Category: Blog News

I lug around those big ugly beer coolers that plug into cigarette lighters in a car, or can be plugged into a wall socket. Hunting for working freezers in a sub-Saharan war zone has been my task of Sisyphus for the last three years, and I’m looking forward to the day (coming soon) when I run out of this pesky film forever, and no longer need to worry about keeping the film cold. It has been like carrying around one of those Tamagochi toys which you have to keep alive like a feeble baby.

–Richard Mosse

via Raw File | Wired.com.

Finney Country Sheriff Kevin Bascue told AP the two men were charged because they didn’t have permission to take off from private property and hadn’t told anyone they intended to take photos… The sheriff didn’t mention Kansas’ ag gag law, the Farm Animal and Field Crop and Research Facilities Protection Act, which became the nation’s first when it was signed into law in 1990. The law bars individuals from entering and photographing an animal facility not open to the public.

via HuffPo.

For a photog, the path of the generalist can be a fraught one. You are never the first shooter called, for instance, because you are never the regarded as the “best” at anything.

— Joe McNally

via The Path of the Generalist – The Photo Society.

If you’ve had a photo project on indie-go-go, or Emphas.is, or Kickstarter asking for money, I wonder: have you contributed to other photographer’s projects? If you’ve got a book-signing coming up, or have published a book, did you buy someone else’s book, or go to their signing, or for that matter, their gallery opening?

As much as I can say there is a photography community in New York, I find myself questioning how much of it is self-interest and how much of it is reciprocal.

via Stella Kramer.

It’s disgusting. I hate it! I’ve done it only when I’ve been to countries where it was difficult to go and they said, “If you don’t do color, we can’t use your things.” So it was a compromise, but I did it badly because I don’t believe in it.

The reason is that you have been shooting what you see. But then there are the printing inks and all sorts of different things over which you have no control whatsoever. There is all the interference of heaps of people, and what has it got to do with true color?

via Henri Cartier-Bresson: ‘There Are No Maybes’ – NYTimes.com.

Along with Irving Penn, Richard Avedon and Mark Shaw, Mr. Stern was part of a generation of photographers who made clear, clutter-free, arresting images the language of glossy magazine advertising, which until then had mainly used pictures to illustrate text.

…Robert Sobieszek, the curator of what is now the International Museum of Photography and Film at the George Eastman House, called Mr. Stern’s martini photograph “the most influential break with traditional advertising photography” of its time.

via NYTimes.com.

The pair have actually been working together for the last three years; and for the last year, AP reporters have been using Bambuser’s backend to record and then deliver video to its studios from the field; and also to source content from citizen journalists to bolster overall coverage. Notable events that have benefitted from that relationship have included the siege of Homs; video taken by activists inside the Syrian government’s Taftanaz air base; the Oklahoma tornado; the Russian meteor; and the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings.

via TechCrunch.

30. YOU’LL HAVE A HARD TIME PROVING THAT YOU WERE TOGETHER ON VACATION

That’s because they’ll be taking most of the pictures, without themselves being in front of the camera.

31. THEY WON’T PHOTOGRAPH WHAT YOU ASK THEM

Think having a photographer partner will bring you advantages? Think again. Photographers are very proud and stubborn creatures and they will rarely photograph anything they consider unworthy, unless it’s paid or they like it.

via 41 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Date A Photographer.

“The Internet is driving the ability of the masses to do their own research, do their own due diligence just as they do with a stock — really enabling individuals to determine and place their own value on individual pieces of art,”

via The Art Of Investing: The Rewards Aren’t Always Financial : NPR.

via The Guardian

Perhaps the most important people that I should photograph are the people who don’t have a voice. And I think that that’s the message of the day. That’s the most honorable thing to aspire to. To be able to give someone the chance to express themselves, to tell their story on a platform that they would never normally get. And in doing so, that platform shifts how we see the times that we are living in. So that really is my mission.

via A Conversation with Platon | New Republic.

“After you’ve bought three homes, two yachts and a plane, the most visible manifestation of affluence is what’s hanging on your walls — particularly if your friends know what’s there,” he said. “Bragging rights are important.”

via Now’s Best Time to Buy Art, Collector Rachofsky Says – Bloomberg.

The airbrush backlash is now well underway as Debenhams announces a ban on all retouched lingerie model shots.

The high-street department store puts and end to such images as they ‘want to help customers feel confident about their figures without bombarding them with unattainable body images’.

via Mail Online.

Since Buzzfeed published shots of the star that her publicist didn’t like, her PR squad stopped issuing press passes to photojournalists to tour dates, and instead has required news organizations to register with them for access to pictures taken by the tour’s official photographer. They’ve also contacted media outlets like Buzzfeed to request that certain photos be removed.

The strategy hasn’t worked too well for Beyoncé; news outlets, frustrated about the limitations on their photographers, have used the original offending photos, from Beyoncé’s Super Bowl halftime show, in lieu of the provided photos.

via Poynter..

My whole philosophy on hiring people is: I need to meet you. I need to know what type of person you are (even if it is just for 5 minutes). I may already know what you shoot and your work, but as soon as I meet you/we make a connection, you get added to my consideration list.  Some photographers I’ve met share recent projects with me and others just check in with me every once in awhile. Either way, I know that person is going to follow through on a lot of things and that is important to me when I hire a photographer.

via Sasha Carillo, Creative Planner and Art Producer at Davis Elen advertising in Los Angeles.

Broomberg and Chanarin were praised for their book War Primer 2, originally published in a small edition by Mack Books, which reworks Bertolt Brecht’s original War Primer publication from 1955 using internet screengrabs and mobile phone snaps to comment on the role of photography in the so-called “war on terror”.

via The Guardian.

A camera is just a tool. A carpenter using a hammer and me using a hammer are going to get different results. I can use a hammer but I don’t know how to make a table. For me it’s not about the camera, it’s about the skill and the storytelling ability.

I heard from a reporter yesterday who shot two features with her phone and she marveled at how much time it took to shoot the photos, choose the ones she wanted, edit the photos, upload the photos—she just had no idea how much time it took. The product of the reporting and the photography is going to suffer.

via The Daily Dot – A talk with Rob Hart, the photographer behind “Laid Off From the Sun-Times”.

people think that it’s going to be this “new up and coming” person who is going to take over, and I don’t think that that is necessarily the rule. I think as long as you are putting out solid work, good work, staying fresh and true to your ideas, and evolving with time, then you can have an extremely successful career. And I like to see that versus “trend.”

via One Art Producers Point of View: Photography Portfolio Review Events. Part I | Heather Elder Represents Blog.