Those Justin Bieber paparazzi photos are not worth a life.

Los Angeles (CNN) — The paparazzi pursuit of Justin Bieber along Los Angeles freeways is a “tragedy waiting to happen,” a Los Angeles city councilman warned.

Dennis Zine, who has sponsored tougher punishment for photographers who break the law while stalking celebrities, witnessed an example Friday of why the practice is so dangerous.

“I expected to see a crash,” said Zine, a 33-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department and still a reserve officer. “The danger is of someone getting killed.”

Bieber’s Fisker Karma — a $100,000 electric sports car — looked like a silver bullet as it zoomed past Zine at 100 mph on U.S. 101 Friday morning, he said. “He was coming up behind me, making abrupt lane changes, not giving signals, cutting off cars.”

Four or five other cars followed close behind, apparently carrying photographers stalking Bieber, he said. “They were close by, at a rapid speed, all of them.”

“It’s like a miracle that nothing happened,” Zine said. “It was mere luck that no one got involved in a collision.”

The high-speed chase, which Zine estimated went for 15 miles, ended when a California Highway Patrol officer, alerted by Zine’s call, stopped Bieber and cited him for speeding.

Not only were the photographers not ticketed, but the officer allowed them to snap photos as Bieber was cited.

“He let all the paparazzi just around my vehicle while he was doing the whole citation,” Bieber said in his own 911 call a few minutes later.

Bieber, sounding frustrated, called 911 for help after he resumed his drive toward downtown Los Angeles, complaining that the same cars were chasing him again.

The highway patrol won’t release the recording of Bieber’s call until its investigation of the paparazzi’s pursuit is concluded, Officer Mike Harris said. But a copy was leaked to radio host DJ Laz, who aired it on his syndicated morning show Monday.

“They’re being very dangerous, swerving around other cars trying to get to me,” Bieber told the dispatcher. “And when I get to a stop they pull up next to me and just be, like, just harass me.”
But unlike earlier, Bieber said he was just driving 50 mph.
“They’re driving really reckless,” he told the dispatcher. “They just will not stop following me.”
Zine, who heard the call, criticized Bieber for initially giving the dispatcher a fake name, Justin Johnson, and “hem-hawing” without explaining he was a celebrity being chased by photographers. “When you give information to a dispatcher, you want to be accurate.”

But the dispatcher soon realized she was talking to Bieber, who she knew had been stopped minutes earlier. “I was trying to go fast so that I could lose these people and I got pulled over. And then the police told me if they kept following me to call again,” Bieber told her.

When she asked him if he wanted a highway patrol unit to intervene and stop the cars from following him, he said, “I would love that.”

When a patrol car caught up with Bieber in downtown Los Angeles 15 minutes later, he filed a complaint which prompted a police investigation to see if any photographers will be charged with breaking California’s paparazzi law, Harris said.
A conviction under the law passed two years ago, and pushed by Zine, could bring up to a year in prison and a $5,000 fine for each count of breaking traffic laws while pursuing a celebrity.
Avoiding tragedy is up to the celebrity, since “he’s not going to get a police escort everywhere he goes,” Zine said.

In Bieber’s case, his choice of a very visible, exotic sports car is not recommended, he said.

“You’re waving the big flag that says ‘Here I am,’” Zine said. “Put that car in the garage for a while and get something that’s not as recognizable.”

Most celebrities realize this and drive less conspicuous vehicles, he said.

Zine, who served much of his law enforcement career as a motorcycle officer, suggested that whenever Bieber or other celebs are pursued by paparazzi they should “slow down, get off the freeway and call 911.”
“The faster you go, the faster they’re going to go,” he said.

No lives should be placed at risk, he said.
“It’s not like they were trying to mug him, trying to kill him. They’re trying to take a picture,” Zine said.

Zine compared Friday’s scene to the paparazzi chase in Paris that ended with the crash that killed Britain’s Princess Diana 15 years ago.
“This is a tragedy waiting to happen,” he said “It will happen unless he is somehow restricted in his driving habits.”

Bieber sells out U.S. tour in one hour

A photo series can be a powerful thing even if the subject is just, well, what you ate for breakfast. The photographer responsible for this series is Tiffany Yung.

You can check the hi-res photo here.

If you are looking for a retro-styled camera then the Fujifilm X100 may be the perfect camera for you. A lot of photographers, experts and beginners, simply adore this camera. At £625.00 this camera is quiet, has great image quality, and it really cool to handle.

