The Shed

So the final slideshow is coming up fast on us, and I still feel like something’s missing. I’ve gotten a good handful of establishing shots, I’m just not sure what to shoot to get the one or two shots that really convey the mood of struggling through a recession. I’ve shot an empty restaurant, bored waiters and chefs, but I just can’t put my finger on what should come last. Any ideas guys?

Here’s a few of my favorite shots from what I’ve shot so far. Any ideas on what’s good? Bad? What could be done to improve anything? Thanks guys.

Shepard Fairey's famous edit of the Barack Obama poster, which has seen numerous recreations since it's birth.

As if the argument could go on any longer, Shepard Fairey, the man accused by the AP for stealing a copyrighted Obama photo, has turned the table back on the AP. Earlier in the year the Associated Press took a lawsuit out on Fairey, saying his now-famous rendition of President Obama was an infringement of copyright since the picture originally belonged to the AP.

But now, Fairey’s lawyers are using something called the “doctrine of unclean hands” to fire back at the AP. Apparently the AP has many other similar copywrited photos, including Fairey’s famous versions, and they are keeping them for commercial use. Other depictions of Fairey’s poster are being used by the AP, something they hope will turn the tables of the case in favor of Fairey. More to come as it develops..

In the same light as some of the final project proposals in class, the NY Times website has a new interactive feature on their Economy page called “Picturing the Recession”. Essentially readers can take and submit their own photographs that depict how the recession has affected their lives. Photos are broken up into six categories: Family, Sacrifice, Business, Transportation, Home and Work. For those of you who also decided to do a slideshow covering the impact of the economy, this gives a really good look into how to capture the feel of times like these.

The Pentagon has ended the ban on press photos of fallen war soldiers in their American flag-draped caskets. Since 1991, photographers have not been able to even snap long distance photos of caskets being delivered to Dover Air Force Base, something that many people have considered a breach of first amendment rights.

Defense Secretary Gates called an end to the rule, saying that the decision should be left up to families and others close to the fallen soldiers, rather than leaving them with no option for photographic memories. Personally, I can’t see how this wasn’t mandated years ago, especially since so many soldiers have passed in the last 8 years. My best friend of almost 10 years passed away in Iraq a couple of years ago, and I know our friends and family wished for nothing more than to be able to take some pictures for memory’s sake, and perhaps to permanently honor a hero.

There’s not too much going on in my world this week, just trying to save up for a really good Spring Break phtoshoot (I have something strangely fun in mind, so keep an eye out!), but I did stumble across this a couple days ago.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t stand using the tiny cards that come with the department’s cameras — honestly, it’s just too hard to focus on getting a great shoot when you know you only have about 150 shots on your memory card! Well, if you’re looking for something for your personal SLR make sure to pick up this 2 TERABYTE (not a typo) SD Card. Yep, that’s 4,000 Raw photos, 17,000 regular photos, and if you’re the movie type you can get a full 60 hours of video on this bad boy. Pretty impressive huh?

I don’t really have anything interesting to blog about this week…so I’ll just leave you with some of my favorite pictures from this weekend’s Valentine’s Day at the Riverbanks Zoo. It turns out that animals aren’t really all that hard to photograph — they pretty much do whatever they want, and 9 times out of 10 you’ll capture a candid picture you never expected. In fact, it’s the people at the zoo that are the hard ones to photograph!