Before 2009 gets completely spun up, here is one more chance to look back at 2008. Jim Goldstein just published a wonderful blog project where he asked his readers to post their Best Photos of 2008. Jim had stellar turn out for his project with 92 photographers participating. Enjoy reviewing 2008 from 92 points of view from around the world.
Photographers’ Best Photos of 2008
January 13th, 2009Poll: Photo or Food, What Do You Do?
January 13th, 2009While out shooting the other night, I was faced with this very situation and started wondering what would other photographers do? Yes, it’s very situational type of question but generalize it and go with your gut answer (pun intended)!
Loading ...If you have a story where you encountered this situation recently, share with the community in the comments and let us know what impact your decision had.
Genius of Photography Available Online
January 4th, 2009
Sometime around the middle of last year (that’s 2008 for those who, like me, don’t feel like it should be the new year yet) I had accidentally discovered the BBC documentary series The Genius of Photography. It was airing on the Ovation cable station here in the US, and since then I have not seen it rebroadcast.
So I was excited this morning when I read on Syl Arena’s PixSylated that the entire series has been uploaded to YouTube in 10 minute chunks. Thanks Syl for linking directly to each of the 37 segments!
Since these segments have been on YouTube since June, they should remain up on the site for a while; I don’t think BBC posted these themselves and not sure if they try to have clips of their shows removed from social sharing sites or not.
Take advantage of these segments and learn a bit of photography history.
Reflecting on 2008 Through Photos
December 31st, 2008The end of the year is always a time to look back and reflect on the year just past. Below is a collection of the best sites that review 2008 in photos. While there are some repeated images across these different sites, each has enough unique value that warranted inclusion in this list. Occasionally you will see the same situation photographed from different vantage points. Quite often you will find very clever and uniquely constructed images that tell a story or capture the drama of every day life.
Enjoy the images that made up 2008:
- BBC’s The Year in Pictures 2008
- The Boston Globe’ The Big Picture: The year 2008 in Photographs (part 1 of 3) (part 2 | part 3)
- Chicago Tribune’s Photo Essay: Joy and Sorrow in 2008 (make sure to turn on captions to get a description for each photo, though you may have to manually advance the slide show)
- MSNBC 2008 Year in Pictures (3 slide shows: news, sports, vote)
- National Geographic’s Photo of The Day: Best of 2008 (also check out their Photo of The Day: Best of The Month, starting in January)
- The New York Times’ 2008 - The Year in Pictures (A full screen slide show with 8 Sections: The Election, The Economy, The Nation, The World, Iraq and Afghanistan, The (New York) Region, Sports, Art & Entertainment)
- Sacramento Bee’s The Frame: News Pictures from 2008, Election Pictures from 2008, Feature Pictures from 2008, and Sports Pictures from 2008
- The San Francisco Chronicle’s 2008: A Year in Pictures (Broken down into select photos per month, too bad they didn’t include dates with each photo…)
- Time’s Pictures of The Year 2008
- Vanity Fair’s Year in Pictures, Part One (Part Two)
- The Wall Street Journal’s 2008 Year in Pictures (Slide show with 10 Sections: Financial Crash, Sports, Global Conflict, The Elements, Campaign, The Year’s Best, Fashion, Biggest Buys, Top Entertainers, WSJ’s Photowall)
- World Press Photos of the Year - 2008
Happy New Year!
Updates to the Blog
December 16th, 2008This afternoon the the FocalPower blog was updated to WordPress 2.7. While you may not even have noticed, this is a huge change to the FocalPower team who write these posts. WordPress 2.7 is a major release that changes the entire administration interface to the blog. (If you can’t tell, we’re pretty jazzed about it…and plan on posting a bit more frequently now that we have some major coding behind us.)
If you notice any strangeness on the blog, please let us know. There might have been a few incompatabilities that we haven’t caught yet.
Update from the Team
November 10th, 2008The Team has been quiet for a while and we thought it time to give a formal update as to what has been happening at FocalPower.
The past few months has seen an unprecedented number of economic, market, and political changes. Dave and I have been absorbing the implications of all these changes just like the rest of you have. These changes have definitely increase the challenges faced by FocalPower as a boot-strapping startup. Regardless, we continue forward with even more enthusiasm behind what we are doing because we believe that:
- the FocalPower vision speaks even louder today to the challenges facing photographers
- recent changes in the photography market only validates FocalPower’s vision and plan
Dave and I have both been busy with our day jobs (which is what currently funds FocalPower toward our initial service launch). Yet we still burn the midnight oil working on the FocalPower Photo Asset Management service. And we are both excited at the continual interest and increasing usage of the Photo Quote Widget, now serving up thousands of quotes daily!
On a personal note, Dave and his fiancé took a long weekend break a few months back to sneak off to elope with a handful of friends in attendance. Congratulations Dave!
Life changes and changing times aside, we have been hard at work executing against our launch plan. As we push toward a public beta of the service, we have expanded our development team by bringing on additional contractors. We are also looking for even more contractors, specifically Flash developers. Any talented flash developers out there who have a passion for photography or digital media and want to strut their stuff to the world as part of the FocalPower Photo Asset Management service, get in touch with us!
As we march forward to a public beta, we do have early access passes available to those who enjoy getting their hands on the latest technology and understand the rigors of early product release (i.e., working with an evolving service, running a service through it’s paces, providing feedback to help shape the future of a service).
Interested? Send us an email to the contact us address on the main website. And make sure you convince us of why you should earn the priveldge of an early access pass. We’ll get in touch with your early access pass.
