Luma Labs:

Going back to the drawing board has given us a camera strap like no other. It provides a unique combination of exquisite comfort, incredible flexibility and amazing stability.

Skillfully turning crisis to opportunity. And a killer name to go by.

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How much work, do you think, it takes to excel at something? Plenty, right? We all know that. But how much effort one really needs to create a ‘career’ when you’re just starting out?

Plenty of time and really thick face.

‘Dreams’ is just one of Manik Nur haq’s elaborate attempt to go from zero to hero. A very thoughtful one, I must say, for it elaborately not only create what looks like a photo book, but also to make it look like it has won an award of some sort.

And it doesn’t stop there. From Susan Core:

[…] She claims working for [sic]: Elle, Versace, FashionTV, SanFranciscoChronicle, MetropolitanMuseumOfArt, Ford Models, W Hotels Worldwide, Vanity Fair, Volkswagen USA, Leica Camera, Audi USA, Loreal, Land Rover USA, Artful Dodger, National Geographic, BMW USA, Vogue, Ford Motor Company, TOYOTA, Australian Geographic, ArtGalleryOfWesternAustralia & more…

Now, the whole thing might be just a coy, that perhaps someone has gotten angry and wants someone to pay back, or it is too young and unwise to know that it is wrong, or it is just simply a very clever sociopath that has nothing but free time and very, very thick face who thinks it has a rebootable life. But boy, look at how the internet, according to Google+ has reacted. By the time of this writing, it has been shared 626 times, commented 324 times, and plussed by 123 internet persons.

Perhaps you knew it all along, you couldn’t have picked a better title for your fictional award-winning photo book. ‘Dreams’ is really just a dream for you, and it will always be until you wake up and smell the coffee. Or perhaps, Manik, your parents knew it too by picking a name that mirrors your disturbing tendency?

If you, Manik, somehow gets to read this: make better use of your time. You may get away winning the jobs from the people you manipulate, but know that you have gained nothing real. It’s never too late to stop and make amends.

“You’ll get back to your core, stronger.”

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One of my favorite studio branding in the history of movies has a slick new logo.

It has a wider viewpoint that includes the surrounding of the Wasatch mountain range, and appears to depict a sunrise instead of a sunset like the soon-to-be-retired logo it will replace after Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.

Unlike previous attempts with new logos, this new landscape actually looks better, but something caught my eye: highlights on the peaks doesn’t seem to have been rendered accurately based on the position of the sun & the levels on the three peak lines; the rendering would have been possible only if a) there’s a second light source from the left of the picture and b) the sun in the background is set a little higher.

It’s just wrong to my eyes, but then again, I don’t work in Hollywood nor I have been to Utah, so I may not be the best judge of that.

Update: Saw it on the big screen today, and I stand corrected. The lower peaks protrude higher than the curve on the left-flanking peaks, the shadows are indeed natural, though the sun appear lower than it should be. On the other hand, Brad Bird lived up to my expectation, he not only delivers but lifted the bar higher for the Mission: Impossible franchise plot-wise, the mellow-romantic drama from M:I 3 is refreshed with a less-than-perfect actions and failures which makes Hunt and his team more human. I wonder how long till we see M:I 5.

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It’s a per­fect $5 christ­mas gift for your­self, or your iPhone-using-paparazzo friend, yes occa­sional crash still hap­pens and opt­ing in high-res out­put gives you the never-ending wait to snap another around, but you’re in for a dif­fer­ent kind of iPhone-photography game, peo­ple… and this time you might want to stay a lit­tle longer cause dig­i­tal never felt & looked so finely analog.

That was the day before Instagram, when the camera app makers were dipping their toes in the water to find a better revenue stream rather than just the buy-once-use-forever model Apple has set toned since the beginning of the App Store.

It’s a competitive market. Making great apps is no easy, making them popular is harder, and making money out of them is extremely difficult. But the team behind Hipstamatic did it. It has grown from a mere app to a cult movement. Its in-app store carries $2 packs and franchise-sponsored goodies to keep them in the game.

Somehow it’s not enough for them.

