Are High Dynamic Range photos appropriate for illustrating news? That’s the debate that’s been started by the Washington Post’s use of an HDR image on its front page in January. Sean Elliot, president of the National Press Photographers Association came down firmly against it, saying, ‘HDR is not appropriate for documentary photojournalism.’ John Omvik, Marketing VP with HDR software maker Unified Color understandably disagrees. He’s written us a response arguing that what we see is closer to HDR than, say, a mono photo shot with Tri-X film.

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HDR used properly is appropriate for photojournalism, says Unified Color’s Omvik

> It’s Friday, and that means it’s time to set C-4 charges on your week, hit the detonate button and watch the whole thing go kablooie. To set the mood, we’ve provided a few awesome demolition videos. We recommend providing your own soundtrack, maybe some Sabbath or Mastodon . Fight the urge to look in the rearview at the Monday-through-Friday rubble as you drive off into the sunset of the weekend. Enjoy. Above: St. Paul Smokestack Implosion Filmmaker Chris White shot this excellent video of a huge smoke stack coming down in a controlled demolition. The 550-foot high smoke stack weighing a bit over 11 million pounds was built 36 years ago and had to be cleared out for a new power plant. Video: Chris White > View all

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Demolition Videos Are Well-Engineered Catharsis

Hasselblad has launched Hasselblad tv – a new multi-language online video platform for professional and aspirational photographers. Read more and comment

Lensbaby has launched a new set of macro photography accessories for its lens bodies and optics. Read more and comment

At the CP+ trade show, Kenko Tokina will be showing a mock-up of its newest full-frame lens, the Tokina SD 70-200mm f/4 (IF) FX. Read more and comment

Kenko Tokina has announced yet another mirror lens for Micro Four Thirds. Read more and comment

From 17th February until 31st March, Daniel Blau’s London gallery will host an exhibition entitled, “Photographer’s Own – Paper Negatives from the 1850s”. Read more and comment

Mod, a manufacturer of stylish camera straps and accessories, has announced several new product lines for compact and SLR cameras. Read more and comment

The Light of Venice by photographer Jean-Michel Berts is the fifth volume in Assouline’s popular The Light.. series. Read more and comment

Hama has introduced two newly designed metal camera cases for digital compact cameras. Read more and comment

Fujifilm USA has announced the recommended retail price of the new Fujifilm X-Pro1 compact system camera and three Fujinon XF lenses. Read more and comment

The winners of the January 2012 Photography Blog Competition have been announced. Read more and comment

The new Tokina AT-X 17-35mm f/4 Pro FX full-frame wide zoom is now on sale in the United Kingdom. Read more and comment

The Casio Exilim EX-ZR20 is a 16.1-megapixel compact camera with a 25-200mm equivalent lens, Rapid Shutter technology and 0.13-second high-speed auto focus. Read more and comment

Win a Buffalo LinkStation Pro Quad worth £450! Read more and comment

Hands-on gallery of photos of the new Pentax K-01 compact system camera. Read more and comment

Pentax have unveiled their K-Mount lens roadmap for 2012 and 2013. Read more and comment

The Ricoh Lens A16 24-85mm f3.5-5.5 is a new lens/sensor module for the Ricoh GXR system, featuring a 15.7-55.5mm (24-85mm equivalent) lens and a sixteen-megapixel APS-C sized CMOS sensor. Read more and comment

Ahead of our full review, here are 85 sample JPEG photos and a full HD 1080p movie taken with the new Fujifilm X-S1 super-zoom compact camera. The Fujifilm X-S1 is a premium bridge camera with a 12 megapixel EXR CMOS sensor and a 26x, 24-624mm equivalent zoom lens. Read the preview

Hands-on gallery of photos of the new Nikon P510 and P310 compact cameras. Read more and comment

Hands-on gallery of photos of the new Nikon L810 and L310 super-zoom compact cameras. Read more and comment

Hands-on gallery of photos of the new Nikon S9300, S6300, S4300 and S3300 compact cameras. Read more and comment

Hands-on gallery of photos of the new Nikon S2600, S30, L26 and L25 compact cameras. Read more and comment

