March 27th, 2007
The Guardian reports the sad death of Manchester-based staff photographer Don McPhee, who has died of cancer at the age of 61.
Don was a legend in the British press photography scene, mentor to many young and aspiring photojournalists, and an all-round gentleman whose presence will surely be missed. The Guardian has posted an obituary by Eamonn McCabe and a gallery of some of his pictures with commentary from the paper’s picture editor, Roger Tooth. A previous gallery of his work can be seen here and Guardian photographer Dan Chung writes a very fitting epitaph here.
March 14th, 2007
Those living in countries that don’t have a large range of international papers available can find it hard to keep track of which photos get used and where. The two best online sources of front pages from around the world that I’ve come across are Newseum and Press Display.
Previously I’d gone off Newseum because I found the interface to be clunky and it was difficult to search by country/paper etc. I’m not sure quite when it was changed but it appears they’ve recently had a major revamp of the site with a clean and easy to use interface. Check it out.
Newseum
March 12th, 2007
Yes, 2.8.
Sigma have announced a monster of a lens - the APO 200-500mm F2.8 EX DG - featuring a fast F2.8 aperture over the entire zoom range and an LCD panel on the lens displaying shooting distance and focal length. No word on pricing or … err … weight.
March 12th, 2007
In my mind, the most powerful and haunting image in this year’s crop of World Press Photo winners was the photograph by Nina Berman of disfigured U.S. Marine Sgt. Ty Ziegel and fiancée Renee Kline’s wedding day, which won 1st Prize Singles in the Portraits category.
The first time I saw it I was quite shocked and it’s an image you can stare at for ages and read all sorts of things into how each party is feeling - maybe accurate, maybe not - but there’s no doubt it violently succeeds in drawing empathy out of the reader.
Salon.com are currently running a fascinating interview with Nina talking about the couple and how the photograph took place. They also link to a London Times article and gallery of Nina’s photos chronicling Ziegel’s recovery and wedding day - which is really interesting to see as it gives much background and shows a different side of the couple to that shown in the surely iconic image. Be sure to take a look at her website too, having a number of rather nice galleries including one on a similar subject entitled “Purple Hearts“.
Her image proves that even in this fast-paced low-attention-span world of infotainment that we now live in, the still photograph continues to have the power to shock, really shock… and that’s a good thing.
Update: For more analysis of Berman’s picture, Dennis Dunleavy has a thoughtful commentary here and here.
March 4th, 2007
A colleague recently showed me an innovative device now on the market that’s pretty appealing to frequent travellers. The MoGo Mouse is an ultra-slim wireless optical mouse the size of a credit card that fits completely into the PCMCIA slot of your laptop whilst travelling.
It features no need for batteries, chargers, or wires - charging itself directly from the pcmcia slot and operating over Bluetooth. Once removed from the slot there’s a flip-down kickstand that angles the device up to a reasonably comfortable position.
You’re not going to want to ditch your desktop’s mouse for this device but as a compact travel mouse it seems near-perfect. The only missing feature is the lack of scroll-wheel functionality but you can’t have everything in a device this size.
MoGo Mouse
