I just purchased the Letus Elite 35mm lens adapter for my HVX200. So in honor of my new equipment, I decided to grab frames from some of my favorite digital videos from around the web.  I wanted to make sure that all of the stills were created with digital technology, no film allowed. I hope you love these frames as much as I do - cheers!

Latin news site Terra ran this clever set of print ads depicting world leaders as they become the first to know of breaking news — Terra bills themselves as the quickest delivery method in bringing that news directly to you, making you the second to know. A timely photograph paired with a bit of copy. Simple and extremely effective.

The thing I admired most about Michael Jackson was his passion for entertaining, for putting on a show like no one else could. He possessed unrivaled vision when it came to spectacle and showmanship, a talented innovator whose inspiration paved the way for countless others. His performances were never disappointing because he always left everything he had out on the stage, singing and moving like no one else ever has while no one else has ever moved a crowd like he did.

HBO has released the trailer for their upcoming epic miniseries about the Pacific Theatre in WWII. Produced and written by the same guys that brought us Band of Brothers; Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg and Gary Goetzman. I always make sure to pay attention to the title sequences and the music in any film or trailer, they have the ability to make them better when properly executed or take away from them if done poorly. Here, the title sequences are beautifully done and flow seamlessly with the imagery, while the score is powerful and moving. I really can’t wait to see this one…

Bold. Stylized. Minimalist. All can be applied to Charley Harper’s body of work. Having been raised on a farm in West Virginia, it’s understandable that the subjects of his artistic expression were most often birds and other wildlife. Harper illustrated many books, posters, and prints over his career, which reached it’s pinnacle in the 60s and 70s. Harper passed away in 2007, but the influence of his work lives on…

Politics exploit power differentials. Consequently, differences in power will usually be accompanied by politics as usual. Like all human institutions, academia is not immune from this co-incidence. It is a helpful dis-ease, one that serves to both preserve and propagate the ordering and orderliness of power. We should be thankful for this systemic and system-wide condition, because without it we would inversely exist in a world without order. And although we may claim to detest it, we all need a little order.

Our ambivalence toward Order and the Hierarchy(s) of Power is as natural as the otherwise chaotic conditions upon which it proceeds and is predicated. I fully appreciate the paradox of ambivalence as it is presently for me both necessary and not needed. To share my work, I must first pass through a gauntlet of academic powers. Like a rite of passage, I am required to perform a variety of tasks to appease those at the helm of my academic tomorrow. They alone have the power to certify what I have produced; they alone can grant me the liberty to disseminate my research certifiably. But like any rite of passage, academia’s gauntlet aims to produce competent and skilled craftsman. And just like any power structure, academia must judge who is competent and skilled by those who have already been proven to be both .

Thankfully, my initiation is almost complete. And when at last this has occurred, I will be free to profess.

For over two years, I have investigated a phenomenon with no theoretical precedent.

And so I have developed my own.

I will present it here in this forum, piece by piece and week by week.

And I will welcome any comments or criticisms.

Because in this forum, power is distributed equally.

I finally posted a couple new desktops up in the STASH for June. Father’s Day is coming up this weekend so I thought it would be appropriate to pay tribute to mine is some small way. One desktop features my father sitting on some sandbags and looking bad-ass with an AK-47 in June 1970 while stationed in Vietnam, the other one pictures his Corvette Stingray from that same era.

I paid a visit to Buffalo’s 52nd annual Allentown Art Festival this weekend. Although it’s made up of mostly kitchy, arts & crafts type stuff, there are usually a few artists worth seeing. This year was no different, I met a few really talented and friendly people aaaand one big jerk ( I’ll get to that right after the jump ). Here’s the skinny…

Drew Morrison — website

Brian Reszel — website

Tony Mauro — website

Born in Buffalo — website

Brezo:

And now for my D-bag Award of the Festival. Seen in the picture below is a local photographer that shall remain nameless.

I made the mistake of snapping a photo of one of his framed-in-glass photographs, uh-oh. Mr. Pro Photo howled at me from 3 whole feet away to “stop that!”, causing a minor scene. He marched over to me, got up in my face, and commanded me to delete the picture I had taken “immediately”. I complied to his bravado-laden request, but advised him that he didn’t have to be, well, “such a dick about it”, to which he responded “I asked you nicely” ( in a tone that wasn’t very nice ). I disagreed, which compelled him to warn me further that I “wouldn’t want to see him not ask nicely”. No his name isn’t Bruce Banner. Wannabe hulk didn’t bother to ask me why I was taking the photo, he just assumed I was up to no good. Normally I would have asked first, but he was MIA when I first showed up at his tent, that was my bad. But, his reaction was way over-the-top, it reeked of someone who is downright insecure about their work. If this dude thinks I was taking the photo to pirate his and pass it off as my own, then he’s a paranoid joke. We’re not living in 1999 anymore, big guy, I don’t subscribe to the outdated theory that there’s a way to take a photo of another photo in a glass frame and make it look like the original. Anyone with a brain in their head shouldn’t either, especially in this setting. This guy also watermarks his photos on his site, as if someone could take the 72dpi image and print it out at 300dpi and 2″ x 1″, frame it, and pass it off as their own. Riiiiiight… Hell, maybe he believed that I was taking a photo of his photo to somehow steal it’s soul, now that would be a better case to make.