Helen Levitt
Helen Levitt (August 31, 1913 – March 29, 2009) was an American photographer. She was particularly noted for “street photography” around New York City.
Interesting link: Dikant, Thomas (2003). “Helen Levitt: 10 Photographs“. Philologie in Netz 25: 1–30. Critical study of ten of Levitt’s photographs.
Photos that Changed the World
Photos that Changed the World, a dedicated web site. Not the first to do so. You could e.g buy the Life Magazine book with 100 Photographs That Changed the World, some of which you can see online here.
Don’t expect perfect images (some of them are really good of course). It’s the story behind the images that makes them special. What disturbs me thou is that most, if not all show violence, loneliness, starvation, … Is this what we are ?
Update: the same goes for newspapers e.g.. Is there really nothing nice to report about mankind ? I don’t say we have to ignore the bad and the ugly, but surely some things are proof that things can be ok as well ? Probably stuff that doesn’t sell. Says a lot about the readers I guess.
Note to myself: stop rambling.
10 most expensive photographs
Andreas Gursky, 99 Cent II Diptychon (2001), $3,346,456, February, 2007, Sotheby’s London auction.
Edward Steichen, The Pond-Moonlight (1904), $2,928,000, February 2006, Sotheby’s New York auction.
Richard Prince, Untitled (Cowboy) (1989), $1,248,000, November 2005, Christie’s New York auction.
Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey, 113.Athènes, T[emple] de J[upiter] olympien pris de l’est (1842), $922,488, 2003, auction.
Gustave Le Gray, The Great Wave, Sete (1857), $838,000, 1999.
Robert Mapplethorpe, Andy Warhol (1987), $643,200, 2006.
Ansel Adams, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico (1948), $609,600, Sotheby’s New York auction, 2006.
Andreas Gursky, Untitled 5 (1997), $559,724, 6 February 2002.
Gustave Le Gray, Tree (1855), $513,150, 1999.
Diane Arbus, Identical Twins, Roselle, New Jersey, 1967 (1967), $478,400, 27 April 2004.
Le Smoking
Created in 1966 by famous couturier Yves Saint Laurent (died yesterday 01 Jun – obituary BBC), the Le Smoking tuxedo suit for women was the first of its kind to earn attention in the fashion world and in popular culture. When Le Smoking appeared as part of Saint laurent’s ‘Pop Art’ collection, in the shape of a black jacket and trousers in grain de poudre with four button down pockets, and a straight cut, high-waisted satin version over a white organdy blouse, they were a controversial alternative to the classic little black dress or evening gown. Instantly adored by a chic collective of style icons including Catherine Deneuve, Betty Catroux, Francoise Hardy, Liza Minelli, LouLou de la Falaise, Lauren Bacall and Bianca Jagger, over the next 30 years Saint Laurent reinvented his signature silhouette in hundreds of new and different guises from dress and short versions to jumpsuits and trenches. Today all Saint Laurent’s successors from Alber Elbaz to Tom Ford and the current YSL designer, Stefano Pilati, all ensure that Le Smoking is an inherent feature in every YSL collection.
Fashion photography echoes the influence of this suit in shoots that feature androgynous models with slicked-back hair in a mannish three-piece suit, a style that was first popularised in photographs by Helmut Newton (now you know why I posted another picture yesterday of Helmut Newton).
Nude Madonna
– Madonna by the famous Helmut Newton, a German-Australian fashion photographer.
How to find images on the internet
Images can be found just about everywhere on the mighty internet. Below you’ll find some interesting gateways to larger image collections. Some are for free, some ask for hard bucks. Some are copyrighted, others are not or even others have a Creative Commons license. If you have located an image somewhere in the digital chaos of the world wide web, always check the conditions of use. Don’t say I didn’t warn you… 
The easiest way to search images is to use search engines :
Ask image search
Google advanced image search
Yahoo image search
Next you can search Creative Commons images,
Creative Commons Web site, Creative Commons explained and portal
Creative Commons image search
Google Creative Commons search (yes try using the advanced search features of Google iso of the ususal simple search bar)
Yahoo Creative Commons search
everystockphoto.com is a search engine for creative commons photos, located in Vancouver
and free stock image collections (always nice if it’s for free, but read the fine print of some of these…) :
DeviantART
FreeFoto.com
Free Images.co.uk
Imageafter
MorgueFile (The term “morgue file” is popular in the newspaper business to describe the file that holds past issues flats)
OpenPhoto.Net
Stock.xchng
Media resources are great for finding recent images :
AFP (Agence France-Presse)
BBC Photo Library (sometimes there seems to be a problem with this site – I’m trying to figure it out)
Empics (Press Association)
Nettizen Online Newspaper Directory
News Directory, a guide to all online English-language media (worldwide), over 3,600 newspapers, 4,800 magazines, hundreds of television stations plus colleges, visitor bureaus, governmental agencies, travel links, and comics ; more than 14,500 links in all
NI (News International) Syndication
Reuters
Or you could check dedicated photojournalist resources :
Association of Photographers
EPUK (Editorial Photographers United Kingdom & Ireland)
NPPA (National Press Photographers Association)
NUJ (National Union of Journalists)
World Press Photo
Some commercial image collection can be found at (read : you have to pay, subscribe, have credit,…) :
About the Image blog
BAPLA (British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies)
BigStockPhoto
Big White Box
Clipart.com
Corbis
Getty Images
Fotolia
iStockPhoto
Jupiterimages Unlimited
PACA (Picture Archive Council of America)
Stockxpert
Or if you are desperately seeking historical images, have a look here :
UNESCO’s Archival Portal, an enormous portal to archives around the world, a bit overwhelming.
