What Was I Thinking?: March 2008

Don't Miss Video

Here's an Excellent Use of Storytelling & Video on the Web (thanks Roy, whoever you are)

"The continuous withdrawal of mental health funding has turned jails and prisons across the nation into the default mental health facilities."

Trapped: Mental Illness in America's Prisons from Jenn Ackerman on Vimeo.

A "Fine" Way to Live

Farewell My Subaru is a new book from Doug Fine
Today on Boing Boing tv, a short film to give you a taste of that experience, directed by Jason Ensler.

How can this be?

Take a close look at this (from American Public Radio's Marketplace)
(Is Radio still radio if it comes with slideshows?)

Real Estate preoccupies me. Take a look at this.
We've all seen the man-made archipelagos being constructed in Dubai

©Alexander Heilner

But have we taken a close look?

©Alexander Heilner

It get's even better.

©Alexander Heilner

It's almost starting to look like our old backyard in Brooklyn:

©Russell Kaye-click the image for a really big view

"Robert, your socks."

They could be heard through the bedroom wall earlier that morning. The master was nervous. There was to be another jamboree today, another spectacle revolving around him, and nerves made the old master forgetful.

“Robert, your face,” she said.

The master shaved his face.

“Robert, your socks.”

And the master removed his shoes and put on a mismatched pair of socks. He came out of his room with his shoes untied.

Now the sycophants arrived, a few party officials and also Li Zhensheng, the competent and brave Chinese photographer who documented China during the Cultural Revolution and hid the photographs underneath his floorboards during its bloodiest days. One of the high officials was flabbergasted to find the master unprepared. In an outrageous and obsequious gesture of respect, the official got on his knees and tied Frank’s shoes. Another official took Frank’s elbow to steady him. Li brushed the dandruff from his shoulders and hugged him with his hands. Frank, sour-faced at the spectacle, clutched the only thing familiar to him—dear old Billy—pulling the waistband to his navel.

read the whole thing here

Potato Blight

Our photo assignment work very slow here - leaves us time to photograph those metaphorical vegetables that one discovers in the root cellar. Is this a good image to depict the state of our financial services economy in the US. Rotten at the core.

There's an insightful analysis of the bail out of Bear Sterns over at the NY Times by Gretchen Morgensen:

"WHAT are the consequences of a world in which regulators rescue even the financial institutions whose recklessness and greed helped create the titanic credit mess we are in?"

and more:

"And as one of the biggest players in the mortgage securities business on Wall Street, Bear provided munificent lines of credit to public-spirited subprime lenders like New Century (now bankrupt). It is also the owner of EMC Mortgage Servicing, one of the most aggressive subprime mortgage servicers out there."

read the entire story here

The Chip Simons Photo Gear on Ebay Report

Sandi told me to check out Chip Simons' webpage. Chip is suffering the slings and arrows of divorce and lack of work and friends. I never met Chip but feel like I just sat next to him on a cross-country red-eye after reading his bio:

I have no home, no studio, no family, no retirement, no savings, no money, no work, few friends, and two really great whippets. ...with puppies on the way.(need a whippet?) and all my beautiful cameras and studio gear, and maybe even prints, to sell on ebay...or store in some closet. I have to get rid of most everything I own just to pay for taxes and have capital in case I do get jobs I need to float expenses for. I am divorced now. 1.1 million dollars and they took 1.2?

"So, here I am. I am thinking about moving back to New York City and trying to re-invent myself. I have no idea if I can because I have little desire to do the same thing that has destroyed what I built my dreams upon."

If you hurry you can bid on his Hasselblad 903 SWC over at Ebay - it ends in about an hour....

update: 903SWC gone at $3280 and on the way to Hong Kong..

Friday Fading Polaroid Report

Triboro Bridge © Russell Kaye & Sandra-Lee Phipps

I Got all weepy this morning while washing the polaroids from yesterday's shoot. Here's an older polaroid neg that didn't make it home so safely and the emulsion started to lift off - we're going to miss the the happy accidents.

Assignment Ideas

We (Sandra-Lee Phipps and I) very much want to fly down to Hale County, Alabama and explore and document and photograph something called "Project M." It's a perfect magazine story. (Perfect for The Sunday Times, The New Yorker, Smithsonian, National Geographic, Orion ...to name a few.)

