Since I have a poor list of links to other online photography outfits, I thought I’d take this opportunity to highlight the places that I’ve found the most inspirational and interesting this year.
B: Blake Andrews
Contrary to another blogger, I first came to Blake Andrews work through iN-Public and then after that started following his blog. Blake is a photographer’s photographer and that’s the voice he writes in. He has a way of picking up on certain ideas that are floating around the blogs and crystallizing them in a way that gets to the root of issue or idea. In addition he highlights his own work and has fun with photography by posting random, often absurd and humorous pieces he finds around the web.
HCSP (Hardcore Street Photography)
Not a forum for the thin skinned. It closely resembles a rambunctious neighborhood bar that many people will leave within two minutes of entering. But if you stick around and get to know some of the regulars and partake in the discussions, it’s a great resource and forum where ideas freely float around, are bashed, embraced, mocked and more often than not ignored. It has become a place where notable street photographers will check in from time to time to chime in on the discussions or promote their endeavors, most notably Nick Turpin with recent launch of PUBLICATION. It was also in HCSP that the Vivian Maier story was first presented and really gained steam.
lenscratch
Aline Smithson is one of the hardest working photography bloggers working today. She consistently post new work with intelligent text and image selection. Over the year, I’ve probably found more work that I found interesting from her blog than just about anywhere else. She explores all types of photography and enthusiastically tells you why she loves it and why you should too. [Disclosure: I was featured on her blog in February]
Colin Pantall’s Blog
At times I’m not able to tell if Colin is simply taking the piss or writing serious commentary. And that’s the brilliance of his writing. On some days I role my eyes and shake my head in disagreement with something he’s written and then a paragraph later, I’m in full agreement with him. By the end of a post you have no idea if you agree with him or not, and more often than not, you have no idea if he agrees with himself or not. The Walt Whitman quote always comes to mind: “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself; (I am large—I contain multitudes.”
A Photo Student
James Pomerantz probably doesn’t need to get his MFA. He’s an accomplished photographer with a body of work that many young photographer’s would love to have. But that doesn’t matter and that’s why his MFA endeavor is interesting. He rather methodically documents his course load and what he’s learning, providing a view that many people don’t have access to. His posts often accompany links to articles, papers and other scholarly writing about photography, in addition to posting work that’s being discussed in his classes. Get your MFA by proxy.
