One Million Dollars

According to a post on his blog and website, Peter Lik claims this photograph, entitled "One," sold to an anonymous buyer for One Million Dollars.

US? Or Zimbabwe?

Does not say. Could be any number of currencies which use the term dollar.

Maybe he paid himself that much to give the photo to his mom?

I don't know. I think it is a fine photo of implied fall colors and white birch trees.

But, $1,000,000? Does the buyer think it will appreciate in value?

And the whole story is kind of strange. This is the "only" print. Did he destroy the negative? Is it film? Digital? Obviously he scanned it.

Hey, if I paid 1mil for this, I would want to know there were not a million idiots blogging my picture all over the place.

Sour grapes, you say? Nah. I wish him all the best. Just more proof that photography is all a mind game, like selling air, or internet service.

Just find the right buyer... and Bob's yer uncle.

Kodachrome Gone... big deal.

Sentimental BS. Kodachrome is gone because Kodak did not evolve it. The development process is straight out of mad science, each run prone to color shifts, the machines were beasts to calibrate, and let's face it, Fuji has been making better color film for 20 years now. And they do it in everything from 35mm to 8x10.

Most of the people waxing poetic about Kodachrome are photojournalists who did some amazing work with it, and at the time, it was the best for 35mm.

When I worked at a lab that did pro work in NYC in the 80's, most of the Kodachrome we got was from tourists wanting "that look" the pros in advertising and fashion had already moved on to E6 because they were shooting 120, 4x5, and 8x10s. Those that did ran test strips to see what the process was like on that run. They would then come back and ask for the next run to pull 1/2 or push 1/3. It was a nightmare.

When your whole world is black and white, like it was for newspaper photographers like me in those days, shooting color was special. You might get one color Sunday supplement shot in, maybe 4-5 times a year, if you were motivated you could freelance to a magazine in those days, or shoot stock--but Tri-X was where you lived, how your mind worked.

Over the years I took some memorable shots on Kodachrome. The cracked wood and daises is, I believe, one of the first kodachrome pictures I took while I was in High School in 1973. The photo of the USS Belleau Wood in San Francisco is from 1979. I have a whole box of slides, mostly Kodachrome here, every now and then it is fun to go back and look through them.

Maybe that might be more fun now.

So as Kodachrome sails off into the sunset, let's keep it all in perspective. It was market share and Kodak's hubris that killed Kodachrome, a failure to recognize and respond to years of demands from working professionals to make the film in larger sizes, make development more stable and recognize that Fuji was closing the gap.

Vivian Maier, Photographer

I recently discovered that someone has discovered a fantastic, unknown photographer named Vivian Maier. She lived in Chicago, was a nanny by profession, and a photographer by passion. Her works were accidentally discovered at a abandoned property sale and became an obsession for the man who discovered them.

He has made this blog http://www.vivianmaier.blogspot.com/ which has all the links you need to learn more.

I advise you to do so.

Man Arrested for.... "Illegal Photography"

Yep, that is what WJHL reports here.
Apparently the officer felt the perp's iPhone was a threat of some kind, and arrested him for taking his picture.
Ah, Tennessee.

Miami Photographer Sort-of-Not-Guilty

I have blogged a number of times about the completely merit-less case against Carlos Miller, a Miami-based photojournalist who was arrested (and assaulted) by police there for photographing an accident investigation on a public street.
Anyway, he went to trial Monday 16 June, and the verdict is in late tonight...

Not guilty on disorderly conduct.
Not guilty on unlawful refusal to obey a police officer.
Guilty on resisting arrest without violence.
Guilty of obstructing a public highway.
He’s gonna have to do 100 hours of community service, 1 year probation and pay about $400 in court costs.
The judge got high and mighty saying Carlos was cavalier during the trial and we found out the jury felt that Carlos hurt himself by testifying.

That from his blog, here...

WTF is "resisting arrest without violence?" And if you are not guilty on refusing to obey a police officer, why get arrested?

Indeed, what law, exactly did he violate?

Or did he just not bow and scrape low enough to these thugs in blue?

Photographers Protest Restrictions

There have been lots and lots of reduction in our rights as photographers to make images in the past 7 years. I am amazed at some of the stories I read and hear about these days.
As American citizens, we have THE RIGHT to make any photograph at any time in public. We have the RESPONSIBILITY to make sure those who work for us (police especially) are doing their jobs, and there is a long-standing, historical interest in documenting our society.
Recently, there have been a number of camera confiscations, photographer detentions, arrests, and outright harassment cases in NYC and elsewhere.
Tomorrow a group of NYC photographers are staging a protest about specific issues with the NY Metropolitan Transit Authority, surrounding the construction of a new train yard.
Should be interesting. Hope no one I know gets hurt.