State of the Art

Annals of Fashion: Meisel+Mendez=Art

Steven Meisel has done it again, this time shooting actress/model Eva Mendez for a story in Italian Vogue. In the various images, she wears corsets, sucks her toes, and exposes her breasts. No doubt "Access Hollywood" will be all over this story, which I suppose is justification enough for the photos. But they don't need any other justification--they're pretty great, period. Is it me, or is Meisel getting better and better? Mendez has  already bared her bottom for a PETA ad. She's also signed on to be the face of Calvin Klein Underwear--so we're wondering what's left for her to show?--David Schonauer

Should Lindsay Be the Drunk-Driving Poster Child?

Last Friday marked the debut of this ad, featuring a mug shot of Lindsay Lohan after her arrest last year for drunk driving. I finally saw it today in the New York Post. Somehow it doesn’t seem right to me to use this kind of image in this way. I’m not sticking up for Lohan and her repeated arrests and serial-rehab ways. But does she deserve this?
      The ad is not an anti-drinking-and-driving ad. In fact, it is paid for by a restaurant and liquor group that is campaigning against the mandatory installation of ignition interlocks. These devices analyze a driver’s breath, and if they detect alcohol they won’t let the car start.
      These would be great for drunks like Lindsay, says the ad, but bad for all of us who want some wine at lunch. “No more toasts at weddings,” we are warned. “Let’s stop drunk driving without eliminating our traditions.”
      That’s a shaky argument—the ad wants us to eat our cake (beer at the ball game before the drive home) and have it too (remove drunk drivers from the road).
      The deft use of symbolism is the key here: The ad creates a two-tiered system of drunkenness—an “us” and “them” in which “us” are responsible imbibers and “them” are pretty much without redeeming value—a position that Miss Lohan now finds herself in. A certified cultural scourge, she becomes in this ad a convenient foil, staring at us from the police photo and inviting us to feel ever more virtuous about our own behavior.
      Lindsay Lohan doesn’t have anyone but herself to blame for her life. But this ad let’s the rest of us off the hook when it comes to our own responsibility.—David Schonauer

Photoshop For Free

In the never-ending circus to attract Web-based imaging customers, Adobe has tossed a thousand-gallon hat into the ring with its new Adobe Photoshop Express, now available for free in a beta version. First-look bloggers warn that this is Photoshop Lite — not the full-fledged imaging tool used by pros but a simple, free photo-editing version for newbies.

Meanwhile, rival tech giant Google is upping the ante with an API to enhace its Picasa Web Uploader service. As Adobe and Google — two companies who have snared market share in several imaging sectors with user-friendly designs — battle it out, Bill Gates and company must be fuming. May the friendliest imaging interface win. — Jack Crager

Annals of Advertising: Shooting Escorts

Today in political news, we get to see photos of the call girl, “Kristen,” with whom New York’s soon-to-be ex-governor liaised. We knew that was coming, right? The pictures of Kristen weren’t that good, however. So on my way to work I wondered, where would an escort go to get good pictures for online advertising? A bit of research on Eros Guide New York showed that there are indeed a number of photographers who specialize in this niche area.
     “Where there is a demand for a particular service, someone will step in to fill it,” said one of the photographers listed on the guide. (He asked me not to use his name or indicate which company he shoots for. Though he’s been shooting escorts for couple of years, he says he is primarily a fashion specialist. He prefers to keep the escort work private.)

     For this photographer, the decision to shoot escorts was purely market-based. “What’s the first thing you see when you type the word “escort” into Google? Sh**ty pictures,” he says. “I thought, here’s an industry that appears to generate a lot of money, but not much care is being taken with the imagery used to promote it. So I created my business.”
     Given the nature of their work, many escorts simply snap pictures of themselves. A pro photographer can upgrade the look with basic beauty lighting, simple styling, and minimal retouching. “Basically I create the same kinds of images you see in Maxim magazine,” says the photographer I spoke with. “Some clients want their faces in the images, others not. “
     The Eros ad for one photo service makes the importance of imagery clear. “You’ve got about 2 seconds to make an impression on the viewer,” the ad advises escorts. “Make those 2 seconds count.”
     Judging from the ads on Eros, the rates for escort photography is roughly in line with those for actors, models, and others who need commercial imagery—anywhere from $300 to $1,000 or so for packages that include digital images and other services like styling. Most of the photographers advertising on the site in fact also shoot other types of clients as well.—David Schonauer

