Picture Stories by Stephen Alvarez

Chesapeake by Cameron Davidson

Just in time for your pre black Friday shopping here is a guest post by Cameron Davidson about his new book Chesapeake . I have long admired Davidson's photographs. He is one of the world's greatest aerial photographers (go to his site and be staggered by his talent). 

-Stephen Alvarez

Chesapeake, the book project has been a 20 plus year labor of love. Its foundation came about from a story I shot for National Geographic on the Great Blue Herons of Black Swamp Creek on Maryland's Patuxent River.  After a introductory flight over the rookery in an ancient and quite reliable Piper Cub, I fell in love with aerials.  I abandoned my dream of being a bird photographer for the Geographic and embraced the goal of a career centered on travel and shooting aerials.

Robbie Shone's new gallery from Borneo

It looks like Robbie Shone took some time out from caving so photograph creatures in Borneo's Rain Forest (here).

Joel Sartore Rare:Portraits of America's Endangered Species

Joel Sartore has a new book. Rare: Portraits of America's Endangered Species The book is just what it says, wonderful portraits of some of America's rarest animals. Below is what Joel has to say about the Whooping Crane.

 

Once overhunted, these magnificent national treasures are now carefully monitored to prevent their total annihilation.  Captive breeding and migration training have saved the whooping crane, but power lines along migration routes, an industrial shipping canal in their wintering marsh, and reduced genetic diversity still trouble the species.

The story behind the photo:

Tornado, Sewanee Tennessee -using the camera you have-

We had a tornado last night. Even though it passed right in front of my office I missed it. My friend Ben Beavers, however, was standing on the front porch of his restaurant and made a series of photos as it passed. 

Luckily no one was injured, though there is extensive property damage in Midway. Ben made the pictures with his s90, the same one that I reviewed a couple of month ago (here). I am glad that photographically Ben took my advice to heart. The camera in his pocket worked a lot better than my cameras locked inside my office.

-Stephen Alvarez
 
 

Guest post by Glenn Campbell Band aids in Bangkok! from the f8 Workshop

I thought it would be interesting to get a student's perspective on the f8 Workshop led by Mike Yamashita, Ira Block and David Alan Harvey. Thanks to Glenn Campbell for weighing in.

-Stephen Alvarez

Band aids in Bangkok!

by GLENN CAMPBELL - 

Bangkok day 3 © Glenn Campbell 

The opening riff, 3 national Geographic photographers, over 30 years experience each...thats around 100 years of pointing cameras at some of the most extreme, beautiful and confounding places on earth, only 3 other photographers have as much experience, 2 are semi retired and the other spends his time underwater.

Rob Shone Guest Post: Deep Impact

Recently I ventured underground following a group of students from Oxford University Caving Club (OUCC) to an area of The Picos mountain range in northern Spain called Ario, north of Los Lagos.

daybreak

Here is a photo I took of a friend who was visiting for the 4th. It was a rainy Sunday morning, the sun just beginning to rise, and the light started spilling through the windows into the room. I silently pulled out my camera and snapped this photo while my friend, along with the rest of the world, soundly slept.

Lexi Namer

Guest Post from Glen Campbell putting up a new web site

A post from my friend Glenn Campbell in Darwin, Australia about selecting photos for his new web site. It really is a great one.

-SA

In putting together a portfolio for the first time in a long while, I have found myself  paying far too much attention to my own pictures of late, so much so that I am frankly, heartily sick and tired of the sight of them and every frame screams at me “You’re kidding aren’t you? Are you really going to put that old junk up? YOU HACK!”

REVISITING CHAOS by April Alvarez

Chaos

Photographs by Josef Koudelka/Magnum Photos

Notes by Robert Delpire

Phaidon Press Limited, London, 1999

"Those who are alive receive a mandate from those who are silent forever. They can fulfill their duties only by trying to reconstruct precisely things as they were and by wrestling the past from fictions and legends."   

- Czeslaw Milosz, from Nobel Lecture, 1980

[Note:  Struck by the coup de foudre of Prague68, the book I intended to analyze, Stephen asks me, “Why don’t you write about Chaos?” So that is how the large, flat, and impeccably edited and ordered Chaos with begins to take residence in my head. AA]

 

"Your Work, Your Rights" Seminar by Maureen Dilg

Thanks to Maureen Dilg for writing up rights seminar write up

-SA 

I recently attended a short seminar on creator's rights presented by John D. Mason, ESQ a principal with the The Intellectual Property Group, PLLC based out of Baltimore and DC (he gave me permission to include his email: artlaws2@aol.com).  John gave one of the most easy-to-digest presentations on this topic that I have heard.  He really knows the business, and was able to explain it in a way that the artists in the room could easily grasp.  In short, he gets mad props for breaking it down, as does the Art Director's Club of Washington DC for hosting this free event.