They have recently launched a free ‘social’ camera app called Hipstamatic Disposable:

The new Hipstamatic Disposable-series camera makes it a snap to create and share a camera with your friends. From the first snap to the last, everyone shoots to one album, and at the end photos are magically exchanged to all of the camera’s contributors. You’ll never have to swap doubles or email from your friend’s phone again. Sharing a roll of film has never been this much fun.

There’s the pitch: Sharing a roll of film has never been this much fun. What they didn’t tell you up front is that you need to purchase film packs. But unlike Hipstamatic’s this one actually needs a virtual film reload. One that costs. You need to continue to purchase new films when you run out of it, again, and again.

If they think they can get away from this, they’re totally delusional. Nobody will pay for some pseudo-analog app from a device that made them discover the fun of photography. Digital has made photography mainstream, and the iPhone — with its thousands of photo apps — bring out the photographers out of almost everyone, it brings photography to the mass the same way the internet did to information. It made photography affordable and free.

People love Hipstamatic for it is fun. It is honestly good and it connects to the inner photographer in us. It was a great app and each subsequent update has made it better. Financial ambition will only ruin it. If the developers want to be millionaires, go into the games market and invent a new Angry Birds, but if they truly believe something like the Disposable will proof us wrong, they are literally disposable as an app maker.

“If you are able to state a problem, it can be solved.”

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Great images (some). Ugly truths (most). Poorly curated (all).

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Initiated by the talented shooter, my friend Deny Salman, ‘Indonesian Photography Books’ is dedicated to curating and cataloging photography books from Indonesia, a place of gem hidden in plain sight.

Photographs from HCB’s book above can be seen here.

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Captured by a 17-year-old student from England, Joel Biddle’s images captivated me much more than the rest.

Pretty scary how someone packs so many talents at that tender age. Let’s hope life treats him well so his talents do not shy away from the world.

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Complete with step-by-step howto, video and photographs. This one uses a Sony Pocketable, but maybe a Canon S95 will fit too. View linked page in English.

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90-second short by Wim Wenders, starring Wim Wenders and Wim Wenders’ Leica M8.

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Some might say that the iPhone has certainly reinvented photography but not for the better. With the rise of apps like Instagram, Hipstamatic, PicPlz and countless others, filtered smartphone photography has dominated social networks much in the same way that the iPhone has dominated Flickr.

The problem with apps like Instagram is that some people take photographs of things they normally wouldn’t, slap a filter on it, and think it’s fit for sharing. Whether this is Instagram’s fault or not really comes down to opinion. Would those people be just as likely to share photos taken in front of the bathroom mirror, photos of their breakfast, pets, and more?

[…]

Instagram’s power is in the fact that it creates a communal experience. Part of the allure is the filters, which are possibly among the very best available in any smartphone app, but what good are shared photos if no one is looking at them. Apps like Instagram create an opportunity to share images, but when we take a closer, more professional look at them, do they still meet the grade?

The thing that makes the iPhone a compelling tool for photography is its straightforwardness. You shoot, you tinker, you share, and people can see it immediately. Technicalities disappear behind the final image’s effects & filters; the moment becomes the indisputable story without second guessing the shutter speed and the aperture value.

Camera makers have long fought for technical edge and spent ridiculous amount of money marketing their products that way. It turned the table around and made the cameras, lenses the star of the show with the photographer as the sidekick. Did someone know what kind of canvas, brush and paint Da Vinci used for the Mona Lisa? Does it matter?

What matters to me now is that whatever the reason iPhones are the most popular digital camera in Flickr, it puts a smile to its users and the friends & family surrounds him/her. It made photography fun again.

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Lovely persona behind the military uniform.

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Take a closer look at those pair of eyes. He sees beyond his, or the subject’s points of view, somehow managed to raise the viewing field to that of the spectator’s and infuse a little touch of his magic. He was a complex soul fighting his freedom off it, encapsulating the complex nature of human tendencies into a frames after frames of golden moments.