Here’s what’s good about the Fujifil X100

FUJI X100 – THE GOOD

This is dubbed as the tiniest and lightest “real camera” in the market today. In review, the X100 is even loghter thant the LEICA IIIf, Minolta CLE, Contax G and LEICA M cameras. The X100 is only 1.4 oz and amazing it is even lighter than the Canon G11.

One of the best features of this Fujifilm star aside from its size is that it is essentially silent, the electronic leaf shutter making it quiet. It’s a great camera for street photographers who want to capture a scene instead of disrupting your subjects. It is also less introsive, unlike DSLRs which are on people’s faces (literally), the X100 seem innocuous toy camera. If you want to go all out you only have to tape a film-box on the LCD cover and the camera looks like a real 35mm camera. Sounds pretty cool!

It looks retro but it doesnt mean it is not automated, the X100 also records videos at 720/24P HD movies with stereo sound.

The Image Quality

If there is one praise you’ll hear about the X100 is that it has great sensor and it yields great photos. The images are really sharp and are in-focus. You can play with bokeh and it boasts great colors, the exposure is amazing in every light. The highlights are not washed out, there is the perfect balance between shadows and high dynamic range. For portraits the X100 has great skin tone colors and its fill-in flash exposure is superior. The white balance function works everywhere even in the lowest of lighting.

The Fujifilm X100 handles all sorts of mixed and less-than-ideal lighting with ease. Even under awful light, the X100 usually returns great results with just its usual Auto White Balance setting, and no light is too dim for hand-held shooting.

Skin tones are fantastic with the X100, even tan colors are better than those of the Canon and Nikon DSLRS. It’s amazing how the X100 gives bright colors, as well as extremely accurate colors that used to be difficult to reproduce.

It is better than any Nikon or Canon DSLR at balancing fill-flash automatically in any light from daylight to moonlight for natural results. Especially indoors at night, the X100 seamlessly integrates action-stopping flash-fill with enough sensitivity to catch the ambient background light, all without requiring any of the fiddling with settings that my SLRs require to get this to look as good. The X100 just does it! JPG images from the X100 are the sharpest JPGs pixel-by-pixel that I’ve ever seen come from a camera at its highest resolution setting.

The Viewfinder

Similar to real camera, the X100 can be easily adjusted with the turn of the knob. It has two view finders, the electronic view finder which has eye-sensor control and the LCD viewfinder. In reviews the EVF is the better choice to be used and provides more accurate capture. It also uses less battery.

The Lens

One issue about paying for the X100 (which is comparable to a low-end DSLR) is that it has fixed lens. The X100′s lens is fixed, never needing to extend or retract; it’s always ready to shoot. The X100 never locks-up and won’t shoot as DSLRs will if you don’t set them correctly. The X100 always fires if you press the shutter harder in tough situations.

A real DSLR shoots faster than the X100, but oddly I prefer photographing my wiggly kids while out and about with the X100 instead of lugging a DSLR. The X100′s lighter weight more than makes up for its slower response; the X100 is fast enough if you know what you’re doing. The X100 focuses much faster than a real LEICA. You can set the X100 for zone-focus, but you don’t need to because it auto and manual focuses so fast.

The positive about having the fixed lens is that you no longer have to be distracted from buying or carrying other lenses. You can concentrate on your picture and not your camera. Fixed lenses take better pictures.

The Built

The X100 is an all-metal camera, not a plastic toy. If it’s plastic, it’s made to be thrown away. The X100 isn’t. The Fuji X100 is incredible. The more you shoot, as opposed to spend time in front of a computer, the more you’ll appreciate it.

THE BAD

The Fujifilm X100 can be a bit disorganized in controls and the functions are bit wacky even for pro users.

The family snapshots of Tierney Gearon have only recently come to the attention of the artworld through her significant presence in the ‘I Am A Camera’ exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London in spring 2001, but her work has a strength and conviction that belies her newcomer status.

Born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1963, Gearon has led a predominantly mid-Atlantic life that was kick-started when she was spotted by a European modeling agency while studying ballet in Utah. It was during some five years of traveling the world through her modeling work that Gearon first became interested in life on the other side of the camera. An agent in Paris, impressed by a small scrap book of Polaroid photographs Gearon had taken of other models she worked with, encouraged her to extend her repertoire and she was launched into the world of fashion photography, earning respect from many of the most influential fashion houses and producing work for Times Square billboards and publications such as i-D.

