We’re all exposed to a huge amount of advertising everyday, things that are seen as challenging and shocking one day are passé the next (or at least the following week). What consumers want and how they relate to the world around them is now more than ever driving brands to think more laterally, be more inventive and demand more interactivity from us all.
The Radical Advertising exhibition http://www.radicaladvertising.de/ currently on show in Dusseldorf’s NRW Forum explores the visual and social conditions that have dictated the direction of advertising over the last 3 decades

The nineties: radical shock - advertising as a means of attack

The noughties: radical life - advertising as a means of making contact 

2010 onwards: radical moral - advertising as a means of co-operation

Along side this drive by consumers is the influence that digital technology has had on how image makers approach making pictures. For a long time the technology has dictated the visual look of the image, but I think now, there’s a shift towards a much more creative attitude of ‘just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should’

This animation could have been created the obvious way using computer animation but instead it was painstakingly rendered one frame at a time by hand, I think it’s the imperfections that give it it’s humanity.  

http://www.blublu.org/sito/video/muto.htm 

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

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

Bill Henson, from Luminous series 

Bill Henson is the latest photographer to be forcibly censored by state authorities (although he appears to have been exonerated). Police in Sydney raided the gallery where the Australian artist had just opened his latest exhibition of photographs and literally took the photos off the wall, also confiscating copies of some magazines that had reproduced his offending images (only 1000’s of more of those to round-up…). I’m a big fan of Henson’s work, the impossibly dark, sweltering atmospheres are intensely psychological, and seem to have something unsettling, ancient, and universal about them.

Censorship in photography is certainly nothing new, and accusations of pornography (or worse, as in the Henson case, child pornography) tend to play a leading role in that history. Nan Goldin is another recent target that comes to mind, and I just stumbled on the press release for an interesting-looking exhibition titled Controversies that just ended at the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland which focused on the legal and ethical history of photography.

What gets me is these cases is the latent psychology at work in the accusers and authorities that censor the artwork. What seems to offend them is not that the work was made (after all, the mother of one of the models in the Henson case came out in his defense), but their own reaction to the work. Their outrage betrays their having felt a taboo desire they’d thus far repressed to the point of thinking no longer existed, hence the overly vehement histrionics that ensue as they launch their witch-hunt. The Omnipresent Sociopath is invoked to project these forbidden feelings onto and create an ostensible justification for confiscating and destroying the work (casting out the demons), the sight of which would presumably send the O.S. into an immediate and uncontrollable rampage of sociopath-ing. I don’t mean to make light of truly heinous behavior such as child molestation, it’s just that the wrong-headed self-righteous crusades against art that censors repeatedly go on always seem completely misinformed and come off as botched attempts to play the moral hero.

On a related note, there seems to be a (dare I say the word) trend in photography recently (or maybe since the invention of the camera?) for what I call cute-young-naked-things. The leading figure at the moment in this hip-young-naked-ism seems to be Ryan McGinley, aka Ryan-the-youngest-photographer-to-ever-have-a-solo-show-at-the-Whitney McGinley. Here is his most recent photo project, which it looks like he adapted for use in a new music video for Icelandic band Sigur Ros (hint: just click one of the play buttons on the bottom left, you don’t have to sign up on the right. hint #2: possibly NSFW). The latest project looks heavily influence by Bill Henson, albeit it in broad daylight and minus the more grand connotations and subtleties. Other obvious influences on McGinley, and recent predecessors in the history of young-naked-ism, would be Larry Clark, Richard Kern, and Terry Richardson.

I like the work of Marlene Marino, who seems to fit in with this as well, see some of her pictures here.

In 2006 Getty Images signed a contract with the Compassionate Eye Foundation, founded by photographer Robert Kent in 2005, with the agreement that a majority of the revenue from the sale of images submitted via that contract would go to support the activities of the Foundation.

Their mission is “to support, honor, and empower those in developing nations in order to expand educational opportunities, basic health services, and tools for economic development.” So far their focus has mainly been in Guatemala, where 75% of the population lives below the poverty line, and in rural areas medical and educational programs are scant to nil. Recently they’ve partnered with Education Without Borders and will expand their work into Africa as well.

