We all know that if you wear Google’s new glasses (Google Glass), you are an asshole. Now, Youtube channel Grovo has made a parody video imagining what it would like to actually use Google Glass as a still camera.

I still haven’t seen Google Glass in the wild. While some people think privacy fears relating to having a video and still camera always on are exaggerated, that hasn’t stopped some places from banning the technology preemptively.

(via reddit)

Beijing Silvermine – Thomas Sauvin from Emiland Guillerme on Vimeo.

We linked to a few of these images on twitter a few months ago, and the video above offers a deeper look at photo collector and editor Thomas Sauvin‘s project rescuing discarded negatives from Beijing’s recycling centers. The result is Beijing Silvermine (video by Emiland Guillerme above) a glimpse inside the lives of ordinary Chinese people, mostly in Beijing from 1985 to 2005, when digital photography overtook silver-based negative film photography. I’m often intrigued by photography that isn’t intended for the public, and this obsessive project has fascinating results. You can see more images at Shanghaiist and the Guardian.

(via LPV on twitter)

Mikhael Subotzky gave a presentation at TEDxStellenbosch in August 2012.

A few years ago, I stopped talking about my work completely. I found that the process of trying to explain it to others got in the way of my own attempts to understand it myself. But this is a TED talk and I very much wanted to accept the invitation to be here. So, I’m going to show you some of the images that I’ve made and to go with them I’ve stolen some words. Some as you’ve heard from T.S. Eliot, some from James Agee, from Tom Waits, from Herman Melville and from Wim Wenders. And I’ve added a few of my own.
- Mikhael Subotzky at TEDxStellenbosch

I also recommend Blake Andrew’s review of Subotzky’s recent book Retinal Shift. I also wrote about Subotzky’s project Ponte City in a 2011 post here on dvafoto.

David Lynch has been responsible for haunting and intriguing images on screen (including one of the scariest moments in movie history). He was invited by Paris Photo to create a book selected from the 1000 photos shown at Paris Photo 2012. He described the process as intuitive rather than intellectual, and in the video above (which is a little slow at first) talks about how he looks at images and what they mean to him. If you’ve got a few moments, give it a listen.

The book, Paris Photo by David Lynch, is available on Amazon and published by Steidl.

Gizmodo has written about the “World’s Highest Resolution Camera”, with 1.8 gigapixels, which is being developed for the US government. They shared this clip from the PBS show NOVA which recently broadcast an episode called “Rise of the Drones”.

This is the next generation of surveillance. … It is important for the public to know that some of these capabilities exist. – BAE Systems Engineer Yiannis Antioniades, who designed the sensor

I know some folks working on drone-related journalism and drone-related photography. This should give you some more ideas about what might be possible. And I can’t help but think of what extreme ‘Google Street View’ style projects could be possible from a camera also known as “Wide-Area Persistant Stare’. Maybe some day we’ll see such a thing, for now it remains a classified US Government program.

Scott also recommends having a look at the Dronestagram project, which compiles Google Maps aerial landscapes of the sites of drone strikes. You can follow them on Instagram or on Tumblr.

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Some of the photographers from the SEE New Perspectives masterclass at the opening exhibition in Sarajevo, October 2012.

SEE New Perspectives Exhibition Opening in Sarajevo, October 2012

In 2010, fifteen young South-East European photographers and three masters met in Berlin for the SEE New Perspectives masterclass, organized by World Press Photo and Robert Bosch Stiftung. After the first meeting in Berlin all of the photographers were given a grant to photograph a story within the region but outside of their home country.

The resulting projects are now being exhibited in Belgrade, Serbia (on display until December 14 at the ARTGET gallery on Trg Republike) after debuting in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina in October. The show will soon move to Zagreb, Croatia and Berlin, Germany. The exhibition features an interesting concept of displaying oversized “magazines” each devoted to one photographer’s project, with only one image from each project along with the photographer’s name on the wall.

You can see all of the stories produced in the masterclass on the SEE New Perspectives website as well as more information about the organization of the project.

