Less than a week removed from the train photographer tragedy in Sacramento, California, another sad story has made its way across our desks. A 23-year-old man named Nicholas Wieme died in the pursuit of a “rooftopping” photograph yesterday after he fell into a building’s smokestack in Chicago.
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Tragedy struck Sacramento, California this past weekend after a photographer and high school art teacher was killed while taking pictures of trains.
Kathy Carlisle, a 52-year-old instructor at St. Francis High, was photographing an approaching train from an adjacent track when she was struck from behind by another train headed in the opposite direction.
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Bryce Bayer, the Eastman Kodak research scientist who invented the Bayer Filter back in 1975, passed away on November 13th at the age of 83. Bayer filter mosaics are used by nearly every digital camera, allowing a single sensor to capture a full-color photograph with the help of some “mathemagic”.
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If you’re a wedding photographer, you might want to think twice about doing a trash the dress shoot in a moving river. A newly married Montreal-area woman drowned this past Friday during a photo shoot in the Ouareau River.
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Canon’s president Tsuneji Uchida announced today that he will be stepping down to pave way for a younger management team as the company fell short of expectations for the second straight year. Canon’s stock price dropped 19% last year while Nikon’s grew 4%. The total number of Canon cameras sold dropped 4% last year, likely a result of both a shift away from consumer cameras and the shortages caused by Japan’s earthquake and Thailand’s flooding. However, DSLR sales are going strong:
Although Canon was affected by supply shortages caused by the quake and flooding, efforts to ramp up production and boost sales in response to robust demand resulted in significant increases in year-on-year sales volumes for such digital cameras as the competitively priced EOS Digital Rebel T3i/T2i/T3, along with the EOS 5D Mark II and the new EOS 60D advanced-amateur models.
Another big story in the camera world this past week was the passing of Sigma founder Michihiro Yamaki, who started the company in 1961 at the age of 27 by developing the first rear lens converter. He went on to lead the company for over 50 years, turning it into the largest third-party lens maker in the world. Yamaki passed away on January 18 at the age of 78 after a battle with liver cancer.
(via Amateur Photographer and PopPhoto)
Image credit: Broken filter! by -AX- … off until may!
When Mount St. Helens erupted on May 18, 1980, photographer Robert Landsberg was documenting the changes in the volcano from just a few miles away. Realizing that he couldn’t possibly outrun the approaching ash cloud, he kept shooting for as long as he could before using his body to preserve his film:
He managed to rewind the film back into its case, replace his camera in its bag, put the bag in his backpack, and then lay himself on top of the backpack in an attempt to protect its contents. Seventeen days later, Landsberg’s body was found buried in the ash with his backpack underneath. The film could be developed and has provided geologists with valuable documentation of the historic eruption. [#]
The photos were published in the January 1981 issue of National Geographic. Many people might think of saving their precious photos in the event of a house fire, but how many photographers would think to use their bodies to protect their photographs?
Robert Landsberg (via Reddit)
