Ed Kashi

Dang three posts in a row on people who are already famous, I have to change it up for next time, maybe you my loyal fans could submit some stuff to me for review and I'll pick some for reviews. Anyway back to Ed, he is one of the best know photojournalist working today, he does both standard stills for print as well as some really amazing multi media work with media storm who are producing some of the best multi media work out there right now. Ed's latest endavor in the print world is book called three which I just can't get enough of. For the project he explored he archives and found three pictures for each spread which he matched up together to make some amazing triptychs. I love that these images where not originally shot to be used this way, but they work so brilliantly together, which I think says great things for Ed's consistency of vision. The pictures which given there documentary aproach have a strong narriative element to them already, become something more when matched up, in addition to telling there own individual stories they also tell stories to each other bouncing ideas back and forth. Ed Kashi is one of the most creative photographers working today who is willing to step outside photojournalisms hard and fast rules in his personal work and produce some beautiful and new things.

Website

Boogie !

I was in NYC last week doing a bunch of meetings with magazine folks, two days 15 magazines, pretty tiring but great. I think the highlight of the two days though (besides hanging out with some super cool old friends) was when I was shooting some pick up basketball games I happened to stumble upon on a beautiful fall day. The coolest thing about that besides me getting some super cool tilt shift basketball shots, was that there were a couple other people shooting at the same time on guy I ended talking to a bit was Boogie. Boogie's first book came out in 2006 it's an in your face look at gangs in NYC pretty amazing stuff, his access and apparent complete lack of fear makes these shots really great documents of a insiders view of the gangs. He has gone on to publish several other books and shoot some pretty big ad campaigns. The thing I love about his ad work is that it still feels like his documentary work, often documentary shooters get pulled to shoot ad jobs and then they get so over produced by agency people that it ends looking like ad shots rather than documentary work. Boogie was shooting that day for a job, it was great to hang out with him for a couple hours and watch him work. His work is true documentary work in the tradition of Robert Frank and the greats, whom he walks with.

rodney smith?

I know kind of out of character for me to be writing about him since I tend to focus mainly on lessor known shooters. But I was reading this interview of him the other day over on the Kodak pro website and he said a couple things that kind of connected with me. I've been a big fan of his work for years I think the first work I saw of his was the work he did for Marshal Fields, CA did a story on him and that work and I loved his philosophy of shooting no polaroids and the importance of locations etc... He was also nice enough to send a bunch of his promo pieces to me so that I could show to a class I teach at Columbia College Chicago, so he must be a nice guy to boot. Anyway thing I love about his work is the timeless element to it, the pictures are so perfectly passionately beautiful, and often with a dollop of humor to them. I have a general distain for fashion photography because it seems so often the take a beautiful model and put her in beautiful clothes and then take an ugly picture. rodney smith's work is often Fashion in nature but he is a throw back or maybe hopefully throw forward to a place where beautiful gets to be beautiful, and that I like. Kodak of course makes a big deal out the fact the he shoots film blah blah personally I could careless if he shoot film or digital it's the results that count. So why write about him now? Well two reasons first he has started blogging which is great you can really get an insight on to his brain as he talks about his work on his blog and secondly, he has a new book coming out, I have "the Hat book" which I love and a bunch of his samples, and paper company samples of his work the I look at quite often but this knew book looks really amazing first it's really big like 16x20 big so you'll really get to experience the prints as they should be seen and secondly as with "the Hat book" his designers (I believe probably Leslie Solomon?) have beautifully done the type for the book they have a really wonderful way of arranging letters on a page that enhances but doesn't over shadow the images. Unfortunately for me the book is going to be wicked out of my price range, but if it's in yours and you don't buy it you are not a smart person at all, it's going to be a classic.

web portfolio

Dylan Vitone

Last week was the big opening night in Chicago all the galleries pulled out there stuff and had openings at the same time. For art lovers it's the best night of the year everyone is out looking around great people and art watching is every place you look. I saw lots of shows that night and I'm going to try and blog as many as I can while they are up. First off Dylan Vitone's show at David Weinberg in the River North. I have to admit I'm a sucker for panorama's I love the way you can really get lost in the field of view. Many of Dylan's works are full 360 degree pano's the really impressive thing about his work is that they are so full of life often when you see panoramic work it's pretty staged or devoid of people since the shots are fairly complicated to set up, but Dylans photos are so full of life and action you forget about the trick of the shot and just fall into the seen in front of you. It's classic street photography but wonderfully updated. Sure there are seems but they are to me no big deal, all though I would be interested to see what he would do with a camera like the round shot. Check out his web site you can click on the images to see details of the shot. That's always the rub for Panorama's it's hard to show them online or in magazines and get any kind of sense of the images. When the last time you saw a magazine feature a pano photographer? These images in person are pretty amazing to behold they are very large I'd say a good 6-8 feet long so they really do become your field of vision, wonderful.

My current dream camera obession is the panoramic back you can get for the red camera I think it's a 6x17 digital chip, Mmmm camera drool. Get out and take a look at this work.

where I have I been?

I had this huge commercial gig that I have been doing prep work for the shooting and then doing post to here is a kind of long stop action video of the whole shoot.

big shoot from doug mcgoldrick on Vimeo.

Adam Magyar

I don't want to begin to describe the process by which these camera are achieved, Adam Magyar has built his own digital camera called a slit camera the takes a very unusual picture, it only capertures things that are moving in the direction of the camera, so you get parades of people in a long line walking through a very surreal linear landscape. His website has some larger images on it that you can drag a curser over and see details of what is going on in the photos. I think more than any other person I have written about I would love to see these images in real life, they must be really amazing to behold. Make sure you click on these images to see them larger or better yet go to his site and see them with the detail viewer.

He also has another project called squares which is worth your viewing time as well.

look here

my commute

commute from doug mcgoldrick on Vimeo.