robert hart photography

Here’s an interesting story from the Dec. 6, 2007 edition of The New York Times about “artist” Richard Prince’s photographs of other photographs, which smells like theft to me, or at the very least, an absolute lack of any original creativity.

This image, shot by photographer
Jim Krantz, was re-photographed by
“artist” Richard Prince.

I’m dumbfounded by Prince’s blatant theft but I’m astonished that a collector would pay $1.2 million for a copy.

Photographer Jim Krantz erred by selling his copyright to Marlboro, which means he owns no rights to the images and therefore, has no right to file suit. That has to smart.

See the New York Times slide show depicting more of Prince’s expropriated “art”.

The term paparazzi was used by Frederico Fellini to refer to a character in his 1960 film, La dolce vita. It refers to the noisy buzzing of a mosquito and certainly seems an apt description for the swarm of photographers that hover in the presence of celebrities.

According to The New York Times “people paparazzi” are swelling the ranks of professional photographers pursuing celebrities. Now anyone with a camera–or a cell phone–can join the pursuit.

And you thought image tampering came about with the advent of Adobe Photoshop?

Quite the contrary–it’s as old as photography itself. While digital imaging software has certainly made tampering easier and more accessible, the practice of altering photographs was alive and well in photographer Mathew Brady’s time.

Here at top is a photo of General Ulysses S. Grant and his generals, well almost. General Blair, at far right, was added later (bottom photo). Notice too how the background changes and the table or pedestal at far left in the foreground disappears in the bottom photo.

This excellent research paper from Dartmouth’s Image Science Group provides multiple examples and demonstrates that deception in photography was alive and well 142 years ago.

While photography is less than 200 years old, deception is eternal.

Chris Usher filed suit against Corbis for the loss of 12,640 analog images (transparencies and/or negatives) and won a favorable decision two years after the trial’s end.

Monetary damages will be determined in a Dec. 18 hearing.

Ali Michael on the runway for Barneys at Fashion at the Park.

I recently finished shooting four days of runway fashion at NorthPark Center’s Fashion at the Park. NorthPark launched their first show this past spring, and it was a huge success, so this autumn show was a no-brainer.

Once again I had the opportunity to work for Evans Caglage, a veteran of 20-plus years shooting runway shows in Milan, Paris and NYC. A senior staff photographer at The Dallas Morning News, Caglage has photographed virtually every supermodel to strut the catwalk during the past two decades.

His relationship with the Kim Dawson Agency during the past 25 years has allowed him to work with Erin Wasson, Chandra North, Angie Harmon, Bridget Hall and recently, Ali Michael.

NorthPark has done a superb job of creating a Fashion Week-like experience, according to Caglage, “From inside that tent, you’d never know you weren’t in Bryant Park.” Caglage took a week’s vacation from his newspaper job to manage a team of four photographers responsible for shooting editing and posting images from all 19 runway events as well as the parties before and after each show.

Using PhotoShelter Caglage’s team uploaded 1,572 full-res images (average jpeg image size: 35 to 45 megabytes), during the four-day event and as of this writing, more than 1,542 images have been downloaded. Caglage requested a big pipe for image uploading, to avoid backups between shows, and the 350-kilobit line did the trick. Images were available for download within two hours of the end each show. The downloadable files are available, by password, only to the fashion media.

In the interest of full disclosoure, I was working for Caglage who, for this one-week period, was working for NorthPark, but I must say that NOBODY does an event like NorthPark. Nancy Nasher was at all but a couple shows and her influence was evident in every detail.

Three autochrome glass plates, shot by Edward Steichen, were recently donated to the George Eastman House collection in Rochester.

The images were owned by 96-year-old painter, Charlotte Albright, daughter of the woman on the plates. Her mother, Charlotte Spaulding, was a student of Steichen’s and, for a brief period, a photographer herself.

Legal minds are weighing in on the Stock Photo forum regarding the Curran suit against Getty, Amazon, et. al.

If a book cover is “editorial use” does Curran’s suit have merit? At least two intellectual property attorneys are weighing in.

One of the most difficult/frustrating assignments I give my journalism students each semester is the action shot. We pore over the best sports images from the various wire services in class and they leave ready to capture dogs, boyfriends, intramural athletes, little brothers and sorority sisters in mid-leap.

They return to class fully aware of a major shortcoming of point-and-shoot cameras: Shutter lag. That nasty three-second lapse between the time they depress the shutter button and instant the camera actually exposes the sensor.

For anyone contemplating their next digital point-and-shoot camera purchase, here’s an excellent article in today’s New York Times that explains that it’s not the shutter, really, it’s the processor.

So Getty Images sells a photograph of Erik Curran, a soldier, to St. Martin’s Press.

St. Martin’s Press publishes it on the cover of “Killer Elite”, a book about a super-secret U.S. Army Special Forces team. The book is currently selling on Amazon at $16.47. Curran files a suit naming Amazon and Getty Images (for starters) contending he did not grant permission for his photograph to be used.

No response yet from the folks at Getty, so I’m not going to assign blame just yet, but if Erik Curran didn’t sign a release, Getty’s gonna have to sign a check.

Note to Getty: See Russell Christoff v. Nestle USA.