy girl on a red bike, isolated on white.


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Young couple laughing, arms around each other (digital enhancement).



sun bless, george.
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I've often thought that the images on Adobe's CS Packaging are especially lovely, and now I know how they were made-- by Nick Veasey, who employs x-ray techniques in almost all his campaigns and in his personal work. He's found quite a niche, and works within it well; some images are delicate and colorful, while others are stark and graphic. Clients range from Johnny Walker to ESPN Magazine.

I found a great interview in Nick's press area with Professional Photographer Magazine; all quotes below are excerpts.  Nick has one of the best reasons I've ever heard for why he works with the medium the way he does:


"My girlfriend's father used to be a lorry driver. At one time he drove a lorry for a couple of days which contained thousands of cans of Pepsi, one of which had a ring-pull prize
worth £100,000. I thought I'd try a scam. I decided to hire an x-ray machine from a local
hospital to find the winning can. I never did find it, but it sparked off the ideas for the career I have today."


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Johnny Walker Black Label Campaign



"It's part x-ray and part medium format," explains Nick.  "It works well because you can see a traditional image as well as being able to see through the surface. There's a real skill involved in penetrating the surface of everyday objects to reveal qualities that would otherwise be hidden from view."




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Jacksons of Piccadilly Tea

Lemon tea was just one of a complete
packaging range showing the ingredients used in their teas



"This method really hasn't changed throughout my career. Clients get interested in my work before an idea evolves between us, which means I'm in a strong position to influence art directors when the shoot arrives. About 25% of my income is re-invested into producing and
distributing new portfolios, going to visit prospective clients and generally market myself. You have to cast your net wide."




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ESPN Magazine

Used to illustrate the NFL players
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Oust - Odour Eliminator Campaign

Oust has hygienic benefits as it kills hidden germs in the kitchen. X-ray
provides a view of all surfaces susceptible to contamination.




"I've worked with some real art director wankers, especially in the US. When I travel there I often have to deal with the paranoid nature of the American photography psyche. And I hate the bureaucracy, too."





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Supergrass - Album Cover
Combination of x-rays and photographs of the three band members.



"I started taking pictures when I was about 14 - photography was a cool thing for young people to do then.  I sold a few of my images to a couple of record companies, even though I'd never had any formal training, which inspired me to continue."



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Levis Jeans- Bumprint Campaign
Responding to the brief of "Jeans for Work", Nick was asked to capture what a doctor wears.



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Goodyear Duraseal Tyre
The x-ray provided the ideal method of illustrating the self repairing feature of this truck tyre.



"I really enjoy working alongside scientists in creating images that utilise different types of equipment.  Some of my best work has come from listening to those who use the equipment daily and have a thorough understanding of it."




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White Plains Hospital Bus Wrap
This x-ray photograph of a bus full of people was applied life-size to a New York bus.

(Passengers gawped in amazement and missed their bus. Consequent complaints meant it had to be withdrawn.)




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Jimmy Choo Shoes


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Bulldozer - Parker Technologies



"The type of work I do inspires me because it's simple, strong and I've
developed an instinct for it. It's a bit weird, but I like it."


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Okey Doke, we're going all matrimonial up in here this morning. I have a particular need for information, and I'm wondering if you can help me out. You see, I like to shoot weddings. I do not like to make albums. Rather, I provide all the negatives and high-res files to the bride and groom so that they can make their own.

Here's the question: which vendors do I recommend? We're looking for high-quality and ease-of-use (do those two things generally exist together?)... I'm a sucker for full bleed pages, so we need those. And the kicker-- we want this thing at a reasonable price.

I've done a wee bit of research, and here are the folks who keep coming up:

my publisher
blurb
picaboo
sharedink
iphoto books
shutterfly
ofoto
printroom
photoworks
kodak gallery
lulu
mpix
reedy photo books
booksurge


Thoughts? Comments? I know you have them!
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You'll be as excited as an Amish woman with four puppies when you hear this news; the deadline for PS's Shoot! On Location is this Wednesday, June 25th.  Go here to sign up.


*Since I know some of you have the serious lazy, I'll post the details below to make it easier for you.


PHOTOGRAPHER HEAVEN MIGHT LOOK LIKE THIS

This one's on us. 20 supremely lucky PhotoShelter photographers will be chosen for fully staffed photo shoots, equipped with best-in-class Nikon equipment for the day. And, they're completely free!

Renowned pros like David Hobby of The Strobist will be your guide. And you'll hone your technique in one of the five Shoot! The Day image categories, with full support of models, stylists, and assistants. To be chosen, you must be a registered PhotoShelter contributor, and you must complete an application. You must apply by June 25th. The lucky 20 will be announced on June 30th.


Some Details:

  • Only PhotoShelter members are eligible to participate - it's a special treat for our photographers.
  • Each participating photographer will be equipped with a Nikon D300 for the event.
  • All photo shoot expenses will be covered, including location, prepping models, lighting, and analysis of images. A makeup artist, stylist, and photo assistant will be provided where possible.
  • All Shoot! On Location events will take place in the New York metro area and last approximately 5 hours. Transportation to/from New York is not provided.
  • Selected images from each shoot will be included in a slideshow presentation during the wrap party at Shoot Digital Studios on July 20, 2008.
  • All photos captured on Shoot! The Day are the property of the photographer and may be submitted to the PhotoShelter Collection to compete for prizes and sales opportunities.
  • There is no fee to participate.

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Further to our foods for thought day; new VW ads out of Brazil.

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Advertising Agency: ALMAPBBDO, Sao Paulo, Brazil
Executive Creative Director: Marcello Serpa
Creative Directors: Luiz Sanches, Dulcidio Caldeira
Copywriter: Eduardo Andrietta
Art Directors: Marcus Kawamura, Ary Nogueira
Photographer: Hugo Treu
Typographer: Jose Roberto Bezerra
Account Supervisor: Fernao Cosi
Advertiser's Supervisor: Ana Maria Oliveira



It takes a village to make a VW ad, eh? Funny that they all agreed "for every kind of load" was a great dek.
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This made me stop and look. I think, with all my love of stuffed animals and rabbit photos, that this I do not like at all.

The curators want me to be shocked. From The Vine:

"Tourists wandering through Sydney's streets today might wonder if the city has gone slightly mad. In fact these works are part of the 16th Biennale of Sydney, which has filled seven venues with art from more than 180 contemporary artists from around the world.

If viewers are confused, the Biennale's artistic director, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, will have succeeded. "I was looking for artworks I don't fully understand, art that raises more questions than it answers," she said. 'It is when we are confused that our minds start to work.' 

This year's theme, Revolutions - Forms That Turn, urges artists to rebel. The stuffed horse is a 1999 work by the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. Christov-Bakargiev sees the stiff horse as a metaphor for thwarted revolution.


'At certain historical periods there is always a moment of social despair where people are no longer able to tolerate the pain and hardship of their times,' she said. 'I think we are at a stage where the world has to invent new political systems to protect the weak in society due to the great inequalities that globalisation has caused.' "


Read more.


I am confused, but my mind tells me nothing. Does yours?


*Muffins, please note before you comment, that this is a taxidermied, un-alive horse. Now you may do your worst.

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We here at PhotoShelter enjoy our grub-- so much so that a few of us have become daily devotees of Food Porn Daily, which fantasizes about cinnamon buns, cheeses, sausages, and so much more. Their mantra of "click, drool, repeat" is well-received around here, and we follow their directions faithfully.

HOWEVER, there's a little snag in all this goodness; these food images aren't all that good. I'd give them a C+. Maybe a B- with a little mozzarella stick payola. And the cranberry/feta surprise is downright upsetting.

I went to Annie Etheridge, PS's senior photo editor and pro stock guru, for a professional opinion. Here's her beef:

"in true porn fashion, the camera is a little close to to the action.  I think some of these would have some commercial use, but overall, they are off for me. I like the idea a lot, but the lighting, etc. is off for me."


Take a look:


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We talk a bit in the Production Values section of School of Stock about what makes good stock food photography. The gist:

1. The food should look beautiful, edible, and delicious - and this usually takes knowledgeable cooking and preparation, good selection of colors and produce, clean and picturesque arrangement on a plate, spraying or misting during the shoot to keep everything fresh looking-- total attention to detail.

2. The food needs to look homemade and have a loose feeling, but still be beautiful.

3. Keep the setup classic and simple. Don't put lace and gems on the table (you'd be surprised).


Quentin Bacon is someone who knocks food photography out of the park. He's a favorite with the top-of-the-line foodie mag editors, including Food & Wine Magazine, and he's photographed for scads of high-end food books. Also, um, his last name is Bacon.

