If you have ever seriously looked at humanity through a lens, you no doubt have known about Magnum.
Briefly,
“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

© Rene Burri. USA. NYC. June 27, 2010. Magnum photographers at the Annual General Meeting.

As the organization turns 70 this year, there are events all over the place, sharing, celebrating, illuminating the work created by some of the best photographers on the planet.
Here are just a few events coming up in NYC: Continue Reading »

I’m definitely a problem v. solution person. Need starts the search for the right gear solution.
And like many of us (all of us?) have a plethora of camera bags. the most fickle of gear options.
So, when my well planned flight from an event, went awry and I couldn’t put my ThinkTank Airport International in the overhead, and had to give it to the Flight Attendants who assured me that the bag would be in the hold and awaiting me at the gate. It wasn’t, then did, but that is another story.
Point being that the experience made me change things up. I needed a hard case, just in case I have to check my camera bag.
First solution was a Pelican 1510, with Trek Pak dividers, and then a ThinkTank backpack in my luggage, empty, then transfer once I got to a hotel/location. A bit funky, but it worked.
After 4 travelling shoots, I am ready to share this perfect solution from SKB.
They combined a great hard case, with a ThinkTank backpack, designed to fit perfectly inside the case!
Now, this is what it looks like:

I have packed it with a few different configurations-A mirrorless system with 2 bodies, and a plethora of lenses,& another with a mirrorless camera and a 4K video camera, broadcast handheld mic, lav, mic, etc. (this photo is just a sample image from SKB. Mine is all covered in stickers from events and cities)

It all depends on what the event will be.
An extra added beauty to this rig, is that there is enough space around the bag to add my many, many, many, lithium batteries. Seems we should be carrying them in the cabin now, and not checked. Thanks, exploding hoverboards and Samsung phones! I do keep them in mesh Muji bags so they are not flopping around. these have 2 compartments so I put used, and fresh batts in appropriate sides.

Plus, I always put a few TSA approved locks in that space, in case I do have to check the bag
The SKB outer case has a red button for raising and lowering the external handle, and is nicely places on one side of the top of the handle. This way you won’t accidentally lower it as you are rolling in with your hand in the middle of the grip.

The combination of a hard, waterproof case, with a ThinkTank quality backpack, has been a perfect combo.
Yes, the size is the same as a Pelican 1510, so you know what will fit.
Diving into the backpack a bit, you have a the adjustable dividers, and zippered see though compartments on the lid.

You can add a laptop or table to the outside, and the compartments for cards, easy to reach cables, pens, etc, are right where you need them.
One things.
There is a side pocket that I add a Gitzo traveler tripod into, secured by ThinkTank straps from some other bags. The tripod does get packed into my luggage. I could put a monopod with a ball head into the case, but I packed that into luggage as well.

What’s the downside? The only design flaw I saw was a zipper on the bag that had a tendency to catch on the weather resistance zipper cover. They are looking into that.

So. will it work with DSLR rigs? Of course it will! 2 bodies, the holy trinity of lenses (15-25, 24-70, 70-200 all f/2.8) tighter and heavier.

Cost is about $290 .Definite recco for purchase!
Yes, I have added another bag with some extra gear onto the handle. Full transparency, I brought my Nikon DSLR and lenses in addition to the mirrorless rig, to SXSW, in the additional bag. Yep, was still not sure the mirrorless could handle the speed of shooting live music.
And if you order via this link, you will get a bonus gift!

OK, here is what mine actually looks like, with the 4K Canon video cam, and Fuji X-T2 in there:

You’ve been looking for that upgrade from the phone, and not sure if mirrorless is the way you want to go?
Nikon is bringing out a new DX format DSLR this summer, that could make your wallet smile.
With an incredible range of ISO 100 up to 1.64 million (yep, that’s right), your low light concerns may go away. Now with any camera using that high of a range, the files get a bit “grainy”, shall we say.
The bigger news for me is the eliminated low pass filter, so you’ll now get better clarity, and sharpness. It seems to be the trend as companies are realizing that the possibility of moire happening on your photos, is way less of a worry, then better looking files. Good call/
And for the families looking to capture the families extracurricular activities, sports, fast-moving kid, you can shoot a burst of 8 frames a sec, with a 50 RAW shot buffer.
Spray and pray with confidence on this affordable unit.
Articulated LCD, touchscreen controls, and lighter weight than the D500 (16% lighter), and all of the legacy tech that was developed and perfected with the D5 and D500, this is one for serious consideration.

