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January 2009 
High Tech President 10,000 Words has a great post-inauguration wrap-up on all the cool high-tech coverage of the new president, including David Bergman's 1,474 megapixel image of Obama's inaugural address.
Final Farewell for a Presidential Photographer Eric Draper spent the last eight years alongside George W. Bush as the chief White House photographer. Draper, 44, who had covered the 2000 campaign for The Associated Press, took the White House from film to digital as he met world leaders and mixed it up with Britian's Prince Philip. He also received an unexpected farewell gesture from No. 43 earlier this week -- a fist bump.
The Portfolio of...
The Idea of India Awarded the Aftermath Project Grant, photojournalist Asim Rafiqui has launched his site The Idea of India. There is a lot to look at and read, and the site may take a few visits to absorb but will be worth the time. Of the project Rafiqui says:
The Portfolio of ...
Remembering the Tragedy In 1989, Patrick Purdy walked onto an elementary school campus in Stockton, CA, with an assault weapon. His violent shooting left 5 children dead and 31 others wounded. The story hit national headlines at the time, and twenty years later the staff of the Stockton Record put together a comprehensive multimedia piece looking at the lives that were changed that day and how the community hasn't forgotten.
Inauguration Coverage This is a pretty cool, pretty different angle on today's inauguration coverage. Second only to this one. Props to photographer Chuck Kennedy for working a remote camera onto the stage and bringing us a different look. The New York Times and the Washington Post have been doing a great job with their coverage today as well.
Inauguration The students from OU covering the Inauguration in DC have a blog. In addition Matt Slaby, David Banks and Noah Devereaux have some great photos as well.
Dirty Pictures
Collaboration is cool. So is fostering a love for the still image and finding other avenues to publish outside of the realm of newspapers. Dirty Pictures does both. A group of bad-asses in Portland (Rob Finch, Torsten Kjellstrand, Jamie Francis, Pam Royal, Mike Davis, Tim Labarge and Heidi Swift and Deb Pang Davis) decided to combine their infatuation with both photography and cyclocross -- and pdxcross was born. 50,000 images were whittled down to the best 160, and laid out over 120 pages. The result is a great little self-published book called Dirty Pictures, which documents the 2008 cyclocross season. Cyclocross is guts out all the time. No hiding. No resting. No pretense. No logic. You can almost taste the grime and grit. You can almost taste the passion and pain. You can almost hear the cowbells in the crowd. In stunning b&w, pdxcross captured the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat and the triumph of trying. Their pictures offer an insight into a subculture. For the love of mud, sweat and tears, cyclocross riders come together to revel in the ride. And they find that the pain of pushing oneself through ungodly obstacles turns competitors into compadres and friends into family. I applaud the efforts of the pdxcross crew. The book truly was a labor of love and as Rob Finch said, "although it's not going to change the world, we hope it makes people happy who look at it." Dirty Pictures is something that's sure to make both lovers of photography and cyclocross cheer. And for me, in a time of shrinking budgets and news holes, it's also a great lesson in covering your community in new and different ways.
Photographing the Photographers Switzerland based artists GORAN GALIC & "I take pictures of things that I do not want to remember."- Ziyah Gafic
The Real Behind the Scenes APhotoEditor has a pretty hilarious behind the scenes look at Nadav Kander's "Obama's People" shoot.
Obama's People This Sunday, the NY Times Magazine will be featuring 52 portraits of members of the Obama administration and Democratic Congressional leaders taken by Nadav Kander. The online presentation of the portraits includes a terrific behind-the-scenes sequence from the shoot and audio commentary from the photographer and the Magazine's photo editor, Kathy Ryan. [via Gallery Hopper]
Living at the Edge of Life The Dallas Morning News spent a year exploring efforts to improve end-of-life medical care. Reporter Lee Hancock and photographer Sonya N. Hebert gained unprecedented access to Baylor University Medical Center's palliative-care team, spending months attending team meetings, observing patient visits and interviewing clinicians, patients and families. In late May and early June, they shadowed the team around the clock for three weeks. Every patient, family member and staffer named or photographed gave prior permission, and unless indicated, the stories are presented in the order that events occurred.
Cowboys and Cul-de-Sacs For years, Helotes prided itself on its small town charm despite being on the outskirts of San Antonio. Encroaching development in Northwest Bexar County has divided the community recently, with one side clinging to its rural identity the other embracing the seemingly inevitable growth. Since March 2007, photographer Lisa Krantz has been documenting life in the city of Helotes and the surrounding neighborhoods. The result is community journalism at its finest.
1mm per day Chris Hornbecker is wrapping up a project called the 1mm project. In his own words, Beginning with 14mm, each day I zoom the lens by 1 millimeter and force myself to use that focal length to shoot and post a photo before going to sleep that night. This will continue every day until I reach the end of the 1mm lens adjustments at 400mm. His striking graphical compositions are a feast for the eyes. I strongly recommend checking it out.
