Flathead Valley Looking Glass: Kalispell, Montana News

Friday's, Nov. 20, lead story on The Washington Post Web site featured a slide show show shot in Missoula by Post photographer Linda Davidson. The images from "Recession Legacy: Returning home after college" are of Missoula native Melissa Meyer who, after graduating Suma Cum Laude from George Washington University, moved home to live with her parents. The images are nice and the story is the usual one about taking time after college to figure things out.

What surprises me is that the Post was willing to fund sending a photographer to Missoula. I have many friends who are professional photogs – sure, some of them may be living with their parents in Missoula as well – who really could have used the freelance and it could have saved the paper a few bucks in the process.

Check out the slide show on The Washington Post Web site.

World Series Time-Lapse by Robert Caplin from Robert Caplin on Vimeo.

Photographer Robert Caplin, 26, combined over 5,000 images from 3 different cameras and about 25 separate locations to create this mesmerizing time-lapse video. Caplin said he shot a total of 12,000 still images which equates to about 125GB of RAW footage.

"Given that the time-lapse consisted only of still images and not video, the files were 3-4 times the size of HD video! Needless to say, my computer spent a good chunk of time rendering all the data." – From Robert Caplin's photoblog

The night is scored to Chopin's Waltz No. 5 which adds to the feeling that we're watching an old movie, something that fits very well with the sensibility of baseball.

Click here for Rober Caplin's Photoblog.
Read about Robert Caplin's time-lapse on the New York Times LENS Blog.

After six days of judging at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Mo., this year's College Photographer of the Year competition winners have been announced. After viewing over 12,000 still images and 226 multimedia projects submitted by 607 students, Ryan C. Henriksen from Ohio University was named the 64th CPOY winner. Henriksen was awarded the gold in the portfolio and a silver in sports portfolio categories.

See a full list of winners as well as their winning images at the College Photographer of the Year Web site.

For those young and young at heart, where can finger painting really take you? Well, throw in iPhone technology and Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum in Times Square as a muse, if you're artist Jorge Colombo, it can get you to the cover of The New Yorker.

Last week, the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) released the results of the 2009 Best Magazine Cover Winners and Finalists. Peter Yang's portrait of a smiling Obama on the cover of Rolling Stone took top honors. Apparently, I don't understand how the magazine industry works, because I'm not sure how you can come out with a "best of" list when the year is still in full swing. Taking a closer look at the winning dates, I notice that October, November and December are included in the following year’s awards.

The categories are as follows: Magazine Cover of the Year, Most Delicious, Best in Entertainment and Celebrity, Best in Fashion and Beauty, Best in House and Home, Best in Lifestyle, Best in News and Business, Best Obama, Sexiest, Best in Science, Technology and Nature and Best in Sports and Fitness.

Half of the Nobel Prize, announced Tuesday morning, October 7, was awarded to Charles K. Kao for his discoveries in how light travels through glass strands, leading to revolutions in fiber optic cable. The other half went to Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith for the invention of semiconductor sensors which are in digital cameras.

The mastery of light through technology was the theme of this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics as the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences honored breakthroughs in fiber optics and digital photography. - Kenneth Chang/New York Times

Read the full New York Times article, Nobel Awarded for harnessing Light, here.

First, this is very cool. Second, keeping up with world class athletes is exactly why photogs need to stay in shape. Photographer Alexx Henry's most recent blog post is this short video on shooting triathlete Chris Lieto for the "Living" magazine cover and spread released with the October issue of Outside Magazine.

"Photographed with the Red One camera, we created our vision of how a motion-magazine of the not-too-distant future would look based on emerging technologies like flexible OLED and E Ink." - Alexx Henry.

The lighting is amazing, the images stunning, the idea brilliant and the flexible video screens mind blowing. Thanks Alexx for posting this blog. For more, check out his blog here, and check out his Web site here.

National Press Photographers Association recently announced the launching of its new blog, The Visual Student. Geared toward students studying visual journalism, the blog provides a space where students can hear from photo directors, professional photographers and fellow students firsthand.

The blog has started strong with Internship Q&As with The Oregonian, The Dallas Morning News and the St. Petersburg Times, among others. 2008 College Photographer of the Year Tim Hussin writes about editing portfolios for the CPOY contest and Angela Shoemaker discusses applying for a Fulbright grant. The site also contains links to grants and scholarships as well as competitions and other Web sites of interest.

This has the makings of a great resource for students and professionals alike.