Here’s a short inspirational video featuring Canadian photographer Jeff Wall in which he talks about his method of allowing his eyes to do “photography” first before using his camera.

(via Xataka Foto)

On Memorial Day 2011, Narces Benoit witnessed and filmed a group of Miami police officers shooting and killing a suspect in a car chase and armed robbery. He was then confronted by officers who handcuffed him and smashed his cell phone, but Benoit was able to sneakily preserve the video with some quick thinking. The Miami Herald writes,

Benoit said the officers eventually uncuffed him after gunshots rang out elsewhere and he discreetly removed the [memory] card and placed it in his mouth.

Officers again took his phone, demanding his video. He said they took him to a nearby mobile command center, snapped a picture of him, then took him to police headquarters and conducted a recorded interview while he kept the [memory] card in his mouth. He insisted his phone was broken.

The video was uploaded to YouTube yesterday, and has since gone viral. A local news cameraman also had his camera confiscated and thrown into the back of a police car.

(via The Miami Herald via Carlos Miller)

Update: Turns out it wasn’t a SIM card, but an SD memory card that was used in a HTC EVO. (Thanks Caleb!)

Update: You can read the National Press Photographers Association’s response here.

President Obama announced last week that photographs of Osama bin Laden’s body would not be released to the public due to concerns that it would incite violence and hatred, but a number of news agencies and advocacy groups are attempting to have them released using a Freedom of Information Act request. The Associated Press is one of the agencies that filed a FOIA request (they’re also requesting that video of the raid be released), and the US government has 20 days to respond.
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Last week a United Airlines flight out of Denver International Airport was returned to the gate after being ready for takeoff when a passenger noticed “suspicious behavior” and notified a flight attendant. The plane was evacuated and swept for suspicious devices, the suspicious passengers were taken and questioned, and the flight was delayed by 2.5 hours. Now it’s believed that the passengers were simply taking pictures during taxiing, though the fact that two of the picture takers were of Middle Eastern descent likely had something to do with the “suspiciousness”.

(via The Consumerist)

Thanks for the tip Eugene!

Image credit: Air Canada’s Boeing 777 interior by Smaku

A new German company called X-Pire wants to give you a little more peace of mind with photographs you share online by allowing you to share them with a time-based “self-destruct” feature. According to Yahoo News,

The software should prevent the increasingly frequent occurrence of someone being refused a job or running into other embarrassing difficulties after posting a photo that maybe should have been kept private.

Before the user posts the photo, he or she drags it into the programme which assigns it an electronic key that is valid for a limited time period, said Michael Backes, founder of X-Pire.

If someone wishes to view that photo later, the server checks whether the photo has “expired” and blocks it from being displayed if its time is up.

While this might be effective in dealing with certain privacy situations, it doesn’t prevent people from downloading the “protected” photos since anything that’s visible online can be downloaded (e.g. a screenshot of it can be taken). Still, it’s an interesting attempt at a solution for people wary of having embarrassing photographs come back to haunt them in the future. It’ll be available by the end of Jan 2011 with a subscription-based cost of €24 ($32) per year.

(via Engadget)

It’s interesting (though some might say infuriating) to see how photographers are depicted in some police training videos. Lesson learned? Don’t carry camera gear and sleeping bags together in the back seat of your car.

In case the video doesn’t start at the right place automatically, photography-related stuff starts around 4:30.

If you’re a fan of lo-fi images produced by plastic or pinhole camera, you don’t have to carry around multiple cameras or lenses. The “Subjectiv” lens give you four shooting modes in one lens and is compatible with Nikon and Canon.
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In 1877, photographer Eadweard Muybridge settled a longstanding debate on whether or not a horse completely leaves the ground at any point during its gallop by taking a single photograph of a horse completely airborne. In the same way, photography was also used recently by a group of researchers to uncover the mystery of how cats drink.
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This is a Kodak advertisement that ran in the The Saturday Evening Post 100 years ago, on April 30th, 1910, and shows how people back then gave their children a taste of photography.

(via The Online Photographer)

Some wedding photographers offer a package that includes an iPad pre-loaded with images from that special day.

It’s a simple, yet brilliant way to get both bride and (especially) groom more excited about the album — while assuring their photos won’t lie forgotten in a dusty album years later.

The digital trend is catching on, said Pennsylvania-based photographer Daniel Lanton, who bundles the iPad with engagement photos. Lanton said in an interview with Tampa Bay Online that the iPad it adds a bit more immediacy to the images, as well as a sort of permanence in a new digital age:

“I just foresee a time when the wedding album becomes non-existent or continues falling away … Now I’m selling more iPads with bound albums. I sold six in the first week.”

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