Creative Round Up Tim Gruber talks about the hard work that goes into being creative, while Nick Onken talks about working hard to make a career, about 10,000 hours worth or work actually. This is a tough idea to sell to folks with "real jobs" who are just looking for a diverting bit of creative tourism or who find themselves yearning for a nostalgic amble past a mostly-abandoned adolescent arts hobby. People who want to learn how to feel creative. To feel successful. To feel like an artist. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Infosthetics points us to the history of visual communication (photographers are visual communicators) while Ed Zawadzki ponders how to communicate better, and he gets there by taking less photos Anyway, the point is that my resolution is to make *more* images, but take *fewer* pictures - I want to make sure that every frame that comes out of my camera is deliberate and considered. Each image should be thoughtfully arranged, deliberately composed and have a considered subject. Tara Kocourek muses the effect of the photographer being present while taking the picture while The Boston Globe mourns the loss of the printed photo, and wonders what effect it will have. I've often struggled with the role of the photograph - it captures a moment, but does it compel any action? I don't know the answer, but this line helps me to think that there is importance to photography, "...millions of pixels of evidence that will remain part of the indelible record.... Their photos, some of them unpublished, provide detail and precision that is lacking from other witness accounts. " Lastly, a Richard Avedon retrospective has been released, and here is an article about it while Liz Kuball talks about her life changing experience with the book America by Zoe Strauss. Power even manages to reach into this year's great political moment, with a closing color portrait of Barack Obama, keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic Convention. Not yet elected to the U.S. Senate, Obama here looks more like a young community organizer than future president. He's in an open-collared shirt and peers calmly into the camera, a picture of possibility from Avedon the rest of us wouldn't see realized until four years after he was gone.
180 Magazine There is an online fashion magazine called 180 magazine that has been around for a few years now. Well worth a look, and while it is primary a fashion show, they have a smattering of other types of photography as well.
Film vs. Digital Ever wonder how film and digital stack up against each other? Well the folks over at FiveFWD did and they made multi story prints to prove it. That being said, shoot what you love be it film or digital. :)
Why do they do it? Low morale, shuttering papers, fears for the future, microscopic pay and even less respect. These are a few of the plights that many journalists would list the downfalls of their job. Yet journalists still continue on despite the economic and mental pressures they face. I have always wondered how they could, what drives them so? The answer comes from Sri Lanka where the risks and trials of journalism are much higher. Before being killed on his way to work Editor in Chief Lasantha Wickrematunge of The Sunday Leader wrote a piece about his own death, and why he continued like he did. No other profession calls on its practitioners to lay down their lives for their art save the armed forces and, in Sri Lanka, journalism. In the course of the past few years, the independent media have increasingly come under attack. Electronic and print-media institutions have been burnt, bombed, sealed and coerced. Countless journalists have been harassed, threatened and killed. It has been my honour to belong to all those categories and now especially the last. I recommend reading the entire thing, at the very least to remind ourselves what journalism at it's core is and what journalists are fighting to save. Via Boing Boing
Last Mission/Last Hour In the early morning of October 20, 2006, six days before his 21st birthday, the Humvee Diyar al-Bayati was riding in during a routine patrol came under attack by a roadside bomb and ambush. On his last mission and his last hour as a translator before moving to Kuwait for a safer translating job, Diyar lost both of his legs and had his right arm horrible maimed. After more than 70 surgeries, in Baghdad and Amman, Jordan, Diyar arrived in Salt Lake City as a refugee, and photojournalist Ramin Rahimian has been documenting his life here.
Portraiture Now Check out Martin Schoeller and Steve Pyke talking about some of their portraits.
JPG Magazine Lives? A recent email to anyone registered on JPG Magazine's website read as follows: We couldn't ask for a better community. In the week or so since our last email, the outpour of support has exceeded our wildest expectations. Your efforts, such as starting savejpg.com, writing blog posts, commenting on Twitter and Flickr, and generally making your voices heard, have provided exciting new opportunities for us. Here's a link to follow their news blog (which seems to lag a bit behind the emails to members)
Question:
Seattle PI up for sale Seattle PI has been put up for sale. The Seattle P-I is being put up for sale, and if after 60 days it has not sold, it will either be turned into a Web-only publication with a greatly reduced staff or discontinued entirely.
One in 8 Million I'm looking forward to seeing where Todd Heisler's new project goes: New York is a city of characters. On the subway and in its streets, from the intensity of Midtown to the intimacy of neighborhood blocks, is a 305-square-mile parade of people with something to say. This is a collection of a few of their passions and problems, relationships and routines, vocations and obsessions. A new story will be added weekly.