Here's the link to Project M

They've done great work and will be doing more in June 2008; if you're an editor and would like to know more and flesh out this idea, please make contact.
( me at RussellKaye.com )

3-Minute Maine: "On A Frozen Lake"

©David Bowman

Two Things:

1. check out David Bowman's blog; he's a great photographer and the other white meat in Minnesota that still continues to blog. His images are beautiful and he recently posted a series about frozen lakes in Minnesota.

and
2. Frozen Lakes just also happen to be the subject of a video we recently completed for our series 3-Minute Maine

.....click here to go to the videos

No Year-Round Rentals

©Russell Kaye

I've been doing a ton of driving lately - two jobs have required driving across New England and back. One hand on the steering wheel, one hand on the camera, I've passed the time in the car looking at the world and have become fascinated with the way images are caught with the shot-from-the-hip, drive-by, especially at twilight. I've also become wearily fascinated with real estate and living in a small seaside village here in "VacationLand" that for the most part has no year-round rentals because everyone can get about ten times the year-round rent for those 4-5 weeks we call summer. We sold our house nearly two years ago in advance of the Real Estate meltdown and in preparation for moving back to NYC or Athens/Atlanta. And here we are still - having not decided on a destination. In the end, these twilight images are really just an exercise in the frustration with myself over all the aspects of mid-career and decision-making and making my family wander between summer and winter rentals. If you really want to feel the seasons, move to Camden, Maine and plan on renting for a bit. (Our winter house rents for $4000/week ($16,000/month) in the Summer - so this June will be the 4th time in two years we've moved our family of four...yick)

PDN 30 and Donald Weber

A ton has already been written about the recent PDN 30 (emerging photographers. I'll just add that I was very glad to see the editors of PDN include the work of Donald Weber.
I first noticed him when he won the Lange-Taylor Prize in 2006 with writer Larry Frolick to document underclass life in the Ukraine. I'll just add that he's having quite a productive couple of years recently having also won a Guggengeim in 2007 and further being included in January as a "network photographer" at VII (what does this mean anyway? Is this how they're getting around their original charter that limited them to 9 photographers?)

He's got great work. See for yourself

I'll also just add that I was greatly relieved to see that PDN got his age wrong - He's 34 not 26. I'm feeling less unaccomplished now. Phew.

Michael Musto as Lindsay Lohan as Marilyn Monroe

©Howard Huang

This is pretty great. If you know the Village Voice writer Michael Musto who writes the regular column "La Dolce Musto," you have to see the slideshow that spoofs the Bert Stern's recent NY Magazine feature that has Lindsay Lohan as Marilyn Monroe recreating Mr Stern's famous portrait session a few weeks before Marilyn's death. Lindsay's nakedness reportedly crashed NY Mag's servers when it received over 20 Million pageviews. I wonder if Michael Musto will have a similar impact.

How many people are reading "A Photo Editor"

This brief little mention on Rob Haggart's "A Photo Editor" weblog recently:

"Russell Kaye discovered a sweet little book viewer for photographers (here). Here’s his book. Get yours at Issuu (here)."

I knew that "A Photo Editor" was popular - but that's really an amazing following he has over there. I don't really know Rob but hear he was famous for his one line, if not one word email replies. I once got the one word "nice" from him for this email promotion (below) I sent. It's great to see him turn so prolific with the written word and be rewarded with a devout readership. Thanks Rob.

Is he really giving back?

Photographer Chase Jarvis is having a contest that will send you to Chicago to attend the ASMP Business of Photography Seminar. "Wow," I originally thought, "what a great way to give back to the community." But then boom out comes the skeptic and wouldn't you guess one of the first comments to his announcement is this:

Chase,

How is this different from Keyword Stuffing? This seems like a scheme to get lots of links from your blog by having people write positive things relating to photography. The net effect of your little contest is that you blog will come up much higher google than it did before. You should be ashamed of yourself... although I guess it is expected.
Mary Star

What if it did turn out that ASMP in conjucnction with Chase cooked up this little contest as a way of marketing the seminar. All it would cost ASMP is one free seminar. Chase could cash in a frequent flier coupon and they could split the cost of the hotel room. It will be interesting to see if he responds to Mary Star. Maybe she could publish the Mary Star Report.

What Was I Thinking?