After LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph last week, we were once again reminded why we love photography – we love viewing it, we love talking about it, and we love hearing photographers talk about their craft. This week we saw a bunch of reviews of the festival; then on the tech side, everyone was blogging about what was unveiled at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). There’s rarely a shortage of news, and this week is no different, so let’s get started.

Bizarre old black & white photos

Black and WTF might be just another Tumblr fad, but you can’t deny that the curator is putting together an amusing collection of old black & white photographs that really do make you say, “What the…?” Here’s one such gem:

Have any strange B&W photos you’ve been dying to share? “Black and WTF’s curator wants you to send them to him at blackandwtf@gmail.com.

Apple unveils new products & features at WWDC keynote

While there was no announcement of a new iDevice (iPhone, iPad) this year at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, attendees were left far from disappointed. Here’s a short rundown of new products and features announced during the keynote on Monday:

• New 15 inch MacBook Pro weights only 4.46 lbs, is 0.71 inches thick, and has a new 28800x1800px Retina Display (four times the pixel density of the previous model). Offers 75% less reflection and 29% high contrast – dubbed “MacBook Pro with Retina display”. A mere $1,800 if you’re looking to buy.
• New iOS 6 sports 200+ new features, including a smarter Siri (more languages, better info on movie listings, restaurant reservations, etc.); Guided Access feature that lets parents/teachers disable hardware buttons so it can be locked into a single app; enormously improved Maps app with turn-by-turn navigation, 3D views, and crowdsourced traffic information; and more.
• New features in OS X Mountain Lion (Apple’s upcoming desktop OS), which resembles iOS with its app-like structure – plus iCloud capabilities that makes syncing apps across all your iDevices quick and easy.

Other exciting releases included “shared photo streams”, which lets users mark certain photos or albums as shared and choose who they’d like to share them with – then those people will receive a notification and can view the shared images on an iOS6 device or Mac with Mountain Lion. People can browse, like, and comment on the pictures in iPhoto, Aperture, or AppleTV.

Also interesting to note the role Facebook will be playing in the new OS. Deeper integration features include using the photo streams to post directly to Facebook and updating your Facebook status via the Notification Center.

Hungry for more? Check out the overviews on Wired, PetaPixel, and of course – Apple.

Nadav Kander: How to create an unforgettable portrait

Famed London-based photographer Nadav Kander was recently interviewed by Fast Company‘s Co.Create blog (focusing on creativity in the worlds of branding, entertainment, and tech) after photographing a series of portraits for GQ. The portraits were used to accompany interviews with actors known for playing villains. Fortunately for us, Nadav also shared his key tips to taking unforgettable portraits. Co.Create also has a fantastic slideshow feature at the top of their blog, so click through to see some of Nadav’s images. But for a little sneak preview, here are some of his tips:

• The first ten minutes are key: “Once a person settles down and becomes comfortable, it’s almost too comfortable. So the first 10 minutes are incredibly important.”
• Keep it simple: “I do find that, as hard as it is to be simple, the more you pare things down the more clear-sighted it is, and the quicker you can make people feel emotional about it.”
• Portraits are about the viewer, not just the subject: “It’s a very interesting subject, the moment a picture becomes a portrait. When people say, ‘Oh, you really got that person, you looked into their soul,’ I think that’s just nonsense. I think what portraiture does for people is it reflects back on them.”

As an aside, here’s another post that I stumbled across on Co.Create showcasing a viral campaign against Shell by Greenpeace, the Yes Lab, and members of the Occupy movement:

Remember McDonald’s Twitter campaign that went array when users started sharing the wrong kind of #McDStories? These environmentalists took that idea of crowdsourcing gone wrong to the next level with the spoofed “Let’s Go” campaign. The mission, says the website, is to get “everyone to feel as ‘pumped’ as we do about freeing much-needed Arctic resources. Why not create your own [ad], and possibly win an all-expenses-paid trip to see the Kulluk [Shell’s Arctic drilling ship] in action?”

Congrats to the creators of #ShellFail for a witty campaign to raise awareness on the sometimes stiff – but nonetheless significant – issue of environmental protection! Can’t even choose a favorite…

 The Disposable Project

Photographer Raul Guerrero started The Disposable Project as an exhibition and fundraiser for children in Tanzania to document their everyday lives. Raul passed out 100 disposable cameras to nine students in Tanzania, whose resulting pictures were both beautiful and thought-provoking. The next step is to create a photo book as part of a fundraising campaign to send these nine students to established schools, as well as exhibit at The Zanzibar Film Festival.

Raul is on his way to get a $5,000 grant from GOOD.is, so please consider supporting his project by registering and voting here. The awarded money will go toward sending the framed prints to Zanzibar, and letting Raul travel out there to see it live.

KairosPhotos picture of the week

We love hearing the back story of our members’ photographs, and this week photojournalist Paul Jeffrey of KairosPhotos shared his new blog series “Picture of the Week” (which is an excellent blog topic for photographers!). Paul lived in Central America for two decades documenting life, poverty, war, and hope. This week, Paul shared an image of boys scavenging in the municipal garbage dump in Chennai, India.

“I met them in a shelter sponsored by a local ecumenical group. I was in Chennai in 2010 shooting images of their excellent HIV and AIDS work, and the staff invited me to come by the shelter early one morning. It’s a place where boys, who otherwise would have to fend for themselves on the mean streets of what the British dubbed Madras, can spend the night in safety, eat a decent meal and take a shower. But when morning comes, they head back out to their daytime jobs, which for most of them is scavenging in the huge municipal dump.”

See more of Paul’s pictures of the week here.

Alex Webb: Live and in Color

Alex Webb is one of the most influential color photographers of our time, and his images strike a chord with almost every viewer. Several of us from the PhotoShelter team were fortunate enough to hear him speak at LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph last weekend as part of the INsight conversations. For those who weren’t there in person, NY Times ”The 6th Floor” blog put together a short and sweet recap of the conversation.

For a full round-up of the LOOK3 festival, check out our blog post here.

LIFE.com celebrates Father’s Day

LIFE.com has put together a slideshow gallery of famous fathers and their children, just in time for Father’s Day this Sunday. “The focus of the gallery is absolutely not meant to suggest that famous dads are more worthy of esteem than other dads. Instead, we’re publishing these portraits of famous dads with their kids, quite frankly, as a simple acknowledgement that, like most everybody else in the world, we’re fans.”

Happy Father’s Day! 

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