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It’s alway a pleasure and an adventure to talk with Chase. This time we met up in the bay area and talked about his new book The Best Camera, his new iPhone app and other amazing things he’s been up to.  He discussed some practical advice for “turning an image on its head,” which is his signature move.  What you’ll hear is how he keeps himself inspired, in fact you’ll find it rather catching, so get ready to go out and get shots after viewing this. And yes, he does tell you what the “best camera” is. So tune in and be prepared to advance your photography…

Deer Isle Bridge, courtesy of KAP photographer “tocs” (Flickr)

Note – regulars to our blog at SilberStudios.com may find they have been directed to our sister site, SilberStudio.Tv, where we house our video shows. Not to worry — we only felt this was a better home for our blog. We hope you continue to stop by and learn of photography news from around the world. Also, stick around and check out our illuminating interviews with master photographers. – MS

If photography has ever been limited in its scope, it’s probably because of the artist’s inability to find the right position. But what if you were able to get your camera into completely unique spots, and effectively capture pictures from an angle and perspective you never thought possible?

That’s the idea behind Kite Aerial Photography (KAP), the latest trend in innovative picture-taking. Basically, it’s exactly what it sounds like — through the use of a special harness, some pulleys, a sturdy fly-line and a nice, high-flying kite, KAP photographers send their cameras soaring through the air to capture images previously unseen.

Take KAP veteran Scott Dunn for example. His incredible shots of the Manhattan skyline or landmarks like the Statue of Liberty reveal stunning facets and breathtaking views of subjects you’d thought couldn’t be captured with originality anymore. And he does it all with his feet planted firmly, safely, on the ground. To see Dunn’s shots of the New york City Liberty Island Swim Event, and to read about how he obtained permission from the U.S. National Park Service in order to get so close to Lady Liberty, check out his Flickr page.

But before you send your valuable camera hundreds of feet into the air, it’s probably best to get a sturdy set of equipment first. Most KAP photographers use something called a Picavet, an X-shaped cross with a set of pulleys that hangs down from the kite, serving as a sort of hammock for your camera. Read more about KAP rigs and accessories at Brooxes.com, an online store specializing in all your KAP needs.

Deborah Willis’ Posing Beauty, a collection of striking images of African Americans over the last century.

Note – regulars to our blog at SilberStudios.com may find they have been directed to our sister site, SilberStudio.Tv, where we house our video shows. Not to worry — we only felt this was a better home for our blog. We hope you continue to stop by and learn of photography news from around the world. Also, stick around and check out our illuminating interviews with master photographers. – MS

Deborah Willis is determined to put the beauty of being black at the forefront of discussion, and in her new book, Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present, she makes a compelling argument.

What started out as a curiosity and fascination with representations of black beauty soon became a determination to create a thorough documentation of how black people were, as one reviewer puts it, “defined, exploited, manipulated, and marketed” through photography in the last century.

In her book, Willis, who currently serves as chair of the Photography and Imaging Department at the Tisch School of the Arts and is a professor at New York University, has put together 10 years of research into a stunning collection of images. Pulled from vintage magazines, journals, newspapers and other documents, over 200 images, both historical, contemporary and everywhere in between, are included that take a deep look at how race interacts with issues of class, gender, sexuality and ideas of beauty.

Gathering images from master photographers like Lee Friedlander, Carl van Vechten, Eve Arnold and Carrie Mae Weems, Willis juxtaposes candid shots in barbershops with glossy portraits of famous celebrities, an effect that forces viewers to question America’s representations of African Americans.

Among the people photographed are leaders from the civil rights era like Angela Davis, Rosa Parks and Muhammad Ali, as well as rarely-before-seen pictures of historical figures like Josephine Baker and Billie Holiday. The collection also features images of contemporary entertainers and politicians like Denzel Washington, Lil’ Kim, Ray Charles, James Brown, Sean “P. Diddy” Combs and the Obama family.

To see the amazing collection of photographs all in one place, check out the new book, Posing Beauty.

Participating photographers donate a portion of their sales to Operation Smile, which strives to give kids a beautiful smile. Image courtesy of Operation Smile.

Note – regulars to our blog at SilberStudios.com may find they have been directed to our sister site, SilberStudio.Tv, where we house our video shows. Not to worry — we only felt this was a better home for our blog. We hope you continue to stop by and learn of photography news from around the world. Also, stick around and check out our illuminating interviews with master photographers. – MS

Ask any photographer and they’ll tell you — capturing a child’s smile is one of the most rewarding shots in photography. But what if a child is physically unable to smile? What if they were never given a chance to show their personality, the way only kids can, and beam with happiness on camera?

