Photo by Iain Crockart

As an extreme change of pace from my life as a Getty Images contributing photographer, I am preparing for my second international motorbike adventure, this time with EnduroAfrica.

EnduroAfrica benefits three charities in South Africa and Lesotho: The Nelson Mandela Children’s Fun, UNICEF and Santebale/The Prince’s Fund for Lesotho. As part of the ride, I have been raising money for all three charities through sponsorships from family and friend members. Everyone who sponsors me not only gets to donate to a very worthy cause, but they also receive a copy of my book - an 80-page documentary of my first life-changing, death-defying Himalayan motorbike adventure.

To raise awareness of this year’s ride, to show off my imagery from the last ride and to hopefully find a few new sponsors, I thought I would share a few images, and the stories behind them, with you today…

Photo by Iain Crockart
It was on a trip last summer, driving our 1976 VW Type 2 camper (orange over white) through Europe, heading for Sweden, when I received a text from a friend saying he was off to the Himalayas to ride a Royal Enfield Bullet. That one innocent, electronic communication started this crazy adventure and ultimately my fund raising project.

The trip sounded fantastic, 28 riders 1200km through remote parts of Northern India, up into the Himalayas and back again. The trip was in eight weeks, there was one place left, I booked it.

Now, I didn’t own a bike at that point, and the last ride I made was through Florida and Georgia on a Harley the year before - not exactly ideal preparation.

I had to organize travel visa’s, equipment, injections of all sorts and tablets for altitude sickness. Oh yes, we were going to be riding these bikes in altitudes of 17,000 ft or 5,000m.

Photo by Iain Crockart

The Royal Enfield motorbike is virtually unchanged from the 60’s, the gears and breaks are on opposite sides to western bikes, which is obviously not ideal when in panic mode, the brakes don’t really stop too fast, you have to stroke it gently and whisper to it to start. The gears have a mind of their own and it became clear that that although they may be stubborn, they are a brilliant and loyal friend who saves lives.

Photo by Iain Crockart

The roads, tracks and vast plains through the Himalayas are dangerous and any mistake could be your last. We nicknamed the trip “1,000 Ways to Die Everyday,” and we loved every single minute of it. We ended each day exhausted from 10 hours riding, but exhilarated, full of stories of the great people we had met, the things we had seen, the tracks we had traveled and the near death experiences we cheated.

Photo by Iain Crockart

It is not often in our lives that our minds are clear. When we traveled along these paths and roads, our minds did not drift to projects, clients or loved ones. We were focused on that bend, that ridge of sand, that child, that running dog etc…nothing else mattered. You could live or die in that moment. The sheer drops, altitude sickness, the gravel, the deep mud, the water, the snow, the glacial rivers, the landslides, the crazy trucks, the crazier wildlife, all were out to get you…

Photo by Iain Crockart

Photo by Iain Crockart
As a Getty Images contributing photographer, I try to always have a camera with me. I strapped my Contax 645 to the tank of my trusty Enfield (inside a waterproof magnetic tank bag, on top of a t-shirt). I was not sure if Contax had subjected one of their cameras to this sort of vibration/crash testing - but they are tough cameras. I am glad I risked breaking the equipment so I could capture and share the huge, breath taking majesty of the Himalayas.

Photo by Iain Crockart

Photo by Iain Crockart
We made it to the top - with only one helicopter evacuation to Delhi…

Photo by Iain Crockart

As street art evolves, so do our tastes and sensibilities.

Joe Baran/Getty Images

Our favorite street art is not necessarily simply a great image or a playful character that makes us smile. It is an element of surprise into an otherwise uniform and predictable world.

Street art that truly inspires me is work that is site specific - meaning that the artist fully incorporates the specific location into the work. This is not only when street art is truly at its best, but it’s when street art is truly “street art” and not just simply a poster or a sticker placed on a wall without permission.

High-end street art for the connoisseur.

I was privileged to be on the panel of the Descubrimientos PHE as part this June’s Photoespania in Madrid. Robin Maddock’s work particularly intrigued me. The mix of beautiful Carravaggio lighting with the harsh brutal nature of the subject matter is very effective and very unsettling. Maddock has worked on arrests for drugs and arms in North London, portraying the routine nature of such operations since 2005 showing the endless cycle of arrests and bail bonds. www.robinmaddock.co.uk

See all the Descubrimientos finalists at http://www.phedigital.com/festival/index.php?idioma=en

For generations, our culture has been fascinated with robots. Perhaps it is because of the ability to project our own ideals onto that of a man-made creature that takes on a life of its own. Or maybe it is because we can make up for our own insecurities in life by creating a more “perfect” albeit “artificially intelligent” being.

The Jetsons/Hannah Barbera

Hal 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey/Metro Goldwyn Mayer

Tron/Walt Disney

Robocop/Orion Pictures

AI/Dreamworks SKG

IronMan/Marvel Entertainment

Wall-E/Walt Disney/Pixar

Lovable and benevolent helpers such as Rosie from The Jetsons, evil doers such as Hal 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, the mainframe computer from Tron, benevolent crime fighters such as Robocop and Ironman and the super cute child-like AI and Wall-E are just a very few of the many robots ingrained in our sci-fi and cultural histories. There is no denying that these machines have an impact on our shared visual landscape as archetypes that we all have ingrained in our minds.