Oh yes, the 4K UHD can be saved UNCOMPRESSED via HDMI to an outboard hard drive.
But all of that is probably not for the enthusiast, unless you are full on conversant in video. You can just save videos to the media card!
With stabilization, zebra focusing help, and the ability to save files as MOV or MP4, you just saved the need for a separate video camera on vacation!

A bit more than entry level, but with all the bells an whistles you would ask for, at a great price and Nikon build quality, could be the enthusiasts go-to. You;’ll have to wait till the summer to see it in your hands, though. A little pre-news.

And now, the official word: Continue Reading »

And that means you!
As an image maker and communicator, you have the skills to capture, and share the information to the world.
No better time than the present. With the amount of events going on cross-country, the time to share real news, not fake news, nor alternative facts has never been more important.
It’s not about what side you are on. It’s about being a voice. Plus giving others that voice.
It’s a daily discussion. Sure, you may get political fatigue, but be part of the process. It’s a needed service, and your talents can make you a citizen journalist.
Remember to identify yourself with credentials, and laminates if you are affiliated. Having a tablet with a release is also good to get after an interview.

To that end, I’d like to recommend some gear to help you get going.

DSLR’s are great, and the best can capture 4K video as well, but you may want to be a bit smaller and move easily in and out of situations.
Capturing quality audio, of course, is a also a big concern.
I have a couple of reccos on hand-held mics that you can attach directly to your camera. Great for interviews on the move.
Audio technica 2005 for an inexpensive and quality interview mic.(around $80)
Move up in the ranks, and the Electrovoice EV50B or EV 50N/D-B ( a little hotter output for DSLRS) will give you pro quality sound, and minimal handling noise. ($180)

What’s handling noise? When you are holding a mic, or an interviewee is, the movement of hands on the shaft of the mic can be heard.
The EV50B has minimized that to the best degree I’ve found. And look at any of your local news broadcasts, and that’s the mic they are using.
When using a handheld mic, you may want to consider designing a mic flag, with your logo, or company name.This adds to your branding and making a more polished looking video at the end of the day.
Have time to mic up someone with a lav? I have 2 suggestions, at 2 price points. Both of these are being held between my fingers so you get an idea on the size

TRAM-50, on the right, and the flatter of the 2 has been my go to for years (about $310), and have now started in with Sanken COS 11d. Almost twice the price, but can hear the diff.(about $380.)
Both omnidirectional, but physical shape is different, and the Sanken is a bit easier to hide.
Many ways to hide either of these mics, and plenty of accessories to help you do that.
For going wireless, which is a good idea, I am actually still using some Sennheiser G2 evolution receivers and transmitters.The link takes you to full set incl. lav, but I’d go used or EBAY, and skip the lav. They rec/trans both look the same, so I’m only showing one of them..

When I was first hitting the trade show floors there weren’t so many of us and the frequency on the trans/rec was easy to keep standard. The beauty of these is that you can scan and adjust to get your mics on their own frequency.
Going back to the handheld mics, add in the plug in transmitter, ( also called the butt plug, sorry) with XLR jack, and completes your handheld interview package. Easy to find used on EBAY, and I’ve had good luck with that. You see it on the EV50 above. Good to add a cover.

And yes, might as well get a well designed logo, on a mic flag for a finishing touch.

After 5 years, I’ve upgraded the video camera. Yep, I like a dedicated video camera for live action.
The Canon XC-15 is my camera of choice:

4K, up to 305 MPS, broadcast quality, in a small, unassuming package. Not intimidating at all, and may help you get the interviews, without imposing on subjects.
With an articulating screen, you can grab that high angle shot in the crowd, and the autofocus is amazing fast and good.
One zoom lens only, so there is that. Sorry but I’m cool not changing lenses and being more nimble.
Using CFast cards for the 4K, and SD cards for the HD, you can get started with what you have, but need to make that painful purchase on new CFast media cards.

Lighting wise, I am using the Fotodiox ring light, as it gives good front fill, and leaves the cold shoe on top free for anything. (under $50) Sometimes, I just add a Rode shotgun mic to the shoe and gather what I can. Plus it comes with a bunch of adaptor rings so you can use it on your other lenses/camera as well
Admittedly, the XC-15 has a separate audio module used in Canon’s bigger pro line C series vid cameras, but i only use those for set-up situations, when I have more time.
Have your social feeds add more than promotion, and selfies. I’ll try to do the same.
There are no rules, except be respectful of those you approach to be on camera and give their thoughts.
Oh, and don’t break any laws!