Exhibitions Watch: The Boudoir as Affordable Art

There’s a new photo show opening soon in New York that you might want to know about. I got a preview yesterday. The show is great, but what’s really interesting is the gallery that’s putting it up.
   On March 27, the Lumas Gallery in New York will debut “Boudoir: A Hint of Sensuality,” featuring photograpahy by Michel Comte, Lylia Cornell, GABO (photo above), Jacques Olivar, Howard Schatz, and other photographers. As the gallery notes, “The title of this exhibition refers to the boudoir as “the classical place of transformation through costume and to the joyous sensuality reigning there.”
    It’s a beautiful show, to be sure, but I’m really fascinated by the Lumas Gallery. The New York location, which is at 77 Wooster Street in SoHO, is the first of several planned U.S. branches of this art operation. Founded in Germany by Stefanie Harig and Marc Ullrich, the gallery now has branches throughout Europe. The director of the U.S. gallery, Stephanie Yovi, told me there are plans to open more branches in New York and the United States as well.
     The idea behind the gallery is intriguing: Essentially, it sells very big digital prints of work by a wide range of photographer. The Lambda prints are gorgeous, and prices for the prints start at about $600 and go up into the several thousands. The prices are kept low because the gallery sells in large editions--up to 100 in some cases—while other prints are sold in open editions. The gallery negotiates deals directly with the more than 100 photographers it represents. The list includes names like Steichen, as well as a wonderful new generation of photographers.
     Do I sound impressed? I am. The idea is to open up the notion of collecting to a new, young generation of buyers. The gallery caters to the taste of modern consumers by offering very large prints and by selling them via storefront galleries as well as online. There’s nothing wrong with that: It’s nice to see quality photography being made available to lots of people. It’s one more vision of photography’s future.—David Schonauer

The Rise of the Citizen Paparazzi

Welcome to paparazzi nation: Today’s Wall Street Journal documents the rise of citizen paparazzi—all those “civilian” (or non-pro) photographers armed with digital SLRs who snap celebrities when they seem them. As Brad Elterman of the Buzz Foto paparazzi agency says, it’s all about people being in the right place at the right time. But of course all this causes trouble for the real paparazzi, because the non-pros sell their work for cheap, driving down prices. In that that sense the paparazzi industry is facing the same challenges that other kinds of photographers do. Is it another case of digital technology driving down prices? Is trend merely the natural culmination of our culture's modern obsession with celebrity? The article is plentiful with details about how much paparazzi make, how much agencies like X-17 make a year ($11 million) and more. —David Schonauer

A Wrap-Up on Photo News

I vowed to avoid work over the longish weekend and forbid myself from posting. But the news of photography and our modern culture piled up. Here is a short, slanted wrap-up:

LINDSAY LOHAN POSES AS MARILYN
I really wanted to say something about this when I saw the images in New York magazine yesterday, but wisely held back. This was a promotional ploy, and it worked—lots of publicity all over TV and the web. But photographically it caused me to wince, and I don’t wince easily. Bert Stern, who famously photographed the “last sitting” of the real Marilyn, took the new photos, but he did Lohan no favors. She looks like a transvestite in that blond wig. She also looks about 10 times more haggard than the real Marilyn did when Stern shot the originals—and that was only a few weeks before Marilyn committed suicide. Above all, the new photos remind us that Marilyn was simply transcendent in photographs. She made pictures better just by being in them. Sometimes photographers have to put their egos on the shelf and admit that it’s the person in the image that makes a picture great.

