Largest Collection of Professional Photography On The Web

Life and Getty images teamed up to provide the largest collection of professional images on the web, all free to share and print. Millions of legendary photos from the archives of Life and Getty but also adding over 3000 new images every day. Check out Life.com HERE, its worth a look.

Stephen Mallon's Flight 1549_US Airways and Insurer AIG

Remember these recovery photos of US Airways flight 1549 shot by photographer Stephen Mallon? Scroll to my post dated Monday, February 9, 2009. It seems that US Airways and AIG, who insures US Airways, yes... that AIG, does not want these photos shown, at all, ever and no one seems to be able to figure out why. Mallon was hired by Weeks Marine to photograph the full recovery of the plane from the Hudson River and had full access to the plane and the blessing from the NTSB and US Airways. After posting them on his web site the NTSB said he could not post them, so he took them down, then two weeks later released them and said he may post them. Recently he got a letter from a law firm, directed to him from insurance company AIG asserting that Mallon has no rights to the recovery photos. This story seems to be still in the development stages and I expect we will be seeing more about this in the photography world. Read more of this story at the Online Photographer, HERE. See Stephen Mallon's site HERE.

Vintage Fishing Ads from Field & Stream

Its interesting how advertising has changed, or actually we have changed. These ads contain dead fish, tobacco and things that you just will not see nowadays. Many non fishing companies cashing in on this sports advertising also. I think the two guys in the boat need a bigger net or they are just snagged and that might not be cigarettes their smoking. Check out the collection of advertisements from years past at Field & Stream HERE.

Photographer_Yousuf Karsh @ The Art Institute of Chicago

The Art Institute of Chicago has on display 100 master prints by master portraitist Yousuf Karsh. Above photos Winston Churchill, Pablo Picasso, Albert Einstein. The show, "Yousuf Karsh: Regarding Heroes", goes through the end of April. It is a rare opportunity to see such a large collection of Karsh's work on display. Karsh used a technique called "inspection" for developing his negatives, this was accomplished by developing negatives by hand under a safe light to produce optimal detail. See the Art Institute HERE for details. Also go HERE to learn more about the photographer and to see more of his images online. I am definitely going to try to catch this one, and have some fun in Chicago.

Photographer_Eddie Adams

"The image disturbed him, and he continually wrestled with the responsibility it brought," this is what his wife said in reference to the cover of his new book, "Vietnam", referring to his 1968 Pulitzer Prize winning shot of a Viet Cong prisoner being shot execution style on a Saigon street. Eddie Adams died in 2004. This is an incredible photograph considering how close Eddie must have been to the scene, this is no telephoto lens here. The photo apparently disturbed Eddie Adams for the remaining of his life, even saying he wished he never shot it. Eddie Adams photographed 13 wars, six presidents, and numerous celebrities. The officer shooting is Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan, the prisoner being shot had just murdered eight South Vietnamese. The photograph turned Americans against the war and haunted Loan for the rest of his life. See some of Eddie's work HERE. Go HERE, and this is a must, to check out a trailer of a documentary of the Eddie Adams Story.

Is This Photography, or Not

My friend Jim emailed me with this question,"Hey John, what did you think of this guy's gallery? At what point is it no
longer photography, just computer generated art? I look at this way, it is photography and the computer is one of our tools to use in the process of making images, just as the camera itself is a tool for making images. I have seen this technique before and it is kind of cool when used with the right kind of images. As you can tell from the gallery some images work better than others with this technique. The top two images are from Alexandre Duret-Lutz, a French photographer creating what he calls "wee planets" using a technique of stitching together and bending many photographs of a particular scene, see his gallery HERE. The bottom photo, done by photographer Chris Kling is called a globe, it has some of the same characteristics but is done with photoshop and only one photo, see photographer Chris Kling blog HERE. See the technique for the single image version in photoshop HERE and try it yourself.