pictures to prove it™

i didnt actually jump on the strobist bandwagon, but it doesnt mean i dont appreciate the ingenuity and enjoy solving problems and creating things. its just sometimes, i’d rather make photos than make light modifiers. however…

i just stumbled across this and i gotta say, im stoked.

http://ikeahacker.blogspot.com/2010/01/ivar-loves-dolly.html

On his blog Dallas based shooter Jensen Walker has posted a video showing how he gets things done. you can peep it here. it’s almost enough to make me wish i photographed pretty girls.

“Have you seen a truly awful piece of Photoshop work? Clumsy manipulation, senseless comping, lazy cloning and thoughtless retouching are our bread and butter. And yes, deep down, we love Photoshop.”
- photoshop disasters

this site has been around for awhile, but only recently has it become one of my fav resources. there are so many goodies tucked away on this site. it’ll make you giggle and it’ll make you look at photos a little more closely.

not that i want to pick on Annie Liebowitz (cause it seems every magazine i stumble onto has some comment on her financial woes) but this photo of husband and wife Sam Mendes and Kate Winslet boggles me. with so many eyes on the production through publication of this, how did THIS happen?

i love the photo, or the concept of the photo. maybe she didnt sleep enough. that is usually my problem. i think she needs a week of RnR or maybe a solid spa day. im sure she has had a lot on her mind, but are the editors that work with her so in awe of her that they would let this pass? did they praise it?

curious eh? you can see some video of the shoot HERE. it’s funny that it isnt really a composite because they weren’t together, someone had just decided that they didn’t like him in a jacket i guess. she is famous for convincing people to take their clothes off in her photo shoots. maybe now she just tries to do it in photoshop.

HERE you can see how Vanity Fair ran it online.

those who know me, know i love comic books as much as a love photos. i was thrilled when i stumbled onto this story at PDNonline. ive been suggesting that ben lowy do a graphic novel of his first trip to Iraq, but draw it himself. maybe this will inspire him.

—

“Drawings and photographs are like oil and water,” says graphic artist Emmanuel Guibert. “One always wants to kill the other. They are like enemies.”

Despite this esthetic antipathy, however, Guibert’s graphic illustrations blend peacefully and seamlessly with the black-and-white photographs taken by his late friend Didier Lefèvre in The Photographer (First Second Books, 2009), a deeply compelling narrative in words, drawings and photographs. The book, a 278-page graphic memoir, describes Lefèvre’s first mission to Afghanistan for Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) in 1986, during the Soviet occupation of the country. (continued here…)

The New York Times photoblog Lens has a interesting video of Tony Cenicola, “the master of The Times’s basement photo studio” showing how he made this illustration for the Wealth & Personal Finance section of the paper. pretty cool. you can see it here.

© Kurt Weston

Time.com has this great photo essay featuring the work of blind photographers exhibiting their work at the California Museum of Photography. the exhibit called Sight Unseen includes work by; Kurt Weston, Ralph Baker, Evgen Bavcar, Henry Butler, Pete Eckert, Bruce Hall, Annie Hesse, Rosita McKenzie, Gerardo Nigenda, Michael Richard, Alice Wingwall and others.

im not one of those people.

me as photographed by ben lowy

ben was here for the past couple weeks. he made some pics of me and he put them on his blog. he has just started doing these multiframe portraits. id dig em. peep it.

NYT photojournalist Steve Crowley gives proof of how difficult and uninspiring it can be to work in Washington, DC.

—

At the White House today, news photographers streamed into the Oval Office for what’s known as a “pool spray,” a very brief photo opportunity. This one, in fact, lasted 30 seconds. About 12 seconds inside, President Obama glanced at our gaggle of photographers and said, “I hope one of these works.”

ok this isn’t actually photo related, but i want to make a prediction right now. very soon you will be using you Wiimote in photoshop and lightroom. thanks to some sweet open source coding you can now control things in flash on your lappy or your desktop. it’s called Wiiflash. if i have my way, i’ll be able to control my camera with the Wiimote too.

my norcal connection Ali Sajjadi sent me a link to this. im not even sure if this should be described as light painting, but im so stoked. i wish i could read it. regardless you can be sure to find me wandering around the WDC all night for the next few months trying to create my own versions of this. these guys are inspiring. get stoked, get out the tripod, and get out the glo sticks and flashlights. it’s on.