Author: Nicolai Grossman

Petition fuels UK photo rights confusion

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I’ve been watching a petition to prevent the UK government from requiring people to have a photographer ID card to photograph in public make the rounds for a bit, and am happy to discover that the concerns it aims to address appear to be unfounded:

A photographer’s Downing Street petition against ‘proposed restrictions’ on rights to take pictures in public has confused many into wrongly believing that the government is planning such a move. It seems that the petition was largely fuelled by a photo enthusiast’s idea to launch a self-styled ID Card and has nothing to do with future government policy whatsoever.

Continue reading at [UK-based] Amateur Photographer

Attorney Bert P. Krages podcast interview: Your Legal Rights as a Photographer

Nicolai Grossman 1 Comment

Check out The Digital Photography Show #41, an hour-long podcast interview with photographer/attorney Bert P. Krages. His Web site says:

Bert is an attorney who concentrates on intellectual property and environmental law. He is recognized nationally as an advocate of the right to take photographs in public places, having appeared in media such as National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, Popular Photography, Shutterbug, and Wired.

He’s also the author of the ubiquitous PDF leaflet The Photographer’s Right and the book Legal Handbook for Photographers: The Rights and Liabilities of Making Images (which I have and heartily recommend).

Listen to the interview at The Digital Photography Show

Via PhotoAttorney

Abelardo Morell, "Camera Obscuras: 1991–2006" show, NY, US

Nicolai Grossman 2 Comments

cam.era ob.scu.ra – a darkened enclosure in which images of outside objects are projected by their own natural light through a small opening and focused onto a facing surface.

For the last 15 years, Abelardo Morell has been quietly building one of the great ongoing photography projects – a view of the world through rooms that have been turned into camera obscuras. At once pictorial and conceptual, these pictures address issues of science, art, topography, landscape, and architecture. Surprisingly, this will be the first New York exhibition devoted exclusively to Morell’s Camera Obscura series.

The initial idea for the work came out of Morell’s demonstrations to his photography students at the Massachusetts College of Art in the mid-1980s where he turned his classroom into a Camera Obscura. The exercise was designed not only to elicit a sense of awe and wonder, but also to connect students to the precursive roots of the medium. It was not until 1991, however, that Morell decided to document the process on film, and he began by taking pictures in his own house in Brookline, Massachusetts. In order to capture the elusive projections, the exposures had to be about eight hours long, but the initial results charged Morell with possibilities. The play between the inside and outside world, the tension between the right way up and upside down, the surreal contrast of buildings and beds, trees and walls, formed a miraculous and original vision of a magical but still real world.

Over the ensuing years, while continuing to make photographs of a number of different subjects, from still lives of books to the backstage of the Metropolitan Opera, Morell has continued the Camera Obscura series venturing further and further afield to different cities and states and then to England, France, Italy, and Cuba. He has photographed in simple cottages and in some of the world’s great museums, in the homes of the rich and in public libraries. 60 of the photographs were recently published in a monograph: “Camera Obscura – Photographs by Abelardo Morell.” and the work can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Victoria and Albert Museum, and more than forty other museums and institutions around the world.

This exhibition was produced in association with the Bonni Benrubi Gallery.

For further information please contact Danziger Projects at the above number or at: info@danzigerprojects.com.

The show runs 3 March – 7 April, 2007, at Danziger Projects, 521 West 26th St., New York, NY, US

Via Pinhole Visions

f295 Lensless & Alt Process Symposium early registration extended, B&H sponsorship

Nicolai Grossman 1 Comment

Tom Persinger, organizer of the f295 Symposium on Lensless, Alternative and Adaptive Photographic Processes, writes:

THE BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!

