Dog Days at the White House

Barack Obama made a lot of promises during the presidential campaign that are going to be hard to deliver on, according to Wednesday-morning quarterback stories. But one decision that he cannot duck is his pledge to get a new puppy for his two daughters, Malia and Sascha.

The Obamas will be joining a proud presidential tradition of pet ownership, according to a great photo gallery the Daily News website. Among the most famed political canines are Richard Nixon's four-pawed pal, Checkers, and Lyndon Johnson's exceptionally tough-eared companion, Him (left).

Back from the Grindstone

Photos © Tom Sperduto except where noted

What makes someone run an ultramarathon? Photographer Tom Sperduto says the eyes have it.

"I think when you meet an ultra runner you can see it in their eyes," says Sperduto, who has been shooting an ongoing photo project on these peculiar athletes. "At least I can, and it's one of the reasons why I began shooting portraits of them."

The Edison, New Jersey-based Sperduto recently completed a series of before-and-after pictures of competitors in the grueling Grindstone 100-miler in Swoope, Virginia, which he says is "the hardest 100-mile race east of the 100th meridian. (Above and below are a couple of examples.)

"These 'after' portraits were shot less than five minutes after the subjects completed 100 miles," he says. "In their eyes I see a sense of accomplishment and almost euphoria. I have heard many ultra runners talk about this."

No Picture, No Title

Blogging from a government-owned computer while waiting around at a lower-Manhattan courthouse on jury duty, I don't have the usual browser options to post a picture or story links (nor the usual time -- I've already been booted off once) ... but I'm compelled to comment on a story in the Style section of today's New York Times -- The Sum of Your Facial Parts -- that begs the question: What's so funny 'bout peace, love and natural beauty?

The story describes a new computer software that "enhances" photos by conforming faces to a scientific algorithm of beauty -- altering such factors as symmetry, distance between facial parts, and other geometric things. Though designed mainly for cosmetic uses such as advertising photography, the implications are downright scary. Among the sample photos shown with the story, one set demonstrates that a beauty like Brigette Bardot loses her "individuality" in the process. One commentator in the piece says, "There is a whole generation of girls growing up who think it's normal not to look the way they really look." We would have more to say, but ... we're about to get booted off this computer again! Check out the piece.  -- Jack Crager

Eye Candy

In the category of Goofy But Fun Things to Do with Your Photos, we came across a site by M&M Candylab that lets you upload a picture of your favorite face and have it animated. In preparation for Halloween, you can direct your face to sing either Bow Wow Wow's "I Want Candy" or Thomas Dolby's "She Blinded Me with Science."

We chose the former tune for a picture of our six-year-old daughter, with mixed results. Be sure to choose a picture with a nice likeness that lends itself to being stretched in animation. For our first attempt we used an image that was a bit dark, and the animated result had our blond-blue-eyed girl looking shadowy and sinister — sort of like a scene from The Exorcist. Then we loaded a cheerier pumpkin shot (at right) and got a nicer result, though still a bit spooky (at top).

Naturally, the site includes options for sending your creation to a friend or posting it on Facebook. Oh, you can also put your pix on a personalized package of M&Ms for about $15 — at those prices, and in these times, maybe more apt for Christmas. — Jack Crager

Western Exposure

Somebody forgot to tell superstar rapper Kanye West that when you try to destroy a paparazzo's gear, it's best not to do it while being filmed.

West was booked on suspicion of felony vandalism following his skirmish with a photographer yesterday at Los Angeles International Airport, according to reports. However, it may be the entertainer's bodyguard who's really going to face the music, according to TMZ.com, which caught the fracas on video before it's own cameraman became involved. Viewing the videotape, it seems that West's bodyguard smashed a $1,400-plus Canon 40D DSLR — possibly a felony as it's worth more than $400 — while Kayne threw down the photographer's $100 light unit. "Here's the irony," TMZ opines, "the bodyguard could be processed for a felony, but not Kanye."

Either way, the now-seen-globally videotape won't do much to help West's defense, or his image. (Unless, that is, you share his disgust with the paparazzi.) — Jack Crager

Shorpy Trip

Came across a really cool website featuring photographs from the first half of the 20th Century, from journalistic slices of life to oddball visual novelties to wonderful period moments, such as the above shot, "Atlantic City Forever: 1912."

Called "Shorpy: The 100-Year-Old Photo Blog," the curious site is named after Shorpy Higgenbotham, a young Alabama coal minor who was immortalized in a series of 1910 photographs  by the legendary Lewis Wickes Hine. (Such an obvious name for a blog, after all.) The site's commercial functions include links to fine-art print sales and a print gallery, but it also makes for fascinating browsing, with seemingly endless pages of photos offering glimpses back in time. Though most images are early-century black-and-whites, a few Ektachrome and Polaroid color shots from the '50s and '60s appear.

