In The News: Three Photography Links

Here are 3 recent photography-related links... just things I found interesting:

• ONE: Highest Resolution Photo of the Sun:

About a week ago, Miami astronomers released the highest resolution images of the sun that anyone has ever created. It shows "a surface that’s divided up into discrete, Texas-size cells, like cracked sections in the desert soil. You can see plasma oozing off the surface, rising high into the solar atmosphere before sinking back into darker lanes."

The surface of the sun in motion.

Here's a bit about the technology behind it:

To observe the sun, you can’t just build a telescope the old-fashioned way. DKIST boasts one of the world’s most complex solar-adaptive optics systems. It uses deformable mirrors to offset distortions caused by Earth’s atmosphere. The shape of the mirror adjusts 2,000 times per second. Staring at the sun also makes the telescope hot enough to melt metal. To cool it down, the DKIST team has to use a swimming pool of ice and 7.5 miles of pipe-distributed coolant.

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• TWO: Capa's "The Falling Soldier" Sold:

Late last year, Sotheby's Paris sold the famous photograph "The Falling Soldier" shot by Robert Capa, hailed "the most emblematic image of photojournalism." It sold for €75,000, or just under $100,000.

Taken in 1936, it captures the last moments of a Spanish Republican fighter, in a shocking and fascinating composition. Capa made this photograph while reporting in Spain. It became famous a year later, when it was published by Life magazine in large format. Since then, many have speculated (and many have "proved") that it was a set-up image.

One of Capa's famous quotes that I like to share with students is:

     "If your pictures aren't good enough, then you're not close enough."

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• THREE: New York Times' "The Year in Pictures" for 2019:

I always like to share this because it's an important curation of photographs. Check out the The Year in Pictures 2019 by the NY Times:

Fun Photo Links

It's been a while since I've done a "news" post, and although most of these aren't "news," I'm still using that tag. Here are 5 things I've recently found interesting in the photography world:

• 1: There's a new app called the KODAK Reel Film App that can tell you where to find movies being shown on film (not digital projection):

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• 2: A photographer/videographer recently discovered this AMAZING Nikon store in London. This is a 35 minute video, but parts of it are quite interesting, especially if you're a bit of a history buff:


Direct link: https://youtu.be/qlxcpD5-sGA

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• 3: I don't know how to feel about this one... Relonch is a service where you take photos, send them to Relonch, and they send back fixed up files. For $99/month, they fix up and send back SOME of the files you upload by 9 a.m. the next morning. (The example files they show seem vignette-heavy with high contrast.)

This video explains it a bit:


Direct link: https://vimeo.com/190791985

Photos of the camera that comes with the Relonch service:

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• 4: I know it's a few weeks into the new year already, but if you need a photo challenge for 2017, check out this "365 photo project" calendar:

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• 5: Finally, I shared this link a few weeks ago, but it's worth sharing again. Here's the New York Times "Year in Pictures" for 2016. Some amazing work in there. Lots of political stuff (if you're into that).

New York Times "The Year in Pictures"

Here's part of what Susan Chira wrote for the opener to the 2016 New York Times "The Year in Pictures:"

IT WAS A YEAR to be confounded, shocked, humbled.

Donald J. Trump won the American presidency, defying polls, mockery and fear to defeat Hillary Clinton. Britons jolted their country and the world by voting to leave the European Union. Syria’s agony played out before a largely indifferent world, its children staring into the camera with eyes wide in terror, blood flecking their clothing.

The president of the Philippines unleashed a merciless war on drugs, boasting of killing drug dealers himself when he was a mayor, and many of his citizens cheered him on. Climate change created a new class of refugees, even as climate-change skeptics were nominated to key United States cabinet posts.

And talk about shocking: The Chicago Cubs won the World Series after a drought of 108 years.

It was a year so unexpected, so tumultuous, that the fight has just begun over which narrative might possibly explain it. For some, it was the comeuppance of the elites and the rebellion of the forgotten white working class. Or it was the triumph of resentment, rage and racism. Or payback for identity politics. Or perhaps it was a rallying cry for identity politics. [...]

There are hundreds of amazing pictures in this gallery. I can't even try to pick a few to share here. Go check it out for yourself. Please. It's amazing.

Five April Photo Links

I haven't done a "news" post in a while... click each link in each story for all the details.

• 1: Kodak film will be alive in the cinema a bit longer. Disney, Fox, Paramount, Sony, NBC Universal, and Warner Bros announced that they will keep using Kodak film even as most studios go digital.

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• 2: The public recently got a look at the first photo book ever. It's called "Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions" from 1843 book by English botanist and photographer Anna Atkins. It's considered to be the first book ever to be illustrated exclusively with photographs (well, cyanotypes actually).

Direct link: https://youtu.be/ekUUuU7whe0

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• 3: Here's a great list of movies about photography that every photographer should see.

"One Hour Photo" was at the top of the list.

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• 4: Want to shoot a film only lit by candlelight? You are now able to rent a Zeiss f/0.7 lens - the largest aperture len ever seen in the history of photography.

In the 1960s, NASA commissioned Zeiss to make 10 of these lenses to use on the moon. In the end, 3 were bought by Stanley Kubrick and used in his 1975 film "Barry Lyndon" where he shot some scenes only lit by candles:

Short documentary on Kubrick’s use of this lens. Direct link: https://youtu.be/FmSDnPvslnA

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• 5: Photographer Troy Wayrynen caught a photo of a high school cross country runner snapping a selfie, and it won him first prize in the "Sports" category in this year’s "Best of Photojournalism" contest by the National Press Photographers Association.

Close-up of winning image.

