InSight America

Magnum photo agency is doing a running project up to the election with some of their top notch photogs. Their objective?

Who are the people of America? What are we thinking? What makes us angry and frustrated? What gives us hope? Are some of us really all blue and some all red? Or are we mostly shades of purple?

What is the American Dream today?

Could be another interesting series to keep an eye on much like Hard Times.

Found via APhotoADay

Four for a Quarter

I was waiting around at the UPS Customer Service center while they dug up a package for me and decided to look through a couple issues of the Smithsonian magazine. I found great photo articles in both of them, but one had a url with more content.

A photographer produced a book based on the photobooth. You know, the ones you used to see in the mall and would get four photos on a strip. There are some great images and a unique notion about how these inexpensive commerce photography sessions recorded very interesting aspects of history. Four frames at a time.

Today, photographic imagery is at nearly every fingertip on a smartphone that the notion a trip to the photobooth could be one of the lone images of a person in existence seems crazy. I only hope that at some point this over abundant digital immersion will drive people back to analog, much like vinyl records are popular again as CD sales plummet.

Got Passion?

Simply put: If You Don't Have Passion - Get Out Da' Kitchen.

That's the title of DigiDave's blog post and it has some great thoughts and links about passion. It's a nice refresher for some of my goals.

Found via Journerdism

Pray for Snow

It's opening day at Arapahoe Basin and Loveland today and all I can think about is fluffy white blankets of joy.

Be sure to watch the hi-def version. The video has a lots of quick transitions that the normal definition looks lame.

Nachtwey's wish is XDRTB.ORG

Watershed moment in the future of American politics?

"We know it's in the millions," he said of the number of e-mails that lawmakers in the House have been receiving. "But we haven't counted yet, because when you're about to get hit by a tidal wave, you don't count the drops of water in the wave."

Seems as though millions of Americans let their voices be heard not only by calling their representatives. They used the fastest communication tool available. E-mail. And the US House wasn't ready for the traffic.

This is the first presidential election cycle that is saturated with the use of online tools and portals. The ease and effectiveness of the Internet in communication will become more and more integrated into our world. Hence, the iPhone and Android phones are the early stages of the evolution towards the mobility and connectivity of our communication world.

A digital stereo camera

Fuji has come up with a two-lensed 3-D camera.

I'm sure the camera is cheap, but the headset player will probably cost a fortune. It'll be interesting to say the least. Maybe someone will be able to hack it and use it for visual storytelling in a new way. Curious...very curious.

Nachtwey's Wish is revealed Oct. 3

I'm curious as hell to see what it is. There's a lot of stories to cover with a $100,000.

Here's the video from last year when he won the award.

Photog that rocks

This is a CNN story about a high school student that created a program for homeless children to have a voice with a camera. Watch the video. She won a huge grant to continue the program and expand it. There's some interesting photos that the children made as well.

This is a great example of the power of photography.

How small do you want to feel?

Scales of the planets to Earth with a cool backbeat.

Is digital photography killing photography?

The advent of inexpensive equipment that allows for even more photographers to produce photography. I paid nearly $4,000 for a Nikon D1H in 2004. I recently picked up a D300 that is nearly 20 times the camera for $1700. And don't forget to add inflation, it would be over $4,700. I remember buying a Nikon N90s film camera for about $1,000 in 1994 and thought it was unreasonable. Boy, was I wrong. The Kodak DCS420 was about $12,000 in 1994. Your cell phone now has twice the resolution the 420 had.

Eventually supply and demand market forces take over and the imagery becomes worth less and less. Add to the dog pile the notion of people willing to give their content away for free so that they can say they have been "published" or in hopes of getting "more business" and you have a recipe for destruction. One more layer to make it truly gloomy? Working photographers struggling to make ends meet in this harsh economy begin to under-cut each other's bids to get work.

All that adds up to an acceleration of inexpensive photography to go with the relatively inexpensive gear.

CNN's iReport and the like go even farther to destroy the notion of a working photojournalist. Why pay for the cow when the milk is free?

Sure, I'm a Flickr user. But I reserve copyright on all my images. Many don't and leave their work open to Creative Commons. Others give their work to Getty in an over-saturated stock photo market.

What's the future of photography? I don't know, but I'm thinking of buying a bunch of silver gelatin paper from Europe since it's fading so fast here in the US, finding a sweet Leica enlarger at a garage sale and preparing for the rebirth of traditional process.

Convergence might as well be retired as a word

Power photographer Vincent Laforet was tasked with putting the new Canon 5D MkII through its paces earlier this month. Well, this video nearly made my soil my pants. The rich visuals and complete command of the lighting are something dreamlike. Then we can talk about the camera and the absolute thrashing of the notion of a DSLR.

Also check out the behind-the-scenes video.

Nikon better react very very fast with an upgrade on the D700 –the D90 was going to be good until Canon did this– or they will be stuck at the back of the pack with Olympus, Sony and Fuji in the digital camera market.

All this being said, I'm still waiting for Scarlet. With the announcement of the 5D MkII it looks like the Scarlet will also be radically different.

All of this rapidly changing technology is just getting rolling. Hold on tight, just like Miss Budweiser it's going to get fast and rough.

Where's the line?

Parents are now social networking their children before they are barely even cognizant of life. Does this further the social interaction of people or does this go too far? Is there a line of no return in our constant sharing and publishing of our lives?

I know that I over broadcast my life at times and am too hyper-connected to various portals of social and digital media. I'm sure some people get sick of some of my pointless Twitter updates which is also connected to my Facebook and FriendFeed. Will all of this computational connecting become shallow and get people to connect in reality again? Social networking has seemingly taken over the web with it's ability to search out those of likemindedness and communicate. I just don't think that it is enough of a replacement for the true social interactions of a true social species.

I guess we'll see, right?

What is Journalism?

Just in case you didn't know how it all worked.

Found via graphicdesignr

A business opportunity in Colorado?

Those Canucks may have figured out a way to use beetle-killed trees for newsprint. Since the price for newsprint is going through the stratosphere, why not figure out a way to go local?

Just need some investment capital to set up a shop in Silverthorne or Dillon and fire up the chainsaw. 

Todd Heisler, Damon Winter and David Scull on photographing the conventions

Talking about covering the political conventions. I always like to hear what was going on outside the view of the viewfinder and behind it. 

Traffic is Growing Fast—but Capacity is Keeping Pace

Some interesting tidbits about the growth of Internet traffic and trends. 

Red is going hunting

Nikon has announced the release of the D90, which is a DSLR with video capability. Well RED has already been turning the motion picture world on its head with his proposed 5K RED Epic camera and now plans on snaring the DSLR world in his spiderweb. 

I may just wait another year to buy any kind of camera.

Wired article on the RED

Wired piece on the 4K RED HD video camera. Convergence progresses...

Sweet, yummy Olympic goodness

A truckload of fun photos from the Olympics. It's always good to see the photographer frames and not the stuff that runs on the printed page or sports section gallery.