Most of the jpegs are extracted from reference images from the Library of Congress archive, according to the site, which also has brief captions, amusing commentary threads, and a searchable database. It's a marvelous blend of musty old pictures and new technology. Worth a glance — or many.
— Jack Crager

Whipped Cream & Other Memories

What are the coolest album covers of all time? That's a question we've set out to answer in a story that will appear in American Photo — and in an expanded survey on this website —  later this fall. While taking an unscientific poll, we've found no shortage of opinions about which album covers are the best and why. Just as music is a matter of personal taste, so is cover art. But everyone seems to agree that a handful of covers are True Classics. One of these is the image at left, from the 1965 album Whipped Cream & Other Delights, by Herb Alpert & the Tiajuana Brass.

The album came out  in 1965, when sexy, frothy pictures on LP sleeves were already commonplace, but this one takes the cake. It was shot by photographer Jerry Wharf. We were delighted to discover a newspaper story on the lovely model, Dolores Erickson, now a 71-year-old painter in Longview, Washington. For the '65 photo shoot, she wore a sheet slathered with shaving cream (real whipped cream couldn't withstand the heat of studio lights); she recalled that she was pregnant at the time, which made her look more curvy and luminous. "I thought, 'Just another job,'" recalled Erickson, who posed for 17 other album covers and countless beauty ads, as well as landing acting parts.

Beam Me Up, Glennie

Photo © Andy Manis/The New York Times

I was pleased to see today's New York Times, in which one of my college acquaintances made the front page. But he's hidden in plain view. And levitating.

John Schwartz, a technology writer for the Times, was one of the other 56,000+ students at the University of Texas while I attended. A fellow staffer at the campus paper and magazine, Schwartz was one of those alums who went on to big things (others included TV talking head Paul Begala and political advisor Mark McKinnon). Now Schwartz has risen to greater heights — a couple of feet off the ground, in a jetpack.

"“There is nothing that even comes close to the dream that the jetpack allows you to achieve,” says Robert J. Thompson of Syracuse University in Schwartz's Times feature. "[It's] about the coolest desire left to mankind."

Schwartz got to sample a real-life jetpack, invented by Glenn Martin (at left in the above shot) at an air show in Wisconsin. "They held on to me at about two feet off the ground," Schwartz explained in a segement this morning on the NPR program The Takeaway (that annoyingly clever news show that runs in a slot where Morning Edition used to be). Schwartz added that it was a plum assignment. "Sometimes I really love my job," he said.

One of the amusing anecdotes in the Times story concerns the first guinea pig for Martin's new jetpack: The initial prototype called for a person weighing less than 130 pounds. "So [Martin] turned to his wife," Schwartz writes. "'Hey Venessa, what are you doing tonight?'"

Vanessa helped the project get off the ground. Martin plans to fly his invention to heights of up to hundreds of feet. "Mr. Martin said he had no idea how his invention might ultimately be used, but he is not a man of small hopes," Schwartz writes. "He repeated the story of Benjamin Franklin, on first seeing a hot-air balloon, being asked, 'What good is it?' He answered, 'What good is a newborn baby?' ” — Jack Crager

Flower Power Flashback

Robert Altman is a visionary artist whose work reflects a rebellious spirit. Altman — not the late filmmaker of the same name — was one of the earliest staff photographers for Rolling Stone magazine, where he documented the cultural changes of the 1960s, from anti-war sit-ins to psychedelic be-ins (above). Many of his '60s images came out in a book last year, and now they're traveling in an exhibition, currently at Idea Generation Gallery in London through August 29.

Land of Many Colors

Photo © Phylis Galembo

Africa has always been a continent of such wild extremes — cultural and geographic, political and demographic — that it defies categorization, lives in its own realm, yet continues to impact the entire planet. These days the land is much in the news as turmoil in the Niger Delta exacerbates the global oil crisis; the U.S. prepares to nominate its first African-American major-party contender; and the world debates war-crimes charges against a sitting president, among other things. All of which serves as a backdrop to an ambitious series of photo exhibitions called Africas, at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, from now to September.

The three concurrent shows take very different swipes at a vast subject. The outlandish pageantry of tribal costumes in West Africa is on display in artist Phylis Galembo's West African Masquerade. (Her shot of Ngar Ball traditional dancers is above.) The complex and destructive turf wars in Nigeria's oil industry are explored in Ed Kashi's Curse of the Black Gold. And nuggets from the Eastman House's permanent collection come out of the vaults for a survey show of African images shot by such names as Margaret Bourke-White, Eugene Smith, Arnold Newman, and Mary Ellen Mark.