Sorry it’s been so long. I’ve been busy, stressed, and more stressed. My company took us out to the Stockholm Archipelago last week, it was breath taking.

More news in the next few days…

Looking lovely in the Swedish sunset.

My life for a studio, a light rig, some models, and a bucket of paint.

Make sure to check Iain Crawford’s portfolio .

Amy Stein | Photography | Halloween in Harlem

Amy Stein | Photography | Domesticated

I haven’t been inspired by photography for a long time… get on this. (via Fiwi)

From the ICP website:

“In late December 2007, three small cardboard boxes arrived at the International Center of Photography from Mexico City after a long and mysterious journey. These tattered boxes—the so-called Mexican Suitcase—contained the legendary Spanish Civil War negatives of Robert Capa. Rumors had circulated for years of the survival of the negatives, which had disappeared from Capa’s Paris studio at the beginning of World War II. Cornell Capa, Robert’s brother and the founder of ICP, had diligently tracked down each tale and vigorously sought out the negatives, but to no avail. When, at last, the boxes were opened for the 89-year-old Cornell Capa, they revealed 126 rolls of film—not only by Robert Capa, but also by Gerda Taro and David Seymour (known as “Chim”), three of the major photographers of the Spanish Civil War. Together, these roles of film constitute an inestimable record of photographic innovation and war photography, but also of the great political struggle to determine the course of Spanish history and to turn back the expansion of global fascism.”

“Following the long-delayed return of Robert Capa’s “Mexican Suitcase” to ICP’s midtown archive, and the overwhelming response it has received from individuals and media outlets around the world, our staff discussed the need for an online space where visitors could go to stay up-to-date about this story as it unfolds. This site grew out of those conversations.”

The Mexican Suitcase

Interesting stuff

Hello from sunny Zürich! I arrived this afternoon from London and immediately fell in love with what I now consider one of the most picturesque cities I’ve seen. 28 degrees, people swimming in Lake Zurich, quiet & peaceful streets with lots of well dressed and lovely looking Swiss enjoying the easy life. I think I chose a great post-London destination. It was almost like heaven. Green parks with people relaxing and enjoying the sun, with deep blue skies, the snow capped Alps dominating the horizon, and everybody is simply happy.

Anyway… this is a quick update to say hi to all and that I’m safe and sound. I’m going to hit the Alps tomorrow (after doing my laundry and other catching up bits), so expect lots of photos and other spellbound jabber.

I am in a lovely hotel which is on the outside of the main town overlooking everything, nice staff, nice room. Nice!

Looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow and recharging my body for the trek to the Alps.

x

Photographer Peter Funch spends weeks taking photos on Manhattan street corners and then pastes them together into single photographs.

A wonderful idea I wish I had time to execute here in Stockholm, as it’s something best left for the weekend or retirement, me thinks.

Happy New Year.

Fi & I had an awesome time in Berlin. What an amazing city, obviously it’s drenched in history, however the most eye catching details are on the trains, in the subways, on the street, in the parks and in empty lots. Graffiti and street art rules this town. It’s the most bombed city I’ve been too. I mean everything is totally trashed, but at the same time it makes the city so unique. It’s finally finding it’s voice and it’s letting the world know. So much creativity is now reaching the outside world, or maybe we’re just now able to peer inside.

Berlin looks rough. Litter lines the streets, everything is tagged or vandalised in some way, however there is no threat of violence and we never felt unsafe. We met a woman on the flight from Stockholm who said she feels safer walking through parks at night in Berlin than she does in Stockholm.

We couldn’t have picked a crazier time to be in Berlin. NYE went for 3 days. It started on NYE with people setting off fireworks and firecrackers non-stop until the wee hours of the 2nd of January. As you can see above, we joined the party. The youth are rebels at heart, and the older generation are grumpy which makes for an interesting mix as the youth are running the town, and the oldies are just putting up with all the chaos.

What’s interesting to note is that we didn’t see any authority for the entire stay. No police, no met-cops, nothing. In fact, you don’t even need to swipe a met card to get into the subway, you just walk in and walk out. Apparently met-cops bust people constantly, however we saw none of that, and the trains run all night. We made it across the city at 7am with no problems what so ever.

Anyway.

I made the awesome mistake of booking a hotel on the other side of the city from the airport, but it was the only place I could find on such short notice. Seriously, it was like landing at Tullamarine and getting public transport to Frankston, just check the amazing view from our hotel window.

We saw Checkpoint Charlie, saw the wall in various places across the city, and walked, walked, walked to a point where we were both dizzy from lack of energy. We refueled on beer and Japanese. By the way, watching Japanese speak fluent German is a trip, especially when trying to order since they don’t speak English and the menu’s are in German! Tasty, though.

We caught up with a friend of a friend, who also is a stockist for NiceProduce in Berlin. If you’re ever in the city, make sure you pop into Van Liebling and say what up to Chris, also check the NiceProduce in the front window (nice!). He was kind enough to invite us over to his friends house for a NYE party. We of course were the only Anzac’s and the best english speakers at the party, so you can imagine the types of broken conversations we had. Kangaroo’s and koala’s (not koala bears damn you!). I also learned the hard way of setting off bottle rockets. Use a bottle. The New Year came around and the custom is to kiss and hug everybody in the room, a strange thing for strangers!

After getting up, we dragged ourselves back onto the streets and headed over to Mitte, a very trendy, highly fashionable and beautiful part of town. We found a lovely pub which used to be a laundry, a coffin maker and a bakery. It’s now one hell of a good find for some hungover tourists. Bratwurst, parma, stout and house red. It was snowing outside, and we were toasty inside. Amazing. Fi even let me break my stout-drought, as apparently my stout-pout has dispersed since moving to Hugo land. Check the hair. It’s gotta go.

We got back to Stockholm to find it well into the minuses and snowing, a lovely omen for us as it snowed when Fi came and it was snowing when she left. It’s a lovely reminder from now.

My friend Gustav is a waiter at a popular restaurant called Grill just off Rådmansgatan. I had the first steak since living Australia and Fi had an amazing seafood skewer topped with all her favourites. We drank a bottle of Chile’s finest and several cocktails which later led to midnight snow angel making, good times!

Now for a little bit of geekism…

Click the image to view a little larger…

This is Schlesisches Tor U-Bahn in Berlin. I wanted to try out the merge photos as a panorama in Lightroom, and I must say it’s pretty damn good. I’ll be out trying some 16mm shots around Stockholm soon to try to flex it’s muscles a little harder.

So that was NY in Berlin in a nutshell. I could type all night but it’s always too much to take in at once. Perhaps I’ll dribble more over a cold beer back in Australia some time, until then I’m sure Fi will be updating her blog with her version of the trip soon.

Work starts tomorrow, will be good to get back into the swing of things. Speak soon.

If you don’t read The Big Picture, then I highly recommend you start.

I’ll let the pictures do the talking.

The Mysterious ‘Save For Web’ color shift.

Ever wonder why your colours shift dramatically when exporting without an embedded colour profile? Firefox and Safari are two of the few browsers that do read the embedded profiles, however IE does not, and this means your photos, web graphics and ultimately masterpiece designs are shifted across all clients.

Get on this tutorial on how to configure Photoshop and get your photos tight and right.