The Long Shadow of Chernobyl – a long-term Project by Photographer Gerd Ludwig

Renown National Geographic Photographer Gerd Ludwig is documenting the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in his long-term project “The long shadow of Chernobyl“. To commemorate the tragedy 25 years later, Ludwig is recently visiting the reactor and the areas around to investigate the current state of contamination to the land, to report on the progress of its cleanup and to examine the health consequences in the fallout regions. The fact, that he was able to raise over $23.000 for this trip over the kickstarter platform, shows the strong interest for in-depth photo-journalism content, that isn’t covered by traditional media.

Photo Essay: Infrastructure – The Underpinnings that make Civilization civilized

Laura Brunow Miner compiled a nice photo essay “Infrastructure – The Underpinnings that make Civilization civilized”. Below are some of my favorite shots. See the complete photo essay with background information about each picture and photographer at Pictory.

Formally, infrastructure is the physical and organizational structure that enables society to operate. It allows economies to function, and services and facilities to run smoothly. Personally, infrastructure allows us the illusion that we can insulate ourselves from the forces of nature. Look, appreciate, and enjoy, but please don’t take any of these structures for granted.

—Todd Lappin, Telstar Logistics

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Film Portrait of the Leather King of New York by Todd Selby

In this post from July 2010 I already introduced the work of photographer Todd Selby who visits home and work environments of authors, musicians, artists, designers and actors to capture interesting people in their creative spaces. In the meantime, Todd also started to make short films. I absolutely enjoyed this cinematic portrait about Mitch Alfus, the “Leather king” of New York.

(Click through to Youtube to watch in HD and full screen!)

By the way: His book, which was sold out at the time of my last post, is available again.
You can buy it at Amazon.com or Amazon.de.

Bicycle Portraits from South Africa

South Africans Stan Engelbrecht and Nic Grobler are currently spending as much of their time as possible traveling through South Africa by bicycle to meet and photograph as many fellow cyclists out there as they can find. They are focusing on those who use bicycles as an integral tool in their day-to-day existence, wondering why very few people in South Africa use bicycles as mode of transport despite the lack of proper public transport infrastructure. 

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To finance their goal to publish a book about the project in the first half of 2011, they launched a fundraising campaign on Kickstarter, which will soon start into phase III for actual printing and binding of 3000 copies of the book. If you pledge an amount of $50 (or more) you thereby pre-order a copy of the book at the same time.

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For constant updates, follow the project on on Twitter and Facebook. You can also find more photographs at the project’s homepage and more video clips on Vimeo.

 

iPad Photoshoot

If I already thought photoshoot lighting equipment damn expensive, this experiment by Jesse Rosten tops it all: an idea born in the middle of the night, he used 9 iPads as light source for a beauty shooting.

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Find more about the shooting and the motivation behind at Jesse’s blog.