“Leica has officially announced its new monochrome digital rangefinder, the M Monochrom — the world’s first digital camera to do dedicated black and white photography. The camera features a newly designed 18-megapixel monochrome CCD sensor and “100% sharper imaging” due to the fact that raw data is processed directly without interpolation. The monochrome sensor allows the camera to achieve extremely low noise even upwards of ISO 10,000, and various programmed tones can be used to adjust the look and feel of the black and white photographs. It’ll cost $7,950 when it hits store shelves starting in late July 2012.”

So, the real question is “Is it worth it?” The answer is almost certainly no for most people. If I had an extra $8000 lying around, I would love to own a camera like this. I love shooting B&W and to be able to have a dedicated camera with a higher quality file would be amazing – but at this price, I could own 2 Canon Mark III’s plus Alien Skin Exposure and get similar results. It’s too bad Leica missed the price point on this one.

Over the past 4 years the New York City Department of Records has been compiling an online database made up of rare photographs of “the greatest city on earth,” and now that database is available to the public. The compilation consists of over 870,000 photos ranging in subject matter from landmarks to crime scenes put together from a Municipal Archives collection of over 2.2 million photos.

The online gallery, which has been live for two weeks, was only publicized yesterday and already trying to access it yields the message:

Due to overwhelming demand, the New York City Municipal Archives Online Gallery is experiencing temporary difficulties. Please try again later.

If you want to see some of the images for yourself, order prints, or license them for commercial use make sure you check out their website and, for now, just keep reloading until it works. The database is still growing, as the Department plans to continue adding images, but you’re already likely to find something rare if you go digging.

Over 800,000 of the images were shot in color, and 1,300 of them are rare finds taken by local photographers of the Depression-era Works Progress Administration.

NYC Municipal Archives Gallery (via PopPhoto)

PurePhoto.com is all about making photography collection social: it connects art collectors to brilliant photographers and their work. So artists struggling to break free from the shackles of namelessness in the commercial world of photography can use PurePhoto to post their work, and be  seen directly and purchased by the collectors using it. A reciprocal social art network then, where you can discover new talents or get your talent discovered, that makes a buzz around what is worth buzzing about!

Did somebody say “social”?

Social oriented websites are what every dot-com company aims at now days and PurePhoto is no different. Its “social” aspect is in both a community for the artists who can inspire and learn from one another, as much as it is for the collectors’ community, where people can swap impressions on artists and see what other people think of the artist that they consider investing in.

And if I’m not a photographer or a collector?

Well, first of all it has somebreathtaking photography! Secondly, this is a social network that actually has something worth seeing: As the great Seinfeld pointed out: What is the point of social networking when whole societies can be drawn into commenting on and analyzing a lot of nothing? That’s not something you’ll have to worry about with PurePhoto – it’s an artists’ and collectors’ social network that bites: Its art, and its just waiting to be discovered!

Last week, a collection of 36 prints by William Eggleston was sold for $5.9 million at auction.  The top ten list of most expensive photographs ever sold doesn’t contain a single work worth less than a cool million. Just a few months ago, Andreas Gursky’s ‘Rhine II’ became the world’s most expensive photograph, selling for $4.3 million.

Every time news like this reaches the Internet, the comments sections of photography blogs explode with righteous indignation. The common sentiment in these reactions seems to be that the art world is populated by rich fools buying the emperor’s new clothes. Some commenters underscore this idea by expressing how unremarkable they think the photograph in question is, or how it fails technically or esthetically. In the case of the recent Eggleston auction, the photograph ‘Memphis (Tricycle)’ that sold for $578,500 was dismissed by several commenters as a snapshot that ‘any fool with a camera could have taken’.

Whenever I read those comments I imagine how frustrating it must be to have such a limited and cynical understanding of how art is valued. It must seem like the world has gone mad. But while it is probably true that not everyone in the art world is equally sane, there are in fact some sound reasons why some photographs are more valuable than others. Once you understand what those reasons are, your appreciation of art will grow and the frustration will go away.

Head over to PetaPixel to read the rest of this brilliantly written article…

Lightroom Library View

Over the last two years, I have developed a workflow that allows me to quickly pick and process images, automatically find images that need to be processed, and locate any image quickly. My workflow can be broken down into four parts: Import, Process, Export, and Backup.

Step One: Import The first step is to import images into Lightroom. I keep my Lightroom libraries on external mirrored hard drives, and import images into folders named by the year and month, for example “2012-03 Photos” would hold photos from March of 2012.