> > View all That impulsive duck-face kissy photo you took of yourself and your friend at the Apple store to test out the new iPad’s camera may be destined for an art gallery wall. That is if you happened to snap it at any of the Apple stores visited by Irby Pace . “On a daily basis people are leaving their portraits behind on iPhones, iPads and iPods,” says Pace who in late 2010 retrieved over 1,000 images from Apple products in stores across Texas and New York City. “Customers disregard discretion and abandon these photographs.” Pace, who is coming to the end of his photo MFA at the University of North Texas in Denton, began lifting the images by e-mailing and texting them to himself from Apple stores. “Later, I discovered a device to directly download massive groups of images straight to my own iPad,” he says. From the huge cache of images, he has edited down a series of portraits and enlarged them for gallery exhibition. The project is titled Unintended Consequences . Last year a similar art project by Kyle McDonald called People Staring At Computers used software that McDonald installed on Apple store computers to detect faces and capture an image every minute. Over 1,000 captures were automatically uploaded to McDonald’s computer and then posted to a (now shuttered) Tumblr account. But where McDonald’s stunt garnered him a home visit from the FBI and got his laptop and flash drives confiscated, the only question hanging over Pace seems to be whether the images he extracted are the legal property of Apple. Pace said Apple store staff were not particularly vigilant: “None of them seemed interested at all in what I was doing. One employee in New York questioned what I was doing but I told him that I was merely comparing the products.” The distinction between these two projects is provocative. Aside from the fact McDonald installed “spyware” on property he didn’t own, he also implicated members of the public without their stated permission. Without his subjects choosing to click the shutter, McDonald’s People Staring At Computers was ethically dubious; a great stunt but truly a violation of privacy. Pace argues that the people in his reclaimed images “represent themselves however they chose, and without scrutiny.” His is a project less about the images and more about what it means to redistribute them. To reuse the anonymous portraits is hardly seditious but no doubt  Unintended Consequences will make some people uncomfortable. “ Unintended Consequences explores changes in behavior for those people who have not considered how these images may be used,” says Pace. Pace feels justified in his actions and believes he broke no ethical rule. “The people [in the images] consciously left the images behind for anyone to see, or to take.” Inasmuch that Pace’s “subjects” posed and captured the image themselves, the individuals in  Unintended Consequences could be said to be willing participants. In the majority of cases, it seems they snapped their portrait in a performative manner and Pace has created an exhibition of them. The project gives these abandoned images more prominence than they probably deserve, but there is wit and illusion to  Unintended Consequences too. Just because these people go up on a gallery wall doesn’t make them significant in any way; Pace plays with the aggrandizing that can often go along with white cube galleries. It’s a clever project, but what might Pace’s subjects think? “It would be interesting to know what their reaction would be to see themselves in a gallery and represented this way,” says Pace. – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Unintended Consequences (Feb 5th–10th) will be on show at the Cora Stafford Gallery, 1120 W. Oak St, Denton, TX 76201. The reception is on Thursday, February 9th, between 5-7 pm. Photos courtesy of Irby Pace.

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Apple Store Photos Lifted, Now Subject of New Art Exhibit

Tiffen Dfx 3 simulates over 2,000 glass filters, specialized lenses, optical lab processes, film grain, exacting color correction, plus natural light and photographic effects. Available as a stand-alone program or a plugin, Tiffen Dfx 3 offers enhanced multi-processor acceleration for faster interaction and rendering of images, 10 brand new filters for optical effects, interface improvements, and more. Read our Tiffen Dfx 3 review to discover if it’s worth the $169.95 investment. Read the review

Nikon UK is launching a new Nikon 1 promotion offering cashback on Nikon 1 J1 and V1 kits from 2nd February – 2nd April. Read more and comment

The Samsung ST93 is a slim and stylish 16 megapixel compact camera with a wide-angle 5x zoom lens. Priced at £89.99, the affordable ST93 also offers 720p video and a range of creative filters. Read our expert Samsung ST93 review. Read the review

Kenko Tokina has announced the upcoming release of the new Kenko 400mm f8 mirror lens for Micro Four Thirds and Sony’s NEX system. Read more and comment

The Fujifilm X-S1 superzoom is now on sale in the UK. Read more and comment

Hands-on gallery of photos of the new Panasonic TZ30 and TZ25 compact cameras. Read more and comment