PDN >$3000 Studio If you are among the newly freelanced and looking to build a studio on the cheap, PDN has an article on building a studio on less than $3000 in gear. After reading it, I felt that the article missed the mark a little bit in their purchases. The thing I found surprising is that they spend most of the 3000 on camera bodies and lenses and very little on the studio lighting gear. This may work if you are looking at doing more of a portrait studio setup where your primary clients are general consumers who just want various shots of themselves or their loved ones but doesn't translate very well to commercial or advertising type client. On my first assisting gig ever Thomas Boyd told me, "There is nothing that put your client lose faith in your abilities than seeing you fight with your lighting gear" (probably not his exact wording but close enough). This knowledge also extends to cover cheap lighting gear breaking, which my own painful experiences have taught me. Another disadvantage using off brand or no name brand lighting gear you lose the ability to tap your local gear rental place for just the accessories. I use Clutch Camera in Portland Ore., but there are countless others including Borrow Lenses which will straight up ship the gear to you. This allows you to get the light modifiers that you need for the job on the cheap and billable directly to the client. Twelve dollars for a softbox is alot easier for a client to stomach than $70 for renting a pack with a single head. The same goes for backdrops. Why buy a nice cloth one when you can get a seamless paper roll and bill it's use straight to the client and they can even take it with them if they purchase the whole thing. Lastly, good lighting gear is like good lenses, they hold value over time and will last and last and last some more. Just yesterday I did some work in a studio with 3 cabinets full of Speedotron equipment and each power pack had a date on the top that corresponded to the date that said pack was purchased. We used 4 packs for the shoot, 2 were from the mid nineties, one was from 1984 (the year I was born) and the last one was older than that. All fired flawlessly. I were to price it out I would break it down something like this (using mostly their numbers) Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 - $350, That leaves $355 to pick up a softbox and grip gear, like A clamps, cinefoil, wood and other materials for making the necessary light diffusion devices and/or product tables depending on the jobs you are going to go after. As always, all opinions are my own and all are to be taken with a grain of salt. There may be a reason PDN didn't ask me to write the article :) It is best to figure out the type of work you are going after (location, product, etc.) and tailor your starting kit to being most effective in that line of work rather than getting your shopping list off a website online. Visit your local ASMP and talk to photographers already in the line of work that you are going after to help you. You will get a better load out at a good price and have gear you can feel good you have invested in. Via Tara Kocourek
Mario Tama Podcast In a Getty Images podcast, Mario Tama details the stories behind his powerful images of 9/11, the US presidential election and pre- and post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans.
Close-Up of Conflict NPR Photographer David Gilkey gets a close-up of the Israel-Gaza conflict. So, I had just walked down there and I found a spot that seemed reasonably out of the way, and I heard "Boom! Boom! Boom!" on the metal wall that I was sort of up against, and then my camera flew out of my hand, and I looked down and -- there's a hole in it! [laughs] And that was the end of my day.
What do skulls, HIV+ blood, and hearts have in common? Wayne Martin Belger uses them to make 4x5 cameras. Here's the description for his Untouchable (HIV Camera): Designed to study and photograph a geographic comparison of people suffering from HIV.
New photographer social networking site A new photographer social networking site, Fotocoma launched recently, started by a Chad Boutin and Burk Jackson, a pair of studio photographers based in Portland, Oregon. They set out to create a network of like minded photographers for critique and support in the photography industry.
Good news for the undiscovered Emerging Artists are set to get a boon this year, as people pull their money from stocks to invest in other things like gold and your photos. Via Susana Raab
In the Portfolio of...
Obama's Unguarded Moments Time Magazine photographer Callie Shell talks to NPR about having access to intimate Obama family moments, including Monday morning when she got to photograph Malia and Sasha getting ready for the first day at their new school in D.C.
Souza Named Obama's Photog Photojournalist and NPPA member Pete Souza has accepted the position of official White House photographer for President-elect Barack Obama, he told News Photographer magazine. Boy am I jealous.
From Finance to Photojournalist As an investment banker, Marcus Bleasdale was paid 500,000 pounds a year to sit in front of 10 computers and 25 phones. 'My job was to produce for the bank,' he remembers, 'almost like being a battery chicken, sitting there laying eggs.' There were perks, of course, and before the age of 30 Bleasdale was the owner of two houses and a 1968 Porsche 911, and he spent weekends skiing in the Alps. Bleasdale is now a photojournalist, and the change in his life could hardly have been more dramatic. He owns a flat, but no car, and at the age of 40 earns 60,000 pounds a year, if he is lucky. But the most profound change has been in his habitat. He no longer operates from the safe, routine life of an office; instead he is at short notice sent to document conflicts in Africa, Central America and the Balkans. He has photographed the bodies, and interviewed the survivors and those who have raped or tried to kill them. He has reported on child abductions in Uganda, air pollution in China, civil war in Somalia; he has escaped from rioters, checkpoint thugs, snipers and, most recently, a rocket-propelled grenade attack in Adre, Chad (he sheltered in the back room of the Medecins Sans Frontieres compound). Bleasdale, for his part, couldn't be happier. 'I like life being raw,' he says.
Blade Photographer Shares Favorite Work Recently retired Toledo Blade staff photographer Herral Long, a Toledo native who began working for the paper in 1950, shares the stories of some of his favorite photographs in this video.
The Portfolio of...
Photos from Chad Christoph Bangert's project on the Sudanese refugee camps in Chad online at The New Yorker this week is worth taking a look at. The story, by Jonathan Harr is also worth the time.
The Portfolio of ... Ethan Levitas and here's to a happy and fruitful 2009 for all.
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