I was asked by Men’s Health to create an image that would illustrate this feature article on allergies and how cloudy one’s head becomes during an allergic reaction. Creating the cloud around the subjects head was a difficult task but Jeanne was excited to try and make this happen… the cloud of smoke was not accomplished in post production… we were able to do this all in camera.

Once again Jeanne, thank you for trusting me to make this happen for you. model: Chris Ryan, Grooming: Andi Daniel, Shot at Sun West Studios

NEW YORK—Marilyn Minter takes pictures. Then she paints pictures of the pictures she has taken. When she’s finished, she hires Tom Powel to take pictures of her pictures of her pictures.

His pictures go into books and catalogs to catch the eye of buyers willing to pay $100,000 or more for a painting by Ms. Minter. For his pictures of her pictures, Mr. Powel earns $2,000 a day.

“I don’t know how Tom does it, but he’s the best I’ve seen,” Ms. Minter said in her SoHo loft one day. “If you took a sloppy picture of one of my pictures, it’d look like…a photograph.”

She was leaning over a table, brush in hand, varnishing her latest creation: “Sludge,” a painting of a Photoshopped photo of a glossy shoe overlaid with dribbles of translucent goop.

“Dog hair,” said Ms. Minter, picking something off the surface. Then she straightened up and said, “I’m done.”

Her painting glared in the track lights. Standing to one side, Mr. Powel said quietly, “Varnish. My nemesis.”

His job now was to kill the glare and capture the gloss.

Mr. Powel, 54 years old, began doing this kind of work in 1985. Digital cameras and computer software have since become tools of manipulation, but Mr. Powel seeks absolute fidelity.

He resists the urge to make his pictures look better than the pictures he takes pictures of. He’s a star in an occupation that stands out for self-effacement.

The occupation doesn’t exactly have a name. “Copy photographer” works well enough, or maybe “archivist.” Photojournalist Mustafah Abdulaziz, who came along for this newspaper to photograph Mr. Powel taking pictures of Ms. Minter’s picture, said, “I didn’t know this was a job.”
While news photographers have lost business to Flickr’s amateur crowd, photographers of pictures are in big demand.

Collectors today often don’t get to stand in front of an artwork before they buy it, especially if they live in China. They see a picture of the artwork first—and it had better be a good one.

“A lot of our clients experience pictures only through the illustrations in our catalogs,” says Conor Jordan, who runs the Impressionist auctions at Christie’s in New York. For him, pictures of pictures are “of pivotal importance in the art market.”

There barely was an art market, in fact, until engravings of paintings appeared 500 years ago.

Black-and-white photographs followed, then color transparencies—each technique inching toward a truer facsimile of the real thing.

I recently had the opportunity to see “The Morini Strad” about legendary violinist Erica Morini and the story of her stolen Stradivarius while hospitalized at the end of her life.
I loved it… the story of a passionate prodigy who played what many consider the greatest achievement in musical instrument making (the Stradivarius)… the mystery surrounding the stolen Stradivarius (which to this day still has not been solved) and how easily greatness can be forgotten.
The Strad serves as a reminder of a time when Erica was hailed as the next great female violinist. “When one is young,” she says, “one hears only the word ‘great.’ When one is less young, one hears only the word ‘next.’ ”
Arturo Toscanini bestowed a silk scarf on Erica and Leonard Bernstein stopped by for dinner… Erica hardly left her Fifth Avenue apartment in the last decade or so and she died a forgotten genius.
It is a sad story that reminds us all that achieving greatness is not how we are remembered, it is how we treated others.

According to The Daily Mail, a woman’s face is said to be most attractive when the distance between her pupils is just under half of the distance between her ears. Colgate scored a 44% ratio.

The distance between a woman’s eyes and mouth should be just over one-third the measurement of her hairline to chin. Colgate scored a 32.8% ratio.

“Florence has all the classic signs of beauty,” Carmen Lefèvre, of The Perception Lab at the University of St Andrews’ School of Psychology, told The Daily Mail. “She has large eyes, high cheekbones, full lips and a fair complexion. Symmetry appears to be a very important cue to attractiveness.”

“Although we don’t realize it in everyday interactions, in most people’s faces the right and left half are actually quite different.”