Some Folders In Lightroom

I have Lightroom convert the images to DNG format upon import. If the images I am importing all have something in common, for example if they are all taken at the same event or location, I will specify keywords for the images at import time. Importing images into folders for each month helps to make the next step more manageable.

Step Two: Processing Processing involves looking at the imported images, rejecting images that are unacceptable for some reason, adjusting images that I want to keep, and adding keywords. To make it easier to track which images I have not yet processed, I use Smart Collections. A Smart Collection is a virtual folder that contains all images that meet specific criteria. Smart Collections allow you to filter your images in many different ways, and the contents update in real time. I use Smart Collections to group images from specific photo shoots, images for specific projects, images that need to be processed, and images that are ready to be uploaded. Images in Smart Collections are just pointers to the images in your image library, so images can appear in multiple Smart Collections without taking up extra disk space. I make a Smart Collection for each month of images, naming it with the year, month, and “Undeveloped”. The criteria for the Smart Collection includes all images captured that month, with a rating of less than one star, and a pick flag that is not rejected. The dialog in Lightroom looks like this:

In this example, the Smart Collection will contain all the images that I have taken in March of 2012, and that I have not yet processed. When I am ready to process images, I click on the Smart Collection that I want to work on and start looking at images. Images that I know I do not want to process get marked as Rejected by pressing the “x” key. When I reject an image, it immediately disappears from the Smart Collection, and the next image is displayed. When I find an image that I want to keep, I switch to the Develop module (option-command-2) and make adjustments. When I am satisfied with the adjustments, I switch back to the Library module (option-command-1), add Keywords to the image, add a title, and rate it with three to five stars, depending on how strong I feel the image is. Once I rate it, the photo disappears from the Smart Collection and the next image is displayed. By using this simple reject/rate technique, I let Lightroom keep track of images that need to be processed, freeing me to concentrate on the images themselves.

This workflow also ensures that I have added keywords to every single image that I have processed. Adding keywords to images is very important. Without keywords, photo management quickly becomes an impossible task. But when keywords are added to every image, it becomes a simple matter to find any image without having to remember when it was taken or what folder it might have been saved in. In addition, most photo sharing sites automatically parse the keyword data, making it easier for potential clients to find your images online. I always include the location of the image (City, County, State, and Country), information about the subject (Neon, Architecture, Graffiti), and keywords describing other things about the image. I would rather have too much information here than not enough. If you build your keywords in a hierarchy, Lightroom will automatically add parent keywords. I have created lists of location keywords from USGS data which can be imported into Lightroom. When I add “San Francisco” as a keyword, Lightroom adds “San Francisco County”, “California”, and “USA” for me.

This image contains the keywords Abstract, Architecture, Boston, Building, Cambridge, Distortion, MIT, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Reflection, USA, MA, United States, Gehry, Frank Gehry, Stata Center

You may wonder why I use three stars and higher for images that I have processed. What about one or two stars? I use one or two stars to rate images that were used as source images for other processing. For example, if I send an image out to Silver Efex Pro for processing, I will rate the resulting image with three or more stars, and the original image with one or two stars. This makes sure that I keep both the source and processed image, and removes the images from the Undeveloped Smart Collection. The images with three or more stars end up in a Smart Collection that is used in the next step.

Step Three: Export Once I have a batch of images ready to export, I click my Smart Collection “Ready to Upload”. This collection includes all images that have a rating of three or more stars, and that do not contain the keyword “exported”. I export these images as high-quality JPEG files to a directory on my local hard drive. Once the export is completed, I add the keyword “exported” and the files disappear from the Smart Collection. I then upload the images to my accounts on various photo sharing sites. Every image that is exported will end up on Flickr. Selected images are also uploaded to other sites, such as 500px and PurePhoto. When I have uploaded the images, I delete the JPEG from my local hard drive. I know that I can export the images from Lightroom at any time, so I don’t feel that there is a need to keep the JPEG images. I know some photographers who also keep the JPEG images on external hard drives.

Step Four: Backup My photo library represents a significant amount of time and effort over the course of many years. To ensure that my images are safe, I have a three-part backup strategy. The first part is to keep my images on external mirrored hard drives. In the event that a hard drive fails, I can simply replace it and rebuild the mirror. The second part of my backup strategy is a weekly backup of the external hard drive to a second external hard drive. The second hard drive is kept at a separate location. This helps to prevent the loss of images from theft of disaster. The third part of my backup strategy is the files that I have uploaded to photo sharing sites. If a disaster were to destroy both my working copy and backup copy, I would still be able to retrieve the JPEG images. This workflow is the result of many hours spent in Lightroom, and reflects how I ultimately use most of my images. Some of the techniques may not work for you, or you may find ways to improve upon what I am doing. Let me know what you think, and how your own workflow compares.

