West Coast commercial advertising hotographer Tim Mantoani has captured famous photographers posing with their most iconic images for his new book ‘Behind Photographs: Archiving Photographic Legends’. (Click link or thumbnail to buy the hardcover book at Amazon, $37.80. There also is a limited edition version that costs more.)

Yahoo has some of Mantoani’s images in an online slideshow. The images were shot on 20×24 Polaroid. The book began as the personal quest of photographer Mantoani to document and preserve noted photographers together with their images. “We have come to a point in history where we are losing both photographic recording mediums and iconic photographers,” Mantoani comments. “While many people are familiar with iconic photographs, the general public has no idea of who created them. This book became a means to do that, the photographer and their photograph in one image.”

So, why did Mantoani choose to use 20×24 Polaroid film, a soon-to-be-extinct photographic medium, for the project? Mantoani explains:  “I chose the format for two reasons. First, it is very possible that in just a few years, film for this camera will no longer exist. Second, to me this is the ultimate view camera. If you are going to call the greatest living photographers and ask to make a photo of them and you are shooting 35mm digital, they may not take your call. But if you say you are shooting 20×24 Polaroid, they will at least listen to your pitch.”

Tim Mantoani’s all-about-photography blog is at MantoaniBlog.com.

Here is some absolutely stunning time-lapse cinematography of Yosemite National Park. The video is the result of a collaboration between videographers Sheldon Neill and Colin Delehanty. You can see more on their Project Yosemite website. Be sure to expand the video to fill your whole screen.

A horse plays with an old tire during the first snowfall of 2012 in Williamson County, Tennessee.

I went out and shot some pictures with an old Nikon F camera today – first time I’ve shot non-digital in almost a decade, and first time I’ve shot film with something other than a disposable camera in about 15 years. The camera – similar to the one pictured here. belonged to my granddad, Howard Forrest Henry. He used it to create photographs in the 1960s for ad campaigns for companies like AT&T when he worked at N.W. Ayer & Son, the first advertising agency in the United States.

Ayer was AT&T’s main agency for decades, and coined the slogan “Reach out and touch someone” to promote long-distance telephone service. The firm also created the slogan “Be all you can be” for the U.S. Army, and “A diamond is forever,” for deBeers. I don’t know if my granddad worked on those accounts, but I have some original artwork and copies of a variety of ads he created for the AT&T account. He was both a painter and a photographer. That’s a picture of him taken in 1960.

After my granddad died in 1974, the Nikon F became my mother’s camera. Now it is mine. The detachable finder/metering system doesn’t work, so I used my digital camera to meter the scene, then set the Nikon manually. I was shooting on Kodak black-and-white print film. Since I have to finish the roll and have it processed, I have no immediate feedback on how the shots turned out. I don’t anticipate using the Nikon very much at all – it was a great camera in the 1960s, and even the 1970s and 1980s, but today it is simply too technologically limited to do the things I like to do, and film and processing are expensive. Plus, the Nikon F simply doesn’t allow me to shoot as fast as I like to shoot. I shot some scenes today with both the Nikon and my digital Canon T2i. When I finish the roll of film I plan to post some of each images here.

As for N.W. Ayer & Son, it no longer exists. The Art Deco building it once occupied in downtown Philadelphia’s Washington Square neighborhood was sold in 2005 and renovated into a ritzy condo tower called The Ayer. The company however did donate 270 cubic feet of its records to the National Museum of American History, part of the Smithsonian. The N W Ayer Advertising Agency Records include business records but consist primarily of print advertising created for thousands of clients between 1869 and 1996 – more than 400,000 proofs of advertisements prepared by the firm for various clients. Which means my granddad’s artwork is in the Smithsonian.

Kodak teeters on the brink of oblivion. Yahoo! Finance economics editor Daniel Gross summarizes the fall of the iconic brand founded more than a century ago by George Eastman: “In many ways, George Eastman would be enthusiastic at the democratization of film. Cameras today are as easy to use as pencils. Everyone is a photographer and can afford the devices and tools necessary to capture life on their own terms. But here’s the irony: In a culture in which every instant of life can easily be filmed or captured in pictures, there may no longer be room for Kodak.” I think I’m going to buy some Kodak film today, while I still can, and spend some time in the near future making on-digital pictures with some old 35mm and 120mm film cameras.  I just wish I could buy some Kodachrome.