The photographers are:
Andrei Pungovschi, Romania
Armend Nimani, Kosovo
Bevis Fusha, Albania
Dženat Dreković, Serbia
Eugenia Maximova, Bulgaria
Ferdi Limani, Kosovo
Jasmin Brutus, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Jetmir Idrizi, Kosovo
Marko Risović, Serbia
Nemanja Pančić, Serbia
Octav Ganea, Romania
Petrut Calinescu, Romania
Sanja Jovanović (née Knežević), Serbia
Tomislav Georgiev, Macedonia
Vesselina Nikolaeva, Bulgaria

And the Tutors are:
Regina Anzenberger, Austria, artist, curator, photographer’s agent, gallerist
Silvia Omedes, Spain, president at Photographic Social Vision Foundation
Donald Weber, Canada, photographer VII Agency

I asked my old friend Jasmin Brutus, a Bosnian photographer who was part of the masterclass, to paraphrase the statement he gave at the Sarajevo opening which expresses his feelings about the years-long masterclass project: “We [the participating photographers] all returned with nice small toolbox which our employers will never know how to utilize. So, I think experience in the masterclass is very useful for my personal projects and for my job is almost useless. I gained new skills and my old skills got enhanced. But, for me the most important thing is that I met a group of really great people and great photographers.”

Congratulations to my friends from around the region who were able to take part in this interesting project and many of whom were able to produce terrific photo stories that may otherwise never have seen light or been published. I encourage you to explore the work published on the SEE New Perspectives site or peruse the photographers’ own websites linked above.

The video below features interviews with all of the photographers about their work and experience in the masterclass:

SEE New Perspectives from Balkan Photographers from World Press Photo on Vimeo.

We’ve written a bit about iphone photography and photojournalism previously, and now Instagram has taken the photojournalism world by storm. The video (above), by LA improv group Olde Payphone, imagines the studio of a celebrity instagram photographer; while the joke goes on a bit too long, it hits a lot of the right notes.

While we’re on the subject of cell phone photojournalism, be sure to check out Michael Christopher Brown’s recent work from Congo using a phone. Sure, the iphone photojournalism fits in with the current trend, but he uses the phone with good reason for this essay: many of the materials used in producing the phones are mined in Congo.

The video above has been making the rounds, and it’s a great insight into what it can be like as a freelancer. While you might not encounter some of the attitudes in the video as a photojournalist, if you venture into other realms of freelance photography (PR, corporate, advertising, weddings, portraiture, etc.) you’re sure to run in to this. The video is part of a campaign called Don’t Get Screwed Over, which offers tips on how not to get screwed over in your freelance business dealings. The campaign also points to Docracy, an open source legal document repository with plenty of useful forms and contracts for freelancers. As with any legal dealings, it’s best to consult a lawyer familiar with your situation and jurisdiction, but Docracy looks to be a good starting point.

And here’s a bonus video, similar to the one above, imagining what it would be like if people treated all business transactions (a drink at the bar, buying a dvd from a store, the barber) the way that vendor/client relationships often happen.

And remember: Fuck you, Pay me!

In May we interviewed the Serbian photo collective Kamerades and showed pictures from their group project about the Serbian elections called Dirty Season. This week Saša Čolić released his short film that is part of the same project. The film “is aimed at bringing attention and addressing the causes and reasons for apathy and desolation within the Serbian political process. This is also part of a global problem of voters disinterest and apathy in the political dialog.”

Filmed/Directed by: Saša Čolić / Kamerades

Script: Danka Sekulović

Editing: Maja Yuill and Jelena Vidaković

Project coordinator: Photography Development Center

Project funded by: IREX Serbia and US AID

Arrivals and Departures with Jacob Aue Sobol: Episode 2 – Moscow from Leica Camera on Vimeo.

Arrivals and Departures with Jacob Aue Sobol: Episode 6 – The Final Episode from Leica Camera on Vimeo.

“In the streets I try not to make any rational decisions about what to photograph and what not. I do not have any rules. I take pictures of everything on my way: a tree, a building, a shadow, a person. Sometimes it takes me two hours to get down a street, because there are so many things to photograph and people to meet.” -Jacob Aue Sobol, Arrivals and Departures with Jacob Aue Sobol: Episode 5 – Beijing

Photography can be a solitary act; there’s the photographer and subjects and not much else. That’s why I relish it when I get the chance to see good photographers at work. I love seeing how they get into the situations that result in pictures, how they walk the streets, how they handle subjects. Videos like the ones above make me want to go out and make pictures in the same way that seeing a great band makes me want to learn to play the guitar.

Now, via the Leica blog, we have a couple videos of Jacob Aue Sobol (Magnum portfolio) at work in Russia, Mongolia, and China. He’s long been a favorite, so I’m especially excited about this. The videos are a quick glimpse, but interesting nonetheless to see what precipitates his raw and intimate imagery. The two videos are embedded above, named Part 2 and Part 6. The other parts are text and picture blog posts on the Leica blog: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6.