Hands-on gallery of photos of the new Panasonic FX80, FT20, FT4 and LS6 compact cameras. Read more and comment

The Panasonic Lumix TZ30 is a 14-megapixel compact camera with 20x optical zoom, “light-speed” auto focus and a high resolution, touch-sensitive rear display. Read more and comment

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ25 (ZS15 in America) is a 12.1-megapixel compact camera with 16x optical zoom, “Light Speed AF” and Full HD movie capture. Read more and comment

The Nikon Coolpix S4150 is a new point-and-shoot compact camera, featuring a 5x, 26-130mm lens and a 14 megapixel CCD sensor. The S4150 also offers a 3 inch touch-screen LCD, 720p HD movies and a range of special effects. Read our in-depth Nikon Coolpix S4150 review now. Read the review

Hole Park Gardens in Rolvenden, Kent, are among the best places to photograph bluebells in England. Read more and comment

Grenoble-based MicroOLED has announced the world’s highest pixel density OLED microdisplay, developed for use in digital cameras, camcorders, night-vision systems and other applications. Read more and comment

The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-TX200V is an 18.2-megapixel dust-and waterproof ultra-compact camera with extremely fast auto focus, 5x optical zoom, optical Steady Shot functionality and Full HD movie capture. Read more and comment

The Sony Cyber-shot WX70 and WX50 are two new 16.2-megapixel compact cameras with 5x optical zoom, optical image stabilisation and Full HD video. Read more and comment

Sigma’s founder and CEO, Michihiro Yamaki, has passed away. Read more and comment

Sony has announced three CMOS-based compact cameras – the

French manufacturer MicroOLED has announced a 5 million dot OLED suitable for use as an electronic viewfinder – far beyond the resolution of the current best units used in recent Sony cameras. The 5.2M effective dots mean it can display 1280×1024 pixel resolution in color, assuming a four-dots-per-pixel layout. Imaging Resource has written an

Software maker Daminion has announced Daminion Server, a network-friendly digital asset management program. The software allows multiple users to access a centrally-held archive of images, with version control and user access controls to ensure images are kept safe and only edited or accessed by authorized people. It also ensures multiple people don’t work on the same file simultaneously, avoiding data loss. It includes extensive control of metadata in a wide range of file types to help manage files within the archive. It is designed to integrate with standalone image and document editors such as Photoshop and InDesign, to allow users to continue to use their preferred editing tools.

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Daminion launches Daminion Server network-based digital asset manager

Tokina has announced an updated version of its highly-regarded 11-16mm F2.8 wideangle zoom for APS-C SLRs. The AT-X 116 PRO DX II adds a ‘Silent Drive-Module’ (SD-M) focus motor that enables it to autofocus on all Nikon SLRs. The latest version also includes improved surface coatings (which are particularly important for wide-angle lenses) and adds a ‘GMR’ sensor to locate the focus element’s current position, to speed up autofocus – a technology first introduced on the AT-X

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Michihiro Yamaki, Sigma founder and CEO dies