And he likes cheese. We're psyched to have his work in the PS Collection. Take a look at these. Now THEY deserve a "click, drool, repeat."


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!

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I would like this for lunch.

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I've been meaning to devote a blog day to food photography, and though today might not be it, we're going to try to do some serious dabbling. The inspiration? Serious Eats' alarming article about amateur table-side photography possibly being banned at New York's Momofuku Ko. The horror!

Who doesn't want to take a quick snappy of the $32 snapper they're about to snap up? O dear. More coffee, please.

In any case, a-list chef responses to SE's inquiry on food photography at the table:


MARIO BATALI:

"Do you mean folks like bloggers? Our photo policy is that we do not allow lights or taking photos of other customers but do not stop joyous foodies clicking an occasional photo of the food on the table with a small camera. If it starts to feel like a photo shoot or they flash more than twice, we ask them to stop for the comfort of other guests. I pose with guests for hundreds of photos a year in the resto."


DANIEL BOULUD:

"We don't have a policy," Farkas (PR director for Boulud's empire) said. "We discourage it, but we're not going to ban it. It's good, when and if people have a reservation and they know they want to take pictures, that they tell us. We can seat them in a place that will be better for their purposes. We'll also send people photos of the dishes if they ask us as well. The problem comes in when the flash is going off and it affects other customers' experiences."


DREW NIEPORENT (think NOBU):

"No, we're not going to stop people from taking photos," Nieporent said. "We'd just like people to be considerate of the other people in the restaurant."


DAVID CHANG (of Momofuku-Ko):

"It's just food. Eat it."



Well, Chang asked for it; Here's a quick trip down memory lane with flickr photographer Scaredy Kat at Momofuku Ko. Cue nostalgia-inducing music. Maybe something by Kate Bush.

*note: these are snaps. not intended to be an example of professional food photography. hobbiest fare.

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momofuku ko shaved foie gras with lychees and wine gelee



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momofuku ko coddled egg with paddlefish caviar, onion soubise, potato chips and chervil



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momofuku ko pork belly oyster and kim chee consomme



mmmm.

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About ten years ago, I thought it would be a good idea to start a snowglobe collection. My friends thought it was a great idea, too--  every time they passed through an airport, another sparkly, watery creation would wend its way towards me. And then I had over a hundred snowglobes, and a 400 square-foot apartment. That = conundrum.

Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz are cultivating their own snowglobe madness, by creating little worlds far-removed from the beachscapes and glittery lobster traps that I know.


Let's take a closer look:

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O dear, these seem a bit frightful!

Let's get even closer...


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Hmm, those bunnies look like BAD NEWS.

Let's hear what ARTnews has to say about this snowglobe constructing power couple.


Hint: here they are at work.
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The process has become even more involved recently. The storylines are ornate. Check more out here.

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Crossing the Watery Glass, 2005

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Experiment with Red, 2007

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A Winter Walk, 2006



Hmm, I think one of these would go very nicely with my Maine lobster globe. Where can I buy one?

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The Times is doing a nice job with photo features lately. Check out the excellent article on Weegee in the Arts section (maybe that yard sale find was an inspiration).

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And the piece in the Magazine on Mad Men, with a cool slide show by Olaf Blecker.


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photo by Olaf Blecker


Apparently these folks liked the nicotine.
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Do you go:

BIG

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photo by Chrys

or

SMALL?

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photo by Eliot Shepard
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Speaking of playing on youtube, I've found some spectacularly interesting footage (to me, at least) of 1. Charles and Ray Eames explaining the SX-70 camera and 2. a retro advertisement for the SX-70, produced by the pair.

Boy, they must've loved that SX-70! Speaking of, I sort of want one. How does one wrangle the film issue? Anyone? Dalton?


In any case, the videos...


2. (higher-brow)


1. (lower-brow and with a newfangled soundtrack)



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Ok, forgive me for a moment while we continue our theme. I'll show you in a moment why it's a dog-day around here. In any case, let's go to work with our dogs via the PhotoShelter collection.


Perhaps you are a barrelina, and like to bring your dog to work. On the street.

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Or you are a child, and bring your dogs to your homework.

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This one is nice and literal:

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Sometimes the dog does the work with you.

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 And sometimes the dogs are the work.

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If you don't have a dog, you can borrow this one. And if you work near Rockefeller Plaza, it's sort of like having a dog at work.

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Here is a dog, pretending to do the work! You know he's just looking at youtube all day.


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The end.
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Guys: It's June 20th. You know what that means? It's Take Your Dog to Work Day! My PhotoShelter compatriots either do not have dogs, or are blatantly ignoring this special day. I've therefore spent all morning wrangling some of William Wegman's. I think Wegman has been unfairly categorized as a sort of Hallmark Greeting Card photographer (or maybe he made some poor marketing decisions in the '80s); I've always thought his Weimaraner images were pretty thoughtful and fun. I was even more convinced when I saw a biographical PBS documentary last year-- It's nice to be reminded of Wegman's short films and paintings. He was making hilarious video work way back in the seventies. See some clips down at the bottom. But now for some pooches:


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Screen Saver, 2006

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Evergreen, 2001


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Bed, 2006


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U-Tree, 1992

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Dressed to Mill, 2006


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Untitled, 1993

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3D Shadow, 1993

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Feet First, 2006


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Paw, 1993



Early Video Work:

The Hardly Boys!
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O boy; I was lamenting the fact earlier this week that there was no photography-related peg for the new Eames stamps, which was a bummer, because I'm a sucker for that lounge chair. But I was wrong! Apparently photographer Sally Andersen-Bruce was indeed involved in the production of the stamps, putting together both the structure of playing cards, and photographing the furniture.

This article explains it well; here are excerpts:


"Local resident and renowned stamp photographer Sally Andersen-Bruce spent three weeks assembling vintage playing cards into skyscrapers, cottages and pyramids to find the right image for one U.S. postage stamp in a new 16-stamp commemorative series.

Her photographs are used on two other stamps in the series, which will be released to the public Wednesday.

Artist Derry Noyes, who was commissioned to do the set by the U.S. Postal Service, hired Andersen-Bruce to build a structure with a deck of playing cards the Eames couple designed. They have illustrations of animals, vegetables and minerals and abstract patterns on them."


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"In the past 20 years, Noyes and Andersen-Bruce have worked on nine different stamp projects, including holiday ones that had Andersen-Bruce bake more than a thousand cookies to find the right one to photograph and to search the country over for the perfect Santa Claus ornament.

Noyes said Andersen-Bruce's final design for the new series needed to show how the playing cards go together without losing the 'richness' of their patterns and designs. It could be neither too simple nor too complex.

She knew Andersen-Bruce would get it right.

'She is very thorough, and she goes the extra mile,' Noyes said. 'She doesn't just do one or two takes. She does 15 to 30 takes. Every angle and every variety you can possibly imagine. And then we winnow it down to what works best. If it doesn't work, she'll go back and do it again. She's amazing that way.' "



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"After constructing the house of cards, Andersen-Bruce photographed it and submitted the proofs to Noyes, who created the stamp design and added the typography. Her other photos were of Eames furniture.

Andersen-Bruce said she is proud to again have her work immortalized by the U.S. Postal Service."

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Did you know that there are stamp photographers!? Here's some more of Andersen-Bruce's work. Puppies, kittens, dolls! I'm overwhelmed.



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And might I add- the splash page of her website is just too amazing:

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See more here!

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Continuing our v. relevant fashion/photo coverage today, this from MediaPost:

Off-again, on-again soccer star David Beckham will reappear in ads for Emporio Armani Underwear that will show up beginning in the fourth quarter this year. The effort will have an early teaser (so to speak) this week with a mural at Macy's in San Francisco. Beckham will be on hand to greet customers and debut the new image that overlooks a 6,000-seat amphitheatre.

The ads, shot on Malibu's beach by fashion photographers Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, will appear in sport, fashion and lifestyle magazines and on billboards in major cities such as New York, Los Angeles, London, Milan, Rome, Paris and Tokyo. The photographers are reprising their roles in the Beckham ads. The print magazine ads will debut in the August edition of Vanity Fair.

These folks are getting a little cheeky, no? I find it the slightest bit amusing that the article is filed in the index like this:

Soccer's Beckham To Reappear In Armani Underwear Ads [Packaged Goods]


Packaged Goods, indeed!