In an effort to help children with cleft palettes smile again, members of Professional Photographers of America (PPA) are doing their part to address this problem. During Family Portrait Month, participating photogs will be donating a portion of their sales this month to Operation Smiles, a world-renowned medical organization that helps repair facial deformities like cleft lips and cleft palettes.

“Recording the faces of children and their families is what photographers do,” says photographer and president of the PPA Charities Board of Trustees, Mary Fisk-Taylor. “It’s hard to imagine a more appropriate charity for our members to support.”

Founded in 1982, Operation Smile has treated over 130,000 children and young adults with facial deformities, helping them feel confident in their new smiles. The operation usually lasts less than an hour and costs just $250, so the $70,000 PPA photographers have already raised this year will go a long way to helping change the lives of children.

To read more about the mission to help children with cleft palettes, and to learn about some amazing doctors and volunteers, check out OperationSmile.org

Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band in Detroit, 1977. Photo courtesy of Wayne State Press.

As any music journalist will tell you, the best kind of Rock N Roll photography manages to capture a side of musicians most people don’t know exists. Whether it’s backstage, at home or during a moment of quiet privacy, the images that truly stand out are the ones that show our idols as we’ve never seen.

In the new book Travelin’ Man: On the Road and Behind the Scenes With Bob Seger, former roadie photographer Tom Weschler offers up over 150 photographs of the music legend, many of which have never been seen by fans before. The book chronicles the meteoric rise of Bob Seger, from clean-shaven small-town hero in the late ’60s to bearded international superstar ten years later. Needless to say, there are many pictures of Seger that will amaze fans.

“The baby-faced pictures are priceless,” says Weschler. “I think people are gonna look at this book and say ‘My God, did that guy ever really look like that?’

Of an estimated 20,000 photos Weschler has of Seger and his bands, 161 of the best make up the collection in the book. Included are big, glossy pictures of them playing in front of thousands, goofing around while on tour and during more intimate settings backstage and on the road. Along with the photographs are personal stories from Weschler, written by music journalist Gary Graff, that provide a unique insider’s perspective into what it’s like to live around a Rock N Roll band.

“The book and the photos put some real flesh on it,” Graff says. “Those days did exist and here’s what they looked like.”

So whether you’re a fan of Bob Seger or just always wanted to see what it’s like to go backstage with an American music legend, check out Weschler and Graff’s new book for some entertaining shots.

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In the latest episode of Marc Silber’s Photography Show, I interview famed stock photographer John Lund, whose thirty-year career in photography has shaped him into one of the leading artists in the industry. Lund’s work has been featured in countless photography publications, journals and trade magazines.

During the interview, viewers are offered a candid look at a photographer with genuine skill and experience. With a style he himself describes as “clean, graphic and conceptual,” Lund offers a detailed breakdown of the process he goes through when creating each of his fantastic photographs — from initial conception, through the shooting of various images and finally to the polished product. Through this combination of high art ideas, multiple photographic images and some digital tweaking, Lund manages to create “new photographic realities [that] illustrate concepts.”

But the best part is he wants to share his techniques with you. So to hear more about Lund’s work, as well as his essential advice for both amateur and professional photographers, check out our latest photography show episode.

“Black Dog’s Retreat,” the photograph Robbins and Walla used for inspiration. Photo by Tom Chambers.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what sort of song might it conjure? That’s the question behind the Emmy-nominated NPR program, Project Song, a weekly art experiment that seeks to merge the crafts of photography and music-making.

Produced by All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen,  Project Song invites musicians into the NPR studio to create music inspired by a collection of photos. They can pick from five photos and five words, and are then given no more than two days to come up with a song.

In the most recent episode, Chris Walla (of Death Cab for Cutie) and J. Robbins (of Jawbox and Burning Airlines) were featured, along with a collection of work from acclaimed photographer Tom Chambers. For the challenge, Walla and Robbins chose “Black Dog’s Retreat” (above) and the word “cerebral.” The musicians then went to work discussing the imagery and connotations within the photo, and then playing with sounds inspired by the discussion.

The majority of Chambers work revolves around the creation of photomontages, images that, according to Chambers himself, “illustrate the fleeting moods that can’t be captured by a traditional camera or seen by the naked eye.” “Black Dog’s Retreat” is a surreal example of how Chambers merges backgrounds, foregrounds and subjects from different pictures to create something completely new.

So it was the songwriters task to pick up on this. Within the photograph they found deep themes of desperation and the surreal, and it was with these feelings in mind that they attempted to create a song in the same spirit. The result, dubbed “Mercury,” is a fantastic compostion that manages to capture the photograph’s sense of absurdity and immediacy, or as Boilen puts it, “a song that finds hope in its despair. A bit cerebral, but full of imagination.”

