LIVE from the GRAND CANYON, yes it’s REAL - RAWtalk Episode #135
Click Here to download this weeks RAWtalk as an MP3.
No that was not a massive green screen, we were truly filming RAWtalk on the edge of the Grand Canyon thanks to AdventureDriven.com. Can you believe how amazing it looks. We filmed this weeks show with two Canon C300’s, a 5D Mark III, GoPro and DJI Phantom 3 PRO for the arial shots.
This weeks sponsor so happens to be a LIFE SAVER for shooting landscape photos. HOYA supplied me with all the filters I needed to help make my pictures go BOOOOOOMMMM at the Grand Canyon. Having their circular polarizers on my lenses helped pump up the sky as well as the color in my images. Just think how amazing the world looks when you where polarized sunglasses. Now add that in front of your camera lenses and you have fantastically vibrant photos. Here is a link to the exact CP I used form HOYA.
As you can tell this weeks show took us to an amazing place. We had to change up the show slightly for obvious reasons but we cranked through photo news which included two main but very long stories. One involves Anthony Mazur a 16 year old High School student and the other Richard Prince who took peoples Instagram Photos and sold them for upwards of $100,000.
You can check out the FULL Photo News Stories and more at FroKnowsPhoto.com/rawtalk-135
We had a ton of gear out with us but this weeks Gear of the Week was the Hoya Filters and step down rings which were a life saver. Also JOBY sent us car mounts for our GoPro’s which turned out to be freaking amazing. We had them attached to our vehicles in so many situations and they handled the harsh environment with flying colors.
If there is an amazing place you would like to help bring RAWtalk please feel free to email me directly at Jared AT FroKnowsPhoto.com with all the information.
Here’s all of Stephen’s photo news stories in detail:
Iconic Photographer Mary Ellen Mark Passes Away
Iconic photographer Mary Ellen Mark has passed away at the age of 75. She was well known for her portraiture and photojournalism work. Mark published 18 photography books over the course of her career which began in 1962, after she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Art History and Painting from the University of Pennsylvania, and a master’s in photojournalism in 1964 from Penn’s Annenberg School of Communication. She also has had her work featured in publications such as Life Magazine, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone and The New Yorker to name a few. Just last year she received the Lifetime Achievement in Photography Award from George Eastman House too. If you’re unfamiliar with her work, there’s an hour long lecture she gave a few years back at the University of Michigan online along with an interview that Profoto did with her back in 2013, which can all be viewed below; RIP. (via PI)
Nikon D750 Firmware Update Makes Camera “More Reliable”
The Nikon D750 got a firmware update this past week. The firmware version is now C:1.02 which Nikon says makes your DSLR “more reliable”—that’s literally the only changelog notes they had regarding the firmware on the download page. Users that have upgraded say they noticed significant speed changes in accessing the menu and live view however. They also note that image review is faster overall. Have you noticed a change? (via NR)
Yongnuo To Release Nikon 35mm f/2 & 50mm f/1.8 Clone Lenses
Speaking of Nikon, Yongnuo says they’ll be releasing their long-rumored 35mm f/2 and 50mm f/1.8 primes for Nikon cameras. The Chinese company says they’ll put out the 50 F/1.8 this July followed by the 35 f/2 lens come October. No word just yet on pricing or exact specs though, but many assume it’ll be half the price as Nikon’s MSRP since that’s what they did with their 50 f/1.8 for Canon, but we’ll see. Will you be getting one of these? (via PP)
High School Student Forced To Remove Online Portfolio Or Face Suspension
A high school student named Anthony Mazur was forced to remove his portfolio from online after his school threatened to suspend him. The Texas school, Flower Mound High School, discovered his set of over 4,000 images that were posted online. The Lewisville Independent School District then claimed that the images were theirs and that he has no right to use them. The back story is that Mazur joined a yearbook class at the beginning of his sophomore year, which resulted in a school trip to a seminar lead by the Texas Association of Journalism Educators. The event inspired Mazur to pursue his passion for photography. He says, “at the end of the [event] class, I approached the teacher confused, and asked that because I was using a school camera, and using a school press pass, do I still own my pictures? She replied that I did. From that day on, that student and teacher from Argyle inspired me. I was filled with joy; I realized fully that this may be something I wanted to do for the rest of my life. It was my passion. So, I started selling my pictures to parents, tried licensing them to news organizations and get internships to learn as much as possible. It felt great to receive such amazing support from parents, players, and friends. I believed I found my place. One day, that all changed…” He was then pulled from one of his classes and sent down to the principal’s office where he his “Flickr website where [he] posted all of [his] photographs” was on display on their computer monitor. The principal then told him to remove the images, calling the usage illegal and threatening Mazur with in-school suspension and a ban from all extracurricular activities around the school. The principal then made a “concealed threat” to receive all money that Mazur possibly made from the images. Mazur says he was pressured into signing an Administrative Directive with his parents, forcing him to take down his entire portfolio. He ended up posting his side of the story on his Flickr page, which has been wiped of all his previous sports images. He writes: “I told him[…] about US Federal Copyright Law, which states whoever takes the picture owns the picture and can sell it. He didn’t listen. Instead, he threw stacks of papers in front of me, threatened me with ISS (In-School Suspension), banning me from school activities, games, and from school camera equipment.” As of now, Mazur’s family has already filed and lost an appeal to the principals of Flower Mound High School. The school claimed that Mazur’s work “violated students’ privacy by posting their image.” Currently, the family has filed an appeal to the Superintendent of Schools. Mazur says that the second appeal has lapsed behind its seven-day response time, and the family is now seeking to appeal to the school board directly. He says he’s covered under Title 17 of the United States Copyright Law, which denotes that the “Copyright in a work protected under this title vests initially in the author or authors of the work;” in the case of photography, the individual who presses the shutter is the ‘author’. He goes on and says, “appeal after appeal, they