> Crowds erupted in jubilation at the news of Mr. Mubarak’s resignation in Cairo, Egypt on Feb. 11, 2011. Photo: Ed Ou/The New York Times > View all If you’ve been following the Arab Spring, you’ve seen Ed Ou’s work. At age 25, he has made some of the most impactful photos of the revolutions in Egypt and throughout the Middle East. His photography has helped translate the ongoing uprisings for a Western audience and he continues his work on the ground there even now. This month Ou is back in the news. A series of his photos of Egyptian youth have been released this week in conjunction with the one-year anniversary of the protests in Tahrir Square that unseated President Hosni Mubarak. The photos give us some of the most intimate looks at life in Egypt and take us beyond the photos of yelling protestors and clouds of tear gas. “When you have a foreign media, everyone tends to shoot the same thing, everyone has the same photo in their minds or shoots whatever is right in front of them,” Ou says. “But what people forget is that while there is ‘news’ happening, there is also 99 percent of the scene you don’t see.” Ou’s photos provide access to an Egypt that other photographers were unable to see. He followed young Egyptians as they played a crucial role in last year’s revolution and who continue to be central voices in the ongoing process of change. The photos tell a larger story about what happens after the gaze of the mass media turns away. Ou shows the quieter moments that allow individuals to stand out from the visual repetition of anonymous protesters. In many ways, this path was a risk for Ou. He was working for daily news outlets and feared he would miss “the shot” if he looked away or followed another lead. Asking for access and drawing attention to a community that feared being targeted by the Mubarak regime was also perilous. While the group he followed was initially hesitant, Ou said they opened up almost immediately. They related to his youth and saw him as someone who was also trying to navigate the chaos that was Egypt. “I had my own close calls with the police, and it was such an intense experience that we all had something in common,” says Ou. “We became friends immediately and we’re friends now.” Ou, who was born in Taiwan but grew up in Canada, said he was drawn to the story not only because of the young people’s role in the revolution but also because of their intense conviction. Something he knows a bit about, having left a USC International Studies program in Jordan to take photos of the war in Lebanon in 2006. “I was absolutely humbled by just how much they put on the line, how much everyone in Egypt has put on the line,” he says. “It gave me the resolve, it assured me that this was the story I needed to tell.” While many Egyptians just want things to calm down, some of the people he followed are unsatisfied with the outcome of the revolution and are pushing for more change. “Only a year out do we realize how wrong we were. [The revolution] was not the end of problems in Egypt,” says Ou. “That’s why I wanted to stay with the story after the media had left, long after attention had shifted elsewhere.” “The same issues are still there,” he said. “Freedom of speech is kind of there, but not really. NGOs are still being rounded up, etc.” Ou says he’d like to eventually expand the project to look at youth throughout the Middle East. Young people, he says, have been key players in all the ongoing revolutions, and he wants to try and tell their stories as well. “What’s happening in Egypt sets a precedent for what may or may not happen in Libya or Syria or wherever,” he says. “But it is so important to keep attention on Egypt to show that it is not a happy ending.”

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An Intimate Look at Egypt’s Youth in Ongoing Revolution

Kata has launched a photographic contest calling for entrants to submit shots of their Kata camera bag “in action”. Read more and comment

Map-A-Pic for Android has been updated to include a new feature called Public Pictures. Read more and comment

Topaz Labs have released Topaz Star Effects, a Photoshop plug-in that manipulates and enhances light sources to create radiant lighting and star effects. Read more and comment

Celebrity photographer Nick Saglimbeni has announced the return of his PhotoKamp workshop to Los Angeles. Read more and comment

Digital Anarchy has recently released version 5.1 of its Primatte Event plug-in for Apple Aperture 3.0 and higher. Read more and comment

Fujifilm has posted the English-language manual of the X-Pro1 compact system camera on its website. Read more and comment

PetaPixel has published an excellent response from a photographer to a Seattle-area bride criticizing the pricing of wedding photographers. In a remarkably calm response, Nikki Wagner details the expenses connected to her wedding photography business, dismissing the idea that wedding photographers set their prices high simply because they can. After reading Wagner’s response it’s understandable why the bride is having so much trouble finding an ‘exceptional, amazingly talented, fun photographer’ that she also deems ‘decently priced.’ (From PetaPixel)

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Wedding photographer explains the reasons behind ‘unrealistic’ prices

A mysterious new Canon DSLR has been spotted in the wilds of Africa. Read more and comment

The Kodak Easyshare M5370 is a new entry-level compact camera with some advanced features, including a 3 inch LCD touchscreen interface, wide-angle 5x zoom lens, 16 megapixel sensor, and 720p HD video. Retailing for £109.99 / $159.95, read our expert Kodak Easyshare M5370 review to find out if it’s worth the modest investment. Read the review

The new X-Circle kit by LockCircle allows Nikon F-mount manual-focus lenses to be used for cine-style work on any Canon HDSLR camera. Read more and comment

Astrodesign, a high-end Japanese video manufacturer has signed-up to the Micro Four Thirds system. It offers a 4K camera system (including separate camera head, processor and control unit) that captures 3840

The Fujifilm X-Pro1 will officially be released in Japan on February 18th, priced at around ¥135,000. Read more and comment

Sony has developed a new next-generation back-illuminated CMOS image sensor with higher image quality, faster speeds, lower power consumption and better functionality. Read more and comment

Tamron and Tokina have joined the Micro Four Thirds group, meaning all three major third-party lens makers are likely to produce optics for the system. No further details of their intentions have been given. The announcement comes just after Sigma announced its first lenses for both Sony’s E-mount and Micro Four Thirds – both lenses that we think make more sense on APS-C than the Micro Four Thirds format. It will be interesting to see whether Tamron and Kenko Tokina develop lenses specifically for the smaller format. Meanwhile high-end video manufacturer Astrodesign has also joined the consortium, and released a Micro Four Thirds mount 4K video camera head.

