Microstock Calendar

Want tips on shooting on location, breaking into destination wedding photography, or managing your workflow on the go?  PDN and SanDisk have launched a new column, Ask the Experts, in which photographers share their expertise and answer questions from PDN readers about a variety of photographic problems. 

To start things off, Matt May and Suzanne Ricca are answering questions about workflow on the go. The duo behind Matthew May Photography have shot weddings and travel images in China, Europe, Mexico, the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas. They have a lot of experience capturing once in a lifetime shots under pressure, and they've learned how to deal with customs officials and airline baggage restrictions. 

Says May, "For overseas weddings, we team up to pair down the duplicates. For example, we might bring one 85mm lens instead of two, and share it. This saves us room that is needed for bringing additional computer gear that is required for overseas weddings -- extra hard drives, USB hubs, cables, etc, that is needed to make back-ups on location as opposed to a local wedding where we could drive home and do all this work that night."

To learn more about May and Ricca and see some of their location shots on our Ask The Experts page. To submit a question or talk to May and Ricca about the challenges of working on location, email editor@pdnonline.com. 

In coming months, Ask the Experts will be hosted by other members of the SanDisk Extreme Team known for their nature photography, portraiture, post-production retouching, and shooting under extreme weather conditions. 

Oops!

Panasonic's PR department must be kicking itself for releasing this behind-the-scenes video of the making of a new commercial for the Panasonic Lumix G2.

Watch the clip below and you'll see the Canon 5D Mark II with Canon L-series glass being used frequently throughout the filming of the spot even though the G2 shoots 720p HD.

Truthfully, most consumers -- who this camera and the commercial are primarily aimed at -- aren't going to notice (or care) but camera geeks will and the behind-the-scenes footage is already turning up far and wide in the tech blog-o-sphere.

Doh!

UPDATE: Looks like the behind-the-scenes video has been removed. Wonder why.

(Via Photography Bay & CrunchGear)

Toronto-based photojournalist Brett Gundlock, who was arrested by police while photographing G20 protesters over the weekend, says his government-issued press credential was clearly visible to the officers who took him into custody on Saturday evening. A photograph taken by a Reuters photographer at the scene even shows his visible badge during the arrest, he says.

Gundlock also said he held the press badge up and pointed it out to police before he was wrestled to the ground and cuffed with zip ties.

After being charged with obstructing a peace officer and unlawful assembly, Gundlock and a colleague were released on bail. The conditions of Gundlock’s bail prevent him from attending or photographing protests until July 2, and he’s not permitted to go into downtown Toronto until Monday, July 4, he told PDN. He is scheduled to appear in court in August.

Gundlock added that seven photojournalists he knows were arrested or detained over the last weekend, when more than 900 demonstrators were detained. According to reports, the mass arrests are the largest in Canadian history.

Today Gundlock posted some of the photographs he took of the protests on his blog, here. They show violent protesters, vandals and looters, and include a photograph of a police cruiser on fire.

Related: Photojournalists Arrested in G20 Clash

A photojournalist and filmmaker received £3,500 ($5,280) each in an out-of-court settlement with the London police after the pair were prevented from documenting a protest at the Greek embassy in 2008, The Guardian reported today.

A film of the incident posted on the news organization’s Web site shows police grabbing photojournalist Marc Vallée’s camera and covering the lens of Jason Parkinson’s video camera. The journalists were then forcibly removed from the scene so they could not document the police’s treatment of the protesters, who were demonstrating against a police shooting

The settlement announcement comes on the heels of news from Toronto that a pair of photojournalists were arrested and held for 24 hours as police there rounded up people protesting at the G20 summit.

News photographer Bill Hudson, whose images of police brutality against civil rights protesters stirred national outrage, died June 24 in Jacksonville, Florida, the AP reports. He was 77. According to his wife, Patricia, the cause of death was congestive heart failure.

A pair of photographers working for Canada’s National Post were arrested over the weekend while documenting protests of the G20 summit in Toronto.

On Saturday night The National Post published a report that staff photographer Brett Gundlock and freelancer Colin O’Connor were detained by Toronto police while photographing protestors clashing with police. The report included a blurry photograph of Grundlock being wrestled to the ground by several officers in riot gear.

After spending 24 hours in custody on charges of obstructing a peace officer and unlawful assembly the two photographers were released on bail and recounted their experiences in an interview with the National Post.

"We were handcuffed. They emptied my wallet. I still don’t know what happened to some of our camera equipment," O'Connor said.

The world’s largest digital camera is being used by astronomers and scientists to monitor various space phenomena, including possible "planet-destroying asteroids," according to National Geographic.

The camera is a critical component of the PS1 telescope in Hawaii, and is snapping images of the heavens every 30 seconds at a staggering resolution of 1,400 megapixels per photo.

The images are mapping areas in the sky “as large as 36 full moons – a view 3,600 times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope’s main camera.” A 300-dpi print of one of the images would cover half a basketball court. In a full day the camera captures enough data to fill 1,000 DVDs.

The giant camera not only enables scientists to track near-Earth orbiting asteroids that have the potential to cause major damage if they were to impact the planet (according to Edo Berger, a professor with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, “It provides the best early-warning system we have”), but it also creates the potential for celestial discoveries previously unimaginable.

Scientists are now able to see objects that are ten times fainter than anything registered during previous surveys thanks to the technology the camera offers. Because of its stunning accuracy and sensitivity, scientists anticipate making many new breakthroughs.

“This will take us a long way along the path of charting the heavens, both in space and in time,” Berger said.

-- by Cameron Handley

New York-based advertising agency Anomaly has won an Outdoor Lion Grand Prix award for their campaign for denim and clothing company Diesel. Images for the campaign were shot by photographers Kristin Vicari, Melodie McDaniel and Chris Buck.

Anomaly are among a small contingent of American agencies earning recognition at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival this week, and they are the only U.S. agency to win a top prize in any of the awards categories thus far (awards announcements continue through Sunday).

The winning ads feature the tagline “Be Stupid,” with bold copy that makes pronouncements like, “Smart may have the brains, but stupid has the balls,” or, “Smart has the plans, but stupid has the stories,” or simply, “We’re with stupid.”

The ads espouse the idea that “stupid” people are in fact the most innovative, or at least that they have the most fun until personal injury makes them smarter.

Photographs of young people doing an array of humorous and ill-advised things—flashing breasts at a CCTV camera (see above); body-slamming each other; trying to fit too many people on bicycles; posing for photographs with wild animals—illustrate the point.

Edith Shain, who claimed to be the nurse embraced by a jubilant World War II sailor in the famous Times Square photograph by Life photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt, has died. She was 91, according to several news organizations reporting her death.

Eisenstaedt's photo shows the sailor clutching the nurse as he kisses her, and captures the joy of the nation over the end of World War II. But the identities of the two subjects has always been in question because the subjects' faces are obscured, and Eisenstaedt never got their names. Several women claimed to be the nurse in the photograph years later when Life magazine tried to identify the subjects.

Shain said in interviews before her death that she had gone to Times Square to celebrate the victory over Japan on August 15, 1945 right after finishing her shift at a New York hospital. She didn't know the sailor who grabbed her and kissed her, but she told the AP in a 2008 interview that "I didn't mind because he was someone who had fought for me."