Fotographiqa

In memory of all those fighting for change and freedom in the world. The image was taken by Jeff Widener using a Nikon FE2 camera through a Nikkor 400mm 5.6 ED IF lens. It won him a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize Award for Photography. 

Here are his memories of June 3rd and 4th from an interview on Fotoflock: 

Your image of the lone man standing in front of the tanks made waves across the globe and even got you nominated for the 1990 Pulitzer award. Can you share your memory of clicking this image?

At the time, I was very ill with the flu and had been hit in the head with a stray rock during a mob scene of June 3rd. The Nikon F3 Titanium camera absorbed the blow and spared my life. The following day I received a message from Associated Press in New York asking for someone to photograph the occupied Tienanmen Square. Nobody including myself wanted to go but in the end, it was me. After peddling a bicycle to the Beijing Hotel from the AP office, to get an overhead view of the occupied Square, an American college student named Kirk helped me up to his sixth floor room past security agents who had been zapping journalists with electric cattle prods.

I was spaced out by the concussion I received the night before, so I was pretty groggy when the row of tanks came down the street. At first I complained to Kirk that the guy in the white shirt would screw up my composition. I was not thinking clearly. The tanks were too far away even with my Nikon 400mm 5.6 ED IF lens. I gambled and ran to the bed where a tele-converter was lying. This doubled my focal length to 800mm. But after three frames clicked with my Nikon FE2 camera, I realized the shutter speed was at around 60th of a second. By the time I realized that my film was a lower ASA speed that Kirk had found from a tourist, the man was pulled away. I surely thought that I had blown the image. I normally used 800 ASA Fuji but I had run out of film. It was a miracle that one frame was sharp enough. 

Click to read more at Fotoflock

More info and submission details here: http://www.lomographyuk.com/

The 35mm film standard was first designed and cut in Thomas Edison’s lab by William Dickson some time between 1888 and 1891.

Dickson took a roll of 70mm cinema film reel made by Kodak and cut it in half - forming a 35mm roll. This standard is still used in both cinema and photographic film more than 100 years later.

The very first film ever shot using this format was Dickson’s “Experimental Sound Film” and used 12 metres of film for just 13 seconds of film!

Check it out below: 

Q. What advice would you give young photographers?

A. “Get a good pair of walking shoes and…fall in love”

More brilliant photos from Abbas at Magnum Photos: http://bit.ly/kRG87w

Robert Capa (born Endre Ernő Friedmann; October 22, 1913 – May 25, 1954) was a Hungarian combat photojournalist who covered numerous wars ranging from the Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, World War II, and the First Indochina War.

He is perhaps most well-known for documenting the Battle of Normandy on Omaha Beach and the liberation of France and Europe. However, his most controversial photograph is undoubtedly one known as the “Falling Soldier”, taken at the moment of death of a Republican solder during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939. To this day, it is still uncertain whether the photograph was staged or not. 

The Falling Soldier

Two years after World War Two in 1947, Capa co-founded Magnum Photos alongside Henri Cartier-Bresson and others. Magnum was the first cooperative agency for worldwide freelance photographer and is still considered the pinnacle of professional photography. 

Click the link below for more photographs from Robert Capa. 

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Photo: George Brassaï by Michael Somoroff

A Moment: Master Photographers by Michael Somoroff will be released in September 2012. From 1977 to 1983, Somoroff photographed some of the greatest photographers of the 20th century including Brassaï, Elliot Erwitt, Andreas Feininger, Ralph Gibson, André Kertész, Helmut Newton and Jacques Henri Lartigue, among many others.  

Recently announced at CeBIT 2012, the Plustek OpticFilm 120 film scanner for 35mm and 120 medium format film looks like a mouth-watering option for film photographers looking for a new multi-format slide / negative scanner. We’re still waiting for more details and a confirmed release date but we’ll keep you posted as Plustek releases more information. 

Plustek (German language site)