From the curators:

Images in this collection show the drama—both human and artistic—that infuse Kubrick’s work. Included are: the photograph used on the cover of the Kubrick book, Drama & Shadows, of a young woman making her way down a steep set of stairs while carrying a pile of books precariously tilting books; showgirl Rosemary Williams intently applying makeup as the equally intent young Kubrick photographs her. His subjects are as varied as the city he worked in: he catches Broadway actress Betsy Von Furstenberg studying her lines; prizefighter Walter Cartier in the corner between rounds; Dwight Eisenhower, also between rounds—after World War II, before he became President of the United States—when he was Columbia University’s president, and performers from Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.

Also by Kubrick: Chicago, 1949. (via DF)

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None.

They should have done this from the beginning with the X100 (and the X10).

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I did my share of research before I made my purchase. By research, I mean about closely watching half a dozen YouTube video review and reading good, bad, stupid, but often, honest comments from some discussion forums and weblog.

The Black Rapid actually came to my attention when I was researching for a Luma Loop alternative; I was trying to observe why would they prefer a non-Luma product, and Black Rapid, by their share of noise have gained some viral attention on YouTube and photo weblogs, even users I have never met, seen, or heard before, but they seem to have gained traction too.

The Luma, on the other hand, came to me rather quietly. Basically I discovered I would need a sling strap as a redundant backup to my then-new Capture Camera Clip, and I remembered an old post I read about the Loop, and thus began my ‘research’.

My conclusion was clear. I need something simply invisible, so against their recommendation, I actually preferred the LoopIt — the non-padded, smaller version of the Loop — than it’s bigger brother, the Loop v.2. I didn’t even bother to consider anything else knowing how parallel my believe and Luma’s approach are. Everything else don’t matter to me. (At one point, a Black Rapid evangelist even offered to give some of their straps for free. I discreetly declined.)

I made the purchase last March, and I’ve been happily using it along with my also then-new, Goruck GR1, Capture Clip, Canon EOS 7D, even my big-shot Canon lens, the old EF 80–200 ƒ/2.8L.

Until Black Rapid was awarded a patent related to this product, and somehow Luma was cornered to discontinue the Loops:

In short, the idea of a sliding camera sling isn’t an amazing new invention. It’s just a really good idea that’s been around for a while and which has been iteratively developed. Neither we nor our lawyers believed that the USPTO would grant a patent for the claims related to this concept. It was a surprise, then, when our competitor was granted a patent covering the concept on November 1st, 2011. To say that we’re disappointed that the USPTO couldn’t find the prior art around the idea is an understatement.

I’m saddened for this to happen to the Luma Labs for they are making such a great product, and for Black Rapid to seize a common product and use it to kill competition. Free market means we as consumers are free to choose, and the reward goes to those who makes better products. And today, more and more excellent products come from smaller, private companies mainly with passion as their mantra. This patent mumbo-jumbo kills the magic and such freedom to choose, and it is simply unfair.

I am excited, however, by Luma’s rigor spirit to fight it with ‘reinvention’ instead of a meaningless, time-wasting, soul-killing battle in the courtroom, and there’s nothing better to progress than the desire to move on with the most positive way from a less positive situation. There’s nothing to better power progress than that very spirit.

To photograph is to hold one’s breath, when all faculties converge to capture fleeting reality. It’s at that precise moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy.

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… the laws of physics get in the way of our fantasies. The major camera makers are doing a fine job of pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, but there are still fundamental limits. Ultimate low noise requires large sensors with large pixels. Large sensors require large lenses. Fast lenses for large sensors are inherently big and heavy.

And yet:

The camera has a 12 Megapixel 2/3 inch EXR-CMOS sensor. This means that the sensor is 8.8 X 6.6mm (typo corrected) in size, about double the surface area of most pocket digicams. The lens has a 7.1 to 28.4mm focal range, which translates to 28 – 112mm in full frame 35mm terms. This means a 4X multiplication factor compared to standard FF 35mm. By comparison a Micro Four Thirds camera has a 2X factor sensor, while a typical digicam sensor might have a factor of 5X to 7X.

Another thing — the zoom ring:

One of the X-10’s singular features, which will appeal to many photographers, is that the lens zooms via a twist ring on the lens barrel. This ring is also the camera’s On / Off switch. To operate, simply turn the ring, which switches the camera on with the lens at first at its widest focal length. Then, if you wish, continue to rotate the ring until you have the framing that you want. This is a very appealing feature compared to the stepped electric zoom function of most other cameras in this class.