Thanks, Joslyn.


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O boy, today is setting up nicely; we started off with colors and Holgas, then moved on to fashion, and now we're combining the two! These are V. Nina Westervelt's images from fashion week, and I love them; they're square! Some of these are taken with a Holga, and some with a Hasselblad-- can you tell the difference?

I also threw in an unrelated Chuck Bass portrait. Forgive me.


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Sasha Pivovarova sits for hair and make-up backstage at John Galliano's Spring 2009 DIOR Cruise collection.


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Alek Wek backstage at John Galliano's Spring 2009 DIOR Cruise collection.


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Backstage at Heatherette.


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Michelle Alves backstage at the Christian Dior Spring 2009 Cruise collection.


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17-year-old model Ali Michael was sent home from the Paris collections this week for gaining five pounds. Casting directors claimed her legs were "too plump".


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Gossip Girl's own Chuck Bass


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Jenni Kayne presentation.


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Vincent Gallo front row at Rodarte.


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Alexander backstage at 3.1 Phillip Lim


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M.I.A. at Marc Jacobs


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Freja Beha Erichson & Heidi Mount backstage at Zac Posen.



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The Times is running a piece today on Italian Vogue's July issue, which was shot by Steven Meisel and will include exclusively black models:


"In a reverse of the general pattern of fashion magazines, all the faces are black, and all the feature topics are related to black women in the arts and entertainment. Mr. Meisel was given roughly 100 pages for his pictures. The issue will be on European newsstands next Thursday and in the United States soon after.

Under its editor, Franca Sozzani, Italian Vogue has gained a reputation for being more about art and ideas than commerce. Ms. Sozzani also doesn't mind controversy.

She said that, as an Italian, she has been intrigued by the American presidential race and Mr. Obama, which was one source of inspiration when she and Mr. Meisel began discussing, in February, the idea of an all-black issue. Also, she was aware of the lack of diversity on the runways in recent years and the debate it fueled last fall in New York, where Bethann Hardison, a former model who ran a successful agency, held two panel discussions on the topic.

Ms. Sozzani said the issue was not a response to criticism that she, too, has under-represented blacks or portrayed them as stereotypes."


If these images are any indication, Meisel has hit this one out of the park. And right on the heels of that Eva Mendes feature; fabulous!

All text is excerpted from the Times piece:

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The four pictures that Ms. Campbell was supposed to make turned into 20. She also appears on the fold-out cover, along with Ms. Kebede, Sessilee Lopez and Ms. Dunn. "Franca doesn't realize what she's done for people of color," Ms. Campbell said the other day. "It reminds me of Yves using all the black models." She was referring to Yves Saint Laurent, who, like Gianni Versace and a handful of other designers, routinely cast minorities.


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Having worked at one time with nearly all the models he chose for the black issue -- Iman, Ms. Campbell, Tyra Banks, Jourdan Dunn, Ms. Kebede, Ms. Wek, Pat Cleveland, Karen Alexander -- Mr. Meisel had his own feelings. "I thought, it's ridiculous, this discrimination," said Mr. Meisel, speaking by phone from his home in Los Angeles. "It's so crazy to live in such a narrow, narrow place. Age, weight, sexuality, race -- every kind of prejudice."


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He began casting in March. "I love the history of fashion, obviously, and I love old, and I tried to get as many of the older girls as I could," he said. Over Ms. Sozzani's initial objections, he also hired Toccara Jones, a full-figure model, who became known from "America's Next Top Model." "I wanted to say something about weight, and I'm never allowed to do that," he said. "I met Toccara and thought, she's beautiful. What's the deal with her? She's great and she's sexy."

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If these pictures have a heightened sense of glamour, it probably has something to do with the atmosphere of a Meisel shoot. According to Ms. Webb, "it's the darkest studio, like a studio at MGM."

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There are fans and reflectors; many assistants. An area is marked "Hair" and another "Makeup." (Pat McGrath did all the makeup for the issue, and Guido Palau did the hair.) A mirror is placed behind Mr. Meisel, so the model can see herself.


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"It's a dark world," Ms. Webb said, "and you're in the spotlight."
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1. Firefox 3's Color Management System

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Kitties looking funny? Horses changing color? Fix your Firefox settings!

From Rob Galbraith:

"The long-awaited Mozilla Firefox 3 for Mac and Windows, which emerged from beta at 10AM Pacific today (6/17), is the latest web browser to support the colour managed display of photos with embedded ICC profiles. That's the good news. The bad news is it's turned off by default. Here's how to turn it on."

Let Rob tell you, color profiles confuse me.


Horses and kitties brought to you by Tim Walker.

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2.
The Colorsplash Lomo.
It's like having gels at your automatic disposal. Or like those pens with eleven-colors-in-one.

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2a. The Colorsplash book.




3. Holgas in colors!



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4.
This picture
, which was, coincidentally, taken with a Holga. But probably just a black one.

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photo by Nina Westervelt



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This is Danny Kirschenbaum, proudly displaying Carla Richmond's brand spanking-new portfolio. He's doing this because Carla was one of our student photographer contest winners, and Danny is a representative of Brewer Cantelmo, which provided custom portfolios for the lucky five.

Brewer Cantelmo is a mainstay of the photographer business in New York; they custom make all of their portfolios in their on-site factory. It's a family business that has been churning out the quality goods for over 80 years. Clients include Ruven Afanador, Ondrea Barbe, Tara Sgroi, Alex Tehrani, Jennifer Rocholl, and scads more.

Here's the fancy stamp on the inside of the book. V cool.

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I got to thinking "what is this on-site factory really like?" "How do all these portfolios come into existence?!" So down I went, straight to the cabbage patch.

Brewer Cantelmo has a showroom on 39th Street, and the factory is in the basement. Fifteen people work in the factory, and each person mans his or her own station. Books need to be cut, mounted, stamped, have their edges turned, get drop-in panels, get inside works installed, go through quality control, be cleaned, and, finally, shipped. Training takes at least 6 months for each station.

Holy Xavier Roberts!


Here are some pictures.

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There are stacks and stacks of leather bound portfolios and books hanging about in the back rooms of the showroom; BC can make a book out of virtually any material. They have many materials in thousands of colors, but you can also provide your own fabric. If it can be folded, it can make a book (though many photographers still go with the 14 x11 black; you can't mess with a classic).

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Cutting Station:

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Sewing Station...

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Where the portfolio bags come into existence...

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Some of the materials available for use. BC also makes menus and other bound-products.

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These are the letters used for embossing the books. Every book has a metal plate made for it, and it's kept on file for five years.

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Here's the plate for The Spotted Pig restaurant in NYC:

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Here's where the embossing happens. I didn't want to get too close.

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But I DID love the rolls of colorful materials. I felt like I was in a Pantone Factory.


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Also, I found some abs.

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And some Royals.

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Here's the menu for the Manhattan restaurant and bar Please Don't Tell. These keep getting lifted from the restaurant, so they continually need to make more.


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This was my favorite leather; Red Rust Lambskin. It was beautiful and smelled amazing. I do feel bad for the lambs, though. Luckily Brewer Cantelmo offers a super-hardy faux leather called SK. It comes in 700 colors.

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If you choose a remnant material, you get a discount. There's a nice selection.


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That's our tour, folks. I hope you found it Schweet.


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You know what's even schweeter? If you order a portfolio from Brewer Cantelmo before June 27th and tell them we sent you, you'll get 25% off.


Whee!
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Yeah, you read that correctly. Check out Comcast's 83-foot-long, 10-million-pixel LED wall in a  Philly lobby (that cost a mere 22 million to create), and let your mind be blown.


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What's in your lobby?


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A few of my flickr contacts have been using their accounts to sell cameras lately. This seems like a pretty good use for flickr, especially since you can post sample imagery. I've bought most of my cameras off of ebay; I like the adventure. Here are two cameras that have always intrigued me: the Fuji GA654 and the Fuji Pro GSW 6x9.

I've shot with the 645 before, but not the 6x9. The 645 is a pretty fun and fully automatic rangefinder, takes both 120 and 220 film, and feels like a point-and-shoot. Here 'tis:

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This one's still available for $400, which is a steal. Here are pictures taken with the camera:


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photo by Alexander Martinez

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photo by Alexander Martinez

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photo by Alexander Martinez


Bryan Schutmaat sold his 6x9 already, but they're readily available used. The 6x9 format has always seemed rather rogue to me-- does anyone out there shoot with it regularly?

