APhotoContributor

a couple quick shouts...

first off, thanks so much for all of the great comment last time 'round.  glad you guys keep coming back to read whatever this is. 

i like being able to write blogs to kind of counter the non-working photographers like wank and theonlinephotoguy. 

one of my best friends was just featured and interviewed by his editor.  check out what mario says about his start in photography all the way to shooting the oscars at the reuters blog.  don't bother reading the next blog entry, though. ;)  not gonna name names but ... most of the oscar red carpet was COMPLETELY cookie cutter.  mario's was not. ;)  but i'm sure you'll have seen that for yourself.

um ... my friend clayton ... he shot cats. ;)

one of my friends at leica usa asked if i'd post a link to the oscar barnack award.  the winner gets either €5000 or the equivalent in leica gear.  not bad.

so .. yeah ... from a little napolitano bitch to a chicago cat photographer to ... the barnack award ... that's what i've got. ;)

hope you're all well.

cheers from the very overcast l.a.!

Assembled in Vietnam

by Nhat

I sometimes get asked why I carry around a little Pentax dSLR as my personal camera.  The answer? It's because the Pentax lenses are assembled in my homeland, Vietnam. 

I was at Samys one day waiting for my rental gear order and wandered upstairs to kill time in the sales dept. There was a Pentax on the counter and I decided to play with it. Much to my own surprise I saw the "Assembled in Vietnam" label on the lens. "Holy shit", I thought. Being Vietnamese, I was excited. By weeks end, I picked up a tiny K100d with a 40mm 2.8 pancake lens.

It's big deal and exciting to see Vietnam developing. Remember Eddie Adams' and Nick Ut's photos? Now think SLR/lens factory and you'll realize how much change has occurred in just 30 years.

You have to remember that not too long ago in history, Vietnam was just producing rubber and rice as an economy and was under French imperial rule. My grandparents and parents lived under the French colonial flag. If you interested in that time in history, check out the 1992 French film "Indochine". The only good things that came out of imperialism is the alphabet (90%+ literacy rate nowadays), baguette bread (umm sandwiches) and the coffee (I want one now).

After the French were forced out in 1950's, all still wasn't calm because the country was then split into North and South Vietnam, and that led to the war that we all know (which led to a string of terrible Chuck Norris movies).

I know the current government is communist and my father was in the South Vietnamese Army and fought against them, but things have been getting better. For the first time in a long history, Vietnam has enjoyed a period of not being at war or fighting a revolution and that is a good thing because it leads to financial development. I know first came Nike and their gigantor sweatshop that made Air Jordans, but you have to start somewhere. In a odd round about way, that helped me because I ended working for Michael Jordan in '98.

But things have gotten better since. Now comes Pentax. I was reading that Pentax has built and SLR plant near where my father grew up in Hanoi.

So now I've added the Pentax factory to my list of todo's when I head back to Vietnam to visit my 92 year old grand uncle (my mom's uncle), who's a Franciscan Monk and wanted a laptop for his birthday.

On a gear note, the lenses are pretty sweet but the bodies are not as good. If Pentax ever gets back into the pro market and make solid stuff like their old 6x7 and 645 lineup, I'd get it. But until then, I am not letting go of my Canon 1D III. But I will keep the tiny K100d on my shoulder as a fun little personal camera and reminder of things getting better back home.

fear as much as you can...

j and i are really amazed that it seems as though the media, no matter which media is your preferred outlet, are just throwing kerosene on the flames...

like really?  you gotta get some irrelevant ex-homeland official to make everyone even that much more
friggin' paranoid?

reminds me of a quote that rockefeller made in germany back in like 1991 ...

"We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New     York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors     have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for     almost forty years."

He went on to explain:

    "It would have been impossible for us to develop     our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity     during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to     march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual     elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination     practiced in past centuries."    

 

-- David Rockefeller, Speaking at the June, 1991 Bilderberger     meeting in Baden, Germany (a meeting also attended by then-Governor Bill     Clinton and by Dan Quayle

if you don't know who those people are do some googling.

last week my friend and fellow-photographer cyril helnwein sent me a quote:

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." -- Thomas Jefferson, 1802

something to think about.

whilst some are watching 401k's errode whilst others are watching their expenses and choosing less quality foods or getting rid of cable ... there are groups watching this ...

and i believe it's all going to their plan.

i've never agreed with god-fearing people.  i don't believe in any kind of fear.  fear is terrible.

try and control happy people: it's like herding cats.

try and control fearful people and they act like sheep.

thank you news networks, newspapers and the like.  you're just like the sheep you're trying to herd.

my friend olivier sent me a link last night about fox news getting pissy about newsweek not retouching palin's face enough.  bitches.

fox is just pissed "their party's gonna loose." ;)

because i let the photo district news subscription lapse ... it was around the same time they let the wank be a guest editor.  the same wank who can't show the photos he makes to justify what he reviews.  the last review being the best as he cited "national security."  betcha i know which political sign is in his front yard.  ;)

there's a mccain/palin sign ... that i've seen ... and i really think it needs to be ... comandeered. ;)

yes, pdn ... because i also think havlik is pretty much untalented (check out his photo galleries) and has no qualifications writing what he does ... i almost skipped his article about the new canon 200/2.0L.  i was thinking i may get the three-hunski ... but ... hmm ...

dunno now.

i think i have time to go to the lab today!!!!

i've also got the responses from four judges for the uber street contest!!!!  only a few more to go.

hope you're all well.

unless you got into an adjustable mortgage last year, bought 7 52" lcd's or are a mortgage broker, you had nothing to do with what's going on right now.  although it's hard not to feel tripidation, just hug a spaniel.

it works.

cheers from the now-temperate l.a.!

Justice Can Be Poetic Even for a Philistine

You might be wondering who Tom Petters is and what relevance he might have to you, a reader of a photoblog.  He was CEO of Petters Group Worldwide, but, to the community of Polaroid artists, he is known and will be remembered as the man responsible for killing Polaroid film types.  He bought the ailing and failing Polaroid company because he coveted its logo, a design nurtured and attended by Paul Giambara for thirty-some years.  We lost an American legacy of culture and an international legacy in photography because arrogant Petters wanted to peddle cheap digital goods and saw another man's life work as a milestone to earning his quick buck.  For Giambara, it was personal.  For the rest of us, it meant we would bid farewell to a staple of American culture not less prominent than apple pie, Polaroid Instant Film.

Petters' uncouth disregard for an artistic community that relied on Polaroid film types brought, of course,  sorrow and suffering to the photographers who loved the media.  While Polaroid photographers are not likely to get their beloved film types back, they can, at the very least, find some amusement in the events that have unfolded recently.  As it turns out, Tom Petters, who was seen as a possible fugitive because of some incriminating conversations on tape, was jailed so that he might face the charges of fraud recently brought against him.  This came after the feds raided the Petters Group HQ and searched his home.  I don't ordinarily take pleasure in another person's misfortune, but you will have to forgive me while I do my happy dance.

Glenn Stubbe from the Star Tribune gets all the credits for bringing to us this particularly sinister portrait of the man behind Polaroid Petters Group.

After you've enjoyed the unrelated (yet poetic) justice meted out to Petters during the course of the recent events, visit Save Polaroid to join forces with others who wish to preserve a legacy in the history of photography!

Elinor