THE PRICE IS RIGHT: MICROSTOCK FOR $7
Photo District News reports on the on-going effort by microstock agencies to find the optimum price for royalty-free photographs. According to Adam Brotman, senior vice-president of SnapVillage, that price is $7. SnapVillage, owned by Corbis, lets photographers assign prices to their images, and, as Brotman notes, the average price paid for images is $7. The news could be worse, since SnapVillage allows such images to be prices at $1, $5, $10, $25, or $50.

BABY PHOTOS EARN BIG MONEY
But photographers probably don’t see much of it. AdAge.com reports that People magazine is prepared to pay Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony between $4 million and $6 million dollars for exclusive U.S. rights to the first photos of their expected twins. People also reported paid $1.5 million for the first pictures of Christina Aguilera’s new baby. The magazine was rumored to have paid $4 million for pictures of baby Shiloh Jolie-Pitt. According to AdAge, those images drove up sale 45 percent. However, the issue with the first shots of Britney Spears’s son Sean Preston saw a decline in sales of 15 percent. Anyway, being a good baby photographer might be a good business—better, at least, than microstock.

MONKEY PARENTING IS ALWAYS GOOD, PHOTOGRAPHICALLY
With all this otherwise negative news, I’ve got to end on something photographically worthwhile. Below you see one of pictures of the week from nationalgeographic.com. It shows Vale, a four-week-old titi monkey held by his father, Thiago, in London zoo’s new rainforest habitat. Beautifully framed, the photo was made by Peter Macdiarmid for Getty Images.--David Schonauer

Hard Sex: Western Digital's My Book desktop drives

Now that I have your attention, you know as well as any other photographer that digital storage devices are as essential as they are unsexy -- by and large just boxes with a few plugs and a light or two. And external hard drives big enough to back up the contents of your computer become all but invisible when attached, doing their own thing with automatic backup software. You hardly know they're there -- until your computer crashes.

Western Digital's My Book external desktop hard drives are a different story, pun intended. They are sexy, in the sort of industrial-chic way that Apple has perfected. Upright and, well, booklike in shape -- though with a beautifully rounded spine --  they have an elegant satin-metal finish. In fact the My Book Studio Edition I've been testing comes in a silver tone that perfectly matches my G5 tower. (Now if only my socks matched.)

Economics 101: Britney and Photography

Some people don’t like it that I keep posting about the paparazzi, but how can anyone who writes about the photo world ignore them? It’s like when I say I’m sick and tired of seeing Britney Spears on magazine covers…money talks, and Britney keeps showing up on the newsstand, week after week.
     Now Portfolio magazine has quantified the Britney Effect on the Economy, and as you might expect photography is a big part of the story. The magazine estimates that the annual value of Britney to the U.S. economy is up to $120 million a year. The magazine says record companies, promoters, and licensers make $30 to $40 million off of Britney.
     Meanwhile, the paparazzi make $4 million a year from selling pictures of her, the magazine says. The X17 agency, which keeps a 24/7 watch on the troubled pop star, admits that she accounts for 30 percent of its revenues.
     Celebrity media where the real money is.  The magazine says that tabloid magazines, web sites, and other media make $74 million a year from Spears.
--David Schonauer

Why We Needed Henry Froehlich

The photographic realm has just lost two giants with the deaths of Popular Photography's Burt Keppler and, now, of Henry Froehlich, former head of medium-format mainstay Mamiya America. Though less visible than Burt to readers of photography magazines, Henry was just as influential in the photo industry, and in some of the same ways. Influence aside, he was a lovely, kindhearted man.

Apple in the Big Apple

Stepping into an Apple store is the closest thing in retail to heaven--not just all the cool hardware but a bright, comforting whiteness like that described by the near-dead. Apple’s new Big Apple megastore, which opened on Friday night, combines this experience with Manhattan chic. Its location should make New York City photographers especially happy: It’s on the corner of 14th Street and Ninth Avenue, right on the edge of the meatpacking district our ilk has taken over.

