livebooks blog

While iStockphoto is launching its 10th birthday bash, this New York Times story outlining the hard road ahead for photographers stirred up debate in the photo world (there’s even a follow-up article with reader and blog responses). Adding insult to injury, word also surfaced of a new business model for product photography called Via U!, where buyers can composite an image and purchase all rights for a flat $250 fee. A Photo Editor has details.

Blurb’s Photography Book Now competition has also launched its third year. In addition to $25,000, the grand prize winner will also be given the opportunity to show their work at ICP, the Annenberg Space for Photography, and the George Eastman House. The competition is a reminder of the potential of self-publishing, something we discussed extensively in our Future of Photobooks series.

We were sad to hear that legendary photographer Jim Marshall (who lived in San Francisco and we saw around town frequently) passed away on Tuesday. Jim was known for his intimate images of rock stars throughout the 60s and 70s, possible because of his close friendship with many of the artists.

Adobe CS5 launches globally on April 12, but the internets are already abuzz since a sneak peak was released on YouTube on Wednesday that shows a new “content-aware” fill tool that seems to allow hours of difficult retouching to be achieved with a few mouse clicks.

Pretty much everyone in the fashion photography world has heard the stories of Terry Richardson‘s on-set shenanigans, which almost always involve someone getting naked (the model, him, or both), inappropriate sexual overtures, and outrageous comments. When a model finally came out on a blog and talked openly about how degrading the experience was, the story spread like wildfire around the blogosphers — and Rob Haggart at A Photo Editor gives us the play-by-play.

Photographer Charles Moore, an Alabama native who made striking images that helped define the southern Civil Rights Struggle, died on Tuesday. His work includes images of the integration riots at Ole Miss in 1962, the fire hoses in Birmingham in ’63, a Ku Klux Klan rally in North Carolina in ’65, and he was the lone photographer at the scene when King was arrested in Montgomery in 1958.

Ukraine-based photographer Stepan Rudik has been disqualified from the World Press Photo Contest for altering his image “beyond the boundary of what is acceptable practice,” i.e. removing a subject’s foot during retouching, the New York Times LENS blog reported on Wednesday. Several bloggers jumped on the story with their own takes, including PetaPixel, Julian Abram Wainwright, and David Campbell.

We’re unofficially naming this travel coffee mug from the Olympics the coolest photographer swag of the year. PDN alerted us to this instant collector’s item, handed out by Canon in Vancouver, and modeled on their 70-200mm L-series “white” lens. Then Thomas Lee, a good friend and talented photographer, asked the hard question: “Who’s gonna pay if I pour coffee into my real 70-200?”