Bruce Schneier has some great thoughts about The War on Photography.

The Wedding Photography Blog turned me to a New York Times slideshow of photos taken at a wedding during the recent China earthquake.

The Photo Stream (again)

There's something about The Photo Stream that keeps me coming back. I have a very low attention span, and I think this must be part of the reason. At that site, I don't have to scan news headlines—I scan photos instead. Looking at photos is something I love to do. I guess there's one part of it that bothers me a bit though and that's the photos that get posted that are ambiguous.

A photo of, say, a tennis player could be many different things. It could be that the subject of the photo won Wimbledon and the shot is of her celebrating. Or it could just be that the shot of her celebrating is the only photo available of her when it's reported that she was involved in some other non sports related activity, which is a bit problematic.

The Photo Stream solves this by providing mouseovers which give you a headline, and I think that's probably the best you can hope for.

The Chicago Tribune has a gallery up of photos of the Phoenix Mars Lander, and also some of the photos it has taken from Mars.

Greyscalegorilla, known mostly for his awesome photoblog, just finished documenting a 4 month long beard contest. The photos he took of them all, make them look like they're in a band.

100 Strangers

If you wanna get good at street portraits, there's no better way to do it than to actually take them. Luckily, 100 Strangers is challenging you. They've got some tips to get you started and as an added bonus, it's actually a Flickr group, so it's relevant to this blog (my attempts at humor are horrible).

PhotographyBB Issue 2

An anonymous tipster writes in to tell me that the latest issue of PhotographyBB is now available. Here's a snippet of the "press release":

PhotographyBB announced today, the release of the second edition of the PhotographyBB Online Magazine. By way of download in either PDF or ZIP formats, PhotographyBB is setting the stage for the future of magazine distribution. In a completely ad-free format, each issue contains informative and educational tutorials for amateur photographers.

I haven't had a chance to read it (there's also a February 2008) issue, but when I get home, I'll be sure to take a closer look. It looks (at a quick glance) very promising, however, and I definitely expect it to be. I just hope they can keep up the ad-free format.

The Whale Hunt

I'm a huge fan of data visualization and unique interfaces (which I've probably mentioned before), so when I saw The Whale Hunt, my jaw dropped. Not only is it extremely innovative in the way it presents the story, it's also a great example of photography as documentary, or simply put, photojournalism.

TIME Magazine's photo essay about What the World Eats.

A Really Big Show

Vincent Laforet talks about his new found love for Tilt-shift photography for taking sports shots.

You too can fake this technique on already shot images with Photoshop and some know how.

Top Photography Blogs

If you're just learning about digital photography (or film) in your spare time, as I am, or are a full time studio shooter, traveler, or other paid camera-slinger you undoubtably subscribe to some photography magazines. I for one keep getting Outdoor Photographer even though my subscription ran out; thanks! I also subscribe to ShutterBug. I find that ShutterBug is insightful for thinking about new techniques and equipment to buy, whilst Outdoor Photographer is mostly just inspiring with some sprinkles of technique. Both magazines, I think are geared more towards learning than say, American Photo or any of those artsy or journalism ones. (Note: I love "artsy" photography, I just don't subscribe.)

However, the purpose of this blog isn't necessarily to point out good magazines that you can get in print, although I guess that might not be a bad idea for a future article about off-screen learning, but in fact it is about the numerous resources of the World Wide Web. There are many great blogs out there that update their content much more regularly than I, and in fact with much more insightful and useful tips and articles. That isn't to say that you should stop reading Photub of course. If you've been a reader of Photub for any length of time, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

The blogs that I am listing in this post, are blogs that I consider great additions to your RSS subscriptions—those blogs that probably have enough new content for books or bi-monthly magazines in themselves:

In no particular order...

1. The Online Photographer: The Online Photographer packs a wallop of new commentary, reviews, techniques and personal adventures into a blog that is updated fairly frequently.
2. Photocritic: Perhaps one of my favorite blogs, is this one. The authors always have something interesting to share, and do a good job presenting it. The critiques that are occassionally done are quite helpful to new and upcoming photographers, and the DIY attitude helps create some really useful and fun tools. Of note is the DIY Pringles can macro lens, that I have been wanting to try out.
3. Strobist: Everything you'd ever want or need to know about effective flash photography is right here in this blog. Literally courses of information are contained on the pages of this blog. It's also not all about flash photography. Consider the recent series about Flickr and what it can do for your photography career. Insightful articles, interesting topics and amazing techniques make this truely one of the best photography blogs on the internet.
4. Photojojo: While not really a blog per se, Photojojo's unique style and unique media (email newsletter), make it in a class of it's own. I include it in this list because they do have an RSS feed, making it "blog like." I have just one complaint about Photojojo and that is that they often seem to post stuff late, after it's already been posted elsewhere. Nevertheless, Photojojo has knocked my socks off more than a few times with interesting ideas, it's creative writing style and overall growth.
5. Digital Photography School: Anyone looking for tips can always find something at DPS. Choose a "Random Tip" or read them all. It's easily becoming an encyclopedia of techniques, buying tips, etc. for the beginner, casual student and the advanced amateur.
6. Andy Frazer's Night Photography Blog: Taking pictures at night can yeild some extremely interesting results, but not many will give you insight on creating breathtaking images at night without the flash. Andy Frazer does. You'll see lots of examples of compelling night imagery, if nothing else.
7. After Capture: The only site listed here, that actually is a monthly publication, actually has a decent blog. The blog talks, interestingly enough, about post production of your images. Becomming a "post production prince" might not happen overnight, but it'll probably happen faster with the reading of some of the articles here.
8. DIYPhotography.net: Face it, photography equipment is expensive, and we see time and time again, that a cheap light tent provides excellent results. DIYPhotography.net is all about creating cheap equipment to aide in the creation of great photographs. It's a wonderful collection and continues to grow.

The web is full of great content, and with RSS being used by nearly everyone, there certainly isn't any reason (other than time) that you can't be informed of the latest photography happenings, techniques and ideas every 15 or 20 minutes. Surely there are other great blogs out there that I did not address, but these are the ones I read on a semi-daily basis. If you think your blog should be on this list, please submit it for review, and I'll take a look.

100 Photographs that Changed the World

Not to be outdone by some random blog with 13 Photographs that Changed the World, Life Magazine has published a gallery with, count them, 100 Photographs that Changed the World.

If you ask me, the 13 Photographs is a much better read, since it's descriptions are much more insightful.

Capturing Gaza's Hell

"I want to show the daily life of the people of Gaza, through their personal environment." Time photographer, Alexandra Boulat, on the challenges of documenting an ongoing conflict.

Time Magazine Year in Pictures 2006

There was a time when, I would check out Time's Pictures of the Week, a set of 8 pictures which you can vote on for inclusion into Time's Year in Pictures.

Update:I re-checked to see if there was an index page for the Pictures of the Week, as the link above is last weeks pictures, but the old index page now redirects to a YouTube video related to the Person of the Year. The link that used to be the index is http://www.time.com/time/potw. The Year in Pictures is not affected by this.

One Shot at the Top of the World

Vincent Laforet's work is absolutely stunning, and one of his latest projects is featured in an Aperture profile. The project: Capture a worker on the Chrysler building in New York City a top one of the gargoyles overlooking the city. The result: awesome.