Boy do I like a photobooth. More than most things. And I've been thinking about making a photobooth post for some time now, with a map of where you can find them, but it seemed so out of reach-- I mean, where would one get such info?

Well, today this photobooth phantasm turned out to be no mere apparition, my friends. A little google searchitude, and I found photobooth.net.

This site has locators for booth across the world, as well as info, image samples, galleries, discussions, projects, blogs.... it's AMAZING.

Anyway, go there to get all the good stuff, but I did do a little work my own self, and made a google map of NYC photobooths. So I'm not a total waste of space*. Get your 3 bucks and GO!

Another golden goose chase, this one in the form of a Pentax. Here's the timeline, as gleaned from some online sources:


1981: Pentax had sold its ten-millionth LX SLR camera. To celebrate this fete, they created a limited "LX Gold" edition which was 18 carat gold plated and wrapped in brown leather lizard skin. It came in a wooden box with red lining  and silk gloves for handling. Only 300 pieces were made with 200 going to Japan and 100 for the international market. But not all were sold, as some were given away for photo contests and other PR stunts making it a super rare find.




UNTIL

2006: The LX Gold reappears! This time it's recreated as the the "world's first" completely dust-proof and water-proof SLR case design, and marks Pentax's 60th anniversary. Box again included. Gloves too.


Reader scavenger hunt:


Can anyone find one of these for sale?

How'd he do it?

"Milk, water, a big jar, Canon Powershot A95 + macro converter lens, 2x 500 W halogen lamps, black board and PS, of course. Milk was dripped into water with a pipette. While the milk was decending in the water, a series of shots were taken. The background is darkened with a piece of simple black board."


Sweet. Anyone else got a smokey story?

via.

ps. what does "eat hair" mean? i like it.

Screw Botox.

In the spirit of the splayed toothpaste, we shall splay the globe!

Seriously, this is Earth, stripped of its soil and water.

BldgBlog thinks the image has a "70s funk", but I rather like it. Especially the rainbow running down the left side there.

Don't have a mountain vista outside your window? Make your own! That's what the crafty Australian photographer Magdalena Bors would do.

Take a look.

I like how the subject slinks around in all black, like a stagehand.

more.

you can do it with a 4x5.


Always protect your subject's eyes....



et voilà:

verry nice.


Go to Rebecca Hinden's site to see more cool stuff.
__

And now, friends, a challenge for you: send me your very best red eye picture. We'll do a little gallery. Here's mine:

Very Buffy the Vampire Slayer, no?

I had an illuminating conversation the other day with photographer Monte Isom. Isom recently returned from China, where he created several Olympic-themed ads for Adidas. The one above is the big kahuna. See all those people in there? They're real people. Who needed to be cast and wrangled and directed. And then be put together all pretty through the glory of post-production.

How long did all of this take? Isom was in China for six weeks, start to finish, between pre-production, shoot days, and post-production.  And it was a production: "we shot the podium, every individual piece. We shot a scaffolding in the same way. We shot the crowd on a soccer pitch. We shot the athletes in two different cities in different takes. We shot three hundred people in the crowd and built the podium out of 60 people, and 28 extras on the podium.

Wow. What'd that all look like? Funny you ask! We've got some behind the scenes goodies. Here are the actors on the scaffolding:







Wow, how'd they get such athletic models? Here's a video of the casting session (Monte is thorough in his documentation.)




The agency Monte worked with on this project was TBWA Shanghai, and they didn't find him through Photoserve; Isom is incredibly proactive about seeking out work. He actually flew to China months before:

"When i'm not working, I go seek out work. I went to every agency in Shanghai in March, and set up meetings with art buyers and creative directors. Because in an Olympic year, everyone will use an athlete to sell a product. Going personally makes a huge difference. They're not just buying the photography, they're buying the photographer. An agency wants to know what they're going to get. I got China because I got off my ass and went to China to get work. if you want to recession-proof yourself, go to foreign markets."

Amen. Here's the soccer field where they assembled the actors:



And here's some of the shooting, in real time.




After the shooting comes the post-production. Here's some of that (it all started with a sketch):




So, we saw the finished image above, but how did it appear in Beijing and Shanghai? Here's an example:



This is one billboard. And then, Adidas got serious:



Wow, that's a big ad. Adidas created 20-story building wraps in Shanghai and Beijing.

Isom was psyched about the client's enthusiasm, and the media buy. He says it's "what you hope the client will step up and do. Start to finish, it was a cool project."

Cool indeed! Isom is now off to Europe, to meet with more creative folks and charm peoples' pants off. He must have a rep, to help him out with some of this stuff!