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Tamron and Tokina join Micro Four Thirds

> An abandoned lumber mill in Martinsville, Virginia, rests in overgrown brush. Many residents depended on mill and factory jobs to provide for themselves and their families. Photo: Jared Soares > View all Jared Soares has traveled to Bolivia and Paris to find compelling photo projects, but for his latest he only needed to walk out his front door in Virginia. Soares’ new documentary photos focus on the small town of Martinsville — near Roanoke, where he lives. The factory city has a population of approximately 14,000 people, and in recent years it has suffered from outsourcing and the economic downturn. “For 75 years the textile and furniture industries in Martinsville employed thousands of people who produced American-made clothes, linens and furniture with familiar names like Bassett, Stanley and Fieldcrest,” says Soares. Now many of those jobs have been shipped overseas and the town is plagued with unemployment. A quarter of the population lives below the poverty line and the children growing up there have no concept of the town’s previous prosperity. “Martinsville is a shell of what it used to be,” says Soares. Soares, a seasoned documentary photographer who has worked with big news outlets such as the New York Times and the Washington Post , has been documenting the plight of Martinsville since October 2010. The year before that he had traveled to Bolivia to cover the re-election of Evo Morales, then spent time documenting a Roma community outside of Paris. His storytelling style involves developing a rapport with the people he photographs through shared common interests and listening. So when he started learning more about the dire straits of Martinsville, he hit the streets to meet the people in his community. “I went skateboarding at the park, drank coffee in Uptown and attended a few community meetings,” says Soares. “I wasn’t aware of it at first but I was connecting with people who were like me … I would just spend time hanging out — a lot of time hanging out.” Through the connections he made with people within the community, he was able to make images that captured an intimate portrait of this small town. Soares hopes his on-going project will raise awareness for the economic issues that face the region, and is striving to get the work in front of policy makers both locally and nationally. “If Martinsville’s economic condition is an indicator of what America will look like in the near future, then it must be documented and it must be seen.” To see more of Soares’ work, visit jaredsoares.com .

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Small Town Shows Scars of Economic Struggle

Pentax has announced the Optio VS20, possibly the first compact camera with a second shutter button and zoom lever for portrait-orientation shooting. Beyond that it’s a pretty well-specified 20x compact superzoom, featuring a 28-560mm equivalent zoom lens with sensor-shift image stabilization for its 16MP CCD. It’s not the smallest 20x zoom camera we’ve seen but it manages to include a anti-glare-coated 460k dot 3.0″ LCD and costs $249/

In an age where the Apple iPhone is the most popular camera on Flickr, have smartphones finally caught up with traditional compact cameras? Here’s our review of the new Nokia Lumia 800 from a photographer’s point of view. Read the review

DxO Labs have released DxO Optics Pro v7.2 for Mac and Windows. Read more and comment

DxO Labs has added the Canon S100 and Panasonics’ GF3, G2 and G1 to the list of cameras supported by its DxO Optics Pro software. The cameras are added to both the Standard and Elite versions of the Optics Pro v7.2, that the company says are more stable than before. Version 7.2 also gains the ability to import Optics Pro v6 databases containing the image processing settings for existing images.

