pictures to prove it™

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/11/28/world/20081128-Mumbai/index.html

The NY Times has photographer Michael Rubenstein’s account of the terrorist attacks in his current home of Mumbai, India.

Jessica Woolfe (formerly Jessica Koscielniak) recently posted this video of Mike Malacina and his son, Mikey being evicted from their apartment. She has been shooting a lot of video and in my opinion, she is getting pretty good at it. the subject is compelling and the video will make you curious.

while im on a ben lowy kick, here is his latest. it’s his stab at fashion and it’s good.

© 2008 Ben Lowy

just so you know: This is Mark Gong, left, in the remnants of his chinese mr. t (aka Mr. Te) costume and david holloway, right, as a 1970s era David Burnett (see below).

joel sent me this.

how do we reverse engineer this so i can make a camera this stable while im running? remind me to send this to canon and nikon.

from the website — Meet Benjamin Lowy, conflict photographer. Through this first person video diary, we are transported to Kirkuk, Iraq where we see the dangerous life of a photojournalist passionate about capturing the images of a war and the American public increasingly does not care about.

i stumbled onto this story from 2004 on the front of rob galbraith’s site today. weird, but it was nice to see it again. read and learn.

© 2004 Ben Lowy

from Vince’s site:

For years now, I’ve been waiting for someone to take full advantage of the web and to allow photographers to better connect with their audiences. I’ve always found that traditional media rarely offer up a way for photographers to connect directly with their readers/viewers. Photoshelter has just recently released a little widget that allows anyone to embed flash galleries in their (and other people’s) websites. This tool allows photographers to easily share their images - and perhaps to generate some income. In this case - you can simply view the photographs within the widget - and if you’d like, you can purchase a print as well.

I think this has a tremendous potential - so much so, that I’m going to try to encourage you to embed this gallery into your personal sites (or publications!) by applying all of the profits from these print sales for the next 30 days to a student internship/scholarship…

Yep - all of the income (minus the cost of printing, labor, and shipping) will be put towards a student internship/scholarship that I set up. I’ll determine how to select the student (and perhaps students depending on how popular this experiment becomes) and how the money will be dispersed etc. I will work out all of these details at the end of the 30 days once I know how much we have raised and how we can maximize those $$$ to best benefit a student (or students)… Sounds fun no?

One more benefit - there are a total of 88 images in this gallery - all but the first one are limited edition prints. The first image in the gallery of an aerial of Times Square however - will be offered at a significant discount - often more than 10 times cheaper than the limited edition prints.

This is in an effort to drive the sale of this print - as many of you know, selling prints in these economic times is not easy - so this should help. Each print (whether limited edition or not) is 100% archival and will be signed by me. You can get a 16 X 20 of this image for only $75 - compared to $1,250 for a limited edition 16 X 20 print of one of the other photographs… this is pretty much the best bargain I’ve ever offered on my prints. I’m hoping the cheaper price will lead to more sales and benefit the student(s).

So why am I doing this? Well I think this “embedded” gallery is a fantastic idea - and will allow photographers to hopefully find new business models to generate potential income in the future. Most photographers today rely on agencies, print sales, stock sales, and a variety of publications to make a living… wouldn’t it be great if we harnessed the true power of the web to allow readers to in effect sponsor a photographer’s assignments? Imagine paying a few cents a day or per picture to your favorite photographer… and allowing them (through a good volume of subscribers - each paying a very small amount) to chase their wildest creative dreams - sponsored by their viewers - not publications with limitations etc…

I DO think this is a VIABLE business model… so let’s give this a go. As I said - all of the profits from the print sales over the next 30 days will go to a student (or students) minus the costs of producing and shipping the prints (For the skeptics out there: The total amount of money raised will be made public - and I will have Grover Sanschagrin of Photoshelter verify the amounts etc. so that they can confirm that the money does indeed end up in a student’s (or multiple students’ hands…) sound good?

So go ahead - and share the link below with as many people as you can - and embed the gallery within your sites. While I will obviously benefit from having people see my images - any financial benefit for the next 30 days will benefit a lucky student or students!

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.

yes, there are a million different ways to do anything in photoshop. i want to learn all of them, so i spend a lot of time watching photoshop tutorials.

oh this site you can find links to more than you can get through. some of them are very good, some are… well, decide for yourself. then tell me what you think.

we all know j. kost is the best. i just think she is dreamy.(swoons)