Author Archives

Director of Photography, Rob Haggart.

Ben Watts Interview On Designing Minds

One of my favorite photographers:
“There’s no such thing as luck, you create your own.”

thx, Andrew

Foto Week DC Starts Tomorrow

Foto Week DC starts tomorrow and it looks like there’s plenty to do for people in attendance (here).

This screening (here) of a movie on Yousuf Karsh caught my eye because I’m a huge fan.
Film Screening – Yousuf Karsh and Portrait Photography
DATE: 11/10/2009 – 11/10/2009
WHEN: 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM
WHERE: Embassy of Canada
501 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, [...]

The bigger the company, the bigger the blunder

This is why your company needs an experienced marketer on staff. Real marketing directors have an understanding of intellectual property laws. Photographs, fonts, illustrations, and other design elements found online are not free for you to use, especially for commercial purposes.
via Brand’s Anatomy.

A New Model For Old Media And An Old Model For New Media

Maggwire.com, a company I’ve written about before, has a plan to charge users for a subscription to a channel that sounds really good to me. There should be a way for magazines to sell content in pieces, so people can assemble their own based on their interests. Also, it’s a good way to recapture the [...]

A Secret Copyright Treaty

I’m not sure how much of this is true but Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing is reporting that a secret copyright treaty has been leaked (here) and there’s some very interesting language in the draft text (again, who knows if it is true):
“A requirement to establish third-party liability for copyright infringement.”
“in order for ISPs to [...]

Interview: Damon Winter

So many of the photos look so similar and every time you press the shutter you’re thinking that this photo ever so slightly improves on the last image. And the next improves the last. And you never really know when they’ll stop improving. At some point you get the photo of the day – the [...]

random links to random stories in the hopes that people will click

“It is a fascinating fact is that if you go online and visit 200 web pages in one day – which is a simple task when you could email, blogs, youtube etc – you’ll see on average 490,000 words; War & Peace was only 460,000 words.”
via Media | guardian.co.uk.

Andrew Zuckerman – Bird

Andrew Zuckerman seems to have figured out how he wants to use new media to spread the word about these books and films he’s pumping out. He creates a simple custom site: http://www.birdbook.org/; then a vimo channel for the 9 excerpt and behind the scenes videos: http://vimeo.com/channels/bird#5701425; then the publisher (chronicle) has a site with [...]

Last Days of Gourmet

Kevin DeMaria, former Art Director at Gourmet Magazine took photographs of his final days at the magazine (here).

I almost wrote a piece not too long ago about food magazines because I’d unsubscribed to Gourmet but then discovered that having access to millions of recipes online is really a pain in the ass and what you [...]

We get so fixa­ted on our own shtick

A very res­pec­ted jour­na­list once told me, “I’m always telling stu­dents, if you want to be a jour­na­list, for God’s sake don’t be a Jour­na­lism Major. Study something else, like The Clas­sics or Archi­tec­ture. That means when you start loo­king for work, you’ll be brin­ging something to the table besi­des ‘Shop Talk’.”
via  Gapingvoid.

A Note From A Young Photographer On The Way Up

I received this note from a photographer whose work I enjoy and who you might say is a few years past emerging:
Work has still been pretty good this year. it’s strange because it’s slowing down, but the jobs I’ve been getting this year and the last 2 are bigger paying ones so that means the [...]

Some young photographers who are content providers are not content consumers

“If you won’t pay to see someone else’s work, why do you expect people to pay to see your work?” ”How do you expect to make a living as a photojournalist?” ”Who is your audience?”
via  Greg Ceo Blog.

How To Photograph The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

I remember several years ago sitting in a meeting talking about “the great pacific garbage patch,” trying to come up with a way to photograph what we felt was an important story. A floating patch of plastic garbage somewhere between twice the size of Texas and the size of the U.S. was out there but [...]

Selina Maitreya Interview

Selina Maitreya called me up the other day to tell me about a new mp3 series she developed for photographers called “The View From Here.” I’ve heard good things from photographers who’ve worked with Selina so I checked it out. It all sounded very well done and informative but I thought it might be better [...]

The Business Of Photography – Books

John Harrington sent me his latest book “Best Business Practices For Photographers” and at over 500 pages It’s a real door stopper. It has the look and feel of a college text book: loaded with examples, little notes sections along the way, 32 chapters and a cover image/design that screams textbook. For anyone looking for [...]

Listen Up, Advice From A Photo Dino

I discovered a great new blog written by Cheryl Jacobs Nicolai via The Online Photographer that you may want to follow called PhotoDino. Not just because she’s an excellent photographer but because she has excellent advice for everyone. These are real gems:
I get asked all the time, during workshops, in e-mails, in private messages, what [...]

500,000 loyal, engaged users who want quality, long form journalism

More sophisticated ways of measuring usership and engagement will change focus from mass audience, Plotz believes, and that will make journalism better. Raw numbers create “pressure to produce one kind of story” that will draw hits. New metrics of engagement and behavior offer a “tremendous opportunity for Web journalism to escape the traffic” trap. He [...]

Prix Pictet Award Goes To Nadav Kander

UPDATE: Jeanette Ward the Publicist from theresasimon.com just called me on the phone to bitch at me for breaking their news embargo on the winner of this prize. I was told all the photographers were very upset that I made the announcement. I think it’s insane that you would email blast bloggers the winner of [...]