The blue-eyed blonde—who’s currently studying ‘A’-levels at the Dover Grammar School, and works part-time at a seaside chip shop in Deal, Kent—has never had any plastic surgery or chemical enhancements, and normally wears only light foundation, mascara, concealer.

For the natural beauty contest ‘Lorraine: Naked’ (where no make-up or cosmetic enhancements of any kind were allowed), Colgate won a trip to a London model agency and will be featured on billboards and posters in beauty and health retailer Superdrug stores.

Colgate told The Daily Mail that she would love to have a career in modelling but “is currently studying business, geography and psychology, and intends to do business management at university.”

“Women should not have to feel that they have to wear makeup,” Colgate said. “I hope people will look at me and think they don’t need to. I’m very happy with the way I look and I would never have any plastic surgery or Botox.”

Can science define beauty, in your opinion?

Oppenheimer, who had been Robinson’s boss at a stained-glass studio in Memphis, recalls that Robinson kept mostly to himself and had very few friends. Few people even knew he had died, which might explain why Oppenheimer found himself in this position to begin with: There was no one else to take care of the effects.

What Oppenheimer did find when he opened the doors was an immaculately tidy apartment with exactly one of everything: One plate, one bowl, one mug. Robinson only wore white shirts and jeans, Oppenheimer says, and his spare white buttons were meticulously organized by size. A few cameras were in a display case. Then he opened the closet.

“I opened this one box, and stacked down to the bottom was Elton John, Joni Mitchell, Jack Nicholson, The Who,” Oppenheimer says on the phone. “It became very obvious that this was no ordinary photographer.”

Jack Robinson, it turned out, had been a commercial photographer in New York City — namely for Vogue — long enough to build an archive of some 150,000 prints of the most recognizable faces of the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s.

It wasn’t until after his death that Oppenheimer discovered this — and more. Like the fact that Robinson was gay; that he had skyrocketed from a small-town Mississippi home to the upper crust of social hipdom, carousing with Andy Warhol’s milieu; that he’d had a serious alcohol problem, which, likely in tandem with other factors, led to his ultimate unraveling.

Ever since Robinson’s 1997 death, Oppenheimer has been piecing together the photographer’s life — cataloging and publicizing the photos, managing what is now the Jack Robinson Archive. And after more than a decade, a preview of Robinson’s work can be seen in the book Jack Robinson On Show: Portraits 1958-72.

The introduction gives more context. Robinson was convinced by an art dealer to leave the bohemia of New Orleans, where he had moved for college, to pursue a photography career in New York. After some time, he got a foot in the door of Vogue, where “his skill as a portraitist attracted many renowned sitters,” the introduction reads. It continues:

Most of his shots are direct, unfussy, and very rarely furnished with props, the exceptions often being instruments — Elton John’s Piano, Joni Mitchell’s guitar. There is an explorative sensitivity in his work, which could be a consequence of his sexuality. … Warren Beatty, then the most celebrated of Hollywood womanizers, becomes in black leathers a gay icon, and when revealed donning his neckwear, a narcissistic fop.

The career lasted 17 years before Robinson came undone and moved to Memphis. There, he sobered up and took a job as a stained-glass designer. By the time Oppenheimer met him, New York City and photography and alcoholism had all been buried in the past. And there’s really no one who knows much more — at least not outspokenly.

“I kept waiting for some family member to step forward and make arrangements, and to this day no one has stepped forward,” Oppenheimer says on the phone from Memphis. Robinson, it seems, left everything to Oppenheimer on purpose — knowing it would be in good hands. He was right; Oppenheimer still gets excited when he talks about it.

“I wouldn’t have known what Tom Wolfe looked like 45 years ago but I knew the name,” Oppenheimer says. “It overwhelms people to this day to see all of the icons of your youth … to see all of these people when they’re 20 years old.”

And he’s just scratching the surface. In that tiny, unassuming Memphis apartment lived an Alexandria. Today, the people who sat for Robinson, of those still living, are aging. But the photos, pristine as ever, preserve their famous, fresh faces as if no time has passed.

by CLAIRE O’NEILL – NPR

Food was great… my son had the fried chicken (so delicious), my friend had the swedish meatballs and I had the winner with a 3″ thick pork lion chop that was perfect in every way. Highly recommended.

