Category: Photography

Photography

Corbis All Day, Every Day

By Delphine Hirasuna |

Corbis doesn’t lack for products. With more than 100 million rights-managed photographs and illustrations and royalty-free images, Corbis continually faces the challenge of communicating the depth, breadth, diversity and quality of its vast collection and getting designers, art directors, publishers, editors and filmmakers to think of Corbis as their one-stop source for all stock image needs every single day.

That design brief quickly suggested to Studio Hinrichs the idea of creating a day-at-a-time calendar, featuring an event that happened that specific day in history and an image that tied the story together. This approach would allow Corbis to showcase the range of its many collections – celebrities, sports, fine art, science, architecture, cultural, outer space, historical, etc. –and give recipients a fascinating factoid for the day. What’s more, it addressed Corbis’ desire to make this program accessible across multiple platforms and to provide something that would be appreciated by everyone from top-level newspaper editors to wannabe designers still in school.

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Photography

Zuckerman’s Bird’s Eye View

By Delphine Hirasuna |

“When you take anything out of its context and put it against a white background, you see something different” explains photographer Andrew Zuckerman. “It forces all attention on the subject….It’s the absence of space and color…in the end, all you’re left with is the form and range of colors contained in the subject.”

Like his previous books “Creature” and “Wisdom,” Zuckerman’s latest book, “Birds,” is shot entirely against a white background. Using a Leaf Aptus 75S digital camera along with high-speed strobe lighting, Zuckerman caught details that would be impossible to see if the birds were photographed in their natural environment. Instead, Zuckerman set up a mobile studio, mostly at zoos, in four countries and coaxed 74 species of birds into the camera’s range. The result is microscopically crisp detail and dazzling nuances of color. To see more Zuckerman birds and a behind-the-scenes video of the photo shoot, visit Show-Off, a virtual nonprofit gallery conceived and curated by San Francisco/Newark, UK-based design firm Dowling Duncan.

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Photography

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Photoshop

By Delphine Hirasuna |

As we in the United States celebrate Independence Day (aka Fourth of July), those of us in design communications can marvel at the freedoms that technology now allow. The living photograph here by Mole and Thomas was taken decades before the invention of Photoshop or even 35mm handheld cameras.

Around 1918, during the height of World War I patriotic fervor, Arthur S. Mole, a British-born photographer based in Zion, Illinois, joined forces with John D. Thomas, a choir director who liked to position choir members to form various religious icons-a talent that made him the perfect photo choreographer for Mole’s grandiose ideas. Together the two set about creating gigantic patriotic symbols by using military personnel essentially as “human pixels” and then photographing them.

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Photography

Photographer as Entrepreneur:
The End for Rodney Smith

By Delphine Hirasuna |

The End

There are assigned projects and self-generated projects that you do for the love and joy of it. Ten years in the making, The End (Is Just the Beginning) by photographer Rodney Smith is pure passion, wit and style …a total delight. The pleasure Smith took in producing this book comes through on every page. The 16×20 inch, 15 pound tome is hardbound on imported linen with a hand-printed silver gelatin photograph on its slipcase. The design by David Meredith and text by Walter Thomas beautifully mirror and play off the whimsy and elegance of Smith’s black-and-white photographs. Smith, whose editorial and commercial clients range from the New York Times to GQ, Starbucks to Visa, documents a surreal world with a photojournalist’s eye. The End was published by Smith in a limited edition of 1,000 copies, with each signed copy priced at $750.

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Motion Graphics

Inspiring New Zealanders to Read

By Delphine Hirasuna |

A national not-for-profit organization, the New Zealand Book Council promotes reading in general, but with a particular emphasis on New Zealand writing and writers – “our own artists, stories, and point of view.” In this video, the Council brings the printed page to life by turning the paper itself into stop action animation art to move the story forward. For the video, it chose one of the nation’s most celebrated books, Going West, by New Zealand literary giant Maurice Gee. The book, published in 1992, describes a steam train journey across the country, and the title was adopted as the name of the Auckland region’s first writers’ festival in 1996. The Going West festival now draws over 350 writers and performers to Waitakere City for the annual literary event. We couldn’t find anything on the Internet about the creative team behind this video. If anyone knows, please share it with us in the Comments box.