Mel Gibson was outside of a resturant with his friend when a freelance photographer ran up and start to take photos of Mel. Mel’s friend jumped in and tried to trip the photographer. Funny part is, the photographer stumbled but didn’t fall, and Mel’s friend ended up on his butt. The police did show up later, but no crime report has been filed. (via TMZ)

We got to meet up with a sports photograhy legend Michael Zagaris, better known as Z-man in San Francisco.  As team photographer for the San Francisco 49ers, Zagaris is an “inside-out shooter”. He took us behind the scenes of the NFC Divisional playoffs New Orleans Saints versus the San Francisco 49ers.

Ikea products have never looked so good. Carl Kleiner teamed up with stylist Evelina Bratell to photography Ikea kitchenware for Ikea’s first cookbook. The products are very well arangged and photographed beautifully. Supposedly this cook book will be filled with beautiful photos of ingredents and kitchenware. (via Co.Design)

  Flickr has joined the protest against SOPA and PIPA and is letting users darken their images for 24 hours to show their support in the protest. Flickr has also allowed users to darken other’s photos and not just there own to set an example of true censorship and not having control over what gets to be online. Users can only darken 10 photos for the 24 hour period, but 10 photos from millions of members can make a dramatic difference.  Are you protesting against SOPA today? Let us know!

Photograph by Jeff Johnson You remember those photographs that remain etched in your mind and leave you wondering how can you create such an image? The usual thought is, what you need to add to your work, what fancy tricks do you need to learn? Look through your favorite photographer’s work and you’ll find the power is in what they didn’t put in the frame or image. Yes, it’s what you don’t see thats is often the secret sauce. Here’s something I ran across yesterday in The Five C’s of CINEMATOGRAPHY,  a classic book by Joseph V. Mascelli (it’s loaded……

  DigitalRevTV has a great series called, Pro Photographer, Cheap Camera. They flew Chase Jarvis to Hong Kong and had him shoot a professional skate boarder and several different martial arts performers with a Lego toy Camera. It was surprising to see how the photos turned out with such a cheap camera, although chase did happen to use a Nikon SB-900 to help with some of the photos. Take a look at the video to see how Chase shot with his cheap camera.

  Join us for this behind the scenes interview with David Hobby,when we caught up with him on his FlashBus Tour with fellow master of light, Joe McNally.They were stopping off near Silber Studios on their 29 city, 6 week tour to teach America how to see the light! Read more about our interview with David Hobby.

  This video by Jesse Rosten is the perfect example of how much photoshop is put into todays magazine cover photos and overused in general. How many models actually look as good as they do in photos in real life? It’s a question to really think about. You can read more on Jesse’s video here: http://jesserosten.com/2012/fotoshop-by-adobe

Photographer Ken Rockwell joins Marc Silber again to talk about how he captured his award winning shot “Mono Lake Under Pinatubian Light,” which refers to the special quality of light that happened after Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991. The ash entered the upper atmosphere and for months we had very weird light, especially after sunset. This image was made about 15 minutes after sunset, in fact all the other photographers had left by then. Ken said “always look where other aren’t!” Ken tells how he captured this photo, using a camera that was out of repair, but……

  For our first Photo-Dojo assignment of the year, we have 2 tasks for you. The first one is to let us know what your photography goals are for 2012, whether it’s to shoot more, or post more photos in the Photo critiques group, it really is up to you. The second part of the assignment is to share a photo that illustrates “a new year”.   Good luck!