philly

So they finally arrived. Fifteen days after I got notice that they were shipped which is over a week longer than it was supposed to take. But what ya gonna do. They look cool. I've been carrying them around with me in an Altoids Chewing Gum tin which fits a little more than 30 at a time (3 sets of my 11). I would've loved for them to be a bit brighter and have a little more color pop to them. I also noticed that I misspelled one thing like a total asshat. It's not my email, or my name, or my website, or the phone number (removed for this post [I need a teensy bit of privacy eh?]).

They arrived in a little, well packaged reusable box which was inside a plastic bubble wrapped pouch.

On the back of the pink wrap was some info on MOO and the MiniCards I got. The box is recyclable (not that Philly would dare consider recycling #5 plastics!) and the cards made from sustainable forests. That drop logo may mean that they used soy inks, but not sure on that.

Henri Cartier-Bresson didn't give many interviews nor was his face well known. I guess the man just liked to let his work speak for him. I came across this interview of Cartier-Bresson by my favorite interviewer Charlie Rose. Cartier-Bresson is quite soft spoken and thoughtful, not one to waste words. Just absolutely incredible to hear him describe the back story of some of his photos including one where Ghandi plays art critic and casts Cartier-Bresson's new MoMA book The Photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson aside saying "Death, death, death." Half an hour later, Ghandi was assassinated. Another of a so-so shot of the 14th Dalai Lama and even a shot which he reveals he did not take.

Whether you know it or not, you're familiar with Cartier-Bresson's work. His Magnum portfolio will likely jar your memory. Whether they know it or not, or like it or not, just about every photographer born since 1908 has been influenced by Cartier-Bresson, I know I have.

Our landlord has a copy of The World of Henri Cartier Bresson, a wonderful, 200p+, large format book. I'll be pawing through this one for awhile.

Watch the 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner with Stephen Colbert ripping everyone a new one.

YouTube link

A video from the writers of The Daily Show.

via A Photo Editor

Good god do I hate the fucking legislators in Harrisburg. They seem to be more bass ackwards than any other set of legislators in these united states. Cattabiani's latest digs into an issue I didn't know was an issue. Harrisburg politicians have been using tax dollars for their personal political polls.

In a practice believed to be unique to Pennsylvania's Capitol, legislative leaders have paid out-of-state companies $466,000 this year to conduct focus groups and public-opinion surveys, with the results anything but public.

Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate have defended the practice as an effective way of shaping their priorities, although until late last week all had refused to release results.

Here's how House Majority Leader (and total douchebag) Bill DeWeese defends the spending of tax dollars (instead of their own campaign funds, which is what is normally used for straight-up political purpose polls):

DeWeese said House Democrats had used such polls effectively in the past. Last year, for example, polls indicated that the stance by Senate Republicans against an increase in the state's minimum wage was unpopular. It gave Democrats the confidence to wage an "Alamo-like" push to raise the wage, he said.

DeWeese, who is under mounting pressure to resign over a highly public legislative bonus scandal, fell short of declaring an end to all taxpayer-funded polling by House Democrats, but he came close.

These fuckers needed a fucking poll to tell them that, oh shit, maybe people want higher fucking raises like we want to vote ourselves?!?! I have some poll results for them to ponder, they're attached to the knuckles of my right hand and I can stamp it to their foreheads upon request.

DeWeese was one legislator who escaped ousting after the whole pay raise fiasco of 2005. To rewind, that was back in 2006 when our "leaders" wanted to give themselves fat raises (yes, they had the power to just vote themselves a raise, and gave themselves between a 16% - 34% raise) over fighting for a higher minimum wage. DeWeese was for the pay raise. He was so adamantly pro pay raise, he wanted to strip committee assignments of Democrats who were against the pay raise.

This guy is a Class A, No Talent Ass Clown in the league of Michael Bolton. Somebody please get this guy out of office.

This shot is one of my favorite shots I've taken in awhile.

It was taken in Times Square last weekend while staying with Lady at her conference. There's a definite sense of movement within the shot, but also a still moment within the madness just off from Times Square. I tried to take a shot like this all weekend and I was glad I got it on Saturday. I knew that this construction walkway would make for a good shot like this as I'd be walking at roughly the same pace as someone in front of me with the path extending towards a vanishing point. It would've been great to get the face of a person walking in the opposite direction too, but maybe that would've been too much in a shot.

