..at least I haven’t seen this new one yet. Not quite sure how much I like the new stuff, but I admire him for the great output he had over the years, for his literally fantastic productions and also the other projects he did, like the RIZE film (I unfortunately only saw some parts of it on youtube) or the stage design he did for Elton John (can be found under projects>stage).

The website shows hundreds of pictures and it’s fun to see all the complete editorial shoots he did for Italian Vogue, I-D etc.

I actually came back to his website after I found I really weird editoral David LaChapelle produced for Vogue Hommes, obviously Found Footage photographs from the 70s / 80s with some models/things photoshopped.Very entertaining.

© All photographs David LaChapelle Studio

Adam Bryce (via www.slamxhype.com ) wrote about this work:

“Vogue Homme have just published a series of photographs gathered together by David Lachapelle titled ”The Americans”. Re-opening old family albums from the holiday 4th July, Lachapelle has co ordinated a full volume of images that contain the patriotic pride of the American family which border on debauchery. An aesthetic that differs radically from david Lachapelle’s usual photos that are hyper-stylized, but they still prove to be provocative and disturbing.”

I did a post earlier on Winogrand (here) and everytime I see new videos of him working I am amazed again. He did many great pictures (and some of you might now that I’m hard to please with photo journalism / reportage style – but maybe he was just a documentary photographer?) though maybe even more his attitude, the way he works, the way his passion for photography dominated his life impresses (and shocks!) me most. He did what he had to do, and though it’s not easy to live a life like that it was probably the only way for him.

You find a transcription from both videos via this post at 2point8 blog.

Here are some quotes:

“I don’t lay myself down on the couch to figure out why I’m a photographer and not this or that. Whatever it is, I can’t seem to do enough of it. It’s a pleasure.”

“I think that there isn’t a photograph in the world that has any narrative ability. Any of ‘em. They do not tell stories – they show you what something looks like.”

“The nature of the photographic process – it is about failure. Most everything I do doesn’t quite make it. The failures can be intelligent.”

Related to the first Winogrand videos, see also this one of Joel Meyerowitz, with german comment only.

Photographer Alexx Henry shot this editorial for Outside Magazine with a super hight tec ? camera. Is this the future of magazines?

Via www.aphotoeditor.com

I made a video of some installation shots I took last week at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, where they showed a large retrospective of Richard Avedon.

No doubt, Richard Avedon is and was one of the greatest portrait photographers EVER. He took countless strong and outstanding photographs, was a master of technique and printing and published some awesome photo books.

Nevertheless, I was kind of disappionted by the Berlin exhibition that closed yesterday. First of all, there was not enough space for all the pictures, what you can see in one of the last pictures of the video. The room that showed Avedons “In the American West” series was so full, that in my opinion the photographs lost a lot of their power. And second, these beautiful prints were mounted on massive aluminum pieces which just doesn’t look good – framed they would look so much more precious, wouldn’t they?

I again would like to recommend one of my favourite blogs, www.aphotoeditor.com .

Rob wrote about the (not so new) idea of making a video of your portfolio. Like this, you can show the actual portfolio book to many people and I think for us young photographers/students it’s a great way to learn how a well designed and book can look like.

Via aphotoeditor.com, here

Now New York based photographer Platon won the 2008 World Press Award, category best Portrait. He and all the other winners talk about their projects and photos, you can see all interviews here .

I especially love what Platon tells us about the shoot with Russian president Vladimir Putin – just crazy.

Here another interview:

And last but not least some more videos from his own website here .

http://www.platonphoto.com/

Last semester I took a photography course that was about sports, olympia, body culture etc. , and I had to give a presentation on the olympic films. As you might know, each olympiad has one official film, though the most famous ones are those of Leni Riefenstahl 1936 and Kon Ichikawa 1964.

Kon Ichikawa’s “Tokyo Olympiad” shows the 1964 olympic games in a sometimes very poetic way, with some really beautiful camera. Someone put the whole film on youtube (divided into 20 parts or so, see it here), and for those of you who are interested in movies it’s worth watching them.

Here are 2 examples, but check out the other ones too, there are sooo many good scenes.

Thorsten told me about a video where advertising (mostly cars) photographer Dietmar Henneka talks about his job and the relation to the ADs and his clients.
Though this lecture was already held in 1999, it’s still interesting too see and gives an intense insight into the “disaster of being an advertising photographer” in Germany

Long video, but worth watching every single minute (i love the part where he shows to the client how telelens and wideangles lenses work…)
Of course there is a lot of polemic in his lecture, and for sure he exaggerates, but somebody like him who has been in the business for decades should somehow know, shouldn’t he?

Unfortunately, the video is in german only.
See it here .