Fish-n-Flush

Although our company e-mail has a spam filter, we get a lot of wacky e-messages each day promoting products or story suggestions that have next to nothing to do with photography. But one idea for a "product feature" caught our eye with its name. Fish-n-Flush sounds like some sadistic catch-and-release procedure — but it's really "a unique new product whose decorative appeal could turn the bathroom into the most talked about room in the house," according to the blurb. And once we saw the photo, we started wondering whether to cough up $299 for one of these just for fun. "The Fish n Flush is clear two-piece toilet tank," the note continues, "that contains a fully functioning aquarium inside." (For details go here.) In households like ours, where potty etiquette and pet rearing are both topics of kiddie education, this could do double-duty. "We see the toilet serving as a great way to help toilet train young children," says company CEO Richard Quintana, "as well as a fun fashion statement for the homeowner who wants to have something unique." Hmmm... -- Jack Crager

Digital Railroad’s New Research Feature

Last night at midnight, the beta version of Digital Railroad’s new Research Network feature rolled out online. I got a preview of it yesterday from DRR chief Evan Nisselson, and I must say that as an editor I’m excited by the possibilities in it. Essentially, it’s an online image research engine that allows buyers to send out calls for particular types of images through the Digital Railroad network of photographers. And it’s all done in real time, so if I’m looking for a cover photo for an upcoming issue on restaurants in Paris, and I need that picture by Friday at 3:00 pm Eastern Standard Time, I can put out the request and DRR members can look through their archives for just the right image, then upload it to me. This is great for time-conscious image buyers—think of all those websites out there that need what they need when they need it.  It gives photographers specific, targeted ideas, increasing the chances of a sale. Over time, I think it will also show trends in photo requests, so that photographers will know general types of images to put into their portfolios. This is a logical step in the automated-marketing concept that DRR has been pushing effectively for the past few years.
--David Schonauer

The Top Grossing Models of 2007

Which supermodel made the most money in the last year? That's her, in the picture above. Be honest, even from behind you'd know it was Gisele Bundchen, the Brasilian bombshell who besides being rich and beautiful is also dating Tom Brady of the New England Patriots. According to a new survey by Forbes magazine, Bundchen made $33 million last year—way more than the second-best-paid model, Kate Moss, who made $9 million. Rounding out the top five are Heidi Klum ($8 million); Adriana Lima ($6 million); and Alessandra Ambrosio ($6 million). By the way, the Forbes article is a great piece of reporting on the current trends in the fashion world.
--David Schonauer

Annals of Advertising: A Very Impressive Campaign

I was reading the big article on Katie Couric in this week's issue of New York magazine but found myself more interested in a couple of full-page ads in the front of the book. Finally, something new! My congratulations to the person who thought of this. But who was it?

The ad on the left is for Honora jewelry. The ad on the left is for Fage yogurt.  Who would ever have imagined putting the two together like this?  For the yogurt company, it is a clever visual way to represent its product's "thick creaminess." The dual imagery also allows the pearls to be imagined as three-dimensional objects. Brilliant. Can anyone recall anything like this being done before?
--David Schonauer

Her Majesty is Not Amused with Annie Leibovitz

There was a little stir when Annie Leibovitz unveiled her photographs of Queen Elizabeth at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. last spring. The portraits were made in honor of Her Royal Majesty's state visit to the U.S. Some critics were not impressed with the images, saying they were cliched if not outright boring. I thought they were just right. At any rate, this story from the London Daily Mail sheds new light on the photo session. The picture here comes from BBC documentary, and captures the exact moment when the Queen lost her regal cool. It happened when Leibovitz asked Liz to remove her crown. The Queen stormed out, with an attendant lifting the train of her dress. It's not always fun to be Annie. If you were the photographer, how would you have handled the situation?
—David Schonauer

A Social Networking Site for Photographers and the Models Who Love Them

There’s an acronym for ordinary guys for use search sites like modelmayhem.com to find a hot chick who might want to pose naked for them. The term, which should be considered derogatory, is “GWC,” which stands for “Guy with Camera.” These are posers who aren’t really interested in taking pictures, if you know what I mean.