I think my photos are changing, maturing a bit. I'm thinking about shots more now. I've been looking at more photographs and reading about things more than ever now. The links section of my photoblog has been revamped for photo-specific sites. An incredible resource has been the Dave Black workshops. I actually tried the "moody blue" technique discussed here at KoP in the outside shots I took (the last one in this post). Not to the full extent that he used it, but I definitely darkened the blue of the sky behind them and used a color temperature orange (CTO) gel on the flash to keep their skin tones warm and normal. Pretty neat. I'm slowly learning how to use flash creatively.

I get an incredible amount of inspiration from the other photobloggers out there. There is so much great stuff out there and most people are so open to share their experiences with everyone else. There's less "secret sauce" out there I think. There's more of a rising tide lifts all boats notion out there from what I've noticed. Even greater is seeing my contemporaries right here in Philly get better and better and seeing some move onto pro photo gigs as well. With more and more sophisticated hardware and software coming out, it's incredible to see people take full advantage of what's out there; in the digital world, after the initial cost of the hardware, you can experiment without spending cash (but time is money too).

Out of all the new sites I've been visiting, I'm particularly blown away by the portraits here and here and the photojournalism from this photog from the Baltimore Sun.

Where were you at 4.30a on Black Friday? Me? I was at KoP taking photos of their Black Friday madness/spectacular/free-for-all. That's the line at 4.30a. There were about 40 people already inside in the "inside" rope line. The rest of the people…

They were outside of the Citizens Bank entrance and around the corner around Neiman Marcus. If you've been to KoP before, you know that's a good distance.

People were bundled up. In sleeping bags. With pillows. In layers. Holding each other for warmth.

And once inside, they navigated the rope line with their printed-out voucher in hand for their bag full of goodies.

The bags full of goodies included discounts at Starbucks, $500 off from a mattress store, some Godiva, water, more coupons and more coupons.

Here's the initial rush of people for the bags.

The people behind the counter giving out the bags were like high speed robots. They handed out 1500 bags.

But where to go first? The people refilling the bins of the directories had their hands full as well. People were taking the foldouts almost as quickly as they were the bags.

Some people were moving at near the speed of light for the deals.

The scene in front of the Apple store at about 5.50a. About 75 people deep for the mysterious Black Friday deals which weren't open to the public until late in typical secretive Apple fashion.

About the only place that wasn't overrun? The Santa photo line - it wasn't open yet.

I'd say the longest lines were at the two GameStops. What their deals were, I have no idea, but who doesn't want XBox 360, PS3 and Wii stuff?

On my way out, I snapped some last shots of people leaving. These three were in town all the way from Brooklyn.

I survived Black Friday at KoP 2007! I didn't buy anything. The largest retail space mall in America. And after talking with my friend down in Atlanta, she said that KoP was on the news there. There were a lot of people in there.

According to the Inky's 2007 "homicide map" (ouch, Philly needs a murder map?!) 339 people have been murdered as of November 1st. According to last year's map, there were 406 so the situation is improving, a little bit.

According to this NY Times article, murders in NYC are about to dip below 500 for the first time in over 40 years with the count currently at 428. NYC is a city that is roughly 8x the size of Philly and Philly has about 80% of the murder count as NYC. Extrapolating this year's Philly murder count to a city the size of NYC, you'd have 2700+ murders. According to the graphic at left, it doesn't look like NYC has ever had that many ('90 looks like it had a bit under 2500.

Mayor-elect Michael Nutter has a crime plan which he calls Safety Now which would enact an immediate and targeted crime emergency (Philly also has 648 shootings through May). His appointment of a guy who had his force beat up on protesters and a journalist and received some serious criticism from the Human Rights Watch sends the message that Nutter may go Giuliani on Philly. During Giuliani's reign, murders dropped to about a third from when he took office. Nutter will come into office with the last 6 years' murder count averaging 343/year. If he leaves office in 2016 with a murder count of 114, will the centerpiece of his legacy be crime reduction?

Inky image: Alan Basden/Inquirer
NYT image: source: NYPD

From everything I've read (by people who've actually used this sucker), this camera may swing the tide of photojournalists and sports shooters back to Nikon from Canon. See what (Philly-based wedding shooter) Cliff Mautner and (one of the baddest photogs in the biz) Dave Black have to say about the Nikon D3.

Additionally, DP Review's Phil Askey takes a look, and James Russell writes for Luminous Landscape about the D3. Rob Galbraith has rounded up some examples of shots taken with the D3, in the wild, from ISO200 to ISO25600 [that's not a typo].

I cannot put into words how much I want this $5k [before taxes and new glass!] brick of full frame wonderful.

Photo grabbed from DPReview.com

I finished going through several hundred shots from the Body Diversity fashion show last week I shot for A Chance to Heal. Gallery of shots here.