The camera's a beaut:

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Samples:

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photo by Bryan Schutmaat

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Bryan Schutmaat

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Bryan Schutmaat



Search flickr tags for "camera" and "sale"; you'll find some interesting things.



UPDATE: Diego Fernandez sent in an image taken with the gsw690 with the 65mm lens. Nice. I like this whole series, actually.

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An intriguing book is recently out about the creatures lurking at the bottom of the sea, entitled The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss, and let me tell you-- this thing isn't kidding around. These scientists clearly dove real deep, because these are faces only a mother could love:


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Football Fish
depth: 1000-4000mm


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unidentified anglerfish
depth: 1000-4000mm


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Fanfin seadevil
depth: 700-1000m


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Scaly Dragonfish
depth: 200-1500m



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Spookfish
depth: 400-2500m


From an interview with author Claire Nuvian:

"This collection of images is fantastic because it portrays what even the specialists have never had the opportunity to see: the "créme-de-la-créme" of all the dives carried out by their colleagues in the four corners of the world over the last 20 years. The images drew "oohs" and "ahs" from researchers who nonetheless spend half the year at sea exploring the great oceanic depths. They were truly stunned by some of photographs because in spite of their great experience with deep-sea diving, it is by definition impossible for them to encounter all the creatures gathered together in this book. It is at times like these that one grasps the immensity of the oceans. It is possible to spend 10 years diving in a submersible without encountering a certain type of jellyfish, and then to see five of them during the same dive, and then never to see one again. Haroun Tazieff [a volcano expert and geologist from France] has said that exploring the oceanic ridge with the help of submersibles was the equivalent of exploring the Alps at night with a flashlight. That's a strong image that indicates how rare and moving such encounters can be."


Oh, hi! You're pretty cute.

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Dumbo Octopus
300-5000m


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This photographer
does:

TOWN OF NEWBURGH -- A dispute over a missing camera at a wedding reception escalated into a 100-person brawl that left two people with stab wounds Saturday night, police said.

"It just kept going on and on," said Town of Newburgh police Sgt. Peter Talarico, who was one of about 30 cops to respond to the melee at the Ramada Inn on Route 300, which spilled into the hotel's parking lot. "It was a wedding party gone bad."

A woman was stabbed in the leg and a man -- the wedding reception's disc jockey -- was stabbed in the back of the neck. Both were treated at the Newburgh campus of St. Luke's Cornwall Hospital and released.

A third man was treated at the hospital's Cornwall campus after being punched in the face; he was later released.



photo by Bill Jurevich



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Oh, Jose Tomas, that must hurt. Good thing there was a photographer to follow the action.


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Ok, you deserve a rest.


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Holy cow.

I mean, Ole?!
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Renata Boeck enjoying breakfast in bed at the Regency Hotel in New York, 1964.


I came upon Slim Aarons' work this morning, and although I had seen his chronicling of all things famous and aristocratic from the '50s to the '70s, it was only today that I realized how deep his trove of work really is.

Aarons is perhaps most well known for his 1974 cult favorite book A Wonderful Time: An Intimate Portrait of the Good Life, which surveys castles, chalets, motor boats and villas that house beautiful people doing glamorous things. Aarons was born in modest circumstances in the beginning of the century in New Hampshire, and thus embodies the outsider photographer looking in. He built his image archive through his work for Vogue, Town and Country, Life, Holiday, and Travel and Leisure Magazine after beginning his career as a war photographer during WWII.

These portraits are glittering and fascinating and I can't get enough of them. Have a look-see. See if you're not in the mood for Rio when you're done. Or a Capote novel.


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Circa 1960:  German born American architect Mies Van Der Rohe (1886 - 1969) on the rooftop of a skyscraper in Chicago. 


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Film star Joan Collins relaxes with her pink poodle on her pink bed.


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1953:  English playwright, actor and composer Noel Coward (1899 - 1973) on holiday in Jamaica in a hired rowing boat. 


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Hon Desmond Guinness in his recently acquired home Leixlip Castle, Co Kildare, Ireland with his children Marina and Patrick. Their mother is Princess Marie Gabrielle von Urach.  Holiday Magazine - 1963.


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1977:  At the 16th hole on Pebble Beach golf course, singer and film star Bing Crosby (in red) and A Thomas Taylor.


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Lady Daphne Cameron (Mrs George Cameron) on a tiger skin rug  in the trophy room at socialite Laddie Sanford's home in Palm Beach, Florida.


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1959:  Babe Paley (Mrs William Paley) by the pool. Her husband, William Paley is snapping the photographer at their cottage, Round Hill, Jamaica.  From A Wonderful Time.


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Mexican film star Dolores Del Rio (1905 - 1983) floating in a swimming pool in Acapulco, 1952.


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American actor Humphrey Bogart (1899 - 1957) with his wife Lauren Bacall and their son Stephen at their home in Beverly Hills in California on Christmas Eve.


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1953:  American film star Katharine Hepburn (1907 - 2003) driving along the waterfront with Irene Mayer Selznick at Montego Bay, Jamaica. 


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Marilyn Monroe (1926  - 1962), wearing a red negligee trimmed with black lace, sorts out her fan mail shortly after her film 'The Asphalt Jungle' had been released. Original Publication: A Wonderful Time.


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Author Truman Capote (1924 - 1984) relaxes with a book and a cigarette in his cluttered apartment, Brooklyn Heights, New York. Original Publication: A Wonderful Time.



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April 1968:  Elizabeth Matthews, descendant  of H M Flagler co-founder of Palm Beach, sits in her great-grandfather's favourite chair in front of the family mansion now the Flagler Museum, Palm Beach. From A Wonderful Time.


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1960:  American poet and biographer of Abraham Lincoln, Carl Sandburg (1878 - 1967) sits at a desk belonging to Lincoln beneath the 'rail-spliiter' portrait of the President in the Chicago Historical Society Museum. From A Wonderful Time.


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Working at his typewriter surrounded by 'bunny girls',  publisher Hugh M Hefner at the Playboy Key Club in Chicago. He founded adult magazines, Playboy, VIp and Oui. 



MANY more images after the jump!




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National Geographic always has incredible photography features, but these Mark Thiessen images documenting last year's devastating forest fires out West really amaze me.

Go to the NG site for comprehensive coverage; see video about fighting forest fires, and even buy a Thiessen print (at a super-reasonable price!)

Some excerpts from an interview with Thiessen:

You really got into the thick of things for this assignment. How were you able to get into the middle of the fires?

I went to fire school. I did that on my own as a personal project ten years ago and I've shot fires in six of those years. Once you go through the five-day fire school, you just need to get a one-day refresher every year, and then you get a red card certification. A red card makes it a lot easier when I show up at a fire--if the firefighters see a photographer who is red carded, it opens a lot more doors. There isn't the whole issue about having to get a media person to escort me. I'm always escorted, but I can go in with a fire crew or the division supervisor.

What did you do to protect your camera equipment?

The worst thing about fire is not the heat--it's the dust. The road turns into cake flour, and the dust is like powdered sugar. It's the worst. You get this dusting sand in your teeth just from the blowing embers. Every time you change lenses you have that getting into the camera. It's not so much a problem with the lens, because you can wipe that off. It's getting it on the chip.


Was there ever a time when you thought, What am I doing here?

In Smiley Park in southern California. I found myself on this street and seven houses were burning around me. I wanted to see what was down this one road that was blocked by a tree. I hopped over the tree, and all of a sudden the wind shifted, and I became enveloped in smoke--I couldn't even see my feet. I thought maybe I died--maybe I died, and this is what heaven is like. When you're in that situation, you can't see anything because of the smoke. I could hear propane tanks exploding. I walked by one garage and heard what sounded like Chinese fireworks going off--it was ammunition exploding. Power lines were falling down.



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In August 2007, photographer Mark Thiessen drove through the Jocko Lake fire in Montana


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Obliterating houses and forcing hundreds of thousands to flee, 18 large wildfires ripped across southern California's parched, crowded hills in three weeks last year. In this neighborhood near Lake Arrowhead, 178 homes burned--most in just two hours.


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Malibu, California. Driven by wind but shaped by terrain, fires often move fastest uphill. As heat rises, vegetation above a fire dries out and burns more easily when the flames arrive. Narrow canyons, gulches, and drainages can also funnel hot air onto blazes, feeding and transforming them into fast-moving walls of flame.


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Before: Just one ember, landing in dry pine needles heaped at the foot of a staircase, was all it took to incinerate this house during an October 2007 fire in Running Springs, California.


