Photojournalism Links

If you love photojournalism and you need to find the best links on the web, then a blog you should definitely take a look at is Photojournalism Links, edited by photographer Mikko Takkunen.

Mikko describes Photojournalism Links as 'a website dedicated to sharing all things good and interesting in photojournalism, documentary photography, and beyond. Updated once a week.' 

It's certainly is a website not to be missed if photojournalism is your thing. It's a must follow blog!

My main website was linked on the site back in October. A big thank you for that Mikko :)

4,748 Self-Portraits and Counting

I hate photographing myself. For some reason, those George Clooney handsome good looks I have, don't seem to make it onto any of my self portraits. I blame the photographer.

Jeff Harris, however, has photographed himself 4,748 times (up to December 31st). Instead of using the same old setting, Jeff has got out and about, resulting in a broad and fascinating collection of self portrait photographs.

If you do visit Jeff's website, do check out the journal section where people write about a day from their life with an image from Jeff's archive from that day -the full extent of the human experience can be found there.

There are quite a few images that catch the eye - one photograph I spotted from Jeff's collection appears to have been taken by Gene Simmons from the rock band KISS.... at least that's who it looks like.

Visit jeffharris.org to see the project in its entirety.

Following on...

...from the last blog post, I've just spent the last thirty minutes going through the RSS feeds i subscribe to, deleting those feeds that are sadly no longer updating. The final tally came to ten dead RSS feeds, some of which hadn't updated since earlier in the year. Others were close to deletion, only to be saved at the last minute when i realised that the feed address had changed, often with no warning to subscribers.

On a more positive note, a blog I've started following just recently is Alec Soth's 'Little Brown Mushroom that features excellent posts dealing with all sorts of photography questions and topics. The post that instantly caught my attention asked the question 'at what age do photographers do their most influential work?'. The answers via the comments are a great read - even Martin Parr has left an answer.

The Fallen

© Images by Mikael Kennedy/Passport to Trepass

Reading through Blake Andrews' In Memoriam: Photoblogs 2011' makes sobering reading. The amount of great photoblogs who have shut up shop this year is rather disconcerting.

The one that i miss most from Blake's 2011 closure list is Down and Out, now archived at 'Passport to Trepass'. I came late to the blog but loved Mikael Kennedy's work right from the off. The mix of Polaroid images with a personal and distinctly intimate portraits of the people and places Mikael visited. Projects come to an end and sadly this was just the case with 'Down and Out'.

As for my own blog(s), well they are still active, though i must admit that i haven't posted as much as I'd like during 2011. I'll try to be more active in 2012. I do regard the closure of my blogging efforts as pretty much unthinkable. As one of my clients said  'You have a lot to say Richard' - indeed i do but it goes beyond that. A blog is the perfect platform for communication with few limitations, unlike certain other platforms.

Twitter and Facebook may be great for short snippets and linking - convenient too - but they are often of the moment and accessibility for non Twitter/Facebook users can be tough or even non-existent. The clinical  design and detached feel of Facebook has never engaged me as a user, so why do i still use it? Simply because the posts added there reach a different audience to that of my blog, although i have found it difficult to increase my 'likes' or fans. Maybe i should update more - something to work on in 2012 maybe.

Many photographers appear to move to Facebook because they feel that that is where the big audiences reside. That may be true, at least in some cases, but often it's a closed audience who use Facebook as their main social network. If you aren't a Facebook user, would you visit a Facebook page? I doubt it. You're outside of the Facebook network family with no ability to comment or even show approval.

As a final word we come back to Blake's website, simply called 'B'. Definitely a photography blog to follow in 2012, if you don't already.

Merry Christmas 2011

That's it for another year. How quickly Christmas comes and goes. It hasn't been an extravagant one this year -  no Leica M9 under the tree this year - but it hasn't been too bad.

I did get two rather good photography books - that i bought myself i might add - books that include the superb Chris Killip book Seacoal. Superb human interest photography by a great photographer.

Anyway I hope that you've all had a great Christmas day.

Fifteen Minutes

Exodus from panos pictures on Vimeo.

I've linked to this on Twitter a couple of times this week, but here it is again because it is such a great use of the multimedia format.

A brilliant piece of multimedia by Chris de Bode and Panos Pictures.

Journey on Mars

I love this kinda stuff. A time-lapse video showing the whole 4.8 mile journey made by NASA's Mars Rover Spirit that took an astounding 5 years, 3 months and 27 days to complete. That immense journey  has been condensed into 2 minutes and 30 seconds of footage.

LIFE at 75

LIFE celebrates its 75 anniversary, well at least it kinda does. The history of LIFE is as varied as the content of the magazine itself. LIFE magazine in its purist form lasted from November 1936 to December 1972 - after that, the title lost its way. Only recently has LIFE really returned to a close approximation of its original role as part of  an online venture between Getty Images and TIME/LIFE. Something is still missing though.

A series of poor 'specials' and various misguided comebacks over the years, have done the brand no favours whatsoever. The Life.com website does have its finer moments, but it can veer towards a tabloid fuelled, celebrity dominated content at times - mostly at the expense of its own back catalogue of classic work. A return to a broad mix of stories, like those carried by the original magazine, would be nice.

A number of galleries celebrate the 75 years of LIFE, with one of the best showcasing the best photography that made the magazine's name. The likes of Larry burrows and Margaret Bourke-White (both LIFE photographers) have more than one image featured. The 75 best LIFE photographs can be found HERE

More galleries cover aspects from magazine covers to LIFE photographers looking back at a favourite or iconic photo story they produced. Every edition of LIFE ever produced, a great look back in time, and still a good read, can be viewed via Google Books HERE