I’m a Photogrpher Not a Terrorist

by Miserere

  

This bold statement is the war cry of a movement started in the UK to educate the members of the public and law enforcement agencies about street Photography. In recent years there has been an increase in the number of photographers being harassed by police because they were taking photographs in public, and draconian measures have been taken in the UK to limit the rights of photographers. I’m a Photogrpher Not a Terrorist is trying to do something about it. Or at least make a lot noise.

If you are in or near London, UK, on Saturday, January 23^rd, you might want to go to Trafalgar Sq. at 12:00 noon and let the British government know how you feel about their treatment of photographers. Check it out on Facebook too.

Addendum January 23^rd, 2010

Thanks to Lawrence, who e-mailed me the BBC story: Photographers protest over UK terror search laws.

It seems like it was a successful demonstration in that the turnout was good, but nobody got hurt or arrested. The Guardian story reports 2,000 photographers protesting.

Photo Prints for Haiti Relief Fund

by Miserere and Peter Zack

  

UPDATE 21 JAN. 2010
THIS PRINT SALE HAS BEEN CANCELLED

PayPal were not happy with what we were doing and closed down Peter’s account. We have refunded all those who had purchased a print and will be accepting no further orders. We are very sorry it had to end this way as we believed we were doing something good. Thank you to all those who purchased a print, and we apologise for any inconvenience we may have caused you.

Keep the hope, and please donate any way you can.

Miserere and Peter

  

What We Are Offering

Here at EtL Miserere and Peter would both like to do something to assist the victims of the Haiti earthquake.

To that end, we are offering 8 photos from our personal files that you can purchase as prints. All profits* from this sale will be donated to the Canadian Red Cross Haiti Relief Fund. Why the Canadian Red Cross? For one, Peter is Canadian, but more importantly, the Canadian government has committed to matching any donations made by Canadian individuals up to a total of $50 million. This means your contribution will be automatically doubled!

We will be accepting orders for 4 weeks, but will extended the deadline if interest warrants it)

  

How This Will Work

You will purchase your print(s) via secure server provided by PayPal; you can use your credit/debit card and do not need to have an account with PayPal. The funds go to Peter Zack. At the end of each week Peter will take the donations to his local Red Cross branch. The receipt(s) will be published here on the site for verification. We will also publish the local phone number of the branch where the donation was made. All donations will be made on behalf of Enticing the Light. Also at the end of each week we will place the orders for your professionally printed photographs, which you should receive within the following week.

  

I Want to Donate but Don’t Want a Print

No problem! But beware of donation scams. We would recommend donating to a reputable organisation; below we list trusted Haiti relief efforts:

American Red Cross
Canadian Red Cross
American Salvation Army
Canadian Salvation Army
UNICEF

Please note direct donations will not receive a photo.

  

Print Options

Print Size (inches)	Contribution (US$)
Small (8×10/8×12)	$25
Medium (11×14)	$40
Large (16×20/16×24)	$60

Please note that photos will have a white border around them, so image size will be slightly smaller than paper size given in table above.

The photos will be sent to your address within 2-4 weeks of the donation only dependent on printing and delivery times. At the moment we are accepting donations only from the USA and Canada as delivery pricing for other countries is too high to make economic sense. We recommend that our international readers simply make a direct donation to the charity of their choice.

  

Choose Your Photo(s)

We offer you 8 photos from which to choose from, all taken by us, and processed to make sure they print beautifully. Don’t think you need order just one; feel free to order as many as you like. The more you purchase, the more money goes towards the Haiti Relief Fund. And remember the Canadian government is matching your contribution!

Click on each image to see a larger version. When you know which one(s) you want, click on the appropriate size below the photo(s) and you’ll be taken to the PayPal payment page. You can order more than one print of each photo, but this will incur an extra $0.50/print to account for increased shipping costs. It’s of paramount importance that you include your shipping address when placing your order, if not, your shipping will be delayed while we contact you to get your address. Plus, it will annoy us. Please don’t annoy us 🙂

Order Small Order Medium Order Large	Order Small Order Medium Order Large	Order Small Order Medium Order Large	Order Small Order Medium Order Large

  

Order Small Order Medium Order Large	Order Small Order Medium Order Large	Order Small Order Medium Order Large	Order Small Order Medium Order Large

  

Thank You!

We thank everyone for taking an interest in this most worthy cause and appreciate any donations made either through this Enticing the Light print sale or directly to the charity of your choice.

Please help support our efforts by making your friends aware of our print/donation offer.

  

*From the amount of your contribution we will deduct Paypal’s transaction fees, and the printer’s printing and delivery costs; all the rest will be donated to the Canadian Red Cross, and in no case will EtL keep any money.

  

Voting Period Extended for Retrevo Awards

by Miserere

  

Dear Readers,

Thank you to everyone who has voted for EtL in the first Annual Golden Retrevo Awards. I just wanted to let you know that the voting has been extended an extra 10 days until January 25, 2010, so please keep on voting! Remember that each person can vote once each day. Just click on the badge on the top-right of the main blog page, on the badge below, or simply click here to vote right now.