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DxO Optics Pro v7.2 extends Panasonic G-series support and adds Canon S100

Dallas-based Tripad LLC has recently launched two new products, the Tripad and Tripad Traveller. Read more and comment

The second London Photo Festival will be held from 16th – 19th May in The Crypt, Borough High St, London SE1 1JA. Read more and comment

One of the UK’s leading landscape and travel photographers, David Noton, looks back at the photographs that got away… Read the article

Zwijndrecht-based Galarina has released GeoLogTag 4.0, a major update to their geotagging app for iOS devices. Read more and comment

FlarePresets.com is a new website offering a range of presets designed for users of the popular Mac app Flare . Read more and comment

The Velbon V4 Boom Arm is a new mechanism combining a geared/slide elevator with a 180 degree tilt arm and a 360 degree horizontal pan. Read more and comment

Amateur Photographer magazine has published an interesting story about a copyright infringement case of similar, but not directly copied, images. The issue of copyright is thorny, contentious and often misunderstood but this case sheds some light on the current attitude of courts in the UK. Despite significant differences between the two images (there was no implication that the second image was a duplicate of the first), the court found that the second image copied substantially from the ‘creative expression’ of the first (that is the elements that can be protected by copyright in the original image, including a consideration of the composition, lighting and processing of the image).

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Similar, but not copied, image found to breach copyright

Steve Jobs met Lytro founder Ren Ng to discuss the photographic aspects of Apple products, according to a new book about the company. Details are understandably sparse but, according to Adam Lashinsky’s book ‘Inside Apple,’ Jobs asked Ng to prepare a list of three things he’d like Lytro to do with Apple. If nothing else, the story is interesting as it suggests Jobs was as excited by the Lytro and its effect on photography as the rest of the tech community has been. It also suggests Apple’s approach to mobile photography might overlap with Lytro’s aim of creating something fun, shareable and engaging, rather than attempting to replace conventional photography. Such an approach would certainly be in keeping with Apple’s ‘disruptive’ approach to technology. (from 9-to-5Mac) [Updated with response from Lytro]

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Lytro meeting suggests Apple looking beyond conventional photography

In the second of our 3-part series on Winter Photography, we spoke to Light & Land tour leader David Ward about his experiences of shooting ‘Winter in Glencoe’. Read the article

Arthur Tress: San Francisco 1964 is a monograph by James A. Ganz, which presents for the first time a collection of newly discovered pictures Tress took in 1964 as a young man. Read more and comment

Writer and videographer Wiley Davis has launched a Kickstarter project to raise funds for the commercialisation of his invention, the 50-dollar follow focus. Read more and comment

The Vienna International Photographic Awards (VIPA) are now open for entries. Read more and comment

Kyodo News International is reporting that the new Olympus OM-D compact system camera – which has not yet been officially announced – “will be offered in the United States, Europe and some Asian countries as the top model of the company’s digital mirrorless interchangeable lens camera series”. Read more and comment

Kyodo News International, a Japanese news service, is reporting that Olympus will introduce a 16MP camera based on its classic OM series. The news would tie-in with a recent Olympus press advert in the UK that highlighted the letters ‘O’ and ‘M’ in the text. The report suggests such a camera would sell for over

The Olympus SP-810UZ is a brand new bridge-style compact camera that boasts a 36x zoom lens with an incredible focal range of 24-864mm. The 14 megapixel Olympus SP-810UZ also offers a 3 inch, 16:9 ratio LCD screen, 720p movie recording and 3D shooting mode. Matt Grayson goes zoom-crazy in our in-depth Olympus SP-810UZ review. Read the review