UK Public Libraries Page, access to images available at local libraries in the UK
UK Higher Education and Research Libraries, access via these libraries to large image collections, but will take time to search
Sensitive Map, similar as the previous but using a clickable map to direct you to an institution
Libweb, a portal to 7500 libraries in 135 countries which contain of course images
24hourmuseum, a virtual UK museum
Cornucopia, an online database of information about more than 6,000 collections in the UK’s museums, galleries, archives and libraries
Virtual Library Museums Pages, a distributed directory of on-line museums
EIG (Education Image Gallery), nice resource for schools
EnrichUK, a searchable portal linking 150 websites that have been supported with Lottery good causes money from the UK
BBC History
PBS History, some pictures, but mainly movies ; still a nice portal with lots of material including teacher resources (PBS, headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, is a non–profit media enterprise owned and operated by the nation’s 348 public television stations)
Scran, part of the Scran Trust – a registered charity – whose aim is to provide educational access to digital materials representing our material culture and history
British History Online
Best of History Web Sites
Voice of the Shuttle, another overwhelming source of information, I need 48-hour-days
Ok, if you didn’t yet find the right image you need, try some of the following specialist sources :
Directories of museums and art galleries
24hourmuseum (also mentioned as a source for historical images)
Art Guide, the comprehensive internet guide to the art collections of Great Britain and Ireland
Art Museum Network, up-to-date information about the news and activities of more than 200 leading museums around the world including news about the exhibitions, acquisitions, and programs of institutions, and links to all members ; so indirect access to image collections worldwide (well most are American, but other countries are represented as well)
Cornucopia, also mentioned as a source for historical images
Virtual Library Museums Pages, and this one as well
Directories of contemporary art galleries
Artnet.com, actually a place to buy, sell and research fine art online, with over 1,200 galleries in over 250 cities worldwide, more than 100,000 works by over 25,000 artists from around the globe represented on this site ; so lots of art images
AskArt, a comprehensive source for information on contemporary American artists
Gallery Channel, a nice site with information on 8,400 exhibition venues, 21,400 exhibitions and 25,600 artists worldwide – all available for public view, a nice site, easy to access
Other museums with significant online collections
British Museum
Hermitage, a famous museum along the embankment of the River Neva, right in the heart of St Petersburg, Russia
Louvre, situated in Paris as you surely know
Metropolitan Museum of Art, near Central Park, New York
Museum of Modern Art, also in New York between 5th and 6th street
National Gallery in London
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Tate holds the national collection of British art from 1500 and of international modern art. All works can be found on this site.
Victoria and Albert Museum
Or perhaps you are looking for builidings or other architectural images ?
Great Buildings Online, with integrated Google maps ; nice try but too many adds and needs a complete design overhaul ; still nice idea.
Index of Art Historical Sites, no adds, but needs redesigning, although lots of architectural images
RIBApix, another one, better, but search facilities not always optimal
Other aggregated art image collections (some commercial) :
AHDS Visual Arts
American Memory, part of the Library of Congress
Art Resource
ARTstor, aimed at Canadian and American institutions
Bridgeman Education, also aimed at institutions
David Rumsey Visual Collections, both free and subscription based collections
Courtauld Art and Architecture collection
Grove Art, free trial but subscription required later on
OAIster, with Firefox plugin (!)