© Compassionate Eye Foundation

Here is a lightbox of highlights from the CEF photos on Getty Images, and here is the Getty Images page about CEF.

Here is a recent progress report sent out by founder Robert Kent:

facts:
1. Compassionate Eye Foundation royalties earned to date are just over $100,000.
2. Our January 2007 royalties were just under $200. In March 2008 the images earned just over $24,000.
3. The power of imagery to create positive change in the world summarizes our partnership with Getty Images.

TOGETHER, we will educate hundreds of children in developing nations.
Photographers UNITE!
Thank you.
Robert Kent

Current C.E.F. accomplishments as of March 2008:

 

• bought land + built one school, grades 1 to 6 in Guatemala with 2 teachers + 60 children
• established a scholarship program allowing graduates to attend grades 7 to 9 for the first time ever
• for two years have funded a Guatemalan women’s group teaching women’s health + safety, pre + post natal care + artisan skills to over 100 at risk women
• established a parent participation preschool project for 10 children for the first time ever
• providing funds for a young persons accepting personal responsibility educational program, educating over 500 rural teenagers
• providing funds for an agro-forestry project that is teaching about + introducing new crops
• completed the construction of a playground with basketball + soccer nets
• providing funds to a disadvantaged high school in cape town South Africa for a fine art + photography program
• on June 21 2006 spearheaded the first annual Getty Images solstice shoot, 11 photographers and their crews donated time, talent + resulting images to C.E.F.
• on June 21 2007 over 50 Getty Images photographers and their crews from around the world rallied for the second annual solstice shoot
• Getty Images stock contract in place with 900 images online

Our vision is to be a global foundation, C.E.F. is currently scouting projects in South Africa, Tanzania + India for future funding.

A few months ago one of the good things that can occasionally happen to a photo editor happened to me…
a photographer who had been involved with Getty many years ago but had fallen off the radar for some time got in touch via the website and his contact details were forwarded to me by the Dublin office.

I looked at the work that Robert Van Der Hilst had sent and found it absolutely stunning. He’d spent quite a few years in China, travelling all over the country, meeting people and being invited into their homes and workplaces, to catch a glimpse of their way of life in both remote rural and urban areas.

© Robert Van Der Hilst

The more of the images i looked at, the the more absorbed i became. Together they make up a beautiful and fascinating document of a changing place and a people in flux, some clinging to ancient tradition while others embrace modernity, and others, somewhere in bewteen, live with familar elements of modernity in their homes, that look somehow out of place in this context.

©Robert Van Der Hilst

©Robert Van Der Hilst

Sometimes the people appear proud, or fascinated by the photographer’s interest, at other times they appear oblivious or turn their backs, not wanting have their face captured by the camera. 

©Robert Van Der Hilst

Sometimes the photographer decides to look away from them altogether and shows us possessions they live with or use daily. It’s sensitive and subtle work, and he never seems to have been treated as an intruder.

©Robert Van Der Hilst

At this moment in time the different ways that people are living within this one country seems amazing, and it seems unlikely that  lifestyles so diverse can co-exist for much longer.

©Robert Van Der Hilst

I thought i’d share a few of the images here and hope you will enjoy and find some inspiration from them, particularly in the light of the current Creative HOME brief!

There is a much larger selection of Robert Van Der Hilst’s Chinese Interiors and other images, recently uploaded to the Reportage collection.

Ryan McVay/Getty Images

Have you ever wondered how a photographer captured that second in time, or how a filmmaker managed to secure that footage?

Check out our behind the scenes video of how one Getty Images photographer and one filmmaker came together to capture images of over 200 people.

Motoyuki Kobayashi, a Getty Images contributing photographer in Tokyo, is included in the 2007 Art + Commerce Peek Festival, which recognizes outstanding emerging photographers.
The Peek website has video clips relating to each of the selected artists’ work. On the Peek site, click on this part of the collage of images to see the video for Motoyuki:

Interesting discussion yesterday on KQED San Francisco’s Forum with Michael Krasny on “Photography and Its Future”.

Photo: FPG via Getty Images