The OFF detent is nicely firm and the zoom feel is very linear, with a smooth helical gear moving the lens from 28mm to 112mm in less than 45 degrees.

It didn’t take more than a couple of days of shooting to determine that having a manual zoom ring on the lens, combined with the On / Off switch, is one of the cleverest new camera designs in ages. Kudos to Fuji for coming up with something that is not only unique but really photographer friendly and useful.

Design turns problems into solutions, obstacle into advantage, but most importantly breeding imagination through limitation — in Fuji’s case: physical size vs. optical excellence. As I have said repeatedly on the excellence of Fuji’s new X-series team, they seem to have nurtured some great design virtues and approach in their X products, and the results are paying off.

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Since it’s made its web debut late last year, Lytro has been making rounds on the web as the next generation game-changing camera. Earlier this week, they introduced their first line of consumer camera, also called Lytro, and gave a demo at the AsiaD conference.

If a camera records a projected reflection of lights, the Lytro camera reads not just the light, but also their three-dimensional information, and records it as raw data with their 8 megaray¹ sensor as a light field construct.

After you download the data via their proprietary software², you can then explore the depth-of-field of the image, the same way you would focus a scene with your regular camera, only this one happens after you take the shots.

Light field photography isn’t new. Engineers and scientists have played with this in labs for years, perhaps in the last one or two decade, but Lytro is the first one to bring this to the consumer market.

Nonetheless this is a groundbreaking invention. It will capture people’s imagination for the years to come. But I’m not too sure it will be as market-changing as people think it would.

Consumer digital photography has brought photography to the mass. It’s huge, and the kind of adaptation we are seeing today is much more bigger and faster than it has taken conventional film-based photography since the time of its conception.

Digital photography takes the origin of photography as an art form limited to few to the audience at large as a medium, it takes the image from print and galleries to the now-ubiquitous screens worldwide. You take a picture, share it and everyone can see it without installing any new plugins, software or viewer, it’s instant, and easy.

Lytro, on the other hand is an entirely new dimension. It records a lot more information, and the product it presents contains much more information. Right now, it requires a Mac, the Lytro desktop software, and a user to download and process the image before it is scene. The final image is never final, as every it is intended to be fluidly refocus-able. It’s a whole new platform. The company is sure to monetize this big time. At least the investors are. The Lytro is the BluRay of digital photography, you need a new camera, and a new kind of software platform to view the result.

Judging from the demo video, the product seems to have got a proper design and engineering. It is simple, straightforward and easy to operate after someone tells you how³, reminds one much of the designs by Dieter Rams and Apple. Like Apple, the cameras has a structural aluminum body, and a touchable LCD display and the lens on the front and the back part of the camera. You hold the thing like you would operate a monocular; aim, frame (and zoom) with your point finger, then you take the picture by pushing the shutter with your thumb.

The company claims the 8 GB version of the Lytro can store about 350 shots before you need to download and clear the memory. They also claim the battery lasts for about 500–700 shots a single charge. That means the raw image size from the 8 megaray sensor is about 22mb each, much bigger than a regular raw file of an 8 megapixel camera.

This kind of complexion sort of beats how the camera was purported. The investors and the management of the company seem too eager to cash-in the way Apple does with the iPhone and the iPad. For companies like Lytro, the consumer market is very attractive, but they are also a very volatile, unpredictable as an entry point for groundbreaking scientific inventions. Think Segway. There are opportunities and risks that could make or break inventions. It is natural for Lytro to break the product as a consumer device, but what if this whole Lytro-thing is more suitable for the professionals?

Think archeology, science, medical, filmmaking, investigative research, or any field that requires a time-proof recording of informations. Imagine lytro-endoscopy, where a doctor takes one image and study every part of our ingestion organ one click at a time without having the endoscope dive to every part of it. Imagine where an archaeologist takes one picture and study all surface of their research without having him/her take multiple images of a single scene. Imagine police cameras where they don’t need image-enhancing software to see the license plate of a car of a crime scene snapshot? Imagine shooting a movie where we no longer need to follow focus but have it done in post-production.