After five years of jet-setting as a busy commercial photographer, Gearon not only felt the fashion world had taught her everything it could, but also met and married a Frenchman (whom she has since divorced), settled down for the first time and had a family – Emilee, who is seven years old, and Michael, now four. Following what proved to be an emotionally difficult time after the birth of her two children and the break-up of her marriage, Gearon began the highly personal project that launched her, unsuspecting, into an artistic career. The documenting of her extended family has acted as a personal journey for herself and for her family as well, both in a literal and emotional sense.

Structured around journeys with her children to and from the homes of distant and diverse relatives – predominantly across the United States – her images show lives comprised of both comfort and confusion. Little in Gearon’s pictures could be called out-of-the-ordinary: we see the generations of her family hanging out on the beach, going skiing, talking by the pool, and watching TV. There is no documentary grittiness in these bright Technicolor shots, whose backdrops range from sun-drenched beaches to the white ski slopes of the Alps, but there is an edginess at play that goes beyond the snap-happy impressions offered at first glance. Children stand naked on a beach against the backdrop of an azure sea: a family snap indeed, except that the children are wearing identical Disney masks and stare directly out towards the viewer, unexpectedly reflecting our quizzical glance back at us.

In her photographs as in her life, Gearon’s children form a powerful presence among the domesticity. They roam free, play-act and play up, sometimes to the camera and sometimes to the adults they find around them. Masks are again used as props: an old man, hiding his face behind a mask in the shape of a bird’s beak, looks down toward a young boy dressed in Sesame Street underpants. The boy faces away from the camera and stares up at his elder – we do not see his face, but from his confident pose we feel that it is actually the man who is hiding from his younger counterpart.

These children are not sentimentalized and neither are the adults alongside them. Gearon’s talent lies in an ability to capture life with all its surreal twists and confusions, as negotiated by young people in an adult world. A boy stands forlorn by a poolside while his grandfather speaks on his mobile. Two children look down at an animal laying dead at the roadside: the girl points her fingers in the shape of a gun and the young boy removes his wolf mask, both are confused and intrigued by the body in front of them. In another image a boy stands like a neoclassical cherub on a patio wall, looking down with a nonchalant glance from his ‘pedestal’ at an adoring middle aged woman standing below.

These images are highly personal, keyed to Gearon’s own life, reflecting its apparently equal helpings of chaos and stability. But they also remain strangely anonymous and distant. They speak of particulars but also tap into ubiquitous questions about life. Freezing these moments seemingly through children’s eyes, Gearon presents us with the children’s complex mixture of innocence and insouciance, which comes from experiences as yet unmediated by grown-up sensibilities. Any questions we have as we look into these images are bounced back at us as the young counterparts concentrate on life lived.

via her own website

Ryan Tatar has made a name for himself with his lo fi photographs using expired or cross-processed film that depict simpler times. Originally from Michigan, he now resides in San Francisco and is busy with international photo exhibitions and editorial and advertising clients when not working at one of the most well known computer companies in the world. In this episode of D-I-Why Not?, Ryan breaks down the basics of analogue photography while on a road trip with Cyrus Sutton and Foster Huntington last summer.
Read more at http://www.petapixel.com/2012/12/15/lo-fi-surf-photography-with-expired-and-cross-processed-film/#Yc3TT4coH5Qcogqu.99

via Peta Pixel

After Photography examines the myriad ways in which the digital revolution has fundamentally altered the way we receive visual information, from photos of news events taken by ordinary people on cell phones to the widespread use of image surveillance. In a world beset by critical problems and ambiguous boundaries, Fred Ritchin argues that it is time to begin energetically exploring the possibilities created by digital innovations and to use them to better understand our rapidly changing world.

Ritchin—one of our most influential commentators on photography—investigates the future of visual media as the digital revolution transforms images into a hypertextual medium, fundamentally changing the way we conceptualize the world. Simultaneously, the increased manipulation of photographs makes photography suspect as reliable documentation, raising questions about its role in recounting personal and public histories. In the tradition of John Berger and Susan Sontag, Ritchin analyzes photography’s failings and reveals untapped potentials for the medium.

The identical twins are two of the most renowned photojournalists to have covered world events over the past few decades.

Reuters released their top photos for 2012. There are 95 powerful photos that were taken at important events all over the world. Check the full blog here.