Taylor Glascock. Photo: Ryan Henriksen The witty and bitingly honest blog Shit Photojournalists Like just celebrated one year of snark and insight into the photojournalist community. The blog is the brainchild of Taylor Glascock , 23, who for the past 12 months has been finding a way to force photojournalists to confront much of the eccentric, egotistical and straight-up weird shit we do. The blog averages around 8,000 readers a month, but even early on it was an unanticipated success. “Within a week it just kind of exploded,” Glascock says. “I thought it just would be something the Mizzou community would read. I didn’t know it would go international.” Topics covered by the blog range from our fanatic gear loyalty (Nikon or Canon?!), to the trend of writing our bios in the third person (Jakob Schiller is a New Mexico-based photographer) to our obsession with vignettes (“What’s the best solution to a shitty photo? Vignette that bitch.”) Glascock, who is currently a photo intern at the Peoria Journal Star (her third internship so far), said the idea for the blog originally came from observing other students at the University of Missouri, where she studied photojournalism. She and two classmates, Clint Alwahab and Eve Edelheit , wrote and edited the first couple of posts and it’s been running like wildfire ever since. Clint Alwahab, Eve Edelheit and Taylor Glascock. Photo: Andrew Spear Glascock is the first to confess that she often buys into the trends and techniques the blog so cleverly mocks. “It all comes down to having a sense of humor,” she says. “It’s realizing that shit, I also do these things and that’s why it’s funny. I’m not going to stop collecting toy cameras because we made fun of it.” She also knows it’s fairly early in her career to be throwing punches. But her relative inexperience is what keeps her fresh, she says. She’s not bogged down by too many years in the industry. She refuses to admit that “photojournalism is dead” and is therefore willing to take on those whose egos and cockiness have gotten in the way of an industry trying to recover from a severe economic and structural hit. “I feel like a lot people are kind of burnt out so I hope the blog will be a little spark,” she says. “Yeah, things suck. But why not just laugh at it and keep going?” She said the blog gets plenty of hate mail. But it’s normally from people who misunderstand the humor. “If you are offended, maybe you’re taking things a little too personally. But I’m sure there are some people who think, ‘Wow, that girl is an asshole.’” The real fans are those who get the humor. When SPJL made fun of “shooting from the hip,” a technique made popular by Chicago Tribune staffer Scott Strazzante, Strazzante wrote Glascock to say he loved the post. She said LUCEO also enjoyed the post that made fun of collectives. “We don’t normally pinpoint certain people,” says Glascock. “But if we do, they’re people we think can roll with it.” While she’s been slightly distracted lately, trying to keep her own head above water in the photojournalism industry, Glascock said she hopes the blog continues to grow and evolve. There are no specific plans other than continuing to sock it to those who deserve it. “I’m only making fun of photojournalists because I love photojournalism so much,” she said. “Photojournalists are all pretty similar, we all do the same stupid shit, and we should embrace that. Let’s point out all of our flaws to bring us together.”

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Shit Photojournalists Like Gains Steam in First Year

The Trafalgar Sun is a new public art installation in central London. Read more and comment

Website developer Idan Shechter has announced an update to CameraSize.com. Read more and comment

The CEO of Eye-Fi, a long-time member of the SD Association, has posted a blog entry in which he criticises the Association for issuing a press release on the adoption of a draft Wireless LAN specification as a new standard. Read more and comment

Lodz-based Lucky Clan has released Top Camera 3.5 for iOS, which adds a number of new features. Read more and comment

As well as starring roles in films such as ‘The King and I’, and ‘The Ten Commandments’, Yul Brynner was an accomplished photographer whose subjects were some of the most acclaimed actors of the 20th century. ‘A Photographic Journey’, in London’s The Little Black Gallery showcases some of his most famous images, and Matt Golowczynski went along to take a look.

Just Posted: Our review of the Nikon 1 V1 and the simpler J1. Nikon’s first foray into the mirrorless market has produced two point-and-shoot targeted small-sensor cameras, the V1 and the J1. The more expensive V1 offers an electronic viewfinder and higher-resolution screen, while the smaller J1 features built-in flash and significantly lower price tag. Nikon’s decision to use a small, 10MP sensor (with the speed benefits that can bring) caused vigorous debate when the cameras were first announced but this hasn’t stopped the company’s vast marketing effort persuding a lot of people to buy them. So, after painstaking investigation, we ask: ‘are the Nikon 1 cameras any good?’

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Just Posted: Nikon 1 V1 and J1 review

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Adobe: upgrades available for individual CS3 and CS4 packages

The legality of the SD Association’s Wireless LAN standard for SD cards is being challenged by wireless SD maker Eye-Fi. The company says the standard, announced at CES, uses elements of its intellectual property that it hasn’t agreed to license. ‘Essential Eye-Fi patented technology would be violated by anyone implementing this draft specification.’ Eye-Fi says the SD Association’s own process for approving the standard has not been completed and the draft standard should not have been announced.