In the end, Project Song offers a candid view of how some of our greatest artists see each other. It also gives an example of the fluidity of art, and how the mind of an artist can transform anything into an original creation.

To hear the song and see the full creation process for “Mercury,” check out the Project Song website.

In this undated photograph, one of Coplan’s child photographers goofs around with his sisters near the Samiria River, a tributary of the Amazon. Photo courtesy of Amy Coplan/AP.

On Amy Coplan’s volunteer trip to Peru, the New Jersey music teacher was hoping to see the wonders of the rain forest. Instead she ended up being more impressed with the people. So when she got back home she decided to give all the underprivileged children she met a chance to tell others about their lives — through the power of photography.

Coplan donated a handful of digital cameras to a group of children living in a small village in the Peruvian jungle. Now, with their new toys, the kids are able to document their daily lives and show the world a collection of images that most people never see. Some of the photographs — of themselves going to school and helping their families prepare meals using traditional techniques — are purely documentarian in style, while others — a shot of two girls whispering behind palm fronds, a young child cradling a bird — show the children’s articulate conceptions of beauty.

Coplan herself was amazed at how quickly the children learned the technology, even though they live in an area that may be decades behind industrialized nations like the U.S.  “Kids just get it,” she said.

The program, called Ninos de la Amazonia, was started by Coplan in an effort to raise money for the children of the area. She wants it to increase awareness about the region and to raise money for medical supplies, school money and further art projects.

For those still curious about the power of art and photography in changing the world of underprivileged children, check out the 2004 documentary Born into Brothels. The Academy Award-winning film follows documentary photographer Zana Briski as she teaches children in the slums of India how to use cameras and, more importantly, how to potentially improve their own lives.

“Tree trunks” at Petrified Forest National Park. Photo by Ian Shive

For his new book, “The National Parks, Our American Landscape,” conservation photographer Ian Shive didn’t just visit a few parks — he spent almost half a decade travelling the country, including one intense 20 day trip where he covered 7,500 miles and visited 17 national parks. “The book is a culmination of four years of image gathering across the entire country,” he said in an interview with NPR.

And what a culmination it is. Shive’s photographs portray America’s most beautiful landscapes (from a breath-taking gorge along the Rio Grande river in Big Bend National Park to the desolate whiteness around Mt. Foraker in Alaska’s Denali National Park) all in an intensely personal way that many people will never get to witness themselves. This, of course, is the sentiment Shive wants to get across. “The book simply inspires people to connect with the outdoors and our parks,” he says.

Shive, who works as for National Parks magazine and is a member of the International League of Conservation Photographers, has taken it upon himself to help with park conservation and the education of the public regarding places like Yellowstone and Yosemite Valley. His new book aims to to thrill, amaze and, most importantly, teach anyone looking to rediscover the wilds of America. “The power of a single image can never be replaced,” he said. “One image has the power to tell a story, spark imagination and educate people within a few seconds.”

Finally, when he was asked which park every American should see and photograph, he had to go with old faithful. “Yellowstone National Park,” he said, “because it has the ability to let a person step back in time and see the United States in a way that has been completely lost to development and expansion.”

To see more of Ian Shive’s work, pick up his new book –“The National Parks, Our American Landscape”– or check out his blog.

Willard Boyle (left) and George Smith in 1974, testing their CCD equipment. Photo: Alcatel-Lucent/Bell Labs

Digital photos are pretty much the standard for images now, and you can thank American scientists Willard Boyle and George Smith for that. Back in 1969 the two inventors created the first successful Charge Coupled Device (CCD), a digital sensor that helped change the world of photography as we know it. And now, the two men will be sharing a Nobel Prize in Physics for their work.

Boyle and Smith were presented the award on Tuesday from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for their work at Bell Laboratories. For decades they worked with techniques of capturing light before finally designing a sensor that effectively turned light into electrical signals. The Academy called the men “masters of light,” and declared their work a key effort that “helped to shape the foundations of today’s networked societies.”

They’ll be splitting the Nobel prize money ($1.4 million) with Charles K. Kao, a British scientist whose work with transmitting light through long distances on thin fibers set the stage for modern fiber-optics.

The work done by Boyle and Smith revolutionized not only photography and video cameras, but also areas in science and medicine. Doctors use modern CCD technology in certain devices to see inside patients, and astronomers use it to clarify never-before-seen images of deep space.

Now retired, Boyle, 85, is still amazed at how his work has become part of people’s everyday lives. He is reminded of his work with Smith “when I go around these days and see everybody using our little digital cameras, everywhere.”

Smith, 79, is just happy for the recognition. “It does do wonders for one’s ego,” he said. “People obviously like taking pictures. Look at all the cell phone cameras and cameras in your computer. That’s using this technology.”