Here’s our “Living” Magazine Cover and Spread released with the October issue of Outside Magazine. Photographed with the Red One camera, we created our vision of how a motion-magazine of the not-too-distant future would look based on emerging technologies like flexible OLED and E Ink.
Music is “Gone Gone Days” by Two Years Before the Mast and “I Like Van Halen Because My Sister Says They Are Cool” which has got to be my favorite song title in the world by El Ten Eleven. You can buy El Ten Eleven’s music here: itunes.com/elteneleven
Vibe Media Group (Vibe Magazine) is shutting its doors effictive today. Weather you liked the magazine or not, it always sends shockwaves when a magazine closes shop and it can feel like a ominous sign that big change is in the air. And it is. After my dad passed away, I wrote in one of my first blog posts “a good ending is a new beginning”, and that rings true here. We are bearing witness to a transition- old media and business models giving way to the demands of a new world. And the those who can’t adapt will become extinct. I couldn’t be more excited about what’s around the corner.
Sage advice from Milton Glaser by way of A Photo Editor Milton Glaser is a graphic designer, well know for his I Love New York campaign. He also co-founded New York Magazine in 1968.
1. You can only work for people that you like.
2. If you have a choice never have a job.
3. Some people are toxic avoid them.
4. Professionalism is not enough or the good is the enemy of the great.
5. Less is not necessarily more.
6. Style is not to be trusted.
7. How you live changes your brain.
8. Doubt is better than certainty.
9. On Aging.
10. Tell the truth.
Thanks to everyone for all the terrific feedback and comments on this and all the other blogs that carried the Living One Sheet Video! It’s great to be part of this discussion. This is such an incredibly exciting time to be an image maker. We are at the dawn of something new.
It won’t be long before the Harry Potter vision of the future is realized with moving portraits adorning newspapers and adverts. I am so excited about all the possibilities with converging photography with motion and thrilled to be on the front lines.
I’ve been getting some feedback about how these changes are exciting but scary, and some fear about the barrier to entry (cost of Red etc…) and I’d just like to state the obvious and say that yeah, change can be scary, but as Heraclitus pointed out 2500 years ago, the only constant is change. So as artists, we wind up facing the fundamental Darwinian axiom- evolve or dissolve.
Sure the Red One is expensive, but you can rent. And even still, the video image quality from the 5DMII is breathtaking, and that is certainly affordable.
So I challenge you to go out and try something. Take your aesthetic and vision as an image maker and try something new. I’d love to see what you can come up with. As an added incentive, there’s even a contest in the works. Stay tuned for the deets.
Here’s another campaign that does a great job of using photography as the best way of expressing a wonderfully textured idea. From BBDO Guerrero. The cans shown here were installed around Manila.
I just returned from Tunisia where my Dad’s family was having a memorial service. You know, my dad had 12 brothers and sisters, so between the Aunts & Uncles and cousins I had a small nation of family to greet me. There was a celebration with traditional music performed by a well known Tunisian singer, and a wonderful feast.
And after, a beautiful private ceremony where we laid to rest my dad in the Tunisian earth with his mother. In the earth at the head of the tomb, we planted mint. And as we rose to leave, a caterpillar appeared- fat and ready to burst open, and rested in the highlight of the sun as it cascaded through the water that we used to nourish the mint. It was very, very healing.
When I returned, I collapsed on the bed and slept for 15 hours. Waking now with the sunrise (oh, symbolism…) on the heels of my adventure, I am truly invigorated. Hello, world!
While reading That Unreliable Girl’s blog today, I came across a couple pictures that sent me back to childhood, back when all I did was explore the woods of Indiana. It really goes to show how strong a picture or painting really can be. Just by looking at these images, I want to throw my cellphone away, get off the grid, and stop and realize the beauty in life again. Maybe I’ll print one of these and put it in my car like Jamie Foxx in Collateral to remind me to slow down a little.
I’m lying on my dad’s bed. His waifish and frail body is next to me, barely disrupting the bedding above him. At our feet is the tv and on it runs a slideshow of family portraits I’ve assembled for him with the Ken Burns effect giving my family history the focused and sober look of a polished documentary film.
My dad’s body is being taken over by cancer and he is spending his final days at home with the people important to him. All week people parade through the house to share in the experience. At first we are alone, then my brother comes in and joins us. Then my stepmom, my cousin, uncle, mom, and soon everyone is there crowding around the bed watching the show.
There are only 300 or so images and we’ve all seen them many times over now. But seeing them in that context, in that spontaneous moment of assembly, we shared something that is incredibly difficult to manufacture.
What a moment. This is what we do… what it’s all about… doing something that creates a response, thereby creating something that’s bigger. I’m pretty sure that’s what we strive to do as artists…. and to be there when people are responding is such sweet nectar. I wanted to share that, because it’s not often that we get to experience that as artists. We do the work because we have to, and we put it out there because we need to share. …but to be there for and to take part in the evolution from creative expression to something bigger is truly magical and not to be missed.
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