Friday Happy Hour: Mirror Images from the Campaign Trails & More

After this week’s presidential debate, much of the U.S. is fired up over the upcoming election. Alan Taylor from The Atlantic “In Focus” blog curated some of the best images from the two campaigns from a variety of photographers. We also have news on what stock buyers are looking for in 2012 and several other great photo series this week.

Mirror images from the two campaign trails

With just about a month to go before the U.S. Presidential Election, the race is in full swing. “Mirror Images From The Two Campaign Trails,” curated by Alan Taylor on The Atlantic “In Focus” blog, showcases Romney and Obama getting off/on their planes; Romney and Obama holding a baby; Romney and Obama with their wives on stage; and the list goes out. Check out this great collection to see how the two campaigns may actually be more similar than their viewpoints suggest.

What sells in microstock in 2012?

PetaPixel picked up on a blog post by stock photographer Yuri Arcurs this week, and while the original post was written in September, the takeaways remain the same. Arcurs calls himself “the world’s top selling stock photographer” – microstock, that is – and comments on what has happened to the industry in the past four years.

“As all active microstock photographers must have noticed, we have seen a constant decrease in sales in terms of our return per image over the last few years. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to shoot great images and profit from it in the same way as it was 5 or 6 years ago…To make sales now, it’s about getting back to the roots of photography. More artistic, less processed images, and a more naturalistic style, which I, personally, fully endorse. It’s great to see some more artistic and natural images making their way up on the ‘most downloaded’ lists as opposed to the more conventional microstock images that are always overly retouched, overly bright and overly clean.”

Arcurs also says that stock photographers should focus solely on niche topics – the traditional categories like spa and lifestyle are just too saturated. Check out his full post on “What Sells in Microstock anno 2012“.

Nadav Kander’s series offers a stirring portrait of China’s Yangtze River

Award-winning photographer Nadav Kander is perhaps most widely known for his political coverage, but his latest series “Yangtze: The Long River” offers something slightly different: a stirring, but somewhat uneasy, portrait of China’s new modernity. The Yangtze River is the third largest river in the world, and has been transformed since the completion of the Three Gorges dam, which has submerged entire towns along its new banks and displaced over one million people.

“Demolition and construction were everywhere on such a scale that I was unsure if what I was seeing was being built or destroyed, destroyed or built,” Kander told Co.Design. “China is a nation that appears to be severing its roots by destroying its past in the wake of the sheer force of its moving ‘forward’ at such an astounding and unnatural pace.”

New Photo Brigade contest

The Photo Brigade is offering more great opportunities for photographers – this time, it’s the chance to have your portrait photography submitted through Atlanta-based photographers’ Kendrick Brinson and David Walter Banks‘ social media channels, along with other great prizes. Enter your best portrait work and one winner will receive a one-year PhotoShelter Standard Account, ONA’s “The Bowery” camera bag, $100 gift certificate to AdoramaPix, Lensbaby Composer Pro and Sweet 35 Optic, and exposure for their submission. There are also prizes for the first runner-up and People’s Choice, so be sure to check it out! Submissions are due November 27, 2012: http://thephotobrigade.com/contest/

Brad Mangin featured in this week’s Sports Illustrated

Baseball photographer Brad Mangin‘s images of Giant’s star catcher and National League MVP Buster Posey graced the pages of Sports Illustrated this week. Brad was hired to shoot a few home Giants games, and captured this stellar shot of Posey.

But it turns out that after searching Brad’s PhotoShelter archive, the editors went with a frame shot a few months prior. “The image was clean and fit the payout better since the flow of the image was from left-to-right,” says Brad in his blog post. “It was the best of both worlds for me. I got to shoot some fun images for my editor, and my cool archive made me a nice space rate.”