I’ve been visiting modelmeyhem.com frequently over the past few days, ever since I had lunch with a fashion photographer friend last week. I won’t mention his name because, while he is certainly not a GWC, he did admit that he thinks of the site as both a professional resource and a kind of job-specific dating service. (Note to my wife, if you read this: I was only doing journalistic research.)

Glamour Tips: It's All About the Face (and Bling)

Photographers who specialize in glamour imagery may want to check out this new study about how men and women view such pictures. Here's the bottom line: You've got to know your audience.

When presented photos of naked women, most men focused on the models' faces before moving onto other areas. Women in the study gazed longer at images of heterosexual sex than men did. How interested they were depended on whether they were taking birth-control pills, which contain hormones. Curiously, those women who were taking birth-control pills were more interested in "background" details, such as jewelery.

The implications for photographers are obvious. Styling and model selection are of paramount importance. I think that most good glamour photographers have always understood the basics of this. Despite common stereotyping, men look  for emotional satisfaction when they view pictures of naked women--or when they see a woman on the street. Men are constantly trying to gauge whether a woman is interested in them, and they do this by looking at a woman's face.

Women have a much easier time telling whether a man is interested in them. And they don't have to look at his face to tell.
--David Schonauer

Trend Watch: Paparazzi Product Placement

For years, Los Angeles paparazzi have made a living shooting celebs walking out of Starbucks while slurping down lattes from the chain's signature cups. Talk about free advertising! Now, however, we may be seeing a new degree of confluence between celebrity photojournalism and product promotion. Jennifer Aniston, who recently signed on as a spokeswoman for smarterwater, seems to be traveling with a bottle in view, just in case the paparazzi strike. (See the photo here, from the X17 agency.) As much as celebs complain about the paparazzi,they have always known how to make good use of them. Expect to see much more of this kind of unholy marketing.
—David Schonauer

Online Shopping Declines

From today's New York Times, an article about Internet shopping--specifically, how the volume of online sales is flattening out and even declining. Apparently, say some experts, the Internet shopping experience can be frustrating for consumers. Really? In my experience, online shopping for cameras and gear is pretty positive. I really don't a get thrill out of shopping at big-box consumer electronics store, with the crowds and the sales people who greet my questions with blank stares. I'd like to hear back from everyone on their online shopping experience and whether they are doing more or less of it.
--David Schonauer

Benson on Winehouse, Part Deux

My  post yesterday about Harry Benson's photos of Amy Winehouse elicited a comment from Keith Nolan, who did not like the images all that much. I thought they were good—more intimate than most celebrity portraits I usually see. But who knows? Maybe I am prejudiced, because I know Benson personally and really, really love Winehouse's "Back to Black" CD.  To be fair, the images I posted were outtakes—and unretouched ones at that. Here's another, and this one is much closer to the image used in the CD packaging.

Now it's up to all of you...am I exhibiting a lack of critical facility, photographically speaking? For that matter, am I off base on the CD?
—David Schonauer

Amy Winehouse by Harry Benson

I saw one of her videos on YouTube late the other night and went out the next day to get her "Back to Black" CD.  Inside the CD case there is a little booklet filled with pictures of her, including a center-spread shot by legendary photographer Harry Benson. "They called and asked me to do it," he said when I called to ask about the shoot. "I could have done it in a studio, but that would have looked like everything else these days—boring, boring.  So I shot her in her hotel room and in the hallway." Here are some outtakes of his shoot, exclusively for State of the Art.

