In the aftermath of the Petters bloodbath, the article’s subhead sums it up nicely: "Stuck in limbo, for now, is Polaroid’s collection of photos taken by some of the biggest names in 20th-century art."
Read article at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune
‘Roid Week 2009 starts tomorrow! This is a five day posting event for photos made on any instant film. It’s in its third year, and is normally a lot of fun and showcases some really excellent work.
I’ll be shooting with a bunch of stuff, but I’m particularly excited to have gotten a hold of two boxes of Fuji FP-100C peel-apart film in the elusive 4×5 size. Its low resolution is a fantastic match for a Cooke PS945 portrait lens.
Click here to join the ‘Roid Week 2009 group on Flickr and add your instant photos to the pool. (You can participate with a free account.)
Hope to see you there!
Like most visitors to London, Klaus Matzka and his teenage son Loris took several photographs of some of the city’s sights, including the famous red double-decker buses. More unusually perhaps, they also took pictures of the Vauxhall bus station, which Matzka regards as "modern sculpture".
But the tourists have said they had to return home to Vienna without their holiday pictures after two policemen forced them to delete the photographs from their cameras in the name of preventing terrorism.
Continue reading at the Guardian
This is worth a read, it’s short and makes a number of good points [that you’d think are painfully obvious, but apparently still need to be made… over and over and over again].
Via GRINZ
If you ever wondered what film looks like when abused with aftershave, hot sauce, lemon juice, gin, swimming pool water, or a wide variety of household cleaners, check out Thomas Anderson‘s amazing Experiments and Mistakes gallery on Flickr.
You can see more of Anderson’s work and experiments here on Flickr and at his blog, photodu.de.
View gallery on Flickr.
This 16-clip clothes hanger from Ikea is great for hanging film up to dry. It has built-in clips that don’t slide, is heavy enough to stay balanced, and is flippin’ cheap.
Jabba clothes hanger, $4.99 USD.
And it kind of looks like the Nanerpus:
From today, anyone taking a photograph of a police officer could be deemed to have committed a criminal offence.
That is because of a new law – Section 76 of the Counter Terrorism Act – which has come into force.
It permits the arrest of anyone found “eliciting, publishing or communicating information” relating to members of the armed forces, intelligence services and police officers, which is “likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism”.
That means anyone taking a picture of one of those people could face a fine or a prison sentence of up to 10 years, if a link to terrorism is proved.
The law has angered photographers, both professional and amateur, who fear it could exacerbate the harassment they already sometimes face.
Continue reading at BBC News
Via the GRINZ newsletter, whose editor had this to say:
I have two words for this: Rodney King. So the police in that situation could have arrested the photographer (videographer) and destroyed the evidence, and been well within their rights to do so…if it had been illegal to photograph police, what record would even EXIST of the Springbok Tour? Hmmm…worth considering. I’m certainly not saying police are out to get us all – just that documentary photography / photojournalism should be unfettered.
Right on.
The description for Sverrir Valgeirsson‘s free Filmtagger software says it all:
Filmtagger is an application for those of us that still like to shoot film but use the computer to manage our photo collection.
Filmtagger makes it easy to embed EXIF, XMP or IPTC information in the scanned images about camera used, film, ISO, lens, date and other tags.
The program will scan the selected catalog and set the appropriate tags in all jpg or tif images it can find (a backup file will be created).
Polaroid Week Fall 2008 starts tomorrow—Monday, 27 October, 2008! Shoot some Polaroids and upload them to the Polaroid Week 2008 group on Flickr—you can participate with a free account!
About ‘Roid Week Fall 2008
It’s that time again…..POLAROID WEEK! This one is a little bittersweet — as you all know, Polaroid has . It very well could be the last Polaroid Week we have…
But until that happens, it’s time to play! Post a Polaroid a day.
OCTOBER 27 – OCTOBER 31, 2008
Five days. Five polaroids. (or more if you’re so inspired, just not more than 3 a day)
Here are the simple rules:
* It’s five days. Monday thru Friday.
* Pool opens at 6:00 am on Monday, Eastern Standard Time.
* Pool closes at 12:00 am on Friday (technically, Saturday), Pacific Standard Time [GMT -8].
* Members can post up to 3 photos a day.
* Though we call it "Polaroid Week," any instant film is fine.
* Post photos you haven’t posted on Flickr before. Give us something new.
* And give us something good. This is our seasonal eye candy. Make it sweet.
Love,
PS: Check out last year’s Polaroid Week 2007 for inspiration!
According to Wired, a French magazine leaked details of a new Leica aspherical f/0.95 50mm Noctilux, coming in at a predictably heavy 8,000 euros.
While that’s cool and all, I’m not sure I see the point… as the article points out, the depth of field is "ridiculously small — focus on a pupil and the edge of the eye will blur". I don’t equate sharpness with goodness, but if you want to make blur, there are a lot cheaper ways to do it. Quality of blur does matter—greatly, in my opinion—but this seems like it’s going to be marketed as a tool for taking very low-light photos in. Or maybe they don’t care about the actual utility and are counting on the people who will undoubtedly buy it just because the numbers will be limited and it says Leica on it.
Also rumored to be announced at Photokina [photo equipment trade show] by Leica are:
M Summilux 21mm f/1.4, 5,000 Euros
M Summilux 24mm f/1.4, 5,000 Euros
M Elmar 24mm f/3.8, 1,800 Euros
According to this Q&A page about their new Ektar 100 film, Kodak will discontinue their Portra Professional Ultra Color 400UC film by the end of 2008.
I don’t shoot much 35mm these days, but I thought it really sucked when they discontinued it in 120 last year, it was great in 6×6 toy cameras.