Blog surgery
Been having some major bugs with the blog, will be trying out new templates for a while until I find the right one. Stay tuned…..
Did World Press Photo disqualify Stepan Rudik for the right reason?
So, there’s a lot of debate online about the disqualification of Stepan Rudik’s 3rd place Sports Feature story. Seems everyone’s in agreement that WPP was right to disqualify him. However some people (like the erudite Asim Rafiqui) are arguing that Stepan’s heavy use of toning/post-processing and extreme crop (looks about 1/30th of the full frame) [...]
World Press disqualification – Stepan Rudik
It had to happen sooner or later. The warning signs were there, as year after year people debate the fine line of some winners of press awards. Stepan Rudik’s series that won 3rd prize in Sports Features has been disqualified for altering content. Stepan wasn’t disqualified for the toning, but for the removal of a [...]
World Press Photo 2010
The results are in from World Press Photo 2010, and you can see them here. There are photography contests, and there are PHOTOGRAPHY CONTESTS, and WPP is the photography contest, so right now photographers, editors and readers around the world are viewing the results. And no doubt, many of them are thinking something along the [...]
Spring Cleaning
Still February, so maybe a little early for spring cleaning, but it’s been about 26 degrees and sunny every day this past week, so better get crackin’, it may be summer before the start of March. Really just a quick and dirty way to test my new ringflash.
Viva la square!
Wanted to share a few photo essays I’ve been viewing this week. The commonality here, other than great photography, is the format – square. The square medium format is a wonderful little niche in photography that is unfortunately getting smaller, as more people move to the easier/cheaper digital option (square digital does exist, but yikes [...]
The art of the mega-crop
A few years back I started using Genuine Fractals to enlarge photos I’ve had to crop while shooting news. It’s fast, easy and pretty amazing. Now, using the 5DmkII, with its ginormous files, I can make a ridiculous crop and resize it with GF and put it out on the wire with no one the [...]
Phelps, luck and finally, the weekend
It’s Friday afternoon, and I was going to write a week-in-review piece, but as I was doing a little Internet trolling, and came across this image of mine from the Beijing Olympics, of Michael Phelps going nuts after winning yet another gold medal – It was one of those great, lucky, arbitrary moments. I have [...]
The hardest working men in showbiz….
A shout out to Aaron Joel Santos and Justin Mott, as you can see the hardest working photographers around. Had a great weekend with them (and a few other friends) at the Buffalo Fighting Festival in Do So, Vietnam. More to come…..
Joe McNally – doing a photography blog, the right way
I doubt there’s a photographer out there who is more generous with sharing his creative vision and wisdom than Joe McNally (or maybe its a tie with David Alan Harvey). Between assignments for National Geographic and jam-packed lighting workshops, Joe somehow finds time to blog – extensively – about photography. Joe’s at a point in [...]
Canon Photomarathon Asia 2009
Last year I griped about Canon’s copyright grab for their otherwise cool photomarathon. They said, The organisers reserve the right to use any submitted photograph for any purposes without compensation to the photographer. Which was totally ridiculous and in my opinion completely negated any possible corporate goodwill intended in the event. So, this year’s edition [...]
Xxxxxxx Magazine defaults on payment (but then Facebook comes to the rescue)
UPDATE: After posting this blog, and a similar post on Facebook, I got a phone call from the magazine in about 5 minutes, agreeing to pay, in exchange for taking down the Facebook post. Wow, that was the quickest turnaround I’ve ever encountered. “The power of Facebook to speed up late payments” deserves its own [...]
Missing the sea….
Calming, soothing, contemplative. I miss the water, the salty air, the sand between the toes….
Yin / Yang
Last week I flew down to Phu Quoc, a lovely island off the southwest coast of Vietnam, for a luxury resort shoot. The manager, being a warm, generous soul, said it would be fine for my family to come along and stay in one of their swank villas for the week while I toiled (er, [...]
An Evening with Elliot Erwitt
The Sony World Photography Awards hosted an evening with Elliot Erwitt tonight at the Miramar Theatre in Cannes. Erwitt has been a Magnum photographer since 1953, and even if you don’t know much about photography, chances are you’re familiar with his work. I don’t think there’s been another photographer in the last 60 years who [...]
Postcard from Cannes, #1
Street scene in the old town. The old lady in the middle of the frame is quietly awaiting her bus.
En route to Cannes for the Sony World Photography Awards Festival
I’ve got a few hours to kill at Changi International Airport in Singapore, en route from Hanoi to Cannes for the Sony World Photography Awards Festival. If you have to kill a few hours in an airport, this has to be one of the very best. Free Playstations and XBoxes, massage, movie theatre, gardens, designated [...]
Best picture request I’ve ever had
A few days ago I got an email from the brother of an American Olympic diver. He said his family was putting together a photo collage of his sister’s diving experience at the Beijing Olympics, and that an image I had taken of her was “by far, our family’s favorite photo of my sister’s diving [...]
Canon 5DmkII, same price in HCMC as NYC?!?
I’ll likely be purchasing a new 5DmkII sometime this year, and since I’m in North America for a few months, I thought it would likely be best to do it now while I can take advantage of stock and pricing in New York. But I thought first I’d ask a few friends in Vietnam what [...]