‘The ethical issues and paranoia surrounding the laws of photographing children in today’s society are confusing and somewhat farcical. But at what point will the photography of children be completely forbidden?’ This is the question posed by Class Portrait, a collaborative photographic project by Kingston University graduate designers Anna Brooks and Samantha Harvey. Class Portrait was awarded Best in New Blood and a 2nd prize pencil in this year’s D&AD student awards in London.

(via It’s Nice That)

Sean Gallagher is a British photographer based in China. He has lived and worked across the world, spending extended periods of time in locations as diverse as Japan, Brazil, New Zealand, the UAE and Europe. His most recent work focuses on social and environmental issues, such as desertification and its effects across China, and has recently been published in National Geographic China and The New York Times, and screened at the COP15 Climate Change summit in Copenhagen as part of the Earth Journalism Awards. We spoke with Sean, upon his most recent return to Beijing from Inner Mongolia, to discover more.

Notes on Design: What brought you to Beijing?

Sean: In 2004, I was chosen to undertake a 1-year paid internship at the London office of photojournalism agency, Magnum Photos. At the end of this internship (in 2005), I was awarded a grant, which allowed me to buy a plane ticket to pretty much anywhere I wanted to go. At that time, it seemed obvious to me that China was the story of the moment. Within a few weeks of finishing the internship, I booked a ticket to Beijing.

Notes on Design: How did you get into photography?

Sean: I’m completely self-taught, having first picked up a camera during my studies in Zoology at university in England. Upon completing my degree, I worked various part-time jobs; during my free time, I built my own darkroom and taught myself how to print black and white photos from books loaned from the local library. Read the rest of this entry »

Joss Stone with David Goldman — Photo by Noah Stone

Originally from Toronto but now living and working in New York, David Goldman is a photographer, specializing in advertising, music and celebrity portraiture. With an extensive portfolio of A-list clients, Goldman’s work has graced the pages of magazines, CD packages and billboards internationally. He can also be seen on reality TV show, Look-A-Like, the number 1 rated show in the TV Guide Network. We are excited to announce that David is joining the Notes on Design team to give us interviews and insights from the world of Photography. We caught up with David this week to find out a little more about his career.

Notes on Design: Can you tell us a little about your career so far?

David: I’m originally from Toronto. I studied photography at Sheridan Collage in Oakville, Ontario. In the first years after school I assisted with a number of photographers in Toronto working in everything from fashion to corporate and portraiture. In 1994 I decided to drive across the States with a stop to see a friend who lived in Aspen, I had met him on my travels in Europe when I was 19. After a month or so in Aspen I continued my trip and made my way to Los Angeles. Once there I set about assisting as many photographers and learning as much as possible. I was lucky enough to work with some of the best in the field of Celebrity Portraiture, Advertising, Music and fashion, including Moshe Brakha, Annie Leibovitz, Wayne Maser and Michael Lavine. In 1997, I decided it was time to go out myself and give up assisting. I began to work with record companies shooting live and publicity. I continued to do that for a number of years. I was able to make some great friendships in the music business and shot many well-known bands (Muse, Joss Stone, REM, The New York Dolls, Coldplay, The Flaming Lips). I also shot for magazines, and television companies.

Notes on Design: What drove you to choose Photography as a career path?

David: I’m not really sure what drove me to photography. I always liked it and was impressed with my own first shots of Quebec City on a grade 5 school trip. It was during my last year of high school that I took the opportunity to do a work co-op class – Essentially to gain credits for work experience. I was lucky enough to be placed with a photographer who was very helpful and supportive of me. I then traveled Europe for a while, with stops in Israel, and decided to apply to photography schools during that time. So, I guess it was a slow gradual conversion for me, as opposed to knowing right away that Photography was what I wanted to do.

Notes on Design: What would you describe was your greatest creative break?

David: I would say my greatest creative break came when I got a call from MCA records asking me if I would like to photograph an album cover for a band called Blink 182. Read the rest of this entry »

Christine Nguyen

You’ve not seen work like that of Christine Nguyen. Much of her current body of work involves combining original photography, items from nature, and a salt crystalizing process that makes each piece organic and delivers unexpected and otherworldy results. She is a busy artist and solo exhibitions of her work have been featured at the Hammer Museum (Project), Michael Kohn Gallery, Andrewshire Gallery, and Sam Lee Gallery in Los Angeles. Group exhibitions include Laguna Beach Art Museum, Laguna Beach; 4-F Gallery, Los Angeles, PH Gallery, New York; San Art, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; Sprueth Magers Projekte, Munich, Germany; and 10 Chancery Lane Gallery, Hong Kong. Christine currently resides in Los Angeles, California. She received her B.F.A from California State University, Long Beach and M.F.A from University of California, Irvine.

Here, professional photographer and curator Laina Karavani interviews Christine in a series of emails, Internet chats, and phone calls.

NoD: Hi Christine. Where are you from?

Christine Nguyen: California. I grew up in Northern California and currently reside in Los Angeles.