Four February Photo Links

• 1: "Indulgd" recently showed 36 Realistically Colorized Historical Photos. The color images seem to make the past not seem that long ago.

Old Gold Country store, 1939


Washington D. C., 1921


Abraham Lincoln, 1865


Mark Twain, circa 1900

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• 2: Philip Gefter from The New York Times recently wrote an article called "With Cameras Optional, New Directions in Photography."

Here's a bit from the article:

The shift of focus from fact to fiction, and all the gradations in between, is perhaps the largest issue in the current soul-searching underway in photography circles. Questions swirl: Can the “captured” image (taken on the street — think of the documentary work of Henri Cartier-Bresson) maintain equal footing with the “constructed” image (made in the studio or on the computer, often with ideological intention)?

Museums, for their part, are debating whether photography should remain an autonomous medium or be incorporated into a mash-up of disciplines in contemporary art. And photography curators, too, are questioning the quality and validity of new practices, as the ever-morphing ubiquity of social media challenges the singularity of the photographic image.

“The biggest problem facing curators and historians of photography,” Mr. Bajac said, “is the overflow of images.”

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• 3: There's a new product on the market for cleaning your dSLR sensor that claims it "is used professionally by many service centers, including Leica’s." I just ordered the "Sensor Gel Stick," and I'll report back when I try it:

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• 4: Finally, for some fun, there's a website called Photographs Rendered in Play-Doh. It contains, well, you know...

The Butterfly Boy, New York 1949 by Jerome Liebling




Throwing Three Balls into the Air to Get a Straight Line (Best of Thirty-Six Attempts) by John Baldesseri

Five Photo Links for Early November

• 1: Here's a trailer for an upcoming documentary called "Long Live Film." I don't need to tell you what the movie is about.

Direct Link: http://youtu.be/TdmozD2eBp8

I really agree with the line "I like HOW it makes me shoot..." I've been staying that for years.

(Side note: it looks like they didn't shoot the film on film. If they were really smart, they would have...)

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• 2: Buzzfeed was using a photograph from a photographer/engineer from California. But they didn't ask to use it. He posted about copyright issues and his fight with Buzzfeed after he found this photo of his on one of their most popular posts:

CLICK HERE for the photographers story (which ends up turing out OK for him as Buzzfeed agreed to pay his invoice for $500 to a charity).

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• 3: Who says you can't be "discovered?" Rosie Hardy was a young photographer with a Flickr page when a little band named Maroon 5 stumbled across her work.

The band liked one of her images, and contacted her to shoot something like that for their new album. And now it's on the cover of their CD. CLICK HERE for more on Rosie and a video about her story being discovered. (But this won't keep me from still telling my students "don't WAIT to be discovered - you've gotta go work for it!")

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• 4: Recognize this photo?

Probably not. But there's quite the story to it, which ends in the only time that 2 men from the same aircraft received the Congressional Medal of Honor for a mission. CLICK HERE for the entire story if you're a history / WWII / photography buff.

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• 5: And finally, here's a depressing little CNN article for other Adjunct Professors like me. It's titled "Adjunct professors are the new working poor." Damn. (But I should make sure to point out that it IS an "opinion" piece. If you want to put yourself in the middle of a big debate, read through the comments of that article...)

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Five Photo Links for Mid-September

• 1: National Geographic has a new website to highlight their great photography. This is what they say: "FOUND is a curated collection of photography from the National Geographic archives. In honor of our 125th anniversary, we are showcasing photographs that reveal cultures and moments of the past. Many of these photos have never been published and are rarely seen by the public."

Some images are beautiful, some are historical, and many are both. You could keep scrolling for days. There are some amazing photos in this collection, and many of them are for sale. Check it out here.

"The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge from Yerba Buena Island in 1936."


"Teenage girls in bathing suits and caps pose on a dock in Brandenburg, Germany, March 1928."


"Astronaut Neil Armstrong floats in his space suit in a pool of water in 1967."


"Scientists take samples to study radioactive discharges in the Susquehanna River in Maryland, March 1985."

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• 2: On the anniversary of 9/11 last week, Esquire online re-published an article (first published 10 years ago) about this horrific photo:

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• 3: Hasselblad just opened it's first retail store in Japan.

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• 4: An article from Forbes Magazine about one of my photography favorites: Joel Sternfeld.

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• 5: Two related posts (here and here) talk about the lost art of darkroom printing with some iconic celebrity portraits.

Dennis Stock's photos of James Dean


Thomas Hoekper's photo of Muhammad Ali


Bob Henriques' photo of photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson (with MLK Jr blurry in the foreground)


Dennis Stock's photo of Audrey Hepburn

p.s. If you're a local, the F-Stop Swap is happening this weekend in Brooklyn Park.

Annie Leibovitz's Photo Rights... GONE?...

Have you been hearing about this? Famous photographer Annie Leibovitz used the rights to her photographs as collateral in a number of loans which total about 24 million dollars. The loans have come due today, and there's currently no sign that she'll be able to pay them back. Here are a few links regarding this story:

- The Associated Press, from 2 hours ago.

- The NY Times, talking about firms that use rights to art as collateral.

- The NY Times: this article is about 6 weeks old, but it's the best description of what's going on that I've found.

How does a photographer get that far "in the hole?" That last article states the following:

Over the years at Vanity Fair, her shoots became more complex and expensive, often elaborate as movie shoots. “Month after month, it got a little bit more complicated with every shoot,” Jane Sarkin, a Vanity Fair features editor, said in the documentary. “Her demands became bigger. Fire, rain, cars airplanes, circus animals — whatever she wanted she got.”

But STILL! This boggles my mind. Good luck, Annie!