RLG Camio, for institutions mainly
RLG Cultural Materials
Scholars Resource, lots of teacher resources
Art History Resources on the Web
AICT, Art Images for College Teaching
Artcyclopedia
Smithsonian Art and Design
UCLA Arts Library Sources, interesting portal
ULAN, Union List of Artist Names, search using structured vocabularies (Part of Getty Museum website)
WorldArt Web Kiosk, access the Californian University image database
Not all of us are into history and art. Some might want scientific images :
Via RDN (Resource Discovery Network) : a wealth of information including texts, images, maps, etc.
BIOME (Life Sciences, Health and Medicine)
EEVL (Engineering, Mathematics and Computing)
Gesource (Geography and Environment) -
PSIgate (Physical Sciences) -
(In the future RDN is to be found at Intute)
General scientific image databases :
Science and Society Picture Library (UK based)
Science Photo Library
ScienceImage
Science.gov (USA government)
US Government Resources for Science Images
USA Centres for Disease Control (CDC) Public Health Image Library
Hubble Space Telescope
NASA
NOAA, US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
USDA, US Department of Agriculture
USDoD, US Department of Defense
USDOE, US Department of Energy
USFWS, US Fish and Wildlife Service
Medical images
Anatline, a web-based interface for viewing high resolution anatomical images (very nice !)
Bristol Biomed Image Archive, only for Athens member institutions (if your institution is not a member, you can apply via the website)
Images from the History of Medicine, website of the US National Library of Medicine (NLM)
Karolinska Institutet, images provided by Sweden’s largest medical university
Medical Images on the Web, overview of medical image databases provided by the University of Nebraska
MPL Medical Photographic Library
TDR Image Library with a focus on tropical diseases
Viperlib Visual Perception Images, images related to visual perception (obviously…)
Weill Cornell Medical Library directory
Enough about humans ? What about other species ?
Arkive,the Noah’s Ark for the Internet era – a unique global initiative, gathering together into one centralised digital library, films, photographs and audio recordings of the world’s species
Agripicture picture library, a select diverse collection of generic farming images
Biodidac, Biological Images
Canon Photo Gallery, part World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
ImageBank, Higher Education Academy, Centre for Bioscience, UK
Botanical Society of America, online image collection drawings actually
Earth is also a topmodel as we can see in these images :
American Geological Institute Earth Science World Image Bank
Geo-Images Project maintained at Berkeley University by G. Donald Bain, Director of the Geography Computing Facility
Picture Library of the famous Geological Society of London
National (UK) Archive of Geological Photographs
And finally I wanted to include some resources for maps :
Bodleian Library’s Map Room, and that’s exactly what it is, a ‘room’ full of links
Odden’s Bookmarks, enough links to fill a lifetime
National Geographic Maps, always beautifully made
Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection from the University of Texas
David Rumsey Map Collection if you like historical maps
DEMIS World Map Server, a software program to generate maps (not for free…)
Online Map Creation (OMC) Tool, a software package to create high-quality postscript maps in various projections (free)
Timemap TMJava is a novel mapping applet which generates complete interactive maps with a few simple lines of html, and… an open source project of the University of Sydney ; I need to test this as it seems like an awesome application. Anyone tried this already ?
Earthbrowser, software application allowing you to browse the surface of our blue planet (free trial, rated at 23.95$ with updates), including webcams, satellite updates, etc.
Atlas of Cyberspace, an atlas of maps and graphic representations of the geographies of the new electronic territories of the Internet, the World-Wide Web and other emerging Cyberspaces, interesting site
And last but not least Google earth
This list is not intended to be exhaustive. If you know of other resources we should include, please put a comment. Thank you.
NAPP Launches Lightroom Beta Learning Centre
The National Association of Photoshop Professionals has just launched the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.0 Learning Center.(via)
Online Software
To try out (?): Adobe Photoshop Express. This online photo editing application offers users 2GB of free storage, photo sharing, and some of the more commonly-used Photoshop editing tools, including cropping, resizing, converting to black and white, red-eye and blemish removal, distort, and more. But make no mistake, this is NOT photoshop, not even close. The GUI looks nice, but I’m not sure why I should use this. Looks a bit basic.
Thank you
“Magnum is a community of thought, a shared human quality, a curiosity about what is going on in the world, a respect for what is going on and a desire to transcribe it visually.”
–Henri Cartier-Bresson
Eh… a present for Christmas I would really appreciate…
Available online here (Magnum site with info) and here or offline at a decent bookstore e.g. Thank you.
Update : Magnum selling price is 200 USD (139 EUR), Amazon USA 141.75 USD (98 EUR) Amazon UK 61.75 GBP (85 EUR) and Amazon France 133 EUR. Amazon Germany 149.80 EUR. What a huge difference at the different Amazon stores !??
