As newspapers struggle to survive in this new digital media world, an Arkansas-based collector named John Rogers has quietly built the world’s largest privately owned collection of photographs by paying huge sums of money for their photo archives. He currently has about 35 million photographs purchased from newspapers including The Chicago Sun Times, The St. Petersburg Times, and The Denver Post. Of these images, he owns or shares the copyright to about 25 million.

Part of the deal in each acquisition is that Rogers’ company digitizes and meticulously organizes the images, making the digital versions available to the newspapers. Apparently his phone is “ringing off the hook” from newspapers eager to have him purchase and digitize their archives.

Collector pays newspapers millions to digitize vintage photos (via Rob Galbraith)

What’s more beautiful: Hilda Grahnat‘s collection of film cameras, or the way she photographed and arranged them? Either way, we think this would make an awesome poster for any wall.

(via KEH Blog)

Image credit: .5571 by hildagrahnat and used with permission

Yesterday we reported that artist Richard Prince had just lost a copyright infringement lawsuit against a photographer he appropriated images from. Here’s an interesting snippet from an interview with Prince in which he shares his views on this matter:

Copyright has never interested me. For most of my life I owned half a stereo so there was no point in suing me, but that’s changed now and it’s interesting. I’m actually in the situation where I am being sued at the moment (by a French photographer I might add) for taking his original images and turning them into paintings. It’s something that’s really problematic for me because in a strange way now I find myself censoring things that I look at and it’s almost like I can’t do it anymore, because people know who you are. So sometimes it’s better not to be successful and well known and you can get away with much more. I knew what I was stealing 30 years ago but it didn’t matter because no one cared, no one was paying any attention. It was an attitude to do with the fact that I didn’t think there was a future.
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Landscape photographer Terje Sorgjerd spent four years looking to create a timelapse of the aurora borealis (AKA northern lights), then finally flew two hours north from Norway and spent a week capturing one of the biggest displays in recent years. The final result is absolutely jaw-dropping.

In case you’re wondering, the stills were shot with a Canon 5D Mark II along with the Canon 24mm 1.4, Canon 16-35mm 2.8, and Sigma 12-24mm lenses.

Did you know that Canon’s first logo back in 1934 depicted Kwanon, the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy? Kwanon was actually the brand name used until they began thinking about expansion:

When the Company sought to begin full-scale marketing, it needed a brand name that would be accepted by people worldwide. From this standpoint, in 1935 the name Canon was registered as the official trademark. The word Canon has a number of meanings, including scriptures, criterion and standard. The trademark was therefore worthy of a company involved with precision equipment, where accuracy is fundamentally important. It also embodied the Company’s desire to meet world-class criteria and industry standards. And since Canon and Kwanon had similar pronunciations, the transition went smoothly. [#]

Not a bad decision if you ask me…

(via Hongkiat)

Richard Prince, the artist who “rephotographed” a cigarette advertisement and had it sell for more than $1 million, has just lost a copyright infringement lawsuit after being sued by photographer Patrick Cariou. Prince had taken 41 photographs made by Cariou from the book Yes, Rasta, modified them in various ways (sometimes minor), and displayed them at a gallery exhibition as his own work (above is one of Cariou’s photos on the left with Prince’s piece on the right). The exhibition went on to generate over $10 million for Prince and the gallery.
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When PetaPixel reader David Anderson opened up the April 2011 edition of Shutterbug magazine, he was shocked to find a terrorist in one of the advertisements. Someone should alert the TSA to this, since they published a poster warning us of this type of terrorist back in 2010.

Quick, does anyone recognize the back of this guy’s head? Oh wait, this guy might.

Image credit: Photograph by David Anderson and used with permission

Jonathan over at PhotoWeeklyOnline created a couple photography-related word search puzzles that contain words like “aperture” and “shutter”. There’s two puzzles, one for analog photography terms and one for digital. Print out the PDFs for a fun handout at a photography-related event or a quick diversion from work if you need a break.

Download the PDFs: Analog | Digital

A couple weeks ago we reported that a lawmaker in Florida was trying to make photographing farms a felony. Turns out the Florida Senate Committee on Agriculture actually approved the bill this week, but only after passing a couple amendments that make the bill a little more reasonable. The new version of the bill only concerns photographs taken by people who trespass onto the private farmland, and instead of a felony the crime will now be a misdemeanor. Whew.

By the way, some folks in Iowa are trying to pass a similar bill…

Florida Farm Bill Update (via dvafoto)

Image credit: Thai Farmland by marctonysmith

Update: This giveaway is now over. The winner was randomly selected and announced below.

Hello y’all. We’re going another giveaway — this time it’s for a Pro Runner x450 AW backpack by Lowepro that’s worth $430. It can be used as both a backpack and a roller, can store a laptop and tripod, and has a covering to protect your gear from the rain.

To enter this giveaway, all you need to do is answer the following question:

If you could shoot anywhere in the world, where would you go?

There are two ways to enter, and doing both methods will give you 2 entries in the contest, and thus double the chance the win!

1. Leave your response as a comment on this post
2. Tweet your response, and include the following link to this post anywhere in the tweet: http://j.mp/pplowepro

   As long as the link appears in the tweet, you’ll be automatically entered in the contest.

This contest is open to international readers as well, and will end Friday, March 25, 2011. We’ll randomly pick a winner using random.org and update this post. Good luck!

Update: This giveaway is now over. We received 845 comment entries and 415 Tweet entries for 1260 entries overall. The randomly selected winner is…

#371: Pcswann

I’d go to Africa!

Please email editor@petapixel.com to claim your prize (we’re contacting you as well).

Thanks to everyone who entered! Please stay tuned for more awesome giveaways!

A big thanks to Lowepro for providing the prize for this giveaway!