livebooks blog

Jennifer Pottheiser
www.pottheiser.com

“One of my favorites is shooting without looking through the lens – thanks to Joanne Dugan for that one! Its a great way to shoot pets and kids and still actually see whats going on around you. I have gotten some tremendous shots this way, and it really takes the pressure off.”

Mark Wallace
www.markwallacephotography.com

“About a year ago my friend Craig was telling me how uninspired he was about his photography. He had his new 1D Mark III and was telling me that there wasn’t much to shoot. I challenged him to a friendly duel. I told him there’s always something to shoot and told him to grab his camera. We walked outside to a dreary drainage area and I proposed the challenge: 5 minutes in the pile of rocks, my iPhone vs. his fancy camera, may the best man win. Here is the complete story and results.”

Peggy Morsch
www.peggymorsch.com

“Lately, I’ve started going through Freeman Patterson’s book: Photography and the Art of Seeing. There are MANY exercises in there to get your judge off your shoulder and just start playing with the camera like a 9-year-old again. For instance: Walk 50 steps, click, 50 steps, click. Or while I’m walking the dogs, I make multi-exposure images of anything, just to see what it looks like. My judge stays home in the kennel! It’s given me a sense of freedom to know that I don’t HAVE to produce anything.”

• Since the Iranian government banned foreign journalists from covering the rallies in Tehran on Tuesday, people are using social media to spread the latest news on the protests. Whether or not there is a “Twitter revolution” going on in Iran, people are definitely using Twitter to distribute unsanctioned news and images of the protests. One of the most visited TwitPic pages for Iranian protests photos has received over 126,000 page views since Monday.

• Hearing about the unrest in Iran, we immediate thought of Newsha Tavakolian, a talented Iranian photojournalist based in Tehran, a liveBooks client, and a friend. Check out her pictures of the rallies and her interview on the New York Times Lens blog, plus an interview about covering Hajj on RESOLVE.

• Joerg Colberg at Conscientious pointed us to a new online resource for photo lovers: The entire permanent collection of the Museum of Contemporary Photography is now available on the museum’s website. Not only can you search and browse through the collection, you can also save your favorites to view later or share with friends.

• MediaStorm is holding a new Methodology Workshop in the last week of July. The 5-day workshop is a hands-on overview of how to produce successful multimedia projects with a focus on the methodology behind creating and implementing such work. More details on their website.

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, it was great to hear and see so many young photographers at LOOK3 who are taking ownership over the incredible change happening in the industry today. But, in the end, we were all there to scope out some great photography. Here are 10 awesome things from LOOK3 that I might otherwise have missed (they’re in no particular order, so I’m not even numbering them).

• Shaw Rocco’s Cellular Obscura, a series of images taken with this generation’s Kodak Brownie i.e. a cell phone. Don’t miss the end of the slideshow – it’s very worth it. Also, bonus points for a great version of one of my favorite songs.

• Jason Eskenazi’s Wonderland, the result of more than 10 years (and several prestigious grants) documenting post-Soviet Russia. Several people mentioned this to me as the standout of all the festival slideshows.

• Carl Bower’s Chica Barbie about the beauty pageants of Colombia. I feel incredibly ambivalent about these images, which in my mind is a marker of great art. This was one of several great projections brought in by Slideluck Potshow…a natural addition to a festival that started as a projection in Nick Nichols’ backyard.

• Martin Parr’s Playas book. Watch the preview on Magnum in Motion, but keep in mind that the book is so much trashier (in the best way) in person. Parr found the worst designer, cheapest paper, and least-talented printer possible to produce this little conversation piece…which claims “$7.99!” on the cover but really sells for $40.

• Kelly Shimoda’s I Guess You Don’t Want to Talk to Me Anymore. Ok so I technically knew about his one before, and in fact I think my cell phone is probably in this project somewhere, which comprises photos of cell phones displaying text messages. But until I saw this at Slideluck, I didn’t realize how many images were available on Kelly’s blog and website.

• Michael Wolf’s Transparent City. Considering that the Museum of Contemporary Photography has already picked up on these, I’m probably behind the times. The best part about seeing these as a slideshow was the mix between the distance and detail shots of people photographed in the windows of huge office buildings.

• Blood Trail, a documentary following conflict photographer Robert King through 15 years in the field. Sadly, I didn’t make it to this film, but I heard so many great things about it that I am making it a point to hunt down a copy asap.

• Jessica Dimmock’s Papparazzi! Jessica made a name early for herself with her Ninth Floor work about a community of addicts living in a posh New York apartment building. Of course I was intrigued to learn she had moved on to photograph the least respected and possibly best paid editorial photographers in the business.

• Tim Hetherington’s Sleeping Soldiers, which most people saw at the New York Photo Festival, where it was praised as the highlight of the program. I’d watched the video online, but it’s always better live on a huge screen.

• Yolanda Cuomo and Kristi Norgaard, who designed all the visuals for the festival, explaining the fascinating process they go through to design photo books for legends including Richard Avedon, Diane Arbus, and Sylvia Plachy.

It’s not very often that I return from a photo festival with a cohesive message or even a consistent idea. But I spent a lot of time at LOOK3: Festival of the Photograph in Charlottesville last week talking with the up-and-coming young photographers who are being given the chance to shape the photo industry in a tangible way. Starting out as a photographer today, especially as a photojournalist, means nothing is certain. So it’s reassuring to hear that young photographers understand that this time of uncertainty is also an opportunity for evolution.

One way photographers are facing many challenges is by banding together into artist collectives, such as Luceo Images, MJR, Aevum, EVE, and Oeil Public. In the video below, Matt Eich (Luceo), Tim Hussin, Mustafah Abdulaziz (MJR), and Matt Craig (MJR) explain what they’re excited about in photography now. I also had conversations along these lines with Matt Slaby (Luceo), Kevin German (Luceo), Danny Ghitis, and Michael Christopher Brown. Although rubbing elbows with legends is always fun, these young shooters are most excited about their contemporaries and the camaraderie between them.

Michael Shaw, creator of the BAGnewsNotes blog and a RESOLVE contributor, is also excited about these young photographers and the collectives they’ve started, because they treat blogging as a vital, necessary part of their careers and distribution plans. Sometimes they strive to be featured on blogzines like Verve Photo, DVAFoto, and Flak Photo, which highlight great work by (mostly) emerging photographers. There are also blogs like That’s a Negative and We Can Shoot Too, that focus on work by photographers in specific places (Portland, OR, and Los Angeles, in this case). Other times they use the blog format to promote the achievements of their own members, as with the Luceo and MJR blogs.

Despite Michael’s quip about “older photographers,” I do have to mention that Magnum photographer David Alan Harvey, one of the dons of photojournalism, is also on the front lines with his online magazine, burn, which is working toward assigning original photography to emerging and established photographers — something Michael has been doing for years at BAGnewsNotes. David presented a very fun, sexy video promo for burn at the festival that includes an annual Blurb book and lots of other intriguing possibilities for new distribution models.