Jonathan Blaustein is the photographer behind the project “The Value of a Dollar“, which went viral on the Internet in 2010 and then was subsequently acquired by the State of New Mexico and the Library of Congress. Visit his website here.
PetaPixel: Could you tell us a little about yourself and your background?
Jonathan Blaustein: I’m a photographer, writer, and professor based in Taos, New Mexico, originally from New Jersey (who isn’t?). In addition to my career as a photographer, I’m also a correspondent for the photo industry blog A Photo Editor. My family and I live in a little horse pasture at the base of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, far from everywhere. I’m pretty fortunate, as Northern New Mexico has a really vibrant photography scene, and of course our light is legendary. As far as my background goes, I first studied History and Economics at Duke University, but returned to school to study photography, and I have an MFA in Photography from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. I’ve been a practicing artist for the last 15 years, and my work has been exhibited in galleries, alternative spaces and museums around the United States. Read more…
Here’s a neat behind-the-scenes video by Samsung featuring short interviews with the developers and engineers behind its NX lenses. One of the things I found interesting was how the engineers are constantly working to overcome the prejudice that Korean-made lenses are inferior to those crafted in Japan or Germany. The video also briefly shows a Samsung 300mm f2.8 XF ED lens — a lens that doesn’t officially exist. Read more…
Yuri Arcurs — AKA the “King of Microstock” — is the best selling microstock photographer in the world, selling over 2,000 images a day and 2 million a year. Visit his website here.
PetaPixel: Could you tell us a little about yourself and your background?
Yuri Arcurs: I was born in 1976 in Aarhus, Denmark, where I still live with my fiance, Cecilie, and our dog, Maff. As a child I spent some years in the U.S. but I returned to Denmark and joined the army, and later on I continued with my studies in Psychology at Aarhus Univerity. These days I feel like I’m not doing much else besides stock photography, but when I do have time for other things I really enjoy a good work-out. I have always been a very active person, which was probably one of the reasons I joined the army when I was younger, but right now I try to focus all of my energy on stock. So, unfortunately, marathons and the likes will have to wait! Read more…
Every time you launch Photoshop, you’re greeted momentarily with a splash screen showing a cloud of names that give credit to the people who have worked on the program. This “Behind the Splash Screen” video introduces you to some of the people whose names are found there, and provides some background on how Photoshop CS5 was developed (as well as the huge challenges they faced). Read more…
PetaPixel: Could you tell me a little about yourself?
David Gallagher: I was born and raised in the suburbs of Philadelphia. I live in Park Slope, Brooklyn, with my wife Fiona. I’ve been involved with journalism and the Internet since I got out of college. Now I work at The New York Times, where I’m an editor dealing with tech news. Read more…
Here’s a pretty interesting 45-minute interview with Pete Souza, which was done via a live web chat at the end of October. Souza is responsible for the behind-the-scenes photographs posted regularly to the official White House Flickr stream. He talks about everything from how photos are selected to crawling around on the floor of the Oval Office to get the perfect shot.
Heather Champ is cofounder of Fertile Medium, an online community consultancy. She was formerly the Director of Community at Flickr and the co-founder of JPG Magazine, which she started with her husband Derek Powazek. Visit her website here.
PetaPixel: Can you tell us about yourself and your background?
Heather Champ: Living in San Francisco, I’m roughly 2,439 miles and worlds away from Ottawa, the city of my birth. There’s very little of my accent left, though there will be a moment when I can see the wheels turning in someone’s brain and that follows with “are you Canadian?” I have a studio fine arts degree and have hopped and skipped my way through a variety of careers that have built upon that creative foundation. Read more…
In 1983 the BBC aired a series called “Master Photographers” in which they interviewed some of the biggest names in photography at the time, including Ansel Adams, Diane Arbus, and Henri Cartier-Bresson. The series can’t be found anywhere on DVD, but luckily many of the episodes have been uploaded to YouTube. If you’re at all interested in learning how historical greats worked and thought, this is a video series you have to bookmark and chew through. Read more…
PP: Can you tell us about yourself and your background?
HJK: Sure thing. I was born in the Netherlands, and moved to Norway when I was about 5 or so. I started taking photos when I was about 14, but the art of photography didn’t really click with me until I got my paws on my first digital camera – a Casio SX-2000, I think it was.
When I was doing research into my first digital camera, I was apalked by how little info there was about them in Norwegian – and decided to rectify that by starting a website. Not long after, it was bought off me, and it changed name to digitalkamera.no – now akam.no. It was sn exciting time to be writing about digital photography, and I guess I was writing about photography as much as I was taking photos, right from the start. Read more…
PetaPixel: Can you tell us about yourself and your background?
Udi Tirosh: I started photographing when I was in high school, and like lots of amateurs photographers I did photowalks, studio sessions and all the family events. At some point, I started DIYPhotography for the fun of it and thought of myself as a high-tech guy who photographs and has a site. DIYP has evolved beyond my expectations and for a long while I changed the order of my self definition to blogger who also takes pictures. Today, I am finding that I am slowly gaining photography as being first. Read more…
