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I got to photograph a very interesting ‘meet and greet’ with Time Magazine Journalist Bobby Ghosh the other day. He presented a great lecture about what has been learnt by all sides during the war in Iraq. It was both informative but a little depressing as he pointed out all of the mistakes made and presumptions that America and its soldiers were a part of. It made me want to pack my camera equipment and travel more.

ISO 6400, 1 Second @ F4 (10pm)

As a freelance contributing photographer I own all of my own equipment. I recently upgraded my body to the 5D markii and it has made my life much easier. Not only is it able to shoot images at ISO 3200 that are useable but it has also made my 16-35 lens an actual 16-35mm (rather than a 25-55mm on the 1.6x crop). Getty has recently switched all of their staff photographers over to Nikon. I’m sure they cut an amazing deal with them but I bet it still cost a pretty penny. Good equipment doesn’t guarantee the photographer will make great images, but it sure does help, and it certainly creates more sharp and detailed images when your target is skiing downhill at high speeds.

I finally took the time to put some new work on my website – benhider.com. I also took out some galleries and consolidated the work so that it should be easier to navigate for people looking for either my fine art photography or my event work as seen below -

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The song is – Savage Garden: Truly Madly Deeply

Aaron Gustafson has been taking 4×5 negatives while free falling. I don’t think it’s a recommended way to make large format landscapes. This project was part of his MFA Thesis project at Parsons. You can’t fault him for all of the effort even if you don’t like the work.

Canon make it easier and easier for the everyday consumer to make ‘amazing’ images. Well, maybe that’s not completely true, but with a little photoshop and some over shooting the everyday photographer can make some ‘nice enough’ images. This bodes poorly for the professional who used to have to own prime lenses, pro bodies and have some training to get the shot. Now you can set your Canon Rebel T2i at ISO 1600 and your 18-135 IS kit lens will get the rest. The 18 megapixel files (5184 x 3456) allow for plenty of crop capability and a pretty solid dynamic range so photoshop away, or does iphoto cover that?

Of course I could argue that the better cameras also benefit the professional, but I think it’s more worrying as publications and websites don’t always require the highest quality. It seems to be more about getting some content at the lowest prices. It comes back to what Scott Gries always tells me, “It’s all about access.”

These are screen shots from my phone of an application called Live Cams. Some of the cameras I can move around and some are fixed but they all show real time video footage of different places around the world. It’s sort of creepy travel photography from my own couch.

Just to make sure that when the first person/celebrity walks onto the step and repeat we aren’t all making adjustments, a couple of photographers step out for some lighting tests. It’s really not rocket science to get the settings right, but it’s always nice to check. This image was shot at 1/200th sec. F6.3 @ 250 ISO & 1/4 Flash. For pictures from last nights event go HERE. Shooting events with step and repeats is not why I got my MFA, but I don’t mind it at all and it’s a good chance to get a lot of images of different people up on Getty (the images always sell). I’m really looking forward to shooting more street stuff with my new 5D Markii.

If you’ve listened to his podcasts and like them as much as I do then you’ll be excited about this upcoming show.

This was a fairly calm carpet from other ones I’ve worked. If one person starts shouting and stealing everyones eye contact then the noise level goes up. It only takes one over excited photographer to turn the whole event into a madhouse.

For the pictures I took of the 2010 BET Rehearsals go HERE