Lytro opens up a new world of photography and they have chosen the consumer market as their point of entry. It’s a natural choice, I guess, given what kind of marketing and buzz they can create by dropping people’s jaws. It opens up our imagination on what kind of thing we would do with such possibilities. It’s begin-with-the-individual-and-profession-would-follow route they are taking, the same way the iPads are making rounds in corporates, businesses, education, even classrooms.

It is just the beginning.

Katie Sackhoff:

“It’s interesting that everyone thinks there is something hidden in that Last Supper photo, like if you look hard enough, you can find a hidden message in it. To be honest, I think we would have had to be in on it to create a hidden message, and we were all just there having a photo shoot.”

Da Vinci was a genius. (via @Shanghaidaddy)

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Adobe has released videos from its AdobeMAX event, including coverage of the image deblur feature for removing camera shake that has generated so much excitement. The company’s video shows feature in much better detail than the audience-shot version currently on the web. Shown as a prototype of a technology that is being considered for future versions of Photoshop, the function analyses the movement of the camera during an exposure and then corrects for it.

One of the image depicts an Adobe employee sitting onstage which Adobe admits was synthetically blurred ‘to be entertaining and relevant to the audience’:

The image of Kevin Lynch was synthetically blurred from a sharp image taken from the web. What do we mean by synthetic blur? A synthetic blur was created by extracting the camera shake information from another real blurry image and applying it to the Kevin Lynch image to create a realistic simulation. This kind of blur is created with our research tool. Because the camera shake data is real, it is much more complicated than anything we can simulate using Photoshop’s blur capabilities. When this new image was loaded as a JPEG into the deblur plug-in, the software has no idea it was synthetically generated.

The thing about synthetically processed example is that it rarely represents real world situation. Common blurriness doesn’t have patterns but organically produced defects caused by muscle movements, camera shake and all sorts of natural elements, in which altogether creates a unique shake pattern beyond synthetic reproduction.

If you look closely on how Jue Wang did the demo, you’d notice that the deblurring technique involves analyzing the image and loading a certain pre-medicated deblurring recipe. It is an impressive feat, I won’t deny that. But until I try the technology on my own, with my own image without any intervention from the lab, I’ll stick to my breathing technique and increase my arm’s muscle strenght.

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“It was in the late 80s. Jobs walked into the photo shoot and started moving the lights around. Then he picked up the phone and called the art director in New York and said he wanted to do something different.”

A subject who are being difficult in a photo shoot means that he or she knows what they want. It is the best possible subject a keen portraitist could hope¹.

I would ask the same question every time my editors call for an [editorial] assignment: “What is the subject, and what is your story?” I’d learn over the years that less editors would call, but more interesting assignments were on the table. Those who continue to call usually are the ones who put their trust and also gave me editorial freedom to do whatever I want.

Steve would have to deal with me, given such case.

I can imagine what it would be like for the reputable Ed Kashi to be treated that way, but ask yourself this: is it even your story to tell, or our subject’s? I kept asking that question, repeatedly in between photo shoots, albeit a car, people, a room or a building, and the answers always came back strong: I am just an observer to all of this, a clear piece of glass to the window that frames the story to our audiences.

It is when I kept my ego at bay that I begin to see the truth. It is only when I step back from the frame that I see who people truly are, the mask people are wearing, the goals and ambitions they want to achieve, and the real truth beyond all the mask and their ego-ridden self.

There is nothing more important, more interesting, or more powerful and more joyful than a truthful story.

And that’s why, I think Steve didn’t treat Albert Watson like he did Ed Kashi²:

“The one thing I insisted on was that we have a three hour window of set up time. We were prepared…we set up to make [every shoot] as greased lightning fast as possible for the [subject]. I also read a massive amount of stuff about Jobs to help conceptualize the shoot, and to be able to converse with Jobs intelligently.

When Steve walked in, his power, charisma and genius were palpable. It was like when Clint Eastwood walks in to the room:

“Wow, you’re shooting film.”

“I don’t feel like digital is quite here yet.”

“I agree.” Steve said, then he turned to Watson and added, “But we’ll get there“

It was 2008, and Steve may have grown to be more careful with his remarks, but it was clear that they both had an equally respectful stand to each other, an understanding that made the sessions enjoyable and fluid:

“What do you want me to do?” asked Steve.

