livebooks blog

“We want to make sure we are as specific as possible to keep our business safe.”

“We have to put ourselves in the place of our clients.”

American Society of Magazine Editors just announced the results of their 2009 Best Magazine Cover Winners this week, and the Best Magazine Cover of the Year goes to Rolling Stone‘s for its Peter Yang portrait of a smiling Obama. It was also the magazine’s best-selling issue in 2008. Across the Atlantic, The Maggies released the results of the Best Covers in the UK.

Stock Artists Alliance (SAA), an organization that represents independent stock photographers, confirmed in a press release that it will merge with the Alliance of Visual Artists, an umbrella organization representing five photographic associations, including the Professional Photographers of America.

Polaroid announced at a press conference in Hong Kong earlier this week that it will relaunch its instant cameras and film, with distribution expected in mid 2010. The announcement came largely in response to The Impossible Project, a group of Polaroid enthusiasts in the Netherlands that has been trying to recreate the magic of the film on a low budget and is now tasked with recreating it for Polaroid.

Rob Haggart at A Photo Editor pointed us to two impressive documentary videos shot with the Canon 5D Mark II by Danfung Dennis and Yassine Ouhilal, respectively, Check out Rob’s behind-the-scene interview with Yazzy in particular.

Irving Penn, one of the masters of photography, died Wednesday, October 7, 2009, at the age of 92 at his home in Manhattan. Penn leaves behind him a wealth of iconic imagery, from portraits of cultural leaders to obsessively exact still lifes. Photography Now has a great selection of Penn’s work online and the Getty Center in Los Angeles is showing Penn’s exhibition “Small Trades” now until January 10, 2010.

Scientists Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith, inventors of CCD (charge-coupled device), will be sharing this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics with Charles K. Kao, the “Father of Fiber Optics.” Although the duo had moved onto other research projects, their discovery made digital imaging possible, from point-and-shoots to the Hubble Space Telescope.

Both Outside and Esquire launched a moving magazine cover this month, with the full videos available on their websites. Alexx Henry, the photographer behind the new Outside cover, made a name for himself doing a “Living Movie Poster” for the movie Mrs. Washington. It’s the second time Greg Williams has shot a moving cover for Esquire, after the first one featuring Transformer star Megan Fox.

Fashion label Ralph Lauren landed in hot water this week with a “poor imaging and retouching” job on one of their advertising images. After Boing Boing brought attention to a photograph of already thin Filippa Hamilton photoshopped to unltra skinny, Ralph Lauren’s legal department sent the blog a take down notice. Bad move. Now The Drudge Report, The Huffington Post, Yahoo!, Jezebel and ABC News have jumped on it. PDN has the details.