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After: Beyond the debris of the house in Running Springs, California (previous image), living trees reveal that fires often jump from house to house, sparing vegetation. 


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In a last-ditch effort, firefighters covered the Scott Mountain lookout in heat-reflecting wrap to protect it from fire churning through Boise National Forest. It survived. Such lookouts, many built in the 1930s, play an important role in spotting wildfires.


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Using terrain as a tool, a firefighter shoots flares onto a hillside, hoping to create a chimney-like effect: As heat from this fire rises, it should draw flames upslope, away from unburned forest below. But fire doesn't always cooperate.


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"Good" fires are ecologically crucial, clearing out dead brush and returning nutrients to the soil. Most of these ponderosa pines will survive, even thrive, after a low-intensity burn in South Dakota's Custer State Park. "Trees respond to fire," says Frank Carroll of the Forest Service, "like roses respond to pruning and fertilizer."


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Building, camper, truck: All were reduced toto incandescent skeletons by flames that savaged Running Springs, California, last fall.


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A maelstrom of embers whips across a field near Santa Clarita, California. Driven by Santa Anas--fierce winds that can gust at more than a hundred miles an hour--wildfires burned hundreds of square miles of drought-stricken trees and brush in 2007, with exhausted fire crews struggling to keep up.


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Beginning at dawn, a fire burned through a neighborhood near Lake Arrowhead, California--by dusk, all that remained was a waste of charred tree trunks and wrecked possessions. "There was this otherworldliness to it," says photographer Mark Thiessen. "I was one of the first people there, and then these guys showed up to turn off the gas lines that were still burning in the debris."


Thanks, Porter!


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Jason Tozer created these images to demonstrate the capabilities of Sony's Alpha 350 D-SLR, and the results are rather impressive. I can't resist posting some of the most beautiful bubbles, I love the planetary thing they have going on.

If you want to see all the behind-the-scenes muss and fuss and watch the camera in action, go here.

Me, I'll just bliss out with these for a while.


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I like nothing more than a behind-the-scenes shot. It makes me feel so insider; if there's anything I like more, it's a behind-the-scenes preview. And that's what Nikola Tamindzic is giving us on his site right now-- a sneak peek into a shoot for the cover of the Village Voice which won't be revealed until Wednesday. What fun!


What could these girls be up to? Certainly a lot of NO Good. We shall see tomorrow, stay tuned.


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Styling: Fabrizio Babino
Make-up: Virginia Bradley
Hair: Gregory Alan
Models: Isabella David and Julia Standefer


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P.S. Please send me your behind-the-scenes shots. They're such fun.
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photo by Amber Sexton


Henry Horenstein
was in the office today, and was his usual pleasant, gracious, wonderful self. I've only met Henry a few times, but he taught me the foundations of photography through his books, and if sales of his classic manuals Black and White Photography and Beyond Basic Photography are any indication, I'm not alone.

How fortuitous, then, that Horenstein, the ultimate professor (he teaches at RISD and learned his craft from Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind and Minor White), would stop by today-- right in time for our School of Stock launch. Brilliant! Even better was that he brought a preview copy of his new book Animalia with him.

Animalia follows Horenstein's books Creatures, Aquatics and Canine, and includes work made between 1995 and 2001. Though it seems shocking, all this work is expressly low-fi; Horenstein works mostly by himself, at zoos and aquariums. He does this intentionally; he notes that if he went to an aquarium with three assistants, "they'd pull me aside in a second". Horenstein uses 35mm film cameras with macro lenses and Scala (he has a bunch stock-piled in his refrigerator). I questioned Horenstein about his technique and he says he's developed a "variety of really obscure little methods just for this. I like the no big-deal aspect of it; there's no decisive moment-- they're always going to be swimming around that tank. It's just a matter of patience."

Well, I'm glad we waited. Here are some samples. The book will be available on Amazon in about a month.


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Cownose Ray--Rhinoptera bonasus


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Brown Sea Nettles-Chrysaora fuscescens


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African Grey Parrot-- Psittacua erithacus


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Lookdown Fish--Selene vomer


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White-cheeked Spider Monkey--Ateles marginatus


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Beluga Whale-Delphinapterus leucas


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Gold Dust Newt--Cynops ensicauda


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Greater Kudu-Tragelaphus strepsiceros


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Seahorse--Hippocampus erectus


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Indian Peafowl--Pavo cristatus


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Domestic Pig--Sus scrofa domestica


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Domestic Poodle--Canis lupus familiaris


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American Eel--Anguilla rostrata


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Domestic Great Dane--Canis lupus familiaris



See more of Animalia here, and check out Horenstein's work in our collection! And, if you're near Philadelphia, see his show of Animalia at Gallery 339. It's up until July 5th.


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Since we're in the communal spirit with all this Shoot the Day and School of Stock business, I thought I'd put up a few images of rad camera tattoos I've come across recently; If you have one of your own, send it in!


There are many ways to have a camera tattoo. You can make a diagram:
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photo by eric brown

You can use an iconic pattern, a la Aperture:
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photo by Pauly Pic

(Pauly was nice enough to include his photo info: 80EXII camera right @ 1/8 into bounce umbrella, fill light from ambient.)



You can honor an your favorite camera, like the Polaroid SX-70:
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photo by Sorrydad


Or you can go classic, with a twin lens and some meaningful text:
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photo by Shannon Labratt



What decisive moment will you immortalize?


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Holy cow, today is really nutty over here. In addition to the new School of Stock blog, PhotoShelter also launching the Shoot! The Day initiative, which aims to fix the communication gap between photographers and buyers. Buyers simply can't find enough high quality images in many of the categories they most often purchase stock photography, while thousands of talented photographers have no idea what types of images the heaviest users of stock photography need most.

Therefore, PS is teaming up with photographers worldwide on July 20th to officially close the gap, and kickstart the movement towards replenishing the stock photography supply. This will involve organized photo shoots in five cities, with support and prizes from folks like Adorama, Nikon and Apple. Sign up here to participate.


Here are the full deets from the press release:


"Shoot! The Day is a radically new concept designed to mobilize the world's photographers on one day in July, to replenish the stock photo supply in the areas that buyers need most. In partnership with digital imaging leaders Apple, Nikon, and Adorama, we're organizing an event and competition with multiple ways to participate, both live and virtually.

The crux of Shoot! The Day will involve thousands of photographers taking pictures in five key areas we know buyers need most, competing for outstanding prizes and recognition, and then licensing their images directly to thousands of buyers through The PhotoShelter Collection. In addition, 20 photographers will be chosen to accompany experts like David Hobby for live photo shoots in the same five key areas. Meanwhile, in NYC, over 500 photographers will gather live at Shoot Digital for a full day of education from renowned experts, for technical demonstrations, and dialogue with the leading buyers of stock photography from ad agencies and magazines.

Shoot! The Day will be a live, visible demonstration of how we're changing the image marketplace for good - creating success for photographers and alleviating image buyers' frustration with the availability of quality stock. Shoot! The Day aims to be outrageously fun. We're gathering the worldwide community together for one very exciting day, with major participants, live and virtual ways to get involved, opportunities to learn and shoot, culminating in ways for photographers to earn recognition, sales, and great prizes too."


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Today's a momentous day over at PhotoShelter; you may notice there's a new tab on the blogroll. See?

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Wow, what is this School of Stock?! Well, it's an instructional (and often very entertaining) online repository of information about how to shoot stock imagery. Our incredible COO Emily Hickey spoke to literally hundreds of buyers and photographers who work with stock photography every day. The content was also culled and honed according to a survey answered by over 700 buyers. This thing is fascinating; take a look at the pie charts and line graphs to see what buyers consider the greatest stock image needs.

The blog will build as time goes on, but it's starting with the stock category of Lifestyle photography-- specifically: Youth Culture, Seniors, Kids, Diversity, Green Living and Couples & Families. Each category engages photographers and image buyers to help those new to the business learn what sells. Eventually the hope is that the blog will function as a sort of stock imagery Wikipedia; those in the know are encouraged to send in feedback, shot list suggestions, and new category ideas.