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Eye-Fi contests SD Association’s Wireless LAN standard

Rocky Nook has re-published Torsten Andreas Hoffmann’s book, The Art of Black and White Photography . Read more and comment

SF Photo School has announced an “informal and exciting” webinar on the new Nikon D4 digital SLR. Read more and comment

Tickets to this season’s FA Cup Final at Wembley Stadium will be up for grabs for those who upload a photo of themselves supporting their club to the Football Association’s website. Read more and comment

HannsG is launching a new series of affordable LED monitors. Read more and comment

Paul Thomas from Danescour has scooped up the Autosport International Amateur Photographer 2012 award. Read more and comment

Smile2Shoot is an iPhone app that offers face and smile detection technologies. Read more and comment

> Jeff Widener holds his photo of Tank Man in Tienanmen Square from 1989. Photo: Tim Mantoani > View all The Tank Man of Tienanmen Square. Muhammad Ali standing over Sonny Liston in victory. The portrait of the Afghan Girl on the cover of National Geographic . Many of us can automatically recall these photos in our heads, but far fewer can name the photographers who took them. Even fewer know what those photographers look like. Tim Mantoani hopes to change that by taking portraits of famous photographers holding their most iconic or favorite photos in his new book Behind Photographs: Archiving Photographic Legends. Mantoani has shot over 150 of these portraits in the last five years, most of which are contained in the book. “I felt like there was kind of this void,” says Mantoani. “There were all these anonymous photographers out there who have not been given enough credit.” At a time when everyone has a camera in their pocket and millions, if not billions of photos are flying around the internet each day, Mantoani wants to help people understand that iconic photos don’t just happen. They are the product of people who devote their entire lives to photography. Giving these people a face, he says, helps do that. “It was important to step back and understand that cameras didn’t make these photos, photographers made these photos,” he says. “Without these people and their understanding of photography, these moments would not be there for us to understand and appreciate over the course of time.” Mantoani, a San Diego-based commercial and editorial photographer who is well known for his portrait work, decided to challenge his own craftsmanship by shooting the portraits on the enormous 20

Professional photographer Carsten Krieger introduces the practice of landscape photography, looking at the various equipment choices and composition options that any budding landscape shooter should be familiar with when embarking in this popular genre. He also explains the importance of pre-trip research and planning to put you in the right place at the right time.

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Article: Landscape Photography Primer

Screenshot: Google Maps. Google Street View is now Google Store View. A recently released feature of the well-known mapping app lets you go inside participating businesses remotely and take a look around. B&H’s giant photo and video store in Manhattan, above, is one of the first to invite Google into their establishments. When you look up B&H on Google Maps ( B&H Photo Video Super Store, 9th Avenue, New York, NY ), you can click through a virtual tour of the space, zooming in and shuffling around the same way you would on any street view map. While the store is mostly empty, you can still see a couple of straggling customers who wandered in as opening hours approached. “We thought it would be cool for people who can’t come to New York to be able to take a virtual tour,” says Bryan Formhals, B&H’s social media manager. “We wanted to create a bridge between what we do online and what we do in New York.” Screenshot: Google Maps. B&H officials had heard Google was considering the project, so B&H contacted them and offered to open their doors. The Google folks stopped by at 7 a.m. — two hours before opening — and scanned in the first floor of the superstore, using GPS devices to ensure the location services were accurate. According to Formhals, Google told them they didn’t have the technology in place to offer street view on upper floors, but they scanned the second floor of B&H anyway. Hopefully that means the little orange man in Google Maps will soon be able to climb stairs, too.

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Camera Store Gets Virtual Tour From Google Street View

Olympus has issued updated firmware for its latest PEN models to better cope with the recently launched Micro Four Thirds power zoom lenses. Firmware v1.2 is supposed to result in a more accurate display of focal length on the camera display, in EXIF data and in playback. Firmware can be downloaded either via the Olympus camera software or by using the ‘Digital Camera Updater’ utility downloaded from the company’s website.

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Olympus updates PEN E-P3, E-PL3 and E-PM1 firmware for power zooms

As film giant Kodak files for bankruptcy protection, everyone from photographers to economists is looking back at the company that was, for so long, synonymous with American photography. The company has entered the US ‘Chapter 11′ process by which a court oversees its restructuring and protects it from its creditors as it attempts to reorganize into a profitable business. However it emerges from the process, Kodak will never again be the photographic titan it was during the film era. This has prompted many retrospective articles, including a heartfelt and personal piece by New York Times writer and photography blogger David Gonzalez.

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Kodak files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection

Ilford has announced that it is rebranding its popular ILFORD GALERIE range as ILFORD GALERIE Prestige (5*). Read more and comment