"Show me sexy!"

Rube Goldberg clips are becoming like Hitler videos, but this is kinda cute. Cute I say. Wonder how photographers get that special shot? It's magic! Nice self-promo piece from 2D Photography.

Amazing lost series of images from Richard Avedon.

Not really. It’s an image taken by a one Mr. policromados using flavor of the month Instagram and one of its many effects (in this case, a combination of Tiltshift-Retro-Matic magic). BUT YOU THOUGHT IT WAS. Screw the friendly, clean look of Web 2.0, the service and its special cousin Hipstamatic have made it possible for anyone to take a picture of daily life and make it look (insert dramatic adjective of your choice). In other words, even Snookie could shoot like Anna-Lou Leibovitz. These two apps and the sure to follow spinoffs have democratized the art act of photography in a way that Polaroid cameras (and then this generation’s Nikon Coolpix et al.), haven’t.

Email still works.

At first I was like damn, messing with people like that, but okay, it worked. Photographer Arthur Mebius and agency New Message employed OLD SCHOOL email as part of a self-promotion to get him more clients. How? By indirectly playing up on the anticipation photographers have while awaiting word of inclusion in a REALLY important nominations book by the Art Director’s Club of Netherlands. He sent out an email to the same list as the ADCN membership would have around the same time they were to notify people of their decision, and thus jumped to the front of the mind line. Nice trick.

Lights, camera, iPhone.

So much for crappy cell phone pics. Photographer Greg Schmigel shows it’s not about the gear you use. His weapon of choice: an iPhone. Now go trash your laptop-taken avatar, please.

(Via.)

Katrina then and now.

I was never sure about the whole iReporter thing that CNN had started. It always seemed like some fancy tech name they gave to the same people who’d always sent in twister videos. But this look at Katrina then and now using before and after photos is the kind of human interest story that a media parent like CNN might not have deemed worthy in the past, yet embraces now.

(Via.)

Dennis Hopper’s B&W world.

The late actor was also a photographer, among other things. This a collection of his work, ranging from stars on the rise like Bill Cosby above to civil rights protests in Selma, Alabama. That is all.

You mean the ’40s weren’t in black and white?

This Farm Security Administration collection of color images from 1939-1943 represents the early war days of a post-depression U.S. Part of the Library of Congress now, the color shows a human side of the typical historical feel associated with the black and white imagery we grew up seeing in history books. Even though color was around long before this time having started around the 1840s, it hadn’t been perfected. Black & white was just cheaper, hence the majority of the work shot with it. While it gives you a new perspective on the times, there still is this moment where you think color equals a more modern time. At least it did for me.

(Via.)