"The most important thing is to put the weather out of my mind," the guy says. "I don't care how cold or nasty it is, I treat it as I would any other game. It's all mental -- whether you let the elements get to you, or whether you ignore them and do your job to the best of your ability, that's in your mind. That's up to you."
He sounds like Butkus back in the day, like somebody with taped ankles and a snarl on his face. He sounds like someone immortalized in an NFL Films close-up, frostbitten fingers chapped and bleeding as he points across the line of scrimmage at his intended target. But he's not a player at all. He's the guy on the other side of the camera. Literally. He's the one standing on the sideline looking through a viewfinder, his frostbitten fingers chapped and bleeding as he focuses and zooms. He's Don Marx, 35-year veteran NFL Films cameraman, and when the weather gets tough he bears down. [ESPN Page 2 - Neel: The inclement photographer]
Photography is dead, according to art critic Peter Plagens -- if you mean the "straight, nonfiction reportage most people think of as great photography." Plagens mourns the loss of "realist photography," but understands the lure of digital manipulation. It's not all doom and gloom, if you consider that the medium is just as popular among amateurs as it was in the days of the Kodak Brownie. This scholarly article (in Newsweek, of all places) is a fascinating snapshot of photographic history, which should be read by anyone who wonders whether we lose something when analog reality is subsumed by pixels.
The holiday are coming! Here are some ideas from Snapfish to inspire you to get some out-of-the-ordinary pictures this year:
"Capture the fun of holiday cooking, from preparing the feast to setting the table. . . Snap photos as you decorate this season, creating photo stories that document the fun of transforming your home. . . Preserve your children's artwork. Scan or photograph their masterpieces, then save them in a photo book or create collage posters for the relatives. . . Take photos that stick in their memory—literally. Turn photo favorites into stickers, then add to letters, cards, and envelopes. . . Explore new and interesting angles—how about a shot of the Christmas tree from the top down? You’ll capture the star, the ornaments and every present underneath. . . Pass the camera around at holiday parties to get shots from the littlest guest on up. Have kids to take photos too, and get them interested in their family history." [Photo Fun at Snapfish]
"Yahoo has made a definitive agreement to acquire Flickr." [FlickrBlog.]
This appears to be the business model on the web now; the bigger fish buy out the innovative smaller fish. Google bought Blogger, now Yahoo is buying the addictively fun photo site named Flickr. In the long run, this probably helps ensure the service will be around and functioning at peak capacity. I hope this new partnership doesn't kill the "cool factor" Flickr currently enjoys. I don't have much time to visit the site -- I try to resist the temptation when at work because it's too easy to lose track of time there -- but I love the community aspect to it. Groups can be formed intentionally, or simply by using the same tag as others are using.