“Think about the next project you have on the table, think about instances where people would challenge you” replied Watson.

The session went longer than Steve ever gave to most photographers, and the chosen photograph became the witness to the connection between Steve and Watson, and it portrayed the persona that obviously Steve and people around him at Apple knows as he is, the truth beyond all public image that people would render, the final picture to mark an end of an era, the one picture that would be the lasting memory of Steve and his story.

“…brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it.”

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The iPhone 4 is the world’s most popular digital camera according to flickr. Coming to the new iPhone 4S is an all-new camera system:

Great photography isn’t just about megapixels — it’s about light, too. The all-new, advanced optics in this camera work together to make sure whatever light you have gives you the best image possible. The custom lens uses five precision elements to shape incoming light, which makes the entire image sharper. The larger f/2.4 aperture lets in more light, so photos look brighter and better. And the advanced hybrid infrared filter keeps out harmful IR light, so you’ll see more accurate and uniform colors.

What it means plainly is that the iPhone 4S is a serious image-making tool; they understand what makes a camera great, what feature is relevant and useful to take great photographs and they aren’t shy to invest and innovate beyond the realm of the market today.

I never heard a camera manufacturer that says ‘more megapixels doesn’t make a camera great, they make it worst’. Apple did, and they’re also right about one thing: “It just might be the only camera you’ll ever need.”

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The initial introduction of Adobe Creative Cloud is centered around an innovative collection of Adobe Touch Apps that re-imagine creative software for the mobile age and enable tablet devices to be an integral part of the creative process. Adobe Creative Cloud will become the hub for viewing, sharing and syncing of files created by Adobe Touch Apps and Adobe Creative Suite, and includes 20GB of cloud storage. It will quickly develop into a service that will deliver access to Adobe’s flagship creative applications and services and become an essential resource for anyone interested in creativity

No pricing scheme it being introduced now, but it is clear that Adobe is reimagining its future — in a big and bold way.

Remember the saying about ‘skating to where the puck is going’ (Wayne Gretzky)? This is Adobe laying its bricks of the past, for a future in the web of clouds.

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Swedish Nature Photographer of the Year, Terje Hellesö, on a radio debate accusing him of doctoring a number of his images, particularly the one featured above:

“No no no, of course not. Not under any circumstances,” he said.

Four days later:

“Not all the pictures are manipulated, just a few of the lynx pictures.”

A week after that:

“The jury believes that there are likely to have been images manipulated even before 2011, meaning that he can not retain the title,” the agency explained in a statement on Monday.

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“Then I stopped people who were running who were totally anonymous and asked them if they could sprint, because I didn’t want that they were only hot and wet, I wanted that they were breathless. So this is what you see in the picture; the mouth is nearly open because they are trying to get their breath. I told them to run run run and when they were very tired and couldn’t run more, come back and I would take the picture. It produced some totally crazy pictures.”

The series isn’t titled ‘Before and After Sprinting’, no?

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“Then they found out he had taken multiple photographs of the cow skull and clearly it had been moved,” he says. “Well, people who were opposed to the Roosevelt administration seized on this. They became outraged, they felt manipulated, deceived; [there were] allegations that Rothstein had actually brought the cow skull with him from Washington.”

And you think Photoshop is bad.

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By Johny Stiletto, from his book Vintage 80’s: London Street Photography. (Via CR)

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The desire to know is outweighing the otherwise;
for not knowing is a real bliss in disguise.

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Capa would’ve missed that shot if the iPhone and Instagram existed that time. (Via Kottke)

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Instead of digitizing their existing print edition to the iPad, they will be publishing a mix of the best from their print content and ‘some unique content’ for a quarterly update for the iPad.

First ‘teaser’ issue is out now.

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Speaking of the X Series, here’s some futuristic-looking vintage cameras collected by creative director and illustrator, Jon Ashcroft:

Taking pictures with these monstrosities was a complex process that required the user to adjust a number of functions in order to get the desired outcome. All those complex adjustments meant a great deal of information had to be present on the cameras and thus we have a typographic gold mine. Etched exposure knobs, aperture rings, film speed suggestions, canister loading instructions and of course the manufacturers logo mark.