Nope:

"I don't have a rep. I'm repped by basically everyone I've ever met. I sleep well on planes, so it's not a big deal."


Sweet dreams. Here's one more video of Isom at work, just for fun.





See more of Monte Isom's work here.

 

Rumors, rumors, rumors! Is this little beast about to be birthed?


UPDATE!!! canon 50D! canon 50D!

so many smrt folks out there.


*update-- apparently this is a fake. consider me fooled.

I know this is art for art's sake, but it would be a great show opener.

Look like he's since gone away. Climbing walls are more palatable for this sort of thing.

2.  Oh dear oh dear oh dear.

1. This one has been widely exhibited and still exists on google.

It wins #1 because of its performative nature.

It is, in fact, a mystery. No one has any clue what's going on here. Here's the dedicated youtube:

Maybe it's because I recently shoved everything I own into a truck, or because I can't stop watching the 4x100 relay from last night, but I'm fascinated by coverage of Olympic... coverage.

Laforet is doing some very interesting documentation for Newsweek. If you're a gear head or a professional organizer, you won't want to miss it.

read.


Further to this: Check out David Burnett unpacking in Beijing. He travels a bit lighter.

Also there's a nice behind-the-scenes movie.

Ten out of ten, Ryan Allan.

The Globe of Innovation in the morning. The wooden globe is a structure originally built for Switzerland's national exhibition, Expo'02, and is 40 meters wide, 27 meters tall.


 
View of the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) experiment Tracker Outer Barrel (TOB) in the cleaning room. The CMS is one of two general-purpose LHC experiments designed to explore the physics of the Terascale, the energy region where physicists believe they will find answers to the central questions at the heart of 21st-century particle physics.

Aerial view of CERN and the surrounding region of Switzerland and France. Three rings are visible, the smaller (at lower right) shows the underground position of the Proton Synchrotron, the middle ring is the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) with a circumference of 7 km and the largest ring (27 km) is that of the former Large Electron and Positron collider (LEP) accelerator with part of Lake Geneva in the background.


Courtesy of Boston.com's The Big Picture; check out all twenty-seven images. And read about the Hadron Collider. I think I understand it.


Do you understand physics? Think that Einstein guy was a kook? You could be a crackpot. Take the test here to find out. A taste:

1. 30 points for suggesting that Einstein, in his later years, was groping his way towards the ideas you now advocate.

2. 30 points for claiming that your theories were developed by an extraterrestrial civilization (without good evidence).

3. 30 points for allusions to a delay in your work while you spent time in an asylum, or references to the psychiatrist who tried to talk you out of your theory.

4. 40 points for comparing those who argue against your ideas to Nazis, stormtroopers, or brownshirts.

If you have any points already, you have the crackpot.

Check out Vincent's blog and follow his progress in Beijing.

UPDATE:

Rob Haggart over at APE has a great interview with Newsweek's DOP, Simon Barnett. Barnett, of course, hired Laforet as one of his Olympic guns-- as well as Mike Powell and Donald Miralle. Here's an excerpt from the interview, explaining this choice.



(and here's Barnett- thanks for the picture, Rob!)

How did you come up with the dream team of Laforet, Miralle and Powell?

All are ex-Allsport staffers (now gone, an early Getty acquisition), as I was I too. I was Allsport USA's managing editor in the 90's and worked closely with Mike Powell, so we go way back. Vince and Donald joined Allsport after I left to be a part of the team that started ESPN the Magazine. Even though I don't get to do that much sports nowadays with Newsweek, I've always kept an interested eye on the sports photography scene, and I know that I have assigned the three best, most original sports photographers available.

Allsport really was an amazing place for photography--at it's peak it was to sport what Magnum is to photojournalism. There was an incredible hunger at the agency, and often a quite intimidating rivalry amongst the shooters. I remember clearly the harsh ribbing that some of the youngsters would get if they couldn't follow focus 6 frames of an athlete running at them on a 600mm. They'd all be challenging themselves to shoot difficult pictures, on massive tele-photos, using 50 ASA Velvia in the shade, skillfully timing the peak action at the only possible moment when it froze sufficiently to yield a sharp image at a 1/60th of a second. That era produced the likes of Simon Bruty and Bob Martin, both now at SI, and guys like David Cannon and Clive Brunskill who are still with Getty today. Allsport photographers were always shooting portfolio-type images, trying first to make art, and, in a classic sports sense, driven to
beat the hell out of the competition.

For this Olympics, I thought I'd to try and approach it that way again, this time for Newsweek.  I have given Mike, Vincent and Donald a dream brief at the biggest event in the world--go make great photographs first, worry less about recording every medal.



See the full Q&A here.