Work by Christine Nguyen

“My work draws upon the imagery of science, but it is not limited to technologies of the present. It imagines that the depths of the ocean reach into outer space, that through an organic prism, vision can fluctuate between the micro- and macroscopic.” – Christine Nguyen

NoD: Oh. Where north?

Christine Nguyen: I was born in Mountain View and then grew up in San Jose. My dad was a commercial fisherman. He fished mostly in the bay area during my childhood and then in Southern California in my late teens. I realized about 3 years ago a lot of my work is partially inspired by the ocean due to the things my dad would bring home and spending a lot time on his boat as a kid. I’ve always been fascinated in nature, the sciences, geology, the macro/ micro, and outer space. Lately, I’ve been into growing salt crystals and collecting minerals and crystals.
Read the rest of this entry »

Extracting detailed objects from a background can be a tricky thing in Photoshop, particularly when dealing with fuzzy edges like hair, fur, and leaves of trees. The Quick Selection tool and the Refine Edge feature introduced in Photoshop CS3 go a long way, but there are more powerful solutions…

Personally, I’ve been a fan of the Extract filter for a while. With it, you use a “highlighter” to roughly define the edge of the object you wish to extract, and Photoshop comes pretty close to what you’re looking for. The results can be a little rough or jaggy, but usable or easily fixable in many cases.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Brockett Horne

Image: Chris Jordan’s Plastic Bottles, 2007 (detail)

This summer, I’m pondering the enormous weight of numbers:
426,000 cell phones retired every day
9 million American children with no health insurance
12000 plastic bags are used every minute
400,000 plastic water bottles tossed every minute
$60 to fill up my Honda with gas! Ouch!

Artist Chris Jordan presents compelling images that overwhelm with the magnitude of collective consumption. His haunting photographs depict, through repetition, our incomprehensible mass imprint on the world. His images really function as infographics, and illustrate statistical data through the lens of the camera just as effectively as a chart or graph. Read the rest of this entry »

I recently came across the great work of Finnish photographer Ilkka Halso. His photographic series the ‘Museum of Nature’ wonderfully challenges the natural environment from its current state into a future world where it is something we have to visit to experience. The collection of compelling images pictures a series of man-made structures that enclose nature, protecting it from pollution. Using images of nature and 3D digital manipulation, this photographic collection captures a future vision of nature as a museum display. Challenging the audience’s interaction with the endangered artifact of the natural environment, Halso manages to truly visualize a future we so desperately do not want to see a reality. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo stock agency Corbis has come up with an unusually charming promotional scheme: cute and colorful DIY pinhole cameras sporting the agency’s photos and illustrations. The cameras, which take fuzzy photos that have a nostalgically lo-tech look, are ready for download at Corbis’ web site. All you have to do is to pick a pdf of your favorite design (there are currently three to choose from with more to come), print it out on high quality paper and follow the instructions. The cameras were designed by Fwis design firm in NYC who created them exclusively for Corbis. It’s probably a project best enjoyed by those among us that are somewhat crafty (not me), since the origami-like folding looks a bit complicated. But then again, it might be worth a bit of effort. Think of that warm inner glow of accomplishment. And it also makes a great gift. For free.

Checking on the incoming links to my blog one day, I found a link to a photo from one of my posts. I was surprised to see that another blog was using my photo in one of their posts. They didn’t give any credit to me for the photo, though they did link back to it.

I spent some time trying to figure out how they’d found that photo to use and didn’t come up with any firm answers. I even emailed the blog writer, but got no response. It did open my eyes a bit to something I know can be a problem: people taking the images on your web site and using them elsewhere. Read the rest of this entry »

While I was in school, and for a few years after graduation, I carried a digital camera with me pretty much everywhere I went. If I saw something interesting, odd or inspiring, I’d snap a photo, and because of this habit, I eventually came to possess a pretty extensive catalog of visual references.

I don’t carry a camera with me anymore, for a couple of reasons. For starters, I already lug around a laptop, a phone, keys, my wallet, sunglasses and sometimes an iPod. It’s a ridiculous amount of gear, and frankly, the camera just isn’t making the cut these days. But the real reason why I stopped taking pictures is because, more often than not, the images just weren’t all that compelling after the fact. Taking a photo was too easy, and as a result, I grew lazy.

And so I appreciate UNphotographable, a website created by Michael David Murphy. The pages of UNphotographable contain written descriptions of images that, for one reason or another, could not be captured on film. The great majority of the accounts are provided by Murphy, but I believe a few were produced by others. Here’s an example:

This is a picture I did not take of a woman standing on an overgrown median of the Van Wyck Expressway early on a Saturday morning, early enough that there was one sliver of sunlight making its way across the road, and she was caught in both the light and tall grass, bent at the waist, picking herbs or salad greens from between discarded fast food containers and old tires, incorporating a wild, pinwheeling movement with each pick, her arms swinging up like scythes, alternatively holding a fistful of greens high in the air, as if each leaf were a triumph, as her opposite arm swung down to pick anew.

In a world where images, especially bad images, seem destined to proliferate, I find this Read the rest of this entry »