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…

Continue ReadingLuminance Session Four: The Light Tamers
Alan Taylor Luminance
Alan Taylor speaks at Luminance. Photo by Michael Treola.

Luminance Session Three: Packaging Media

Eileen Gittins, CEO and founder of Blurb, a digital book publisher, spoke about the 21st century book: what is it now and what might it become? She spoke about how print provides a different experience than digital. Books have physical mass and this may make people feel that they matter more, she says. When she makes the decision between a physical or a digital book she thinks about whether it is something she wants to keep or something she wants to consume. But that's not to say she doesn't see the value in digital. What we used to think of as a book is changing before our very eyes, she says. To help explain this phenomenon, she used an analogy: before there was TV there was radio and when TV first came out it was a lot like radio on TV. Over time TV developed into a new medium entirely. This is…

Continue ReadingLuminance Session Three: Packaging Media
Donald Pettit Luminance
Dr. Donald Pettit speaks at Luminance. Photo by Michael Treola.

Luminance Session Two: Photography’s New Frontiers

Cory West, engineering manager for Facebook photos started off the second morning session with a discussion about social photography. Some time back he was interested in the relationship between memory and quality of life. After coming across various articles about the way that we remember things (it turns out that as a result of having instant access to information, we've begun to optimize our memories by not remembering facts in order to better remember how to FIND facts), he decided to do a social experiment with his photos. He photographed 7,000 photos at 27 different social events and posted 950 curated shots on Facebook. He received 880 incidents of participation on 400 of the 950 posted photos. What he found surprising was that 55 percent of the activity was from people he didn't know. When he looked at the data, the numbers did make sense, as he had many more friends of…

Continue ReadingLuminance Session Two: Photography’s New Frontiers
Amy-Dresser-Luminance
Amy Dresser speaks at Luminance. Photo by Michael Treola.

Rant: I Love Photography, PhotoShelter Luminance Conference Begins

PhotoShelter, a leader in photography websites, is holding its inaugural photo conference, Luminance, this week. We are excited to be here covering it. We'll be posting here throughout the conference, also follow us on @MediaStorm for updates, hashtag #luminance. The day started out with PhotoShelter co-founder, Allen Murabayashi telling us loosely how the conference came to be. He brought it all back to a blog post he wrote some time ago called "Rant: I love Photography" where he talked about the photos that moved him, like one of a Japanese teenager levitating, among others. He told us that we are in a golden age of photography and it's an exciting time to bring people together to discuss what's happening in the industry, and what's next. Session One: The Manipulators The first segment of the morning focused on what Murabayashi calls "the manipulators," who spoke about the effect photo manipulation is having on…

Continue ReadingRant: I Love Photography, PhotoShelter Luminance Conference Begins
Luminance_PhotoShelter

PhotoShelter Hosts First Luminance Conference in New York

Next week PhotoShelter will be hosting Luminance 2012, a fresh new conference that will bring together leading voices from across industries to answer the question: What’s next for photography? This two-day conference will feature two dozen top speakers from a variety of organizations that help to create, consume and define photography in a myriad of ways. Each speaker will present a 20-minute TED-style talk on a topic relevant to their area of expertise. A brief Q&A will follow each session. Photographers, technologists, designers and those who care about the direction of photography are encouraged to attend. Conference Details Date: Sept. 12 - 13, with kickoff events on Sept. 11 Where: BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center, New York City Registration: www.photoshelter.com/luminance/register. Speakers PhotoShelter recently finalized there speaker roster with NASA astronaut Donald Pettit, who will discuss his role capturing some of the most iconic images from the International Space Station, as well as…

Continue ReadingPhotoShelter Hosts First Luminance Conference in New York