One of my favorite photo collections in the world, and one of the best places to see photographs, The Getty in Los Angeles, just got a huge new grouping of images. Along with other notable institutions, we should all look forward to seeing this work on the walls at the Getty Center.

GETTY MUSEUM AND NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART ANNOUNCE MAJOR GIFTS OF PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE COLLECTION OF DANIEL GREENBERG AND SUSAN STEINHAUSER

Gifts include works by Dorothea Lange, Mary Ellen Mark, William Eggleston, and Richard Misrach, among others.

LOS ANGELES/WASHINGTON – The J. Paul Getty Museum and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, announced today major gifts of photographs from the collection of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser. The Getty’s gift includes 386 works of art by 17 different photographers, including works by some of the most influential American practitioners of the 20th century, and 23 additional photographs as future gifts. The Gallery’s gift includes 143 gelatin silver prints by Dorothea Lange, with 10 additional photographs by Lange promised. These two gifts are the key elements of a broader initiative by Greenberg and Steinhauser that involved donations to a total of 13 leading art institutions.

Greenberg and Steinhauser have been collecting photographs for over 20 years, largely by 20th-century American masters, but also by Latin American and Japanese makers. In keeping with their belief in sharing their collection with the public, they have previously donated very significant bodies of photographs, ceramics, turned wood, and contemporary studio glass to a number of institutions over the years.

“While collecting is a mysterious endeavor, and living with the art is profound, the act of gifting is a joyous and wonderful moment in time,” says Daniel Greenberg. “As Susan and I begin a new chapter in our lives, and after decades of acting as temporary stewards for these photographs, we are excited that now is the time that we can share some of the best works we have owned with the public.”

“These gifts, which are the largest we have made to date, are part of a larger personal commitment through which we are supporting many leading art museums around the country with gifts primarily from our photography collection,” says Susan Steinhauser. “Each photo reminds us of the circumstances under which we searched for, found, experienced and shared it with others. These photographs helped shape our lives and led to many long-lasting friendships. It is our hope that the public will embrace them as enthusiastically as we have.”

The Getty acquisition:

Highlights of the Getty acquisition include the first works by Ruth Bernhard and Eudora Welty to enter the Museum’s collection. Best known for her studies of the female nude, the German-born Bernhard became one of the leading photographers on the West Coast. While Welty is better known as an American novelist, she also had a serious interest in photography, and her work conveys a similar connection with her subjects that can be seen in her books. The donation of 27 works by Imogen Cunningham complements the 66 prints already in the Getty’s collection, and sets the stage for a possible monographic exhibition of her work. The donation of Chris Killip’s Isle of Man portfolio of 12 prints comes as the Getty prepares for a major exhibition of the artist’s work opening May 23, 2017.

Ruth Bernhard (American, born Germany, 1905 – 2006) Untitled, 1936
Reproduced with permission of The Ruth Bernhard Archive, Princeton
University Art Museum. © Trustees of Princeton University

“This incredibly generous donation will complement and strengthen the Getty’s holdings of several major photographers, and provide a rich trove of images from which to organize future exhibitions,” says Timothy Potts, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. “The gift to the Getty includes both individual prints and portfolios, with the latter giving us the opportunity to represent specific bodies of a photographer’s work in depth. We are extremely grateful to Dan and Susan for their generosity and continued support of the Getty’s Department of Photographs.”

The Getty Museum holds one of the world’s preeminent collections of photographs, and Los Angeles has become an important center for the study of the history and art of photography. Greenberg and Steinhauser are founding members of the Getty Museum Photographs Council, of which Greenberg is the current chairman and Steinhauser is a past chair. Since 2000, they have donated over 500 photographs to the Getty, including significant groups of works by Manuel Álvaraz Bravo, Graciela Iturbide, Abelardo Morell, Eliot Porter, and Minor White, all of which inspired exhibitions organized at the Getty Museum in recent years.

