Fujifilm X-Pro1. DPreview has the scoop. Too big/expensive for my needs.
I’m totally happy with my Fuji X10 (which I have attached to a DSPTCH Strap; more on that later), but I can’t help but get a little jealous looking at the upcoming X-Pro1.
My new toy (Taken with instagram)
I have never watched children die in front of me before. Watching their last breath as their chest slowly and with long pauses slightly expand and then deflate again. Until, it suddenly stops. The children who arrived at the Banadir hospital in Mogadishu were in bad shape, but they were the lucky ones. Some of them who made it to the hospital early enough managed to pull through, even with limited medical supplies and overworked, unpaid, and tired nurses. However, for most, it was a place they came to die. Almost all the children I photographed on the second floor in the children’s wing ended up dying. With some I did not even have a chance to know their names or ages. I would return to the room a couple of hours later and the bed the child was lying in before was either empty, or full again with a new child and mother. —Dominic Nahr, Magnum for TIME
Photographer Ryan McGinley’s best shot
Working on this series, 15 of us travelled to a new location every day, camping at night. After three weeks we got to this barn in Marionville, Missouri. I had wanted to shoot with hay for a while, as I have fond memories of Halloween hayrides as a child. I like the saturated colour of hay in photographs: the way it can be gathered easily, yet fill the air wildly.
The bales created a simple graphic background, and we had a gigantic inflatable air mattress, like the ones used by movie stuntmen. Safety is always our biggest concern, so we start with low jumps and gradually get higher. Public nudity is illegal in most places, so we have lookouts with walkie-talkies to let us know if there is a problem.
The model, Amanda, emailed me through my website. I rarely cast anyone this way, but I’m glad I did because she is one of the best people I’ve ever worked with. Some people fall like a ton of bricks but she fell like a feather, gracefully and slow. In this picture she is doing a flip and my assistants are throwing handfuls of hay simultaneously, with a fan blowing. It reminds me of The Wizard of Oz – but my own version, where Dorothy gets her clothes ripped off in the twister.
Falling is a movement that endlessly fascinates me. I guess this action traces back to activities from my youth: skateboarding or diving from stages or into pools. I want to capture the feeling of weightlessness I would get jumping from a speaker and landing in a crowd, or flipping backwards off a diving board.
I love Amanda’s face in this photo: she looks like she’s in a trance within the chaos of the hay. I shot for about four hours, rotating models. I never know who is going to end up in the final shot, or if there will even be a successful image. I guess that’s the fun part for me: finding the moment where everything lines up. Not knowing what’s going to come back is like a present: it’s the poetry of chaos.
Why Instagram is so popular →
It might seem trivial, but showing one photo at a time is a design decision that creates more value for each image, and enhances your viewing experience. Plus it doesn’t hurt to have the images trapped inside a beautiful iPhone screen. It almost doesn’t matter who you follow—their photos probably look better one at a time. From a UX perspective, we keep learning that interfaces with constraints are successful, and it seems like such a straight-forward principle (140 characters, ahem), but it’s kind of worthless on it’s own. Obviously you can’t introduce constraints without other elements, which is why this is the last point. There’s something enticing about knowing that most Instagram photos are created on the iPhone, since it introduces a NASCAR-like equality. That makes it fun to see what other people can create with the same technical constraints you have. Photography has always been all about the equipment, and not at all about the equipment. Knowing millions of people are creating with roughly the same camera and app as you makes it exciting creatively. So constraints, combined with quality and an audience are what makes Instagram so addictive. (Hat tip The Fox is Black)
If you haven’t noticed, I’m on Instagram. A lot. Find me there: ymfy
if you dont have an iphone, you can check here: http://web.stagram.com/n/ymfy/
North Kivu, Eastern Congo, 2010-2011, Richard Mosse
