kottke.org posts about photography
Jill Greenberg’s End Times photography project depicts young children who are quite upset; the photos themselves are somewhat upsetting to look at. The photos were made by snatching lollipops from their hands and mouths and shooting the resulting anguish. Inevitably, the cliche was too much for some and it started a classic blogosphere tempest in a teapot, with calls for Ms. Greenberg’s arrest for child abuse.
Photos of the IKEA Everyday Fabulous! Exhibit, featuring IKEA products improving daily life on the streets of Manhattan, including comfy couches at bus stops, picture frames for lost cat photos, stools near payphones, and blankets for every seat at the movies.
Advice for cleaning the CCD image sensor on Nikon digital SLR cameras. Doesn’t look that scary….does anyone have any experience doing this? My D70 needs a little TLC in this area.
There’s a bit of a shout-out to citizen journalism in Superman Returns. Mid-movie, Daily Planet Editor in Chief White, Lois Lane, and Jimmy Olsen look at some photos of Superman spread across the chief’s desk. They’re great, iconic photos of the Man of Steel in action. White berates Olsen (and I’m paraphrasing here), “these are great and they were taken by a kid with a cameraphone. Whadda you got, Olsen?” Olsen throws his photos down on the desk; the one on top depicts a distant blurry streak across a blue sky.
“Look, in the sky, Chief.”
“It’s a bird.”
“It’s a plane.”
“No, look, it’s…”
Score one for the man on the scene.
Summer reading list of photography books. It’s not on the list, but I picked up New Yorkers: As Seen by Magnum Photographers at a friend’s house this weekend and found it well worth my time. (via rb)
What if some of the world’s best photographers had posted their photos to a photo message board? Garry Winogrand might have been told: “Man at right needs to be cropped out. Sometimes I find if I shout right before I take the picture I can get people’s attentions. If you had done so we would have been able to see more of their faces.” (via conscientious)
Excellent photos of giant flocks of European starlings, which can comprise more than a million birds. In 1866, a passenger pigeon flock was observed in southern Ontario that was a mile wide, 300 miles long, took 14 hours to pass, and was comprised of some 3.5 billion birds. That would have been a fantastic sight.
Great photo of the surf in Puerto Escondido, Mexico. (Reminds me of the work of another photographer, very large prints of waves taken head on, the ocean very dark and the crashing waves a bright, vibrant white. Beautiful stuff. Can anyone help me out?)
Update: The photographer I was thinking of is Clifford Ross. He uses a camera that he built himself to take 2.6 gigabyte images. His Mountain IV is currently on display at MoMA. (thx, david, barbara, and john)
Khoi has some thoughtful notes (+photos) about his experience with a digital photography class he’s taking. “The more I learn about photography, the less interested I am in close-ups that fetishize surface textures, and the less impressed I am by well composed but basically inert subjects that don’t communicate a narrative of any particular stripe.”
This news isn’t new, but it’s still irritating. Companies that do photo prints (Target, in this case) refuse to print certain photographs because they look too professional. Digital cameras are so good and cheap these days that everyone’s taking professional-looking photos…Flickr is full of pro-looking stuff shot by complete amateurs. This stupid policy needs to change or these places aren’t going to have any business left.
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