Here's a taste of the current SOS content:

Youth Culture
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photo by Alex Tehrani


"I always think when I'm shooting, I'm a newcomer to this world, what could I do with this? That's 50% of every project. I have been photographing Ultimate Fighting lately - the fastest growing sport on earth. I spent time researching it, got on YouTube, saw who else was shooting this, and figured out my own approach to it. If a magazine or ad agency hired you to shoot, chances are they want your style, not something generic." - Alex Tehrani


Seniors
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photo by Glenn Glasser


"Make sure you are happy with everything you submit to clients or for sale - once you submit, they pick what they want from that point - so the edit needs to be true to your standards and style." - Glenn Glasser



Kids


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photo by Kathy Quirk-Syvertsen


"I do a lot of location scouting. I consider that composition in a way. And I try to use as much available light as possible - so I am always looking for good light. Also, you have to take advantage of where you are. Think about what an advertising agency would pay for someone to go on location for in your area and shoot it. My background is fashion so when I moved to Minneapolis I used to travel to Paris to shoot - but it was really forced. I've learned to take advantage of what's around me - the small town look, the Finger Lakes, parks, gardens, nature - I don't try to do urban gritty photography here. Figure out what's unique or sellable about your surroundings and embrace it." - Kathy Quirk-Syvertsen


Diversity
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photo by Nancy Ney


"Agencies are really picky. I've been doing this since 1983. In the beginning they took everything, hundreds of pictures. That has decreased dramatically - to 2-3 accepted images from a shoot. If I had 5 images accepted from a shoot I'd be thrilled. Sometimes it's none. Try to do at least 2-3 situations within a shoot - change outfits - and that could help you get more accepted." - Nancy Ney


Green Living
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photo by Andrea Wyner


"You have to really know that being a photographer is something you want and really be able to deal with the roller coaster of it. Or maybe decide to do something else in the business that's not actually photography. Don't take anything personally. Stick with it. Even if you're getting a lot of work or one month you make a lot of money, it's never a sure thing. A lot of incredibly successful photographers still panic that they're not going to do anything next month! It's hard. Also, it does take a long time. And it's all about who you know, so be good to people and don't burn any bridges. Treat people well." - Andrea Wyner



Couples & Family
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photo by Jon Ragel

"Someone asked me one time if I had different pictures on my studio wall than in my commercial portfolio - and if so, address it - you shouldn't have these two separate lives, make sure you working on stuff that is closest to your heart. And editors know that. I've talked to so many editors - when they see the personal section of your site that's where they go first, they don't go right to your tear sheets. You reciprocate what you cultivate. If you only show stuff that's close to your heart then that's what people will hire you to do. The key is to stay true and not waver, and it's tough." - Jon Ragel



Check out the new blog for TONS of information along these lines. In addition to discussion about Lifestyle photography, there are lighting clinics, keywording and model release information, file processing hints, and my favorite-- a primer on production values. What's good styling, and what's bad? Good location/ bad location? Take a look and be amused. Here's my favorite (this one's for casting):


BAD CASTING
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GOOD CASTING!
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photos (l-r): Thayer Gowdy, Andrea Wyner, and John Ragel




Watch out for zebra stripes, my friends. Not stock-friendly.
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As a result of the discussion a few weeks ago comparing Canon's 50mm lenses-- specifically, the f/1.8, f/1.4 and the very pricey f/1.2, I decided to take the fancy pants 1.2 out for a spin. I was headed up to the Catskills this weekend to shoot a wedding, so it seemed like the right time.

And boy, was I ever not disappointed. We stopped at a diner along the way, and I thought I'd never get out of there. Table flowers, dented salt and pepper shakers, cups of coffee-- even the tattered window curtain had this new creamy depth of field. It was sort of addictive, I have to say.

Along with the 50mm f1.2, I also brought along the 70-200mm f/2.8 and the 24-70 f/2.8, but I really didn't want to take that 50mm off; I pretty much shot the whole wedding with it. It was like Butter, my friends. Definitely going on the wishlist. Luckily my friends at Fotocare can help me out in a pinch.

Here are some pictures from the diner:

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The devil is in the details with the 1.2. I spent a lot of time communing with the flowers at the wedding.


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And with the nice ties.


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I did remember to get some wider shots once in a while; the 1.2 was good at that, too.


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At the end of the night, I even used it for landscape shots of the tent. I was really surprised what a nice effect I got. Love the low-light capability.


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My synopsis: pure, buttery love. worth the dough, if you have it. If not, rent! It's like a weekend with miracle fruit for your eyes.



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PSC000789897-comp.jpgNatasha Richardson, Cabaret, 1998.


The Tonys are on Sunday, and while I'm not much of a theater buff, I'm psyched. Because I can finally post Rivka Katvan's Broadway imagery; these pictures are in the PhotoShelter collection, and I love them-- there's something about seeing an actor in preparation that fascinates me. And these feel especially stolen and special-- there's no sign that the actors even recognize Katvan's presence. She's clearly a pro, and has been making this imagery for decades; check out her book Backstage: Broadway Behind the Curtain.

Here's what Carol Burnett says about Rivka (and you know Carol is a straight-shooter):

"One of my least favorite things in the world is to pose for pictures. I have never been that comfortable in front of a still camera . . . until Rivka. But then, you don't 'pose' for Rivka . . . you simply 'are,' and she's right there to catch the moment."

PS photo editor extraordinaire Amber Sexton loves these too, and we spent all morning clucking happily as we made an edit. So here's a super-sized sample. Have a great weekend!
 

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Cyndi Lauper in Three Penny Opera, 2006.


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Carol Burnett and Julie Andrews, Tony Awards, 1999.


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Elizabeth Taylor, The Little Foxes, 1981.


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John Cameron in the Broadway show Hedwig and the Angry Inch in 1998.


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Jonathan Pryce in the Broadway show Dirt Rotten Scoundrels in 2005.


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Kevin Kline, On The Twentieth Century, 1978.


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Alan Cumming of the Threepenny Opera in his dressing room in 2006.


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Nellie McKay in The Threepenny Opera takes a break on a couch in 2006.


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Liam Neeson in the Broadway show Judas Kiss in 1998.


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Amanda Plummer, A Taste of Honey, 1981.


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Dame Edna in the Broadway show Nothing Like a Dame in 2000.


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Christine Ebersole in the Broadway show Camelot in 1980.


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Gregory Hines in the Broadway show Coming Uptown in 1979.


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Broadway performers show their solidarity during the taping of a commercial to promote New York after 9/11 in Times Square.

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Here's how to be awesome; meet some PhotoShelter photo editors and a blogger at the New York Photo Festival, be extremely friendly and clever, and send over a package a few weeks later with prints for everyone. That's what Portland, Oregon-based photographer Anthony Georgis did, and now his piñata and french fries decorate our office walls.


I was very excited when the prints arrived, so I spread them on the floor and took a picture for posterity. Here's some more of Georgis' work; I love his diptychs and sense of color and fun. Good for a Friday.


Don't you dig that dog/puzzle?


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You know, that lobster credit card put me in a crustacean kind of mood. So much so that I'm going to share with you a little trend I've been seeing in the ad world. That trend is lobsters, my friends. If you shoot stock, start hitting up those lobster boats, because this thing spells CASH COW. Let me show you some examples, they've been collecting dust in my lobster folder.


Many trends start in the sneaker market, and this is no exception. These come complete with claw (toe) rubberbands, gingham napkin insoles, a shell cracker, lemon wedge, and wet nap. The leather is even dappled like a real shell. Where do you get them? You can't. They're sold out, because they are trendy. Try ebay.

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The wide view. They come in a crate.

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And the print ads:


  • Cannes Lions 2007: The Lobster

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  • Lavinia Breeze Restaurant
Agency: Liquidmedia Advertising - Sri Lanka

*this one's a little dirty.

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  • Laidbackwaters: Lobster

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  • Alka Seltzer: Lobster
Advertising Agency: BBDO Barcelona

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  • Tesco Lotus
Advertising Agency: BBDO Bangkok, Thailand

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  • Tuborg: Lobster
Advertising Agency: Noble Graphics Creative Studio, Sofia, Bulgaria

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  • Visa: Because Life is Now, Lobster
Advertising Agency: Diego+Heymann+Partners, USA


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  • Surfrider Foundation
Advertising Agency: Young & Rubicam Paris

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* the lobster is hidden, so I helped with an arrow.



Go make lobster pictures! And send me your results! Or send me lobsters!

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The interwebs are abuzz today with excitement over the new Capital One credit cards; you can use your own image! Holy excitement, why is personalizing something so fun?! They even allow you to upload images directly from your flickr account. This is a brilliant marketing campaign, though I'm going to resist; I need another credit card like I need a hole in the head. Or an IRS audit.

I did enjoy wasting twenty minutes on the site, however. First I tried my image of my favorite food. Excellent. A little stocky, though.


