This image was shot for Channel 4 London to illustrate “what would happen to an English chef if he were to tinker about with traditional Italian recipes”. When asked that question I said that in Texas we would string him up, and the idea went on from there. Channel 4 (a mad band of ultra creatives) had me do the image in NY and had Jamie Oliver fly over. The set was built in a sound stage so we had complete control of content. Every item in the image was chosen and placed. Orderly chaos. The color felt right being greens and warm tones to give the right feel of tension mixed with some old world. Jamie Oliver hung upside down four times for a couple minutes each. He is a great guy and fun to work with. He kept smiling and saying that the sides of beef needed more blood on the floor, and had I ever slaughtered a cow, and some stuff about dogs bollocks, and other generally confusing things. Fun stuff.

PS: the guy at the table is a spineless boaster waiting on his Ma. She’s the one that’s going to cut stuff up.

Winners Profile

Jim Fiscus was born in Dallas, TX. He attended business school at Texas Tech, but left after two semesters to go work the fish canneries in Alaska. Shortly after, he transferred to East Texas State University, home of one of the top photography departments in the country.

After school Jim began assisting established commercial photographers in Houston and Dallas. Later, while working as both a producer and location scout, he began investing in cameras, lights, a darkroom and new portfolios.

Jim began shooting classically lit environment portraits – a track he could’ve followed successfully for the rest of his career. But, in 1995, Jim and (his now wife) Lisa Ellis began experimenting with digital manipulation. This led to creating seamless images from shots taken at different times and locations – a revolutionary approach.

In 15 plus years of shooting Jim Fiscus has shot campaigns for Levis, Nike, HBO, and many others. He was voted International Photographer of the Year for 2006. His work featured on two communication arts covers, and named #1 on Campaigns 2008 list of top photographers in the United Kingdom. Jim Fiscus lives and works from Athens, Georgia, United

The 2008 International Aperture Awards.

The staff at The Beaumont Enterprise collected its photos from the impact of Hurricane Ike into the book “In Ike’s Wake” with a portion of the profits to benefit relief efforts from the September 13, 2008, hurricane that caused heavy damage in southeast Texas.

Ike, the costliest storm to hit Texas, slammed coastal areas from Houston to Louisiana, sending storm surge through communities in southern Orange and Jefferson counties and felling trees and damaging homes throughout East Texas.

The first printing of the book is more than 11,000 copies. Customers who pre-ordered the book will also receive a companion DVD with hundreds of additional photos and video shot by The Enterprise’s staff.

One of the fascinations with digital still technology is the ability to easily create a video from sets and series of still images. The latest incarnation of this ode to Muybridge is Fat City Reprise – Long Gone, a music video created from 45,000 still images by Cesar Kuriyama, a New York animator and lighting technical director.

Wired reports Kuriyama used a Nikon D200 to shoot 15 second bursts at four frames per second to  create the original files. They were then edited and reworked to make the 24 frames per second necessary for video productions.

It took about 14 months and $3,000 of after-work hours to create and execute the four minute video which is more an indication of lighting, composition,  style, and stop motion cinematography than an effective video.

I applaud Kuriyama for his work but it is far from the best use of still imagery to make a movie. That distinction belongs to Steven Spielberg and a runaway coal car chase scene.

Indiana Jones and his companions escaping from an underground cavern in The Temple of Doom was a miniature set created when the original plans for the film’s conclusion were expanded to make the climactic chase more visually stimulating and better match the storyboards.

Creating a miniature set to match the artists designs proved too difficult. The length of the scene and number of peak moments would have required a very large miniature set that would not only have been complicated to create, it still would have been longer than the available studio space. The only choice was a sub-miniature set and miniature VistaVision camera.

The Raider.net explains the decision to use a modified Nikon with a motor drive:

“Making tiny sets and props was no problem for the ILM model makers. Filming them was. Since many of the shots called for the camera to be trucking along with the action, the mineshaft sets needed to be built large enough to allow sufficient clearance all around. The smallest camera in the ILM inventory was 9-inch width and seemed to be a limiting factor on how small the sets could go. So they ended up using an in-house Nikon after Mike MacKenzie slowed down its motor drive about two-thirds and built a special magazine for it that would hold fifty feet of film, which is four hundred frames of VistaVision. The end result was a VistaVision format motion picture camera almost literally small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. No wider than a normal Nikon, and only a quarter-inch higher than one equipped with the standard motor drive, it was mounted on a small pan and tilt head and used to photograph almost all of the mine car sequence. By making the Nikon work they essentially cut their scale in half, which meant that rather than building a set that was sixty feet long, they had to build one that was only thirty feet long.”

“In shooting the miniatures, we used Nikon still cameras. I wanted to keep the scale down as far as possible to reduce the length of the sets and it occured to me that we could use a Nikon. Mike McAlister, who shot all the miniature sequences, worked on ways to steady the Nikon and put a larger magazine on it. Everything was dictated by the smallest camera we could devise, and it worked great. We could have spent $100,000 on building a special new camera, but a slightly modified 35mm Nikon with 30 feet of Vistavision film shooting at one frame per second worked perfectly.”

So, enjoy your stop-motion, still digital images from the masses as markers of enthusiasm and progress. Just remember that Spielberg did it with a Nikon F2years ago

Every day for a year, Tacey Willis looked for an eye-catching photo subject — a ballerina, a rocker dude in a bookstore or three older ladies from the Red Hat Society. She allowed herself one shot each day, with only one piece of instant film.

Tacey Willis’ “Day By Day Polaroid” project contains 365 photos, movies, songs and quotes.

Tacey Willis’ “Day By Day Polaroid” project contains 365 photos, movies, songs and quotes.

But halfway through that year, Willis abruptly took the money she’d saved for a down payment on a car and bought every piece of Polaroid film she could find. Why? Because the Polaroid Corp. announced it would stop making instant film. And without it her project, “Day by Day Polaroid,” would never be complete.

Sixty years after Polaroid introduced its first instant camera, the company’s iconic film is disappearing from stores.

Fans bid farewell to Polaroid film – CNN.com

On Oct. 16, 2008, Kayte Elsea’s father, William Townsend Godsey, was posthumously inducted into the Missouri Photojournalism Hall of Fame, though Elsea almost didn’t know about it.

In September, Elsea’s daughter Vicki was given a clipping announcing her grandfather’s new honor, but the family had never heard anything about it.

“I didn’t know that they had a photojournalism hall of fame,” Elsea said.

She called the Missouri Press Association, she said, and found out that they had tried to contact Godsey’s family months before but had only gotten in touch with a nephew.

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Four Reasons to Consider Working for Free

Strobist: Four Reasons to Consider Working for Free

Germany’s largest newspaper is looking to expand — and not by hiring new reporters.

Bild has partnered with discount grocery chain Lidl to sell a basic-function digital camera in a bid to recruit a legion of citizen journalists to contribute images to its coverage.

“We can’t cover everything,” said Michael Paustian, a managing editor for the newspaper with a circulation of 3.3 million copies Monday through Saturday. “We think it is an advance for journalism.”

Germany’s largest paper seeks citizen photographers – International Herald Tribune

The Rocky Mountain News, Colorado’s oldest newspaper, has been put up for sale by its parent company.

Citing worsening financial conditions, the E.W. Scripps Co. said it will weigh any offers through mid-January. If no buyer emerges, it will consider shutting down the newspaper.

Rocky Mountain News for sale