have refused to listen. They have ruined my efforts to start a career. They have violated my copyright. They have violated my free speech. They have committed Prior Restraint against me. They have misinterpreted and misapplied federal laws and District policies.” The school district says they have a case based on the expectation of privacy within a school environment. The district fired back with an official statement stating their case: “According to Lewisville ISD’s Acceptable Use Policy, the electronic communications system is defined as the district’s network (including the wireless network), servers, computer workstations, mobile technologies, peripherals, applications, databases, online resources, Internet access, email and any other technology designated for use by students, including all new technologies as they become available. The district considers the use of said technologies to be inappropriate when a student electronically posts data (including but not limited to audio recordings, video recordings, images and personal information) about others or oneself when it is not related to a class project and/or without the permission of all parties. Lewisville ISD’s practice is if anyone attending a public district event takes photos using their own device from an area accessible to the public, the district would not interfere with those photos being posted to a third-party site.The district is not at liberty to share student information pertaining to this situation due to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act [FERPA].” Jared ended up reaching out to Anthony to see he full side of the story. Check out his interview below–thoughts? (via PP)
Photographer Uses 18 Pounds of Fireworks to Light Up Band Photo Shoot
A photographer named Jake Harsh did a band photo shoot with 18 pounds of exploding fireworks! The three members, part of the band Hand of Hearts, were basically surrounded by fireworks as they were all lit at once while the photographer shot away, praying for a clean shot. Mixed with strobes, the photographer says “[W]hen you’ve got something so unpredictable involved, sometimes its about getting lucky and being okay with imperfection.” There’s a quick 2-minute behind-the-scenes video which can be seen below, showcasing how crazy and unsafe it was. The band members did at least wear sunglasses for “eye protection” though and a fire extinguisher was at hand in case any fire broke out. He says, “luckily the only casualties were a few burn marks and some hair smoldering.” He also notes at the end of the video that he dropped his brand new Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 II lens out of his bag and shattered it as he was leaving the shoot; ouch. The final results can be seen here over on his blog. He ends the video with a simple statement: Don’t try this at home…
This is Now The World’s Largest Photo
A new photo has earned the title of the world’s largest photo, weighing in at 365 gigapixels. The giant panorama is of Mont Blanc, Europe’s highest mountain, and was taken by Filippo Blengini and his team. The photo is 45 gigapixels larger than the previous record-holder, a 320-gigapixel shot of London that was published back in 2013. The 5-member team spent two weeks in late 2014 on the snowy peaks at an altitude of 3500 meters (~11,500 feet) braving -10°C temperatures. Using a Canon 70D DSLR, a Canon EF 400mm f/2.8 II IS, and a Canon Extender 2X III on a special robotic mount, they captured 70,000 photographs of the mountain over a 35-hour period. Post-processing and stitching the 46 terabytes afterwards took a whole two months, and the resulting 365-gigapixel photo would be as large as a soccer field if printed out at 300 DPI. Check out a behind-the-scenes video of how they pulled it off below and have fun with their interactive viewer over on their website where you can zoom in and out and pan all around. (via 500px)
New Nat Geo Photography TV Show Gets Inspiring Trailer
A new TV series that follows five photographers around the world called Tales by Light got a brand new inspiring trailer. Sydney-based cinematographer Abraham Joffe says that all the footage was shot by just him and two others: a sound engineer and a camera drone pilot. The three of them followed photographers around the world for a year, traveling to 15 countries across six continents and capturing the photographers’ processes of capturing amazing photographs. The photographers featured include Art Wolfe, Darren Jew, Richard I’Anson, Peter Eastway, and Krystle Wright. Joffe notes that he “hope[s] this series inspires someone to say ‘dad, I want to go out and buy a camera’,” and i think it does just that. The show premiered on the National Geographic Channel in Australia last week and will air every Sunday until June 28, 2015. (6 episode series). Check out the epic trailer below and tell me that doesn’t inspire you: (via DT)
Historical Photos Live On with OldNYC & OldSF
Software engineer Dan Vanderkam created two new historical photo websites called OldNYC and OldSF. The websites feature thousands of historical photos of both San Francisco and New York City that are plotted on city maps. The geotagged images includes 13,000 photos of San Fran and 40,000 images of New York City. Here’s how it works: each of the websites is an interactive city map that contains dots at the locations where each photo was captured. Users then Click a dot to bring up a lightbox showing old photos snapped there. The items are linked to their pages at their respective public libraries where the digital image is held, and users can even comment on images and submit feedback and corrections too. It’s truly great to see these old photographs living on, we just wish there was a map for Philly! (via Gizmodo)
Artist Richard Prince Reselling Other People’s Instagram Photos Without Permission for $100K+
Artist Richard Prince is reselling other peoples images that hes transformed without permission for quite a bit of money. His latest sale includes an Instagram image that he took and tweaked comments, later reselling them for up to $100,000. In a gallery exhibition titled “New Portraits,” which ran at the Gagosian Gallery in NYC from Sept. through Oct. 2014, Prince displayed 38 portraits featuring photos taken from his Instagram feeds, basically stealing other people’s images without permission. The 48×65-inch works featured a screenshot of the photo as it appeared on Instagram and a short message posted by Prince himself as the last comment on each one. One of the images was taken by Doe Deere (seen below), who wasn’t initially aware of the sale. Deere writes that she never gave him permission, but she isn’t planning on taking action over the usage. Apparently her photo was sold by Prince for $90,000 too… Prince himself has said that copyright is something that “has never interested” him. “For most of my life I owned half a stereo so there was no point in suing me, but that’s changed now and it’s interesting,” he said back in 2011. What do you think about this whole situation? (via PP)