By the way, this isn't the first time Benson has photographed a rising British musician in a hotel room. He shot the Beatles in a hotel in Paris as they  celebrated after hearing that one of their songs had climbed to number one on the charts. "You always work with what you have," says Benson.
—David Schonauer

How Baby-Loving Photographers Earn Extra Money

From the New York Times's Sunday Business section comes this article about a "new trend" in photography: women who have set up businesses taking pictures of babies. (The photo here, showing baby photographer Laura Brophy, was made for the Times by Max Schulte.) The article is mostly based on facts and figures  supplied by the Professional Photographers of America. The premise is that all the popular, affordable digital SLRs have allowed weekend photographers to take their work to the next level. Overwhelmingly, these people are women. Once they start selling photos of the tots, they often use the money to buy better cameras, and the cycle repeats. But let's face it: This kind of business begins and ends with baby love. You've got to have an abiding affection for the little ones, and the ability to work fast before they start screaming.
—David Schonauer

Modern Postcard Announces Photo Contest

As someone who gets probably 10 postcards a day about new shows or rising photography stars, I can tell you that those little pieces of cardboard do get seen. Which is why the grand prize of Modern Postcard's Spotlight Awards--a $1,000 Portfolio Package including almost 2,000 cards--is a potentially powerful spring-board for emerging photographers.

Submit your three images by April 30, 2007, here and you'll also receive 20 percent off printing on your next postcard order from Modern Postcard. The top five entries will be posted to the website from May 14–31, where the public will vote on its favorite, to be announced June 11.

~Miki Johnson

The Simple Photo Life

As we begin work on our annual "Editor's Choice" survey of new photo products (see the 2006 installment), I'd like to register a formal complaint. I have already tried a number of this year's contenders—I won't name names, yet—and while they mostly perform as advertised, it has been a pain in the neck to get some of them to do what they're supposed to do.

Aperture Event: March 13

A panel discussion titled Fine Artist or Commercial Photographer? will examine the myriad paths photographers may choose to tread once they leave art school. Stephen Frailey, chair of the Photography Department at the School of Visual Art's Bachelor of Fine Arts degree program, will mediate conversation between James Danziger of Danziger Projects; Elisabeth Sussman, curator of photography at the Whitney Museum of American Art; and American Photo's own EIC David Schonauer.

6:30 pm
Free and open to the public
Aperture Gallery
547 W. 27th St., 4th Floor
New York city

In Search of the Green Photo Studio

We have no outright evidence of this, but we suspect that one of the good things about digital photography is the effect (or rather lighter effect) it has on the environment. That notion got us to wondering whether there are any photographers out there who have purposefully designed a "green"  studio. Does anyone know of photographers who have adapted their businesses to an environmentally sound standard? We'd love to hear.
—David Schonauer

Camera as Appliance

Here's another measure of how mainstream digital cameras have become: General Electric is getting into the business. Now you can buy your point-and-shoot from the same company that made your refrigerator. GE will be selling models ranging from seven to 12 megapixels, all with the image stabilization and high ISO settings that make it more realistic to turn off that ugly frontal flash.

The California-based creator of the line, a new outfit called (of course) General Imaging, is chaired by a former president of Olympus, and its chief designer is the man who brought you the good looks of Sony VAIO computers and Olympus Stylus point-and-shoots. So we're hopeful that the GE cameras will be better-looking than our office microwave, though the company is also promising a snapshot printer that's bound to resemble a toaster. If Panasonic and Samsung can do it, then so can GE.

--Russell Hart

Photo: A sample from the "G" series of new GE digital camera line.

Kodak Rising

Time will tell if Kodak's new cheap ink strategy helps the struggling giant. The new printers that use it, while they look to be well thought-out, enter a super-competitive field in which prices have just about bottomed out. The venture's success would seem to depend entirely on the idea of cheaper home printing. Sensible enough.

Just in case you haven't seen it, here's Kodak's "internal commercial" for its overall marketing push. My first, quick take on it was that the venerable company has a self-deprecating sense of humor. Then its schiz-y, hysterical quality made me think it might be a deeper sort of self-portrait. You decide. In any case, I nominate this guy for an Oscar.

--Russell Hart

VII Joins MySpace

VII Photo is male, 35 years old, married, and lives in Venice, California -- at least according to the photojournalism agency's official MySpace profile. MySpace, the insanely popular social networking site (46 million unique visitors in July) owned by Rupert Murdoch's Fox Interactive Media, is increasingly being utilized by web-savvy marketers to drum up business, so kudos to VII for being one of the first photography firms to take advantage.