The Arts Company introduces a two-month celebration of photography with the eight South Light photographers featured in the exhibition, The South Through Eight Lenses & A Code. Accompanying the exhibition is a Salon Saturday Festival, featuring: special photography events; expert panel discussions; master class presentations, including a street photography excursion … and much more. Click the image for the details.

Ever seen Nashville through the eyes of those considered to be “disposable” members of our community? Soon, you will have the chance to do just that while enjoying good food, music and the company of others who want to give back. The DISPOSABLES is a benefit for The Contributor, a street newspaper produced and sold by homeless and formerly homeless Nashvillians. The event will feature photography by the homeless and formerly homeless street paper vendors. The event will feature the music of Mike Farris and Dave Perkins.

The when and where:

Saturday, January 7, 2012
6:00 – 9:00pm
Downtown Presbyterian Church
Fifth and Church, Nashville
Doors open at 6 pm. There’s no cover fee, but donations are accepted and greatly appreciated!

Barn in Winter
2011
Williamson County, Tennessee

The Daily Beast’s Alice Cavanaugh speaks with famed Memphis photographer William Eggleston on the latest book of his photographs, Chromes, which showcases 364 images selected from a catalogue of thousands of transparencies housed in the Eggleston Artistic Trust in Memphis. Most of these images have never been seen before.

Chromes, says Cavanaugh, documents a very important era of Eggleston’s career: a time from 1969 to 1974 when he started experimenting with composition and color film. “The main film I used is called Kodachromes, which is why the book is called Chromes,” Eggleston told Cavanaugh. “At that time the negative (well, it was later improved tremendously) but at that time the best color was with chromes, not negatives.” The Daily Best includes a brief gallery of five of the 364 images in Chromes.

Readers of my blog know I’m a recovering Kodachrome addict myself. I’m also a fan of Eggleston’s work. I thoroughly enjoyed the Eggleston exhibition a year ago at Nashville’s Frist Center for the Visual Arts. Though I must admit I’m somewhat of a conflicted fan because, while some of his images (like this one) really capture the South in a quietly spectacular way, others just look like snapshots to me (which, in fact, they are), and not particularly great snapshots.

Here’s one of the images from Chromes:

I like it. But is it really art?

Here’s an image I shot a few months ago with my iPhone:

I like it, too. But I wouldn’t claim it is art. Slap Eggleston’s name on it, though, and it would be worth a small fortune.

If you want the Eggleston book, it’ll cost you:

Here’s how Amazon describes the book: “Chromes is an edit of more than 5,000 Kodachromes and Ektachromes taken from ten chronologically ordered binders found in a safe in the Eggleston Artistc Trust. This archive had once been used by John Szarkowski who selected the forty-eight images printed in Eggleston’s seminal book William Eggleston’s Guide, while the rest of the archive has remained almost entirely unpublished. This book presents Eggleston’s early Memphis imagery, his testing of colour and compositional strategies, and the development towards the ‘poetic snapshot’. In short, Chromes shows a master in the making.”

Nashville’s creative economy now ranks fourth nationally, a new report says, trailing only Washington, D.C., New York City, and Los Angeles. The “Creative Vitality Index” is produced by the Western States Arts Foundation. The Metropolitan Nashville Arts Commission has the details.

The CVI is a statistical tool to benchmark a state or city’s creative economy through a series of income and sales indicators, including income of not-for-profit arts and humanities organizations, per capita book, music and photography store sales, per capita performing arts revenues and art gallery and individual artist sales. The creative economy continued to expand beyond the traditional arts and music sectors as jobs were added in creative areas such as fashion design, film and video editing and set and exhibit design, said Jennifer Cole, executive director of the Metropolitan Nashville Arts Commission.

While other cities may be experiencing a decline in their creative economy, Nashville’s continues to grow, Cole said, with 36,850 people directly employed in creative occupations in the Nashville MSA, and more than $135 million in revenue for Nashville record, music book and photography stores, joining art sales of more than $738 million in 2010.

“We possess a dynamic creative ecosystem in Nashville; one that continues to attract new investment in our community and lures talented individuals to work and live here,” she said. “Creative life is thriving in Nashville.” Nashville also ranked 4th in 2010. Here’s the 2010 Creative Vitality Index report from the Metropolitan Nashville Arts Commission.