ROBERT HEINECKEN DIES at 74

By Christopher Knight @ LA Times

Robert Heinecken, an artist who was instrumental in changing the way photographs are considered in the American cultural landscape, died Friday at a nursing home in Albuquerque, N.M. He was 74.

Heinecken, who had relocated to New Mexico after living and working principally in Los Angeles for more than 50 years, had suffered from the effects of Alzheimer's disease since 1994, according to his wife, Joyce Neimanas.



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Museum of Contemporary Photography

Bodybuilder and Sportsman Gallery

World’s Smallest 8-Megapixel Image Sensor from Micron Technology Packs Ultra-fast Picture Taking and High Definition Video

Micron Builds the World’s First 8-Megapixel Image Sensor in the Popular 1/2.5 Optical Format;
Company Continues Imaging Innovation, Unveils Pictures Taken With a 1.4-micron Pixel Test Chip

BOISE, Idaho, May 18, 2006 – The world of digital cameras just got bigger and smaller at the same time. Using a tiny 1.75-micron pixel design, Micron Technology, Inc., has built the world’s first 8-megapixel image sensor in a 1/2.5-inch optical format, the standard size for mainstream digital cameras. This new sensor comes loaded with features and functionality that will catapult Micron-equipped cameras into the next generation of digital cameras featuring high-resolution still images, ultra-fast image capture and vibrant high-definition video.

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The eye next door

Photographer Bill Owens roams, but keeps coming back to suburbia.

By Michael J. Ybarra @ The LA Times

Hayward, Calif. — On a bucolic street in this suburb (what else?) south of San Francisco, Bill Owens lives in a cottage crammed with art, mementos and the detritus of enough half-started projects — vintage pickup truck rebuilding, sparkling winemaking — to full several lifetimes. Somehow the human skull sitting atop a shelf doesn't look out of place.

"Don't ask me where I got it," says Owens. "I used to have an antique store. I can tell you where I got the cannonball, though."

A typical Owens story starts with "I once worked as a .... "

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The Great Luminous Landscape 2006 State-of-The-Art Shootout

by Chris Sanderson, Michael Reichmann, Charles Cramer, Bill Atkinson @ Luminous Landscape




In March of 2006 I purchased a Phase One P45 medium format back in Hasselblad H mount. This was an upgrade from a P25 back – 22 Megapixels to 39 Megapixels, among other improvements. My friend Bill Atkinson also upgraded from a P25 to a P45 at the same time, and Charles Cramer simultaniously purchased his own P45, his first digital back, after shooting 4X5" film for the past 30 years.

The three of us decided to inaugurate our new gear with a shoot together in the redwoods of Northern California, but not before adding my friend and frequent shooting companion Kevin Raber, who happens to be the VP of Marketing for Phase One in the US. A description of that shoot, and some photographs from it can be found in Counting Ants, an essay on shooting with a view camera and the P45 back.

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Adobe Photoshop CS2 updates

Adobe has released an updater for Photoshop CS2, Camera Raw 3.4, and DNG Converter. According to thier documentation there are many enhancements and improvements,

Adobe new downloads page

MacWorld UK article

Next-generation cameras inspired by fruit flies and moths

By Lisa Zyga @ PhysOrg.com

Today’s digital micro-cameras and other optical devices use lenses based on human-type single aperture eyes. These lenses, which are manufactured with macroscopic technology, do not get thinner than about 5 mm.

However, insects such as fruit flies and moths have a completely different type of eye called compound eyes to accommodate the animals’ small size and low brain processing capabilities. Compound eyes consist of up to tens of thousands of tiny sensors called “ommatidia” that detect light and sometimes color. Flies and moths see images made of a combination of inputs from the ommatidia that point in different directions, forming a large field of view while the total volume consumption remains small.

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A Brief History of Aperture, or "How Not To Do A Product Launch 101"

By Dave Girard @ arsTechnica

It is no secret that I wasn't a fan of Aperture 1.0. From the outright broken things like 8-bit TIFF export and EXIF data stripping on output to the Zen take on a manual (there is no documentation"), everything about Aperture 1.0 pointed to an unrealistic deadline and a QA department with their monitors off. While the EXIF bug was fixed with the OS X 10.4.6 update, the problems I saw in Aperture 1.0 were sadly only the tip of the iceberg and eventually users' different workflows exposed numerous additional flaws, some nastier than others. After inconsistent responses to some angry customers who wanted their money back, the whole thing got even uglier.

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Trading His Camera for a Brush

Charles Sheeler Took Masterly Photos, and Then an Unwise Leap

By Blake Gopnik @ Washington Post

Every last move an artist makes -- every last move -- has social and political implications. Draw a female nude, and you're not just depicting an attractive chunk of biomass. You're invoking the entire history of gender politics, and how that has panned out in art. Choose to paint in watercolor, and you're not just working in a pretty medium. You're calling to mind a whole bunch of associations that watercolor has with decorous gentility. You can fight those associations; your work might even manage to outshout them. But you can't pretend such social realities, or your struggle against them, simply aren't present in your art.

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Apocalypse Porn

by R.C. Baker @ Village Voice

After an airburst, smoky tendrils trail from a blood-red orb that floats like a gargantuan, haloed jellyfish; a soaring, spiky tower of boiling water erupts from the Pacific seconds after an undersea detonation, dwarfing a decommissioned armada near Bikini Atoll. The artist culled these images from government archives, rephotographing the original prints (1940s–60s) with a large-format camera, which captures the bureaucratic notations of the military-industrial complex—grease-penciled marginalia, ragged binder holes, dog-eared corners, Scotch-taped rips. A nocturnal image of soldiers crouched in the dirt, backs turned and eyes shielded from a distant blast—which throws their stark shadows onto a corrugated-steel wall—conveys the biblical power of these weapons. Even more unsettling is a vision of military V.I.P.'s in shorts lounging on Adirondack chairs as a false sun, bursting over Enewetak Atoll, is reflected in their oversize black goggles. Nothing like a day at the beach.

100 Suns: 036 Grable/15 Kilotons/1953, 2003
Courtesy Hosfelt Gallery, New York/San Francisco
Michael Light: 100 Suns
Hosfelt Gallery
531 West 36th Street
Through May 13

Data Rescue for Compact Flash

Have you lost your pictures? Do not panic! Try PhotoRescue: the digital photo & picture recovery solution for erased or damaged compact flash, memory stick, xd cards, smart media, sd cards and other media used in digital cameras. For Mac OS X and Windows XP. Definitely worth the $29!

PhotoRescue site

DIAS DE LOS MUERTOS

by Kathryn Garcia @ artnet

Sometimes it seems like Mexico City is built on layers of death, first the sacrifices of the sun-worshipping Aztecs, then the Spanish genocide in the name of Christ. Today, modern life adds another layer -- the violence, crime and suffering that permeate the world’s most populous city.

Such contemporary catastrophes are the subjects of Enrique Metinides (b. 1934), the Mexico City photojournalist who has an intuitive aptitude for framing compellingly gruesome images. Since age 12, he has dedicated his life to tabloid photography, snapping shots for La Prensa as well as following tragedy as employee of the Red Cross, capturing some of the darkest aspects of human existence.

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