Barry Z Levine/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

The summer of 1967 is often referred to as “The Summer of Love”, the epicenter being the Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco, but this mythical summer was a long time in coming and it’s impact reverberated across the seas and forward into early 70’s.  The tokens of subculture and the psychedelia-fueled aesthetic trickled up to the mainstream.  Early in the decade paisley, a traditional textile pattern originating in Persia, was seen as dangerous as it implied that one was delving into Eastern spirituality but by the end of the decade the pattern was on racks at major department stores. Even Playboy Bunnies had flower-power influenced outfits when the 60’s drew to a close.

Blank Archives/Archive Photos/Getty Images

The summer of  ‘69 culminated in the monumental outdoor concert in Bethel, New York better known as Woodstock. As each decade following the seminal outdoor musical festival passes, fruits of the experience are leaked, relived, re-celebrated and re-released.  To commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the transformational Woodstock concert of 1969, a number of projects are coming to light.   Rhino Records has released Woodstock — 40 years on: Back to Yasgur’s Farm Boxed Set, Warner Brothers has teamed up with Amazon.com to release an exclusive disc of unreleased material in Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music Director’s Cut and  Brooklyn’s Prospect Park may host a 40th anniversary concert.   Even Getty Images has some newly uncovered Woodstock material to offer, such as Barry Z Levine’s coverage of the event in color.

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The New York Times noted recently that advertisers are feeling the groovy vibes too,  citing Ameriprise Financial’s 2006 campaign using Dennis Hopper as the beginning of an ad trend that is currently cresting with references to the 60’s counter-culture movement by retailers such as Geico, Mitchell Gold & Bob Williams, General Mills, Macy’s and Levi’s.  The Bloomingdale’s in downtown Manhattan shows mannequins holding Stone Wall Protest signs.  Obama’s election to the White house is listed as a catalyst for the sea change that calls to mind the tumultuous decade that has its very own PBS series, The Sixties.  The photos here aren’t from a hipster picnic at McCarren Park this weekend,  last seasons Urban Outfitters catalog, or a press photo for a New Wierd American Band, though they could pass.  They are a genuine depiction of an era gone by.   See more from the hippie side of the 1960’s here.

Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Keystone/Getty Images

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“In today’s society, our animal instincts are smothered by daily modern life, city-living and constant technological developments. Man is an animal, but he no longer knows it.“

The current European campaign for Wrangler, which launched this summer, wants to re-awaken our instincts. This is a back-to-nature campaign without tree-hugging, but truly interesting visuals instead. Check it out on YouTube and here.

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Paul Potts

So this guy was the winner of ‘Britain’s got Talent’ and now he’s being cleverly used to promote Deutsche Telekom:

Deutsche Telekom Paul Potts

Reminds me of the Brazilian samba street cleaner

Who then starred in this Orange ad

Reality sometimes has the best stories

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Here we go! We knew it was only a matter of time…With constant talk of recession, “bailouts,” the mortgage and loan crisis, Wall Street’s crazy fluctuations, it’s no wonder there’s a massive trust deficit going on. The question on top of everyone’s mind is, “Who caused this? Someone must have failed us.”

Our trust in the system has been shattered and it only makes sense that we begin to see advertisements reflect this sentiment of distrust. Some will be done in a tongue-and-cheek way like the ad above, other companies will look to re-establish trust and loyalty by going back to basics through conveying the message of “what really matters”. Expect to see more ads showing families bonding at home and less of ads highlighting extravagant lifestyles.

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Today we set out to scout a location for an upcoming shoot. We are planning a shoot around a restaurant environment that will convey concepts of business lunches, social gatherings and dining scenes. Most of the department came along since we are all doing different jobs on this shoot. We have one photographer (me), one producer (Amy Uratsu), One art director standing in as a stylist (Karen Strauss), and two on set art directors standing in as themselves (Jennifer Dorn and Stephen Schauer). The location Nick and Stef’s Steakhouse in downtown Los Angeles.

The location has four distinct areas we can utilize to get different looks: the outdoor patio, the indoor bar, the fine dining room and the private party room.

Outside we can do a natural light feel with city scape backgrounds that can look like anywhere city downtown USA.

Inside we can use ambient light coming through the windows for a moody back lit look. Finally we can light the space to give a more dramatic effect or mimic a nighttime feel. The best thing about this location is that it is an elegant restaurant with a generic feel that becomes a clean palette to allow the photography and talent to highlight the concepts concisely with a worldwide appeal.