It looks to me that we have gone backwards, not forward in terms of camera aesthetics today; none of them make ‘em like that anymore. (Via Theo Inglis)

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Notable features:

• ƒ2.0–2.8, 28-112mm metal-housed/manual barrel zoom lens with built-in image stabilization & up-to 1cm macro capability.
• Lens ring on/off switch & a bright optical viewfinder
• High-sensitivity, ⅔” EXR-powered CMOS sensor with bespoke pixel array
• Black-coated magnesium body

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Hosted by the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand and OnAsia, the competition aims to promote excellence in photojournalism in the Asia-Pacific region for an up-to $3000 of prize money.

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It’s very confusing, and all the more so as it’s the users who really get to test this stuff. Obviously there’s a certain amount of reticence to test the limits amongst people with less money than sense and simple lore tells you that pride comes before a fall. The camera that’s never taken to sea will never be filled with saltwater when a seal fails. Some of us have to work close to the limits; we need to take pictures at sea, in rain and snow or even underwater and many of us will have suffered casualties.

It’s funny how a camera, which is very much an outdoor gear, requires all the cases, straps — protections — to be used in its natural habitat: the outdoor, with its unpredictable weather and element of surprises.

The basic benchmark would be our own human body, a camera should be able to withstand reasonable low, or high temperature, dust, moist, weather, water, physical abuse, as much as a human body can withstand. But the truth is far from it.

How long do you think it will take for our personal electronic devices — cameras included — to be outdoor-friendly? Will that day ever come?

Ruggedness is overrated.

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The Tim Hetherington Grant, which is the result of a joint-initiative between World Press Photo and Human Rights Watch, will be awarded to a photographer “to complete an existing project on a humanitarian or human rights theme.

Deadline is October 15, 2011.

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Now BMW-owned, the all-new MINI Cooper S still has some British soul at heart. Recently unboxed to the Indonesian audience after years of being unofficially imported to the car-loving nation.

Produced & Edited by Will W.

Dubbed the FF, is Ferrari’s first all-wheel drive, four-seater GT production model.

Client: blitzmegaplex
Art Direction: Santi Rivai
Production & Editing: Will W.

A hip establishment for street-smart moviegoers.

Client: blitzmegaplex
Art Direction: Santi Rivai
Production & Editing: Will W.

We were entrusted two SUVs, precious enough to make us treat them like gems. The mission: show the power and the elegance of the vehicles.

So we decided to take it up on a little road trip to the mountain.

Mt. Halimun is one of the least active of the Ring of Fire mountains in Java. It was a scientific centre for many years, but is now a little-known destination for nature lovers, perhaps it has something to do with access.

The four of us decided to ride in twos. Me & Arief, my writer-in-crime took the white, 4500 lt., V6 beast, and my producer with our assistant, Vierko & Jupri were in the 6000 lt., V8 ‘black beast’, the top-end model of this latest US-made luxury SUVs. We had the gas tank full and our hopes high, we started the car and took the highway.

And the story begins.

Our cars performed admirably. It runs like a beast and corners like a babe, and everything was right about it, quiet like a baby’s sleep, the audio made us believe we were in a concert, it all started well, until we reach the end of the tarmac off to the beaten path.

Traffic then took charge, and we soon ran out of patience. We managed to squeeze in a quadruple file of a single two-way street, hours later we maneuvered to began our ascend to the highland and our GPS, cellular phones and radio communication went dead. It took us more than 16 hours to reach our destination, and despite reaching it safely, our hopes were down.

After we parked our cars and unload our gears, we settled at the local home stay. Photographs, thank-you cards, notes were plastered on the walls with warming words, our host opened his doors for these hungry lost men and quickly brought our big-city ego down to the earth. We had our dinner — the best tasting instant noodle I ever tasted in a long, long time — and we entered the night with an mood-lifting echoes of the day. I bravely took the long-needed bath, and the freezing water kept me up to watch everyone sleep to the night.