The Getty gift includes:

 12 works by Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
 29 works by Ruth Bernhard (American, born Germany, 1905-2006)
 18 works by Wynn Bullock (1902-1975)
 27 works by Imogen Cunningham (American, 1883-1976)
 57 works by Bruce Davidson (American, born 1933)
 14 works by William Eggleston (American, born 1939)
 1 work by Andreas Feininger (American, born France, 1906-1999)
 96 works by Mario Giacomelli (Italian, 1925-2000)
 5 works by André Kertész (American, born Hungary, 1894-1985)
 12 works by Chris Killip (British, born 1946)
 1 work by Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
 15 works by Mary Ellen Mark (American, 1940-2015)
 26 works by Richard Misrach (American, born 1949)
 18 works by Abelardo Morell (American, born Cuba, born 1948)
 9 works by Arnold Newman (American, 1918-2006)
 8 works by Milton Rogovin (American, 1909-2011)
 38 works by Eudora Welty (American, 1909-2011)

Abelardo Morell (American, born Cuba, 1948)
Title/Date: Camera Obscura Image of Santa Maria Della Salute in Palazzo
Bedroom, 2006
Copyright: © Abelardo Morell
Credit: The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and
Susan Steinhauser

National Gallery of Art acquisition:

The Greenberg and Steinhauser gift establishes the National Gallery of Art as one of the major repositories of Lange’s work in the world, powerfully revealing why she remains one of the country’s most acclaimed documentary photographers. An excellent and comprehensive holding of Lange’s photographs, this gift represents her entire career from the late 1920s to the early 1960s.

“With only two photographs by Lange previously in the Gallery’s collection, Dan and Susan’s donation is a truly transformative gift,” said Earl A. Powell III, director of the National Gallery of Art, Washington. “The exceptional depth and breadth of this group of photographs will allow the Gallery to beautifully illustrate the full range of Lange’s art, from her early studio portraits and her profoundly moving documents of the impact of the Great Depression on the American people, to her later pictures featuring people and cultures she engaged with while traveling around the world.”

One of the best known American photographers working in the 1930s, Dorothea Lange was made famous by her 1936 portrait of an impoverished migrant farm worker and her children in Nipomo, California, called Migrant Mother. However, Lange began her career as a studio portraitist working in San Francisco with a mostly upper-class clientele. Between 1929 and 1933, the years bookended by the Stock Market crash and the start of the New Deal, Lange struggled to redefine her professional identity. Yet in 1933 as she looked for subjects outside her studio—from breadlines and homelessness to labor demonstrations and workers’ strikes—she found her voice, responding directly to what she saw and helping to define what would become known as social documentary photography.

Lange was a committed photographer whose works have been consistently received as compelling records of the human condition. But her carefully composed pictures, often closely cropped to increase their emotional intensity, also reveal her remarkable talent for marrying eye-catching formal compositions with captivating, socially charged subject matter. Of particular note, this collection contains multiple prints made over several years of some of Lange’s most celebrated photographs—such as Death in the Doorway, Migrant Mother, and Migratory Cotton Picker—which will help the Gallery elucidate to students and scholars alike the evolving nature of her practice.

Founded in 1990, the National Gallery of Art’s collection of photographs and its program for photography have become one of the most celebrated in the world, with large, in-depth holdings of work by such celebrated photographers as Eadweard Muybridge, Alfred Stieglitz, Walker Evans, Ilse Bing, Robert Frank, Harry Callahan, and Robert Adams, among others, and numerous award-winning exhibitions and publications.

The first donation to the National Gallery by Greenberg and Steinhauser, this gift is a major addition to the Gallery’s large holdings of works by such social documentary photographers as Gordon Parks and Jim Goldberg. Several of the pictures donated by Greenberg and Steinhauser will be featured in The New Woman Behind the Camera (2019), as well as other forthcoming exhibitions.

In addition to their generous gifts to the Getty and the National Gallery of Art, Greenberg and Steinhauser have recently made gifts to 13 other American art museums, including the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia; the Hammer Museum at UCLA; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Minneapolis Institute of Art; Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe; and Peabody-Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

Images:

Left: Rekha with Beads in Her Mouth, 1978. Mary Ellen Mark (American, 1940-2015). Dye transfer print. 30.8 x 47.6 cm (12 1/8 x 18 3/4 in.). The J. Paul Getty Museum, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser. © Mary Ellen Mark

Center: Migratory Cotton Picker, Eloy, Arizona, 1940. Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965). Gelatin silver print, printed 1950s. 7 x 9 in. Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser

Right: 10.31.98, 5:22 PM, negative 1998, print 1999. Richard Misrach (American, born 1949). Dye coupler print. 50.8 x 61 cm (20 x 24 in.). The J. Paul Getty Museum, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser. © Richard Misrach, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York and Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Los Angeles­