Recently in inspiration Category

Since the Athens games in 2004, news sites have come around to having more (and better) photo galleries that aren't strictly tied to articles. The summer games in Beijing seem like the best covered Olympic games in recent memory. Or at the very least, the games with the widest selection of photos available to the public.

The games are finished, now, but there are just tons and tons of photos to be had and here are some of my favourites:

• Olympic Pictures of the Day from the New York Times
• Photo Galleries: Beijing Olympics 2008, LA Times 
• Newsweek's Visions of China. Vincent Laforet's entry about shooting events with multiple cameras is excellent. Access and timing are everything. 
• Women's Fencing at Boston.com's The Big Picture.
  

It took me a little by surprise to be smitten with photos from Entertainment Weekly not once, but twice in the last couple of weeks.

First up, a photo shoot of the cast from the forthcoming Twilight. And no, I don't mean the cover (Kristin Stewart is gorgeous, but I don't know why they had to do that to Rob Pattinson, I mean, really). Heh. No, I'm talking about the photos in the article, shot by Jeff Riedel.



I like that the photos have little to do with the look of the movie, they're Riedel's own. And you've got to respect a guy who shoots on location with a 4x5 camera. Dang.

Second up, a series of actor portraits from the by-all-accounts insanity that was the '08 San Diego Comic-Con. The portraits, shot by photographer James Dimmock, feature actors at Comic-Con in support of their various projects. A few of my favourites in the bunch:







What I like is the way the subjects dictate the mood of each shot and they're not all serious and drama with just rotating faces. Surely, a metric ton more were shot and just not uploaded, but still, it's a special skill bringing out your subject's personality (one I'm working on, myself) and Dimmock's clearly got it.

Inspiration, as they say, is found everywhere. The affordability of video cameras (Flip Videos, compact digital cameras that produce pretty good video, even small-ish HD cameras) has ushered in an explosion of folks creating hours and hours of their own video. It's not always good, but sometimes it can be great.


DIY35mmPro from twoneil on Vimeo.

This one is a test demonstrating a 35mm lens adapter on an HD video camera. I'm only used to seeing the focus change like this from inside my own viewfinder (or sometimes during some particularly dramatic moment in a film, heh).



Dunstan Orchard has a particular gift for composition. The combination of the images (bits of time?) and music he chooses for his video is always somehow just right. (And it doesn't help my gear lust at all that he made this one with the Ricoh GR Digital, a small-ish digital camera I'm highly interested in. (: ) For another example, check out "I can tell that we are going to be friends".



Lori is a favourite whether it's video or regular still photos. She has a great sense of humour and fabulous sense of style (and she owns that dead-center, headless thing and don't let anyone tell you different). Her videos tend to be short and this one's one of the best, I think.