Photoshop CS3

Adobe posted a beta version of Photoshop CS3 last week and the reviews are streaming in. It certainly adds a great deal of speed to the application on my MacIntel desktop, others running PPC G5's have lackluster reviews.

Photoshop CS3 download page

Martin Evening's "What's New in Photoshop CS3" (PDF)

John Nack's Adobe Blog

Scott Byer's Adobe Blog

Adobe Photoshop CS3 Forum

Wayne Crosshall's review of Bridge CS3

Wayne Crosshall's review of Adobe Camera Raw CS3

Late breaking news of problems @Macfixit

Alexey Titarenko

a book review @ Lens Culture

I met and interviewed Alexey in 1996 and actually have a signed copy of the print above from that experience (and he has a piece of mine). Very interesting guy. In fact, here is an image of me filming Alexey in St. petersburg, Russia.


Read the review @ Lens Culture

A Trail of Diamonds

Photographs by Kadir Von Lohutzen

I ran across this and thought it appropriate for both the time of year and the current selection at the theatres. What is it about diamonds, besides their value, that is so attractive?

View Photo Essay @ ForiegnPolicy.com

War/Photography: An Interview with Simon Norfolk

Simon Norfolk. Ascension Island, South Atlantic

Geoff Manaugh interviews Norfolk on his blog.

Geoff's blog

Talking Pictures

John Szarkowski on the good, the bad and the flat in American photography
By HOLLY MYERS AND TOM CHRISTIE @ LA Weekly

There are few people alive today with more stories to tell about American photography than John Szarkowski, and probably none capable of telling them with quite the same charm. Born in Ashland, Wisconsin, in 1925, Szarkowski took up photography himself at a young age, secured two Guggenheim fellowships and published two books of his own before being tapped by Edward Steichen to take over the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art in 1962. His tenure at the museum lasted nearly 30 years and spanned a decisive period — perhaps the decisive period — in the institutionalization of the medium, a process in which Szarkowski himself played no small part. As U.S. News and World Report proclaimed in 1990, “Szarkowski’s thinking, whether Americans know it or not, has become our thinking about photography.”

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Peter Fetterman Gallery

TEDTalks: Ed Burtynsky

Photographer Ed Burtynsky accepts the 2005 TEDPrize, and presents a stunning slideshow of his work, which explores human impact on the natural world in eerily beautiful large-scale landscapes. He also unveils his three wishes: To use his artwork to encourage a worldwide conversation about the planet; to launch a ground-breaking competition that motivates kids to invent new ideas in sustainable living; and to create a IMAX movie of his work.

View at Ted Talks

What’s New in Photography: Anything but Photos

By PHILIP GEFTER @ NY Times

In New York City, a vast number of commercial galleries show photographs. Many of them represent photography exclusively; some show photo-based art that incorporates other mediums; others are galleries that represent painters and sculptors primarily but also include a handful of photographers. But in the last few years, some of the most famous and long-standing photography galleries have begun mixing nonphotographic work in with their primary offerings.

It may not be a revolution, but it is a significant change in the gallery landscape. These are the places that helped to establish photography’s viability as an art form as well as to create a business model. Having proven their point, they are now at liberty to experiment.

There is an unofficial hierarchy among photo galleries, and the oldest tend to be at the top of the heap. Many of those have featured photographers who over the years have earned a place in the medium’s canon — sometimes because of their dealers’ efforts.

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Forensic Traces of War

photography by Simon Norfolk @ Lens Culture

Simon Norfolk is a very talented driven young photographer who is pursuing one of life’s big questions with intensity and focused intention. He is studying war, and its effects on many things: the physical shape of our cities and natural environments, social memory, the psychology of societies, and more.

He is examining genocide; imperialism; the interconnectedness of war, land and military space; and how wars are being fought at the same time with supercomputers, satellites, outdated weapons and equipment, people on the ground, intercepted communications, and manipulated and manipulating media.

READ ON @ Lensculture.com

Charlie Rose interviews Henri Cartier-Bresson

As the title says Charlie talks with Henri.

Video at Google

New media storage viewers for digital photographers

Canon today launches the portable devices, designed with EOS and other digital photographers in mind. The Canon Media Storage M30 and Canon Media Storage M80 devices feature a large ultra-bright 3.7” TFT screen with 160º viewing angle for image and video review, and a 30Gb/80Gb hard disk to store digital images, movie and sound files of various file formats. Both units feature a USB 2.0 Hi-Speed interface and slots for CF and SD cards.

30/80 Gb hard disk
3.7” ultra-bright TFT screen with 160º viewing angle
CF and SD card reader
USB 2.0 Hi-Speed connection
Support for multiple image, video and sound file formats, including Canon RAW, MPEG, MP3 and WAV.
Extended PictBridge functionality
4 – 8 digit image file password protection
1/8” audio-out headphone jack

Press Release

Do not adjust your screen

We know the American Depression through black and-white photographs. Now you can see it in colour.

By Blake Morrison @ The Guardian

If you have an image of the 1930s, the odds are it will be in black-and-white. This was the decade of the Great Depression and in both Britain and the United States, photographers worked almost exclusively in monochrome. Many books, songs and documentaries of the era - from The Grapes of Wrath and The Road to Wigan Pier to Woody Guthrie and John Grierson - are suffused with the same austere spirit, exacting a full look at the worst (hunger, poverty and oppression) with the aim of changing conditions for the better. The work isn't uniformly grim, but even the more hopeful images seem to be filtered through a lens of dusty grey - like the cold, post-apocalyptic ash that overlays the landscape in Cormac McCarthy's gruelling new novel, The Road.

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Slide Show

Thin Ice

Photographers take on the current environmental crisis

by Leslie Camhi @ Village Voice

It was an uncannily balmy day in late November when I visited Ectopia, a lively survey of work by some 40 artists from 14 countries who address, at times obliquely or through local case studies, the current environmental crisis. Take Shishmaref, for example, a small village on an Alaskan island, home to 491 Inupiat Eskimos whose way of life is threatened by global warming. In Gilles Mingasson's photographs (included here in a deeply affecting slide show of work by photojournalists on the front lines of ecological catastrophes) they hunt for seal on ever thinning ice, beside a coastline that is rapidly eroding.

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Ectopia: The Second ICP Triennial of Photography and Video
International Center of Photography
1133 Sixth Avenue
Through January 7