Part of my action packed trip to New York City 2 weeks ago was to solidify a partnership with B&H Photo & Video! B&H will soon be cross promoting the f295 Symposium to their customers! AND a B&H representative (whose also a HUGE lensless enthusiast!) will have a promotional table in the lobby of McConomy Hall during the symposium on Friday 27 April, at which they’ll be handing out catalogs, answering questions and offering sale flyers with symposium specials and sales on discounted merchandise and supplies! Look for future announcements on this exciting development! And look for the f295 logo in their next promotional email announcement!

yet MORE SYMPOSIUM NEWS!
*We’re receiving strong interest from people far and near. We’ve had inquires from the UK and Germany as well as a host of people from the states: New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Minnesota, California and many places in between! Professional and amateur photographers, faculty and students, and just *regular* people ;) This event is shaping up to be the biggest most diverse and interesting gathering of lensless/alternative photography enthusiasts in the past 25 years (somewhat arbitrary, but I think accurate)… AND We have the beginnings of a nice group from the forum attending…. will you be adding your name to the list? email me if you’re thinking about it. This thread started by gneissgirl (thanks!) is an ongoing dialogue on whose attending, where they’re staying and other thoughts:
http://www.f295.org/Pinholeforum/forum/Blah.pl?b-to/m-1172336315/s-15/

*The early registration rate has been extended through Sunday March 4! This is your last chance for this great rate! Register now… by phone 412-268-1125 OR…

*You can now register ONLINE!

*Many hotels are sold out due to Pitt Commencement being that weekend… How dare they schedule over the symposium and worldwide pinhole day! but I found that the holiday inn express on pittsburgh’s southside has rooms and a free shuttle that goes to the symposium: Holiday Inn Express Pittsburgh South Side – 1-412-488 1130 Their shuttle also goes into town (for the f295 exhibition) and will probably get you fairly close to the Daguerreian Society.

Last day for early registration discount for f295 Symposium on Lensless, Alternative and Adaptive Photographic Processes!

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Don’t delay, act now! This thing is gonna rock!

This is a reminder concerning The f295 Symposium on Lensless, Alternative and Adaptive Photographic Processes. If you’re planning to come to Pittsburgh in April for the most exciting photographic event of the year today is the LAST DAY to register at the ‘early-bird’ discounted rate of $100 (students w/ valid ID: $70).

Tomorrow the rate rises to $120 – still a bargain but less of a bargain than today!

You can register by phone by calling:
Carnegie Mellon University
Conferences & Event Services
Phone: 412-268-1125

Registration includes:
Admission to the 8 lectures and 2 round table discussions held in conjunction with The Center for the Arts in Society at Carnegie Mellon University. They will take place in McConomy Auditorium at the University Center as part of The Perspectives on the Arts in Society Series from 9am-5pm on Friday 27 April, as well as a name badge, coffee, tea, water, and snacks during breaks, a program of the days activities, and access to the sale of books by symposium speakers.

Speakers and Topics include:
Jo Babcock- Contemporary Pinhole Photography and it’s Place in
Photographic History
Craig Barber- Photography and Memory
Barbara Ess- Reality, Representation and Lo-Fi Image-Making
Alan Greene- Steps Leading to ‘Primitive Photography
Patricia Katchur- Back to Basics: The Renaissance in Alternative and
Historic Photographic Processes
Terry King, FRPS- Retro-Invention: A Revolution in Gold and Blue
Tom Persinger- Introduction: ‘Simple’ Methods in a Complex World
Mike Robinson- The Daguerreotype: Past, Present & Perfect

All workshops and other events must be registered for separately with the corresponding hosting organization. Links and phone numbers may be found on each of the corresponding web pages.

Complete symposium information: www.f295.org/wordpress

Catering to a Lebanese cliché: 2006 World Press Photo of the Year cock-up

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The World Press Photo of the Year 2006 shows upscale young Lebanese men and women visiting a bombed-out Beirut neighborhood like disaster tourists — or at least that’s what everyone thought. Bissan Maroun, one of those featured in the photograph, told SPIEGEL ONLINE the true story.

Time to bust out the "assume" trichotomy again. On the other hand, you have to assume something when looking at reportage photography… I guess we just need to keep an open mind and not address those assumptions as fact.

Continue reading at Spiegel Online

Via Conscientious

Get vertical

Nicolai Grossman 2 Comments

I just snagged an Olympus Pen FT from fleabay. The Pen F series are half-frame 35mm SLRs (what actually used to be "full frame", the size that 35mm cinema frames still are… what we today call full frame was originally called double frame!).

Square composition definitely shook my world up, and I’m excited to see what composing with a vertical viewfinder does to how I see. I can also see how getting 72 shots per roll could go either way: a blessing if you’re shooting a lot, and a curse if you’re casually taking a shot here and there over the course of a week.