O.K., here's possibly the best photo gallery I've ever recommended checking out. Seriously.
TheDailyBeast.com has run an article about British photographer Mike Stimpson, who recreates famous photographs using Legos. He's modeled his work on that of classic photographers Alfred Eisenstadt, W. Eugene Smith, Robert Capa, Eddie Adams and more. And he really nails his concept — his work is brilliant.
I shot the Pilot Pen tennis tournament in New Haven, Conn., today. I covered only four matches, but was glad to work out some rust with the US Open just around the corner.
Today's shoot gave me a chance to test my in-tournament work flow with Adobe Lightroom and the gallery software for my upcoming new website, ProTennisPhotos.net. The goal is to be able to get a day's shoot edited and to upload selects to the online catalog by the end of the same evening.
It was also good to see a few photographers I know, including Bob Child, a recently retired Associated Press staffer who was a professional friend of my uncle Bob Dixon in the 1970s; Ron Waite, whose book Perfect Tennis is apparently selling great; and Michael Baz, the first full-time freelance tennis photographer I ever met, at my second tournament assignment ever, at Pinehurst, N.C., in 1996.
I'm a little dehydrated, but all told, today was a good day.
I'm a little late on this topic; to be honest, I forgot to post this a few weeks ago. But I still feel it's interesting, so I'll still post it anyway.
The website MyNorthwest.com published a gallery of photos from the total solar eclipse of July 22. The collection has a nice variety, including images of cityscapes, public gatherings and the eclipse itself.
(My favorite, FYI, is the photograph of the man swimming in the Golden Temple pond with the eclipse in the background. Great image.)
I stopped by the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens, N.Y., today to start getting ready to shoot the 2009 US Open tennis tournament. And a weird thing happened: I actually got excited about being there.
I've shot the tournament every year since 1996, so you'd think I'd be getting used to it, hardened to it. However, the US Open is still one of my favorite assignments of the year. I got into tennis photography because I thought I'd like it, I stayed with it because I loved to do it, and I'm a little thrilled that I'm still poised to enjoy my work while there.
The main draw doesn't start until next Monday, but I'm ready to go....
FOX News recently posted a photo essay of sonic booms.
How can a photo capture a noise? When an object breaks the sound barrier, a cloud of water vapor briefly forms. Or, as FOX puts it, "The visual effect is created by moisture trapped between crests in a sound wave." A precisely-timed shutter release can freeze that cloud on film (or, er, digital sensor).
The essay includes photos of planes, rockets and nuclear bombs at their sound-breaking moments — all visually fascinating.
Courtesy of the Urlesque blog comes a great photograph.
The site has a running collection of images wherein someone (usually drunk) ruins a photo by stepping into the background, or making faces, or so on. But this "photobomber" (as they call it) is one of a different species — literally.
As the story goes, a couple on vacation in Canada found a nice mountain-lake scene and wanted to get a picture of themselves sitting by the water. With no one else around to trip the shutter, they instead relied on a remote trigger.
But as the camera's autofocus motor whirred and the shutter clicked a couple times, a curious squirrel approached to take a look.
This fits into the super-cool-gadget category: I recently discovered the existence of a diving mask equipped with a built-in camera, allowing for hands-free underwater photography.
The product is made by a company called Liquid Image (great name). It comes in four models: low-res photo, high-res photo, low-res video and HD video. The company also makes attachment lights and filters to correct for underwater color aberrations.
At an image size that maxes out at 5 megapixels, these cameras are not likely a good fit for professional or high-quality photography. But they're a way-cool idea that I'd love to test out some day.
Just a quick note to announce that several of my photos have been published in the July and September issues of USTA Magazine, a supplement to Tennis magazine.
One set of photos was published along with an article I wrote, "A Quick Way In," which examines the success of the USTA's QuickStart tennis program through the lens of a single event in Fairfield, Conn.
The second set of photos is comprised of images of recreational tennis activities taking place at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York City. While not hosting the annual US Open tennis tournament, the center is run by the USTA as a public tennis facility.
The annual Perseid meteor shower is at its peak as of early this morning, offering nighttime photographers a near-certain opportunity to photograph shooting stars. In fact, the only potential obstacle to seeing the show is a curtain of cloudy weather.
The meteor shower — which lights the skies with up to 25 visible shooting stars an hour — is created every August when Earth moves through a cloud of debris left by Comet Swift-Tuttle.
CNN.com has run a video feature about a photographer trying to save a small island nation.
Shuichi Endo has embarked on an ambitious project to produce 10,000 photographs of Tavalu, a country of nine islands in the South Pacific Ocean. Through this endeavor, he hopes to raises global awareness of Tavalu's tribulation: It's sinking into rising sea levels. Increased flooding is already damaging homes and ruining crops, and the whole country could one day be literally washed off the face of the earth.