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Then I tried out Henry. Henry put on a mask for Halloween, and this seems like a nice way to reward him. He can now buy his own jerky treats.

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But THEN I had a dangerous impulse. I wanted to put SOMEONE ELSE'S image on my card. I love photography! What would be better than having Ansel Adams' Nurse Hamaguchi buy me lunch every day? Nothing! and it would be ok, because this image is public domain. But what if it wasn't? Surely there are folks out there who will have the same impulse I did. Who's checking the copyrights on these things?

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UPDATE:  A very clever lawyer friend did some research on this for me. Here's the lowdown:

"the 'Image Guidelines' say, 'We will not approve any images that contain the following ...' and one of the following is 'Copyrighted or trademarked material not owned by a Capital One partner.' I admit, it would totally be a waste of Cap1's time to actually check the copyright on all images submitted for approval --- like, a TOTAL waste of time. But otherwise, aren't they opening themselves up to potential liability?  I mean, I'm not an IP lawyer, but considering the fact that they also say they screen for 'Socially unacceptable groups (ie, gangs, supremacy),' sexual content, etc ... all of which are much easier to screen for without doing additional research (though more controversial), I'd think it's dangerous turf.

Interestingly, among the other images they prohibit are: 'Any references to the Olympic Games or events' "


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You all know how I love a floater, so I about hit the roof when I saw the fashion images Jill Greenberg shot for the latest issue of RADAR Magazine. I think this is a darn clever and un-boring way to simultaneously showcase clothes and shoes and the U.S. Olympic Synchronized Swimming Team.

Clothes! Shoes! Synchronized Swimming! Seriously, this could be a musical.

In any case, I tracked down the brilliant photo editor Stacey Pittman at RADAR (also a PS photographer), who produced the shoot, to tell me how it all came together, because man, does that look complicated.


High-tech IM interview follows:

__

RH: Did Jill Greenberg do that swimming fashion shoot just for you guys?

SP: Yeah, I produced it. RADAR loves working with Jill, she also shot Lindsay Lohan for us. Our editor in chief Maer Roshan is a big fan!

RH: It's great, where was it shot, how did it happen, did Jill don scuba-gear?

SP: Outside of San Francisco, Pleasant Hill. We had to do hair and makeup at their apartment because their rival team was practicing and thought they would steal their moves. She was underwater the whole time with a scuba instructor. There was housing on the camera with two flashes and it was a monster, I have a picture of it.

RH: Ooh, you don"t want to share that, do ya?


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SP: This is her assistant holding it. Jill couldn't hold it above water but worked it out underwater. She also rented a cherry picker for the overhead shot. It wasn't tethered so she had to come up to put card in to check images. She was also trying to work out a system to have her lights fire using a water bottle and a slave but she could explain that better. It didn't work out but was pretty darn smart. She knew exactly what she wanted - she had a vision.

RH: It seems complicated! Plus, the coordination of all the fashion...

SP: It was kind of a bear to produce because the pool we were going to shoot in fell through the night before I left for San Francisco, because someone had been paralyzed there some years before and sued the city so the insurance and responsibility requirements were insane.

I found another one but it was surrounded by buildings, not grass and blue sky like the other one. That's why the leg and high heel shot goes black in the back, because there was some ugly building in the background. The stylist was amazing though, and had some great stuff and a lot of really beautiful shots didn't make it in because of space constraints.

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See all the captions, ie: "It's a full-contact sport, there's a lot of kicking", and complete shoe and fashion info here.


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Giraffe Under an Acadia Tree, Serengeti, 2007


PhotoShelter photographer Andy Biggs is passionate about African Safaris and animal imagery, and it shows in his work. Biggs recently landed a big deal with Banana Republic; they're using his images in stores, on billboards and in window displays as part of their Summer 2008 advertising campaign. The images are all black&white, and are calm and classy; this is a thinking-man's safari. Biggs was lovely and cooperative and answered all my questions about his work, and gave me the dirt on the Banana Republic deal.


Tell me how you got started shooting safari images, and nature images in general; has it been a long-time career for you, have you been able to make a living from it?

My wife and I took a month and a half long trip to East Africa a number of years ago, and I fell in love immediately. I had finally found what I was passionate about. I had not earned a dime with my photography at that point, but when we returned home I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my photography: capture images that stir the soul from a new found place for me. I do have a business background, and I have been mindful to bring business discipline into a creative career. I try to spend my time working on things that benefit the business, whether marketing, sales or relationships with other companies or photographers.


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Zebras from Above, Serengeti, 2005


I began my photographic career leading a workshop or two in Africa each year, and now it has turned into a business where I am leading up to six or seven photographic safaris and workshops in a year, augmented by other photographers that help me out with a few more.
Whenever people think about anything safari or African, I want them to think about my photography and my photographic safaris.


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Acacia Trees and Fog, Serengeti, 2005


How did this Banana Republic deal come about; was it like anything you'd been involved with before (have you made a lot of corporate sales, or more editorial, or neither)?

The process has been extremely simple, really. I was contacted through my website to see if I would be interested in licensing my photographs out to Banana Republic for their summer 2008 campaign. We went through a few rounds of image selections, using Photoshelter and a few private galleries I had set up just for them. This allowed stakeholders on both coasts to view and select images that fit their specific needs. Once I had a better idea about what they wanted to portray, I was able to expand the collection of images and pull from my 50,000 image archive. Once the images were selected, I pulled my agent in to negotiate the terms of the deal. It couldn't have been a better process.
 

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Biggs at an in-store signing of his work. Photo by Stan Jirman.


African wildlife photography is a very unique niche in the stock photography marketplace, and I feel proud to have my name and my photography associated with Banana Republic. They are using 13 of my images in many different ways, but the most visible is their use in store fronts and interior decor in all of their stores around the globe.


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photo by Stan Jirman


What was the experience of dealing with the Banana Republic folks, and what has it done for your career? What's the licensing on the imagery?


I am definitely getting more interest in my photographs, and a result my print sales have been great as of late. I have also been approached by some big name companies for sponsorship, which is a win-win for both parties.

Banana Republic has licensed a selection of my images for exclusive use, worldwide, with no restrictions for 4 months. I am evaluating additional inquiries for these images, and hope to have some more deals lined up in the years ahead. I will start working on a portrait project in Africa in 2009, and I look forward to spending more time creating a new body of work.


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Banana Republic Billboard, NYC


What's an image from your archive that was a real triumph to capture? Are there any fan favorites (ie: do giraffes sell better than lions?)

Well, I always try to communicate three different things in my images: timelessness, remoteness and hope. So the challenge is finding these three things at the same time. I am most proud of my Elephants and Clouds image, as we followed a small family of elephants around for a few hours. Trying to line up these beautiful animals with the big, puffy clouds, as well as have a clean background was a challenge. I don't like to stress out the wildlife, so hanging back and using a longer lens allows me to have the animals more relaxed.


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Elephants and Clouds, Serengeti, 2007


The less aggressive animals have done much better for me from a sales standpoint, such as zebras, giraffes, elephants and any young animal. Lion and cheetah cubs are always favorites.


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Two Giraffe Heads II, Lake Manyara, 2007


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Leopard in a Tree, Serengeti, 2006


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Portrait of a Lioness, Serengeti, 2006



Where is a place where you've never shot that you'd like to go?

I cannot wait to visit Antarctica in 2010, when I will be leading a workshop on a private charter ship. I cannot wait to experience something completely different than what I see in Africa.




For more Andy Biggs musings, check out his blog.


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I alluded to Phillip Toledano's Phone Sex Operators work last week, as he was showing it in Sante Fe, and Rob Haggart had written about the impending book, but I didn't get a chance to read through the subject's own quotes until yesterday. It furthers the "words and pictures" theme we have going. Here are a few of my favorites, check out Toledano's site to see more.


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"I'm 60 years old, have a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology from Columbia University, and married for 25 years. I have a son in his last years of college who lives at home. He's a 4.0 with a double major in English Literature and Religion. Men call me for an infinity of reasons. Of course, they call to masturbate. I call it "Executive Stress Relief." It's not sex; it's a cocktail of testosterone, fueled by addiction to pornography, loneliness, and the need to hear a woman's voice. I make twice the money I made in the corporate world. I work from home, the money transfers into my bank account daily. I'm Scheherezade: If I don't tell stories that fascinate the Pasha, he will kill me in the morning."



