Giant assignment

Although I'm no longer seeking photo assignments, occasionally a few do come my way. Following the San Francisco Giants World Series victory Harvard Business Magazine wanted to feature Larry Baer, Harvard Business School graduate and president of the Giants. And so I got the call from long time Boston publication designer John Sizing for the shoot. I felt that I owed my son the opportunity to meet the president of his favorite team. Herewith Mr. Baer going into his wind-up on the pint sized playing field at ATT Park.

Thomas Alleman

Photo Lucida has announced the top 50 photographers in for the 2010 Critical Mass. Among the 50 is a personal favorite and fellow Holga user Thomas Alleman who entered some of the photos from his excellent series Sunshine and Noir. Here are the winners and here is Thomas Alleman's website.

Low Tech High Tech

Fans of toy camera photography have to be encouraged by the news that the as yet unreleased white iPhone 4 is experiencing light leaks.

Apple announced this week that its white iPhone 4 was delayed yet again this time until Spring 2011. Apple has not offered any reason for the delays, except that the device has proven "more challenging to manufacture" than the company had originally anticipated.

Cult of Mac on Wednesday offered a potential explanation for the delay: an anonymous source "with connections at Apple" indicated that the white model takes poor pictures due to its white glass. That person indicated that the white case allows light to leak in, causing washed out pictures.

Genaro Molina

A story on the Los Angeles Times features the toy camera work of one of their staff photographers Genaro Molina. Molina discusses using toy cameras to shoot top movie directors who seem genunely excited about the playfulness these cameras suggest.

(Link is now fixed)

Bupkis

The top 175 entries in Photolucida's Critical Mass were announced over the weekend. Alas, unlike a year ago, my entry went unchosen. The yiddish word for this is bupkis. For those who may be interested here is what I entered.

Johanna Drucker

Ordinarily an academic lecture on art criticism wouldn't be at the top of too many lists of what to do for fun on a Saturday night. But with my art history interested daughter in town off we went to the San Francisco Art Institute to listen to Johanna Drucker discuss aspects of her critique of contemporary art criticism. Drucker's book Sweet Dreams, Contemporary Art and Complicity was the basis of her talk. In it she argues for decoupling art from various frameworks a critic uses to convey purposes and meaning in works, as well as a call for an end to unnecessary obscurity and a reintroduction of aesthetics. Although this post any indicate otherwise the talk was upbeat and positive about newer developments.

It isn't the pitch, it's the product.

Joerg Colberg, at his blog Conscientious, published my response to the discussion over Fotofest (and the like) portfolio reviews. It seems disappointment is common at these gatherings, which to me seems to be the most likely outcome. Not going has an even higher level of rejection.

It all started with Joerg's earlier post.

See also this this and this