10 Little Known Facts from the World of Photography

by Miserere

  

1. The word “Photography” was coined in 1839 by British mathematician and astronomer Sir John Frederick William Herschel (son of Sir Frederick William Herschel, discoverer of the planet Uranus). Hershel also coined the terms “negative” and “positive” as they apply to Photography. You can see a splendid portrait of him here.
2. You can’t take a bad portrait of a lion.
3. While the Leica brand is famously identified with Germany, they have also built cameras in Canada and Portugal.
4. The single-lens reflex photographic camera (SLR) was invented in 1861 by Thomas Sutton, a native of Jersey (one of the Channel Islands)—it was a large format camera. The first 35mm SLR developed was the Soviet Union’s Спорт (“Sport”), from 1934. Because it wasn’t marketed until 1937, Germany’s Kine Exakta became the first 35mm SLR to be sold when it hit shops in 1936. Asia’s first SLR, the Asahiflex, was introduced in 1952 by Japan’s Asahi Optical Corporation (later to become Pentax).
5. Around 1888, a Mr George Eastman, of Rochester, New York, decided he needed a unique name for his expanding company. In his own words: I devised the name myself. The letter ‘K’ had been a favorite with me — it seems a strong, incisive sort of letter. It became a question of trying out a great number of combinations of letters that made words starting and ending with ‘K.’ The word ‘Kodak’ is the result.
6. Professional portrait photographers never ask their subjects to say cheese when posing them for a photo, what they are actually mumbling under their breath is please pay for this session, pleeeease…
7. Nobody knows why East Asian girls make the peace sign when they pose for photos. That doesn’t mean you can’t have a Flickr Group for it.
8. Henri Cartier-Bresson once asked Marilyn Monroe to “bless” his camera before a photo shoot. She acquiesced by placing her bum on it. I did not make this up!
9. People in the 19^th century didn't like being photographed, which is why they are all so serious in those old photographs. Actually, those images were Daguerreotypes, and it took 10-20 minutes to expose a plate—try holding a smile for that long!.
10. The first portable, compact camera for the masses that did away with the need for a mule to carry photographic supplies was the Kodak Brownie. It was introduced in 1900 at a cost of $1, which is equivalent to around $26 in today’s money.

Vote for EtL!

by Miserere

  

Dear readers, I need your help. I’ve had the good fortune of being nominated for the first annual Golden Retrevo Award in the category of Photo & Video, for blogs covering digital cameras, photography, and video camcorders. Quoting CrunchBase.com: Retrevo is a shopping site focused solely on consumer electronics. The site, which is now one of the largest consumer electronics shopping and review sites online, aggregates product information, reviews and articles from blogs, forums, websites and manufacturers to provide shoppers with accurate, up-to-date shopping advice. Retrevo does their best to provide unadulterated product reviews by filtering out ads, eBay pages and online electronic stores like Best Buy and Amazon.

But being nominated is just the start…winning is the end, and to win, I need votes. Your votes!

If you want to help EtL win in the Photo & Video category, you need to vote once a day, and convince all your friends to do the same 🙂

How do you do that? Just click on the badge below to vote directly for EtL. I’ve also placed the badge at the top of the right-hand column in the blog. Voting ends on January 15 January 25, so hurry up! And because each person can vote once every day, the old adage of vote early, vote often, is especially true this time.

You can also click on the link below (clicking on it will immediately cast a vote for EtL)…and send it to your friends via e-mail if you want (wink wink, nudge nudge).

http://www.retrevo.com/search/vote.jsp?q=GRA57

Of course, if you think EtL sucks, then feel free not to vote. Just don’t expect me to give you a lift to B&H next time your car breaks down 😛

Oh, and if you’re wondering what EtL would win if you guys vote enough times: Recipients of the Golden Retrevo Award will be invited to have their work showcased with Retrevo’s network of over five million monthly visitors. Cool…

Happy New Year 2010!

by Miserere

  

Sorry for the recent silence on EtL; I’ve been away visiting family, being ill, and generally not doing much Photography. But I’ll take spending quality time with my parents over Photography any day, especially when I only see them 1-2 times a year.

I am now back home, jetlagged, and wondering how I’m still awake at 00:05 on January 1^st, 2010 🙂

The party calls, so I will just leave you with a simple

  

!!!!!!!! HAPPY NEW YEAR !!!!!!!!

  

Given how this planet of ours rotates, for some this is old news, while for others the New Year is still to come. Whatever the case may be for you, I wish that 2010 brings you everything you deserve 😉

The Cat that Fought Back

by Miserere

  

A friend of mine believes that the Internet was invented for the sole purpose of allowing people to share cat photos. On Flickr there are over 3.2 million photos tagged with cat (although not all seem to be of the feline variety), while a Google Image search for the word cat returns almost 100 million hits. There are a lot of cat photos out there…and I wonder, do cats even like being photographed?

But now, one cat is fighting back, one cat is saying:

O yea? Wel nowz I teyk fotos of U.
Haw du u like dem apllez!?

Meet Cooper the Photographer Cat. Not only is he a handsome American Shorthair kitty, he also likes to take photos of his adventures in and around the Seattle neighbourhood where he lives with his two servants, Michael and Deirdre Cross.

How does he take photos, you ask? Good question! Cooper ordered Michael to provide him with a camera he could easily carry with him, yet adapted to his anatomical shortcomings (such as not having fingers). Michael, ever the faithful servant, commissioned a special little camera that Cooper could wear hanging from his neck and which would take a photo automatically every 2 minutes. Once a week, Michael puts the camera on Cooper and lets him roam the land, free to practice his Art.

You can see more of his photographs in his Flickr stream.

  

Philosophical Pondering

And speaking of Art, there are many who think one of the pillars of any artistic endeavour is Intention. That is, a photograph is only Art if the photographer intended it that way. So, for example, if I take a photograph of a dent in my car to send to my insurance company, that’s not Art; if, on the other hand, I set out on a walk with my camera and decide to take a nice photograph of the sunset over the hills, then it is Art. The question I pose to you, then, is this: Given the aesthetic merits of some of Cooper’s photographs (he’s had a gallery showing and is selling prints), can we consider them Art? And if we do, are we then saying that Cooper took them purposefully, and thus that he knew what he was doing?

As an aside, I hate to think of the legal ramifications of getting photographs of other people’s private lives through your pet.

All photos: ©Cooper the Photographer Cat (published here without his written consent)