While on the scout I like to take location shots that will give an idea of the framing and angles I will be working with on the day of the shoot.  This way we can set the schedule of the day with visual references, which act as a storyboard, for the shots, talent movement and wardrobe needs. Once we have our schedule and timing down the team goes to work executing the concepts/shots we have laid out for ourselves in a structured shoot brief. I should also mention that the impetus of this shoot came from Creative Research requests for new imagery covering the concept of lunchtime meetings, either social or work related.

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Woman leaning on future car

My father was always fond of telling me how when he was a kid he really believed that the future would be a place with flying cars and laser guns.

Man would live on the moon and regularly visit space. This is well before the personal computers lead us to digital photography. When I was in college I truly believed that cameras in the future would be of film quality and do other amazing things like wireless transfer, GPS tagging and extremely fast writing to storage that would make lag time obsolete.

So what has happened? Where is the wireless transfer that would save hundreds of photographers systems when the model trips over the tether cord?

Why when I am in the middle of shooting do I have to say ³hold on hold on we need to wait for the images to write to the card.²  In the race to sell photographers a new and better camera every 12 to 18 months, manufactures have focused intensely on one marketing point only; mega pixels. I will agree that when we were in the days of 6-mega pixels pro systems it was a consideration. But for a while now the pro end of camera has been well with in the ³film comparable² range. Yet, manufactures and consumers alike still want more pixels packed in to smaller space so that the next system to hit the market can have a larger number displayed on the box. This makes those who have a system feeling jealous and inadequate. The latest jump has brought a

60.5 mp digital back on to the scene, and pushed the 5D up to equal the 1DS Mark III with 21 mp.

It is canon¹s move to put their flagship camera at the same level in terms of pixels as their top selling 5D that is so interesting. Why would a company not keep pushing the top selling point of cameras forward by increasing the Mark III to 30 mp? The answer is noise, noise, and noise.

Noise increases as pixels size decreases. This means that since the sensor size on 35mm cameras has only increased by a small amount, the pixels are running out of room. If any more pixels are packed in to the small 35mm sensor, the noise levels will go off the charts bringing down image quality.

Believe it or not, we have reached a much more exciting point in photo technology because of this pixel ceiling. What we are seeing now is a true separation of sensor size for those that want a larger image and a more professional system. The 35mm is truly separating from the medium format system. This separation means that more research will be poured in to other areas that will make each camera more attractive to professional and armature photographers.

The most important of these needs coming in the near future is going to be a fast wireless transfer system. This means that as we shoot the images will be sent through either a Bluetooth, WAN, or other wireless connection to a near by computer or hard drive. This will bring back a very important part of photography, the photographer¹s freedom to separate the set from the art director and client. Right now the furthest a tether can be is 30 feet unless you have a complicated boosting system. This puts the client and Art director huddled around the computer with your digital tech and in the way of that connection that is made when a photographer can be a little more on there own with the model and set. I remember in the days of film, on most sets, the client and Art Director would sit apart from the set but not a part of the action until the Polaroid was brought over.  This separation also helps the photographer cover up small mistakes. The current tethered system is like having your boss look over your shoulder while you work all day.

Internal GPS Tagging, which is here in a basic way, is the second form of technology that is coming to a camera near you. Why would you want this? It is a great way to track down an image in your system since we are visual people and remember places over dates. This also has great potential for selling photos of a certain area. However, the biggest potential for this will be down the road a ways when people are searching for an image of yours on the web. They will be able to find your ³real local² images. This search technology already exists on flicker and will not be too far off on stock sites.

Finally the holly grail to some photographers is eliminating lag times for writing images to cards. We all have been in situations where we have wanted to fire off our camera like an Uzi only to reach the continuous shooting wall. Due to the Sensors and Pixels reaching their limit in size the engineers working on these systems can now focus on the write speed. The goal here is to get the speed as fast as your 35mm camera with continuous shooting until the card fills. The time is near when you will only have to stop shooting when your battery dies.

There are many other cool technologies out there that have taken a back seat to the race for mega pixels. Ok so Flying cars and lasers are not coming any time soon, but maybe now that the mega pixel battle looks to be ending we can get back to creating the “space camera” that we were promised when I first read about digital camera capture. 

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Let’s love Paris when it’s Halloweening. The street art artist Troy Henriksen has been invited by Disneyland Paris to celebrate Halloween in a tube station in Paris. Thanks to Jours Tranquilles’ blogger, who took the photos of this live performance the 15th October late in the evening, even the non Parisian commuters can enjoy this visual fantasy. If you want to see more images : http://jourstranquilles.canalblog.com/archives/2008/10/16/index.html

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