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"I am a straight male who speaks to women. They want me. They want me to talk to them, and to take them to another world. I'm good at it. I'm a pro. A ladies man. I speak to younger women. I speak to older women. I speak both Spanish and English. I have been thrown offers left and right. They want me to meet up and have my way with them, but I keep it only to phone conversations."



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"I never thought I would work in the phone sex industry. All those years doing customer service, my customers would comment on my sexy voice. I thought I was being professional, not sexy. This work is customer service. It's just your customers leave with more than a smile."


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I came across this rather charming ad for the Leica D-Lux 3 during my interweb travels today and realized I hadn't heard much about it above the din of the Sigma DP1 and the Ricoh GR.

It's a rather handsome camera. Also its name reminds me of a cheeseburger.

C-net tells me this:

The good: Great lens; nice design; lots of manual controls.

The bad: Generally soft photos; mediocre movies; no optical viewfinder; expensive.

The bottom line: A good choice for an enthusiast looking for a powerful camera that can fit into a jacket pocket; however, the Leica D-Lux 3 has a price only a Leica aficionado could love.

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Do they speak the truth?
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This is the kind of thing I'm generally late to, so excuse me if you've already seen Rotterdam-based photographer Ari Versluis and stylist Ellie Uyttenbroek's project Exactitudes, which was "inspired by a shared interest in the striking dress codes of various social groups, they have systematically documented numerous identities over the last 13 years. Rotterdam's heterogeneous, multicultural street scene remains a major source of inspiration for Ari Versluis and Ellie Uyttenbroek, although since 1998 they have also worked in cities abroad."


The site is fascinating.


Some examples (this project seems outrageously painstaking):

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65. Carry Daddies - Rotterdam 2005


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54. Corpos - Rotterdam 2002


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07. Game Boys - Rotterdam 1997


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16. Manipulators - Rotterdam 1997


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08. Young Activists - Rotterdam 1997


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67. Early Birds - Rotterdam 2005


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Reading E. Annie Proulx's story the other day with Richard Renaldi's photograph as an illustration got me thinking about words and pictures, and how the two collide. I was thinking of doing a "what's burning a hole in my bookcase" post anyway, so when I pulled Andrea Modica's Treadwell off the top shelf yesterday, it felt like kismet; E. Annie Proulx wrote the introductory essay.

I've often wanted to post about Treadwell, which is one of my favorite photo essays ever, but the images available online are all pretty small and of poor quality. So we fired up the PhotoShelter scanner, and voila!

Just for some background: Andrea Modica made these images in upstate New York between 1986 and 1995, focusing on one young girl and her extended family. Modica received support from the project from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts.


All of the following text is excerpted from E. Annie Proulx's Essay:



There is a Treadwell, population 200, in rural New York south of the Susquehanna, south of interstate 88, and it is the place where, ten years ago, Andrea Modica took the first and now famous photograph in this study, two children caught in the hands of adults; we look and wonder, are they sheltered or imprisoned, resigned or straining against the hold, is the clasp tender, is the bathrobed child prevented from hearing something dreadful, is the other seeing something that can never be forgotten? The slant of white buttons, the tiny downward glint of a ring introduces us to the richly fleshed and beautiful child who is the central figure in Treadwell, moving from this moment out of childhood toward the shoals of adult life.

For a decade Modica followed her subjects from one decayed farmhouse to another, photographing in an atmosphere of crowded rooms and generations of bad luck. The photographs are not some chronicle of despair, but caught moments in lives ruled by hard situations; there are possibilities of anything.

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"This picture was a turning point for me," she says, leaning forward, her elbow on the table. "Until this one I had been photographing in a place that was like a foreign country to me-- photographing like a tourist." But with this picture she entered into an intimacy with the situation of place, the chewed-over woods and fields of central New York State, the region's moody, autumnal weather, the rural slowing of time that is like wading through backwater, and began a kind of episodic story in photographs that the viewer pieces together.


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The oblivious lovers in the cold grass, the bleak landscape, the wreck of junk, the asphalt shingle that covers the clapboards of an old farmhouse, the glaring window, all eclipsed by the extraordinary expression on the face of the watching child. She stares fixedly at the straining lovers as she hoists a grimacing cat, her expression a mix of nascent longing, tenderness, curiosity, a sense of intrusion, and recognition of the existence of heated passion.


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A skeleton of a horse lies in the dead leaves as it fell, surrounded by a mazy thicket of saplings. We stare and see the hooves still standing, eerily upright, like a spare set the skeleton may use some moony night. And there beyond the saplings, as though risen from the bones, is that a ghost horse, an after-image of life, a reincarnation, a dream-animal, or another fragment in the reliquary of Treadwell?


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The suspended deer head, eyes closed, long neck attached, seems simple enough at first glance, a successful hunt (in fact a young boy's first deer), but the more we look the more we see.  It is not usual to hang a deer by the neck. Rather, they are commonly suspended from a gambrel with the muzzle toward the ground for bleeding out. The head, then, is a trophy, hung up after the venison was cut into joints and chops; the inanimate tree begins to take on a morbid color.


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There is a beginning, a flow of events and episodes, the children grow older, sexual tension increases, lipstick is smeared, caries eat at the teeth, a finger points.


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There is a sculptural, heroic quality in many of these photographs. They feel large. They possess a tactile physicality. Often the images of children are like fantastic statues in some wild garden.

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There is a sense of beating, scratching life, of inchoate longing and suppressed anger.


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The ancient lotus position of a little girl is saturated with meaning beyond her culture. the sculptural effect seems heightened by the outlandish clothes of the late twentieth century, sagging knit fabrics emblazoned with logos and mottoes.


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Modica has a strong eye for the human condition. We are able to catch telling pieces of lives in a single photograph, glimpse private intimacies, animal pleasure, the comfort of skin. She sees, and shows us how to see, a kind of beauty in mean lives, the beauty of affection and gesture, of imaginative play, even with such a macabre object as a decaying fawn head-- relic of deer, of hunt, of deed.


| Comments (1)
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Bobbie's Buckeye Bar, Tonopah, NV

I came across Troy Paiva's Night Vision work last night, and was impressed by the sheer quantity of it. Then I delved into the images themselves and got tingles on the back of my neck. Paiva shoots in abandoned spaces in the American desert, and he finds some truly bizarre haunts. I found an excellent interview on Ballardian with Paiva which discusses his inspirations and methods and everything else. How Paiva got started with this work:

"In 1989 I was working as a designer/illustrator for a major toy company, drawing and painting every day in a heavily art-directed environment. After several years of that I lost any sense of the artistic fulfillment I was originally getting from the job. The last thing I wanted to do was draw and paint at home too, so I was desperate to find a new personal creative outlet. At the time my brother Tom was a full time photography student at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. One of his classes was in night photography. Being my brother, he knew I'd be fascinated by night shooting on a conceptual level, so he snuck me along to some lectures and shoots with the class in the decaying industrial sections of SF. It instantly dawned on me that this was the perfect way to photograph the abandoned roadside towns I was already exploring. After one trip to the desert to shoot at night I became totally obsessed and consumed by it."

Paiva has a book of this work coming out in July on Chronicle Editions; you can pre-order it here. See the full interview with him here, and see the flickr set here.

Sorry, now you have no day left.

I think my favorite set of Paiva's is Abandoned Whorehouse. Paiva's captions complement the spookiness well:

"Bobbie's Buckeye Bar, Tonopah, NV. Abandoned bar and whorehouse. Shot summer 2004, 35mm film. Abandoned for about a year before I found it (judging by the expired liquor license), the place was unlocked and wide open that day, but on my last trip to Tonopah it was locked up tight. No idea if it has been vandalized or ransacked."

I generally don't like gels, but somehow the greens and reds complement these images. They feel like Kubrick.


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Whorehouse art collection. Bobbie's Buckeye Bar, Tonopah, NV.


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Living-room inside the Madam's home attached to Bobbie's Buckeye Bar, Tonopah, NV.


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The tiny office inside the Madam's home attached to Bobbie's Buckeye Bar, Tonopah, NV. Shot July 2004, 35mm film. Green flash.


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Heart-shaped tub complete with Jack-o-lantern inside the Madam's home attached to Bobbie's Buckeye Bar, Tonopah, NV. Red Flash.


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Dead and desicated Siamese cat inside the Madam's home attached to Bobbie's Buckeye Bar. Did the Madam go into hospital and leave her kitty to starve? Shot July 2004, 35mm film. Green flash and flashlight.


Abandoned Whorehouses and dead kitties seem dangerous! What do you think about that, Troy?


"I don't really worry