The first photograph
The Harry Ransom Center has an online exhibition about the first photograph. The picture was made ca. 1826 by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, a French inventor, most noted as a pioneer in photography.
Update: Neatorama has a nice post on the wonderful world of early photography.
The most expensive photographs ever sold
Ever wondered just how much your best photograph could be worth if it was put up for auction? Here are the photos that have won the five highest bids when put on the block.
Inside Lightroom
Inside Lightroom (Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, photographic workflow software from Adobe). This site is a resource for tips, tricks and also hosts Lightroom Develop Presets.
Articles of interest
The game of chess has its roots in rationalism. And, like the Enlightenment itself, argues Sally Feldman, it’s a force for both liberation and tyranny.
Whatever became of Geff, the Talking Mongoose of Doarlish Cashen? What this baffling creature was doing on the Isle of Man to begin with is mystery enough. And what of Pasquale Erto, the Human Rainbow from Naples, who would appear nude and in a self-induced trance, with rays of light six yards long emanating from his body? It is a pity no camera ever captured the full effect. Adrian Searle attends a very strange exhibition – and wonders how these pictures ever fooled anyone.
“Ma’am, books are like Kryptonite to gangs.” Steve Wasserman worries about the decline of coverage of books in newspapers.
Want to outsource your personal life ? Indian call centers is the answer (it’s an American thing… – not something I see myself doing)
And here is a story about an egg that costs 8.9 GBP, eh 8.9 million GBP, a Fabergé egg that is.
Weekend Reading List
Why is Joseph Heller’s famous ‘Catch’ called ‘22′? Why is Bertie’s manservant called Jeeves? And why does the postman always ring twice (in a book that has no postman)? In these fascinating extracts from his new book, Gary Dexter reveals the story behind the stories.
Querty.08, an article on technology convergence.
Two teams of scientists have given human skin cells many of the properties of embryonic stem cells—a development that could ease political, ethical, and medical concerns over the highly controversial research topic. Report by NG and SCIAM.
Not really something to read, but to try out : SAGE, Open Source Mathematics Software.
Browse Dream Anatomy at the U.S. National Library of Medicine. A fantastic site.
And yet another one : Bodies of Knowledge. Our bodies are incredibly complex machines. Every second of every day we are powered by beating hearts, and carried around by intricate skeletons. Pipes, organs, hormones and brain cells keep us eating, breathing, growing and thinking. And yet few of us ever get to see the amazing mechanisms hidden beneath our own skin. For thousands of years the inner workings of the body have provoked fascination, confusion, amazement and even disgust. This site looks at the way different cultures, at various points in history, have looked at the body, and how these ideas have been translated into pictures.
Chase Jarvis
Chase Jarvis assembled a list of 150 blogs about photograhpy, design and pop culture. Some of them I already knew, but there are some fine discoveries to be made here (via)
A photo editor, the Magnum blog, I love typography, the Wooster Collective, and many more to be discovered. Chase was going to provide an OPML with this collection, but I haven’t seen it yet.
43 Camera Brands
Amateur camaras, semi-professional cameras, professional cameras and super-professional cameras, you’ll find them all in this list. If you think some camara brands are missing, let me know.
Personally I’m using a Nikon D200.
Alpa | Arca Swiss | Bender | Better Light | Cambo | Canham | Canon | Contax | Ebony | Exakta | Fujifilm | Gilde | Gowland | Hartblei | Hasselblad | Horseman | Kodak | Leaf | Leica | Linhof | Littman | Lotus | | Mamiya | MPP | Nikon | Olympus | Panasonic | Pentax | Phase One | Pinhole | Plaubel | Polaroid | Ricoh | Sigma | Silvestri | Sinar | Sony | Toho | Toyo | Walker | Wehman | Wisner | Wista
Pinhole Photography
‘Pinhole Photography – History, Images, Cameras, Formulas‘ by Jon Grepstad. A great resource ! Definitely something I want to try out.
Should I get a Nikon D300 ?
Well… I own already a D200, and comparing the features of both, I can’t see a decent reason to get me a D300. Yes, the D300 has live-viewing on a new LCD, faster frame rates, and a broader range of color adjustments, but this does not convince me to get a D300. A self-cleaning sensor unit ? I don’t have any problem with the sensor of the D200. So, only if you don’t own a D200, than I would suggest to get the D300.
And anyhow I principally prefer (suggest) to invest in better lenses. It’s like buying high-end audio equipment with low-end loudspeakers (which I see all too often, because people spend their budget on the audio equipment and what is left on the loadspeakers while it should be the other way around to a certain extent).
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