The recently finished downstairs is a sexy speakeasy style environment complete with the amazing drinks that our trendy “cocktail culture” world craves these days. It has a great throwback feel as there are no windows much like The Raines Law Room and PDT”s. These underground cocktail bars leave us with a feeling of escapism… to an era where things were much simpler… all about imbibing with great people.

The suit started when Reinsdorf discovered that images he took for Skechers from 2006-2009 and licensed to them for very specific terms–six months use in North America for point of sale, magazines and certain outdoor advertisements–were being used for several years and included in ads overseas and on packaging and other unauthorized media. The suit states that Skechers “completely and utterly ignored the terms of the license.” (source)

First reported by TMZ back in September of 2009 it took an unusual turn in 2010 when Skechers filed a motion to dismiss claiming ownership of copyright because of “alterations they performed on the images from slight modifications in models’ skin tone to the substitution of models’ body parts and the addition of substantial graphic effects.” They asked the judge to dismiss because they couldn’t possibly have infringed on their own copyright.

If you want to read the motion to dismiss you can download it (here). It certainly would set a disturbing precedent in the photography world if something like this were to be allowed. In the discussion the judge states that “Skechers is correct that a co-author in a joint work cannot be liable to another co-owner for infringement of the copyright” but that’s not what’s at issue here because “Contrary to Skechers’ assertions, the evidence in the record does not indisputably establish that Reinsdorf intended that his photographsbe incorporated into a joint work.” He simply gave them a limited license to their use. The motion to dismiss was denied.

The latest I could find was an order granting Reinsdorf an extended discovery cutoff of May 15, 2012 (here). This will certainly be a case worth watching. I’ll be interested to see what the judge thinks of the $250,000,000 price tag, the limited license terms and Skechers sketchy defense that advertisements are a joint work and can be used where ever and how ever they want.

by A PHOTO EDITOR on APRIL 4, 2012

©Michael D. Jones. The photographer says this portrait of Quincy Jones, shot in 1995, was recently used without permission in ads for audio headphones and other applications.

A co-defendant in the copyright infringement case against celebrity music producer Quincy Jones has denied the infringement claims, which were filed in February by Los Angeles photographer Michael D. Jones.

Harman International, which allegedly used a portrait of Quincy Jones without the photographer’s permission to promote a line of its audio headphones, says that Michael Jones shot the portrait under work-for-hire terms. Therefore, the photographer doesn’t own the copyright to the images and can’t claim infringement, Harman says. (The company has yet to produce evidence of a work-for-hire agreement, however.)

Harman adds that even if Michael Jones does own the copyrights to the image, he transferred those rights to Harman. As evidence of that, Harman points to a rights transfer contract drafted by its attorneys, but Michael Jones’ signature is conspicuously absent from that contract. For good measure, Harman says its use of the portrait was “fair use,” so Michael Jones’s permission wasn’t required.

“Any and all uses that it made of any such photographic images were authorized, lawful and not infringing of any alleged rights,” Harman asserts repeatedly.

Harman says it is responding to the claims only for itself, not Quincy Jones or the other defendants, including music publisher Hal Leonard Corporation, which also used the portrait.

But Harman’s response presages those of the other defendants, and the dispute is likely to boil down to two questions: whether Michael Jones photographed Quincy Jones under a work-for-hire arrangement, and if not, whether Michael Jones subsequently transferred usage rights to the defendants.

Michael Jones says he shot the images in 1995 during several sessions at Qwest Records. He provided Quincy Jones with some 8×10 prints, but alleges he was not paid for shooting the last two studio sessions because he refused at the time to sign over his rights to the images.

Years later, in 2010, a Qwest Records executive allegedly offered Michael Jones $5,000 for what amounted to a copyright transfer of one of the images so Harman could use it to promote a line of audio headphones endorsed by Quincy Jones. The photographer says he demanded $10,000 for a license, and that he subsequently refused a counter-offer of $6,500. Allegedly without any license agreement, Harman ended up using the images anyway.

A court date has not been set.