Our very own Denise Waggoner is consulted in this nice article in Slate about the Creative Research department she helms here at Getty Images that helps us and photographers peek into the future so we’ll have what clients want right when they want it.

And improve your French ! France, land of better wine in the world, beautiful women, Tour de France, bling-bling president, Art of living. France which as a country can give birth to the better or worse.
Let’s talk about the better today, let’s open the JAK LAB #3 . Every quarter JAKLAB magazine offers a 360° vision about a theme or an aspirationnal trend. JAKLAB invites contributors and gives them room and time to explore and talk. Strategic planners, researchers, writers, artists, photographers, architects are creating an effervescent on line webzine. Monitored friendly by Just A Kiss  founders, a design, creative and strategic agency in Paris, JAKLAB is an open publication and platform.
After Desirable Sunstainability, Absolute Necessity , give a breath to your eyes and brain and involve your senses in Urbanity. If you want to contribute to the next issue, please feel free to “superpoke” this unique quartet on their Facebook group.  http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=11026998211 !  Have fun !  Brigitte Mantel .

Leland Bobbe/Getty Images

(Or at least the Getty Images website?)

If you’re reading this, you probably use the Getty Images website. Read on to find out how you can shape it (and get paid for your thoughts).

We’re talking about customer research. We conduct all sorts: online surveys, usability studies at our offices and visits to your workplace. Nothing we do is too demanding on you and it leads directly to improvements that our customers (you) want.

What do I need to do? Sign up for our customer research panel. Tell us you’re interested by filling out this brief form as accurately as possible.

What will happen? In general, we run 1-2 usability studies a month and we’re always looking for participants. We’ll get in touch when we’re running research with people who match your profile.

What about the money? Participants we schedule can expect a generous gift certificate in return for their time.

On a hot day in June at a dog park in Los Angeles, 21 dogs, 13 owners, 2 photographers and the Getty Images Los Angeles creative team came together for one cause - The Compassionate Eye Foundation.

Every year Getty Images photographers donate their time to do a one day photo shoot to benefit the CEF. The imagery created on the shoots is uploaded to www.gettyimages.com and the royalties generated by the imagery are used to help women and children in third world countries.

It was such a great day, I thought I would share some of the “behind the scenes” pictures and some of our finals. Enjoy!

Art director Andrew Delaney is about to drench a St. Bernard with water to get him to do this…

Photographer Amanda Edwards and art director Karen Strauss working with a Great Dane.

Here are a few of the images created from the shoot:

Siri Stafford/Getty Images

Siri Stafford/Getty Images

Siri Stafford/Getty Images

Images can be tremendously powerful. Images, empowered appropriately, can challenge, convince, delight and inspire. At Flickr, we think one of our most important missions is to enabe images to be all that they can be. And as such, we are incredibly proud and excited to launch a new partnership with Getty Images, the unrivaled leader in digital media licensing, to offer a new Flickr branded collection on www.gettyimages.com.

The creative and editorial teams at Getty Images have a deep understanding of what makes images truly extraordinary as well as what their clients (on a global scale) are seeking. Marrying this expertise to the talent and breadth of the photography on Flickr is truly an incredible opportunity, for our members, for Getty Images clients, and for those who love imagery in all of its forms.

So how does it all work?

Getty Images has the best editors globally taking the pulse of the market. In the next several months, they will be exploring Flickr’s collection of public photos and inviting some of these photographers to be part of the Flickr collection on Getty Images.

Both companies are committed to providing our users with more choices. Flickr members have an unprecedented opportunity to establish even more value for their creativity and work directly with a global leader to license their images commercially. Getty Images customers will have access to even more diverse, regionally relevant imagery.

So make sure to check out the Flickr collection on www.gettyimages.com in the coming months to see what the editors at Getty Images have selected.

-Kakul Srivastav, General Manager, Flickr

Stephen Schauer/Getty Images

We are all really busy right? There’s never enough time in the day to get stuff done. We are always rushed to meet that impossible deadline and it all seems to be moving faster and faster. Most of us have projects with time frames of a few hours to a few days. Some of us deal in weeks and months, and a handful of us may have a five year plan.

Recently, I was on a shoot with photographer Stephen Schauer at the Fuji Bonsai Gardens in Sylmar, California. We had had an idea that needed beautiful shots of Bonsai trees to be used as components in a composite image that will also rely on precise 3D imaging skills. But that’s another story…What struck me about Roy, the owner, was the fact that his business depended on foresight, planning and patience. Lots of patience.

Stephen Schauer/Getty Images

Imagine planning and working in ten, fifteen, twenty year cycles. He has trees that were planted when his father started the business 59 years ago. He has trees that are seedlings that will need to be clipped, bent, moulded and controlled for decades before they can be sold as Bonsai’s. Perhaps the most poignant aspect of the day was noticing a sad, gnarled, dried out specimen tucked away in a corner.

Stephen Schauer/Getty Images

“What happened?” I asked innocently.

“I killed it” Roy replied. “I was repotting it and the main root twisted slightly and cracked.”

“How old?”

Roy shrugged “Oh, it was about 30 years old.”

I cannot imagine investing thirty years in a labor intensive project and having it die. That has got to hurt.

The flip side to this is what happens when we rush.