Rick-Robinson-Luminance
Rick Robinson speaks at Luminance. Photo by Michael Treola.

TimeWarpers: Evoking an Emotional Response, Last Session of Luminance

Rick Robinson, division vice president of marketing for Vision Research opened the last session of the conference with a stunning video by Variable shot using high speed imagery. He said there is an "undeniable appeal of high speed imagery." The high-speed cameras that Vision Research makes can shoot up to 1.4 million frames per second. Earlier this year they released a small 2500 fps camera for about $40,000. Up until that time their cameras cost a minimum of $125,000. High speed photography is often used in science and engineering, functioning like a "time microscope." But high speed photography has an important place in photography as an art as well. He pointed out the emotional response that people have to images played back in slow motion. "When you see it in slow motion you see it again for the very first time," he said. Check out some other stunning videos that use high…

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Tyler Shields speaks at Luminance. Photo by Michael Treola.

The Instigators, Luminance Session Seven

Gary Morgan, CEO and co-founder of Splash News--which was bought by Corbis last year--opened "the instigators" session on day two of Luminance. He spoke about the change that celebrities have brought to news photography. News used to be about issues, it's now firmly about people, he said. He used the recent photos of Prince Harry in Las Vegas as an example. He pointed out that the photos that were sold to TMZ, then later sold to Splash are awful photos, in that they are shot poorly with a phone camera. But the photos made the top headlines and were well paid for because they were the first images to break news. It doesn't matter what kind of camera you have, it matters if you have a picture and you get it out first and fast. This is what is driving the entertainment news market now, he said. The democratization of media creates…

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Craig Peters Luminance
Craig Peters speaks at Luminance. Photo by Michael Treola.

The Merchants, Luminance Session Six

Craig Peters, senior vice president for business development at Getty, opened the second session talking about a way forward with copyright licensing. He made two assumptions: that content creators want to get paid for their work and that the vast majority want to live in a world where copyright exists. He identified the problem with copyright as one that has risen with new publishing platforms in the "new world of media." Today the average person is posting images to new publishing platforms regularly, but the average person doesn't know about copyright and usually doesn't have a budget to license images. The disconnect leads to what he calls the "world of the right-click," where people take content and use it with no benefit going back to the content owner. The answer to this problem is not SOPA or other legislation, he said. Peters sees the internet as large and evolving. The solution therefore…

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Zack Arias Luminance
Zack Arias speaks at Luminance. Photo by Michael Treola.

Photography’s Bright Future, Day Two at Luminance

Scheduling note: Speakers Leila Boujnane and Chris Chabot were not able to speak during the first session. Zach Arias was added to the morning session and spoke on social media. Andrew Fingerman, PhotoShelter CEO, opened the day thanking yesterday's speakers for a generous and thought-provoking day. He also observed the overwhelming positivity at the conference from both the speakers and the attendees. It's great to see the excitement about the future of photography and and it's exciting to be a part of it, he said. Eric Cheng, director of photography at Lytro was the first speaker of the morning. He spoke about light field photography, which differs from traditional photography in that it captures the directional information of light entering a camera. Light field photography takes 3D images that can be refocused after they are taken and are fully interactive. The images open and can be manipulated on desktops and smart phones…

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Peter Yang Luminance
Peter Yang speaks at Luminance. Photo by Michael Treola.

Luminance Session Four: The Light Tamers

The first day of Luminance ended with presentations from three very different photographers. Their presentations were accompanied by strong visuals from their portfolios. We've included links to their work below, we highly recommend taking a look. Barbara Davidson opened the session showing her Pulitzer Prize winning work "Caught in the Crossfire." This body of work, shot over three years, shows the perils of gang violence in Los Angeles. Just because it wasn't a traditional breaking news story, she thought it was an important story to cover and she decided to take it on as a long-term documentary project. Davidson believes gang violence is one of the social ills affecting the inner cities of our country. "We don't only have to go to Afghanistan and Iraq to cover injustices," she says. These injustices are happening here in our backyards, she says. "It's easy for us to ignore it in our own country because…

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