The next morning, the birds called and our host came in with refreshment, a pot of hot water with tea & coffee, unforgotten was his smile and a heavily accented ‘Selamat Pagi’ (good morning) — in a friendly Sundanese tongue. The steaming caffeine broke the snores and soon everyone was awaken. What followed after that, was something uncalled for, a surprising element that I always knew was coming.

As we climbed to the nearby hill next to the compound, the sun breaks from the horizon. The night owl flew back from their hunt, and the roosters cue as the sun arises. As our host-turned-guide beckons with his steady steps, I followed hastily with a beaten breath and sweat “quickly, the sun is rising fast” he said as I carry myself to the hill. My two colleagues and our assistant were behind us.

Soon, the darkness fall, and the fogs began to fade away, the sky turned from black to purple and pink, from orange to blue, and with a big smile he pointed outward and said, “look, that’s the highest peak of the Halimun Mountain, and down there, is the Nirmala Tea Plantation”. As I struggle with the knee-length bushes, I lifted my head and looked in amazement, a lush valley of greens against the purple sky, something that can be seen only in movies and magical place high in the mountains. Everything came to a halt, everything stopped.

Then my colleagues came, “Will! Camera!! … hey! photo!” took me a good few seconds before I realised someone was talking to me, and I began to snap some pictures as he mumbled something that I could hardly hear. Present as I was to the majestic landscape, I barely noticed that the grasses became the sharp & sturdy tea offshoots, scratches were all over my feet, and the pants were all wet from the misty leaves.

“That’s where the tigers and the leopards are” he says as he points to the southwest end of the landscape, a tall shade of a distant mountain, “and back there is where the villagers would spot the Javanese great eagle” as we turned to our backs and see the equally handsome mountain, down the valley, layers of rice fields were scattered among patches of compound of the neighbouring village.

On the other side of the hill, there’s a research outpost that used to be run by some Japanese scientist, it now became a museum, and an office for the park’s administration officers headed by my guide’s younger brother. Inside, a high-resolution satellite photo of the entire area decorates the wall among photographs of the rarely seen exotics captured by trap cameras that used to be placed in dozens of spots in the jungle, a big cat with fat limbs, a sharp-eyed bird with giant wings, and the beer-bellied monkeys that has long hands and long tails hanging on tall, old trees. What a great spectacle.

As we climbed to our cars and bid our host farewell, we descend from the mountain to continue our journey back home, the wet tracks from the rain the night before pushes the limits of our luxury four-by-four, and though our devices and the GPS showed no map but a blinking signal, we were confident that everything will be fine.

Most of our photos from the assignment ended up being cut from the story, but the four us came back as better persons, each having a story to our family and friends, my story is between these photographs and the words you are reading, and perhaps, if nature grants me some more miles to explore, I will continue to tell that story for years to come.

The National Park, home to some of the world’s protected-and-rare animal and one of Java’s hidden gem, sits at the hills of the Halimun Mountain. The tea estate, owned by Procter & Gamble’s locally-owned public listed company, lies serenely at the hills, overlooking the handsome habitat of the Javanese Eagle, long-tail Puma, and the Javanese Monkey, and a village that her 28-family residences host occasional hikers & seasoned trekkers.

A city car built to cross the wilderness.

Shot on location at the Mt. Halimun National Park, West Java, Indonesia.

“And one has to understand that braveness is not the absence of fear but rather the strength to keep on going forward despite the fear.”

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China may be a single-party nation, and the Hans may be the cradle of her population, but she is also home to 56 ethnic groups, a land of concealed diversity.

Chen Haiwen, 54, and 14 other photographers embarked on a project to document this in 2009, and a book “Harmonious China — Features of China’s 56 Ethnic Groups” was published as the result. Follow the jump to see snapshots of the book, which is now available on the iTunes App Store as a $1.99 iPhone App — China 56 Ethnic HD.

One year in making, the book was compiled from over 57,000 captures by the traveling 15-crew production team.

(via Adi Harsono)

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Dave was approached by a photo printing company Clickpixx and tasked to come up with a commercial of some sort, so he came up with the idea to create photographs and film the actual prints from Clickpixx and turn it to a stop motion short.

Obviously, when you spend enough time to create 2,335 photographs, put some chirping birds and nervous giggles to it, things can hardly go wrong.

Check out the how the video was made.

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