Happy shooting!

Jeremy

PurePhoto has been lucky enough that our artists understand that we are a site that sells artwork for people’s homes. While we do have a great site for sharing work and social networking, our primary goal is to put art on walls. When users upload work  to our site they generally do heavy edits and post their best work for sale. In essence we don’t get a whole lot of babies, dogs or cat photos. As sites “niche out” the curation process becomes monumentally important. However, it’s not just the responsibility of the site, it’s also the responsibility of the artists/photographers to curate their own work so they don’t overwhelm the viewers. I’d rather see one amazing shot than 100 mediocre shots.

You can see the rest of the images over at My Modern Met…

See the video here…

BARCELONA: The Monday announcement of the 41-megapixel Nokia 808 PureView represents a major leap in mobile camera technology.

While more megapixels don’t always automatically lead to better photos, they do mean data-rich photos that can be more easily zoomed and edited. You’ll be able to do a lot more in post-processing with a camera like the Nokia’s. Of course, the photos will be very large in file size, so the PureView will undoubtedly need ways to bring in external memory cards or export photos to the cloud to prevent photographers from quickly running out of storage.

Mashable got some demo photos from Nokia taken by a team of rock climbers in South Africa. The results? Majestic shots that we could easily scale to smaller images that still looked just as good. While the nice landscapes gave the photographers an advantage, you can see how we cropped down some of their photos, and they still look great. File size was a factor, too — the images were about 12 megabytes each.

SEE ALSO: Complete Coverage of Mobile World Congress

Nokia unveiled the 808 PureView at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The phone will retail for 450 euros, or about $600, when it launches in Europe in May. The camera technology, brought to Nokia by Symbian, will appear in upcoming Nokia mobile phones as well.

From ArtInfo

Name: David LaChapelle
Occupation: Artist
City/Neighborhood: East Maui

What project are you working on now?

A return to paradise.

Your new body of work features photographs of baroque flower arrangements. As someone who became famous photographing people, what draws you to this surprising new genre?

I love stories/narratives that can be found in the old masters’ still lifes. Every object and even certain flowers carry symbolic meaning. For me it’s about the “vanitas,” the idea of transitions in life, nature, and how they remind us of our own mortality, the brevity of life, and the beauty in each season.

It’s the stuff of legend that, after quitting a project with Madonna, you withdrew to a remote former-nudist colony in Maui to rethink your life and career. What made you decide to move into fine art photography?

A phone call asking me to make new pictures for an exhibition in Berlin that took me by surprise, and also back to where I first began my career exhibiting in art galleries.

Your work contains tropes that are sometimes disparaged by the contemporary art world, such as grand religious metaphors, epic tableaux, and a celebration of consumerism and celebrity culture. Do you feel your work has been misunderstood by the mainstream art world?

I’m just a soul whose intentions are good. Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood.

You’ve shot more than a few famous faces, from Hillary Clinton to Courtney Love. Of all the people you’ve shot, who was the most interesting and why?

Muhammad Ali, who’s been a hero of mine since I was a young boy. I always wanted to meet him and to photograph him. For me he is a true hero. He took a stand against fighting in the Vietnam War, which could have ended his young career. His faith, courage, humor, beauty, and kindness to my entire staff was astonishing.

You have been known to borrow poses, themes, and tropes from art history in your photographs. Which artists have influenced you the most?

Michelangelo and Michael Jackson.

You famously were discovered at age 17 by Andy Warhol, who offered you a job at Interview Magazine. What’s your favorite memory of him?

He and I were in the kitchen and he was yelling because someone threw out a coffee tin that still had some coffee grains in it. I was looking at this — here he was, digging into the garbage and yelling. I thought it was very touching — it reminded me of my mom, a war refugee from Eastern Europe, who also saved everything.

What’s the last show that you saw?

“Glee.”

What’s the last show that surprised you? Why?

The Edward Kienholz installation “5 Car Stud” at LACMA in Los Angeles. It moved me in a way I’ve never felt before when seeing a work of art. It was haunting, especially the idea of leaving footprints in the sand becoming part of the scene. It’s one of the most powerful works I’ve ever seen.

What’s your favorite place to see art?

Public school art rooms.

Do you make a living off your art?

Since I was 18.

What’s the most indispensable item in your studio?

The windows.

