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kottke.org posts about photography

Finalists in Smithsonian magazine’s 2007 photo contest. Some

Finalists in Smithsonian magazine’s 2007 photo contest. Some good stuff in here, but some of it is a little cheesy.


Photojojo celebrates its first birthday with a

Photojojo celebrates its first birthday with a tutorial on how to make video panoramas. The end result is pretty cool.


Photos of the offices of prominent New

Photos of the offices of prominent New Yorkers. You can tell which of these people actually use their offices to get work done…Martha Stewart’s computer monitor is stashed neatly away in a drawer. For a less rarefied look at people’s workspaces, try the Desk Space, My Desk, and My Cluttered Desk photo pools on Flickr.

Update: I read Martha’s item incorrectly…her keyboard is in a drawer, not her monitor. Still, I contend that she doesn’t do any real work in that office. (thx, haran and eric)


A man named Dusan Stulik is working

A man named Dusan Stulik is working to document and preserve all the different ways in which photographs have been made. “Surprisingly, the large photography companies โ€” Kodak, Ilford, Fuji, Polaroid and Agfa โ€” did not save samples of the hundreds of different films and papers they developed over the last century. We’re hoping that you did.”


Photo of the contestants in the 1927 Atlantic

Photo of the contestants in the 1927 Atlantic City Pageant, the forerunner of the Miss America Pageant. (Larger photo here.) Compare with a photo of the contestants in the 2007 competition. What strikes me most about the 1927 photo is all the short hair.


Very much on the travel to-do list:

Very much on the travel to-do list: head to Japan to see the cherry blossoms.


A photo of a Jewish settler seemingly

A photo of a Jewish settler seemingly fighting about 50 soldiers by herself won a prize in the 2007 World Press Photo contest.

Update: In an earlier iteration of this post, I incorrectly identified the woman in the photo as a Palestinian…she is a Jewish settler. (thx to everyone who wrote in)


Don DeLillo’s new novel, Falling Man, is

Don DeLillo’s new novel, Falling Man, is about 9/11 and the title is a reference to the falling man photograph taken of a person falling from the WTC.


Interview with Gretchen Ludwig about her dressing

Interview with Gretchen Ludwig about her dressing room photography. She started the project after she noticed her anti-advertising, anti-corporation self buying a lot of clothes from big corporations that advertise a lot. “The dressing room is not only a very private space, but it is also a space where consumers make most of their decisions. And it’s also mostly void of extraneous marketing ‘noise.’ You don’t have the trendy atmosphere, you don’t have the pressure of others watching and judging you.”


The human eye is equivalent to a 576

The human eye is equivalent to a 576 megapixel camera and has a nighttime ISO of 800 (~1 during the daytime).


Joerg Colberg asked a bunch of photographers

Joerg Colberg asked a bunch of photographers and photography bloggers: what makes a great photo? The answers, with examples, form a great informal discussion about art, photography, and curating. “It’s hard for me to describe what makes a great photo mostly because it’s hard to predict what you might like before you see it. I’m often surprised by things that I’ve never thought I would enjoy or seek out in the world.”


Museumr lets you insert one of your

Museumr lets you insert one of your Flickr photos into a museum (sort of). I gave my beer bottle-shaped sausage photo the Museumr treatment. (thx, chuck)


Women in light pink playing Nintendo DS by Eliot Shepard.

Women in light pink playing Nintendo DS by Eliot Shepard.


Shorpy, the 100-year-old photoblog, is pulling photos

Shorpy, the 100-year-old photoblog, is pulling photos from just after the turn of the century and posting them. This one’s going right in the daily reads pile.


Collection of photos of basketball players with

Collection of photos of basketball players with normal people. (thx, brian)


Expectations of Adolescence is a series of

Expectations of Adolescence is a series of photographs of two cousins as they grow up, seen periodically only at large family gatherings. “We see them as they grow up, become more and more themselves, chafing perhaps at the obligations implied by required attendance in surroundings of upper-crust comfort that remain unchanged and constant.”


The Face2Face Project takes similar photographs

The Face2Face Project takes similar photographs of Palestinians and Israelis and displays them together in pairs. “After a week [in Israel and Palestine], we had a conclusion with the same words: these people look the same; they speak almost the same language, like twin brothers raised in different families. It’s obvious, but they don’t see that. We must put them face to face. They will realize.” (via 3qd)


The National Portrait Gallery has a nice

The National Portrait Gallery has a nice online gallery of photographs of “twentieth-century America’s famous and influential women”. p.s. it’s International Women’s Day today.


Photos of people sleeping. Each series of

Photos of people sleeping. Each series of photos depcits a full night’s sleep. (via cyn-c)


Close-up photography of bugs that have splattered

Close-up photography of bugs that have splattered on cars and windshields. Way less gross than you’d think.


Photographer Alec Soth has a response to

Photographer Alec Soth has a response to the Richard Avedon essay regarding his portrait of Henry Kissinger. “While Avedon is correct that the subject is sometimes ‘implicated in what’s happening,’ more often than not the photographer holds all of the cards.” (thx, jen)


In 1940, an ultra orthodox Jewish group known

In 1940, an ultra orthodox Jewish group known as the Lubavitchers bought a building at 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn. The building became so well-known and revered within the community that other “770s” have been built around the world and subsequently captured by photographers Andrea Robbins and Max Becher. (via paks)


Richard Avedon on photographing Henry Kissinger: “A

Richard Avedon on photographing Henry Kissinger: “A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he’s being photographed, and what he does with this knowledge is as much a part of the photograph as what he’s wearing or how he looks. He’s implicated in what’s happening, and he has a certain real power over the result.” Here’s the photo that Avedon is referring to. (via personism)


For next time around, how to photograph

For next time around, how to photograph a lunar eclipse. Here’s a list of upcoming eclipses. (via inmyallstars)


Nice composite photo of the lunar eclipse

Nice composite photo of the lunar eclipse last night. We missed it because it was a bit cloudy and tall buildingy in NYC last night. (thx, ajit)

Update: Here’s another, another, and one more.


Over 1,000 photos and carte de visites of

Over 1,000 photos and carte de visites of the Civil War. (What’s a carte de visite?)


The seminal photography collective Magnum has a new blog.

The seminal photography collective Magnum has a new blog.


Photos of baskets and truffles at the

Photos of baskets and truffles at the Lalbenque truffle market in France.


Video montage of classic movie photos taken by Magnum photographers.

Video montage of classic movie photos taken by Magnum photographers.


Nick Tosches wonders where the desktop photo

Nick Tosches wonders where the desktop photo on his new computer was taken and it takes him a year (and several messages to the likes of Bill Gates, the editor of Vermont Life, and S.I. Newhouse) to find out.