To read the rest of this interview and more great art news head on over to ArtInfo

Three of the lots carried third-party financial guarantees, meaning an anonymous funding source outside of the auction house guaranteed a confidential minimum price for those wares. Only one work sold for over a million pounds and that was Lucio Fontana’s slashed canvas “Concetto Spaziale, Attese” in virginal white from 1960, which sold to an anonymous telephone bidder for a little over £1 million ($1.7 million) (est. £1-1.5 million/$1.6-$2.4 million). The most remarkable thing about the Fontana is that it was once owned by Andy Warhol and sold back at Sotheby’s New York in May 1987, shortly after the artist’s death following gallbladder surgery for a minute $132,000 figure.

Phillips offered a small-scaled Warhol himself as well, “Mao” (1974), which sold to another telephone bidder for £457,250 ($722,694) (est. £300-500,000). An otherwise unidentified Asian woman bidding at the back of the Howick Place salesroom was the underbidder.

But Phillips’s staple, younger, more cutting-edge contemporary art was mostly successful, with Joe Bradley’s Malevich-esque, black and red “Killroy” (2008) in two parts sold to London’s Simon Dickinson Gallery for £49,250 ($77,603) (est. £30-40,000). Kelly Walker’s brick-patterned four-color silkscreen on canvas with an appropriated image from “Hola!” magazine from 2007 sold to Amsterdam dealer Siebe Tettero for £85,250 ($134,328) (est. £50-70,000).

“I thought the sale was a little tepid,” said Tettero later, “but they did well, just as Sotheby’s did last evening with what they had. I think Christie’s won this round.” Asked about the small scale of Phillips de Pury line-up tonight, Tettero added, “I think people are hesitant to give their works out to this house, which is a pity.”

Still, Phillips soldiered on with a steady beat as Christopher Wool’s leaf-patterned alkyd-on-paper “Untitled” (1988) sold to a telephone bidder for £169,250 ($266,687) (est. £120-180,000). Paris dealer John Sayegh-Belchatowski was the underbidder.

Sayegh-Belchatowski also underbid the Jean-Michel Basquiat oil-stick-and-graphite “Untitled (Half-Eaten)” (1983), featuring images of a banana and Basquiat’s own head, which sold to the telephone for £181,250 ($286,386) (est. £150-200,000). “It was cheap,” admitted Sayegh-Belchatowski, who watched the action from his seat in the second row, close to auctioneer Simon de Pury, “but after £130,000, it was enough.”

In contrast to the bouts of wild bidding at Christie’s earlier in the week for the likes of Gerhard Richter and Francis Bacon, competition at Phillips was decidedly more relaxed. Rudolf Stingel’s densely patterned abstraction, “Untitled” (2004) in oil and enamel on canvas sold to another telephone bidder £505,250 ($798,336)

Of the trio of third-party guaranteed lots, Cindy Sherman’s wildly outfitted cowgirl clown, “Untitled #410” (2003), a color photograph from an edition of six, attracted the most competition, bringing out four telephone bidders who drove the price to £433,250 ($684,565). Another guaranteed entry, George Condo’s classically weird seated figure, “Woman in a Blue Chair” (2007), sold to New York’s Skarstedt Gallery, the artist’s primary market dealer for £205,250 ($324,332) (est. £200-300,000). Marc Quinn’s bad taste “The Golden Column (Microcosmos)” (2008), cast in gold leaf and bronze and featuring a waif-thin Kate Moss in a contorted yoga pose, was also guaranteed, selling to a telephone bidder for £289,250 ($457,071) (est. £300-500,000).

One of the few lots to draw serial bidding was the sensation Walead Beshty’s “Fed Ex Kraft Box” (2005), a laminated glass, silicone, and metal Fed Ex shipping box sculpture that sold to a telephone bidder for £58,850 ($92,992) (est. £15-20,000). “It gets silly,” said London Saville Row dealer Carl Kostyal, referring to the price, who was one of the underbidders. “It comes after a hyped series of auction sales and people are going crazy.”

The only casualties of the quickly paced evening were Andreas Gursky’s “Jumeierah Palm” (2008) and Damien Hirst’s ridiculous confection in painted bronze, “Sensation” (2003). They carried respective estimates of £400-600,000 and £350-450,000.

Moments after the sale, Michael McGinnis, Phillip’s worldwide head of contemporary art described the overall result, saying “It’s exactly what we expected. It was a modest price point sale and we felt confident it would do well across the spectrum of Postwar art.” Asked about the low number of buy-ins, McGinnis added, “we have a much better indication of what the market can absorb, and smaller and more confident is better than a higher risk.”