Sean Flynn in South Vietnam in 1968. Photo: AP

The remains of Vietnam War photographer Sean Flynn, son of Hollywood great Errol Flynn, have reportedly been discovered in South East Asia. It has been over 40 years since he went missing.

In 1970, the 28 year-old Flynn was on assignment for Time Magazine when he was captured by Khmer Rouge guerrillas. He was never seen again. Over the decades family and friends have searched for his remains, only to come up empty-handed. Now, going off a tip from a villager who says he saw the execution of a man with Flynn’s description, researchers have discovered a mass grave in Cambodia containing a jaw bone that has two fillings in it, a dead giveaway that the remains are from someone who had Western dental work.

But not everyone is so satisfied yet. A total  of 37 journalists died or went missing during the war, 12 of whom were known to have been in the same area as Flynn.

“Until there’s positive proof, it could be any of 12 people. My concern is there’s 12 of our mates out there. To us they’re all important,” said Tim Page, a fellow Vietnam War photographer and close friend of Flynn’s who has been searching for his remains for decades.

The unearthed bones will soon undergo a complete forensic analysis to find out just who they belong to.

Those who knew him said Flynn was a dare devil, just like his father. At first he tried to get into show business alongside him, but he quickly found it boring and became a big game hunter in Africa. Then he picked up a camera and headed to Vietnam to cover the war, only to be captured in his prime. His disappearance has remained a mystery to this day.

Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight

Who would’ve thought Two-Face actually leads a double life? Aaron Eckhart, the actor who played pretty-boy-lawyer-turned-scarred-villain Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight, has another passion that has nothing to do with acting: photography.

“I’m obsessed with it–it’s all I do,” the 42 year-old actor recently told People. “That’s really the only thing I think about.”

Eckhart recently shot a photo campaign for a jewelry line produced by model and close friend Molly Sims. At the line’s release in New York City he talked about what he most looks forward to in starting a career in photography, as well as what he wants to stay away from.

“Straight-up fashion photography in the studio–that’s not what I necessarily aspire to, you know? I like to be outside, on location, making up stories,” he said. “That’s where my acting comes in.”

Eckhart, who received a Golden Globe nomination in 2006 for his role as a smooth-talking spokesman for the tobacco industry in the dark comedy Thank You for Smoking, cites photographers like Peter Lindbergh and Bruce Weber and magazines like French and Italian Vogue as inspirations.

While he may not be a professional photographer yet, Eckhart definitely has the passion and curiosity to turn it into more than just a hobby.

“I’m really just a photography geek,” he said. “I just love to shoot.”

Way up in the stratosphere, from a digital camera attached to a balloon.

NASA could learn a lot from Robert Harrison about going to space on a budget.

The British photographer and space enthusiast managed to build his own camera contraption, then sail it into Earth’s upper stratosphere and capture stunning images of our planet, like the one above. The total cost of the project? $750.

Harrison first got the idea for aerial photography when he tried to photograph his house from above by attaching a digital camera to a toy helicopter. Then he went bigger. After researching weather balloons on the internet, Harrison launched his own spacecraft, Icarus I, in 2008.

The craft used a Canon Sure Shot digital camera with a computer chip attached that made it snap a picture every five minutes. This was then wrapped in insulation material and placed in a polystyrene box, which was tied to the balloon. Once the balloon reached its maximum altitude of about 22 miles, it popped, sending the craft back down to Earth on a parachute.A GPS locator then allowed Harrison to easily find it.

Harrison has since sent a dozen cameras into space, and the resulting photographs offer gorgeous images of Earth that we rarely see outside of those taken by governmental space agencies.

NASA has reportedly already contacted Harrison to talk about how he did it so cheaply.

Jim Marshall in 2002.

Jim Marshall, who captured many of the 20th century’s greatest musicians in some of their most iconic images, and who is often described as the Godfather of rock photography, died in his hotel room in New York City on Tuesday. He was 74.

Raised in San Francisco, Marshall bought his first Leica camera in 1959. Only a year later, after a life-changing chance meeting with jazz great John Coltrane, Marshall would discover his passion. From there he would make a career out of documenting great rock and jazz heroes — from Jim Morrison, Janice Joplin and Bob Dylan, to Coltrane, Miles Davis, The Rolling Stones, Ray Charles and many, many more.

According to his website, Marshall shot over 500 album covers. He is also the man behind some of rock’s most iconic images. He photographed Johnny Cash giving the middle finger during the singer’s San Quentin prison concert. He was the only photographer allowed backstage at the final Beatles concert in San Francisco in 1966. He shot Jimi Hendrix lighting his guitar on fire at the famous Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. He was also the chief photographer at Woodstock.

Almost as famed as his images was his reputation as a surly, forceful artist. He refused to mess with lighting or let his subjects wear make-up, preferring instead to capture them in their natural element. He never let anyone tell him where, when or how to shoot, and he often kicked publicists, agents and managers out of the room. And for him, this was a bond not to be taken lightly.

“I consider what I do with the person I shoot a covenant,” he once said. “They present themselves to me, and I treat them with dignity. I refuse to violate that trust.”

As the unofficial documenter of music culture in the ’60s and ’70s, Marshall left behind a legacy that will be appreciated by music-lovers and photographers for many years to come.

His craft was everything to him. “I have no kids,” he often said. “My photographs are my children.”

Martin Luther King Jr. being arrested in 1958. Photo © Charles Moore

Charles Moore, a photographer whose work during the civil rights movement of the 1960s helped force the public to see the inequality and brutality of segregation, has died of natural causes. He was 79.

Born in Alabama in 1931, Moore served three years in the Marines and then attended the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, California. When he returned home he found himself right in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement.

Moore’s most notable photographs — the fire-hosing of protesters in the streets, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. being arrested and shoved into a courthouse desk, white police and civilians beating black demonstrators bloody — are some of the most iconic images from the Civil Rights Era. Distributed by the Associated Press and Life Magazine, his work was extremely important in changing the country’s outlook on racial discrimination: U.S. Senator Jacob Javits said Moore’s photography “helped to spur passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”

Moore’s simple use of a short lens showed he was willing to go to the very center of danger to get the necessary shot. And whether it was on the streets for a civil rights protest or later when he would cover conflicts in the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Haiti and the Vietnam War, Moore knew photography had the power to enact change.

“In Birmingham when I saw the dogs I don’t think anything appalled me more, and I’ve been to Vietnam,” Moore told the New York times decades later.

“I photographed it, and the world rushed in. I realized the power of even one image.”

Irina Krupnik is not happy with the way her photograph was used.

Irina Krupnik never thought she would see herself in a movie… that is until she started getting phone calls from friends who said they saw a picture of her in the comedy Couples Retreat. Unfortunately for the former model, it wasn’t the star-making performance most hope for.

Krupnik filed a $10 million defamation lawsuit on Thursday against NBC Universal, alleging the studio used a ten year-old photograph of her in a bathing suit in a scene where one of the characters (played by Jon Favreau) uses it to help please himself in a solo sex scene.

Krupnik, 30, said the studio allowed her image to be transformed from “a commonplace swimwear ad to softcore pornography,” and that the “ongoing, unauthorized and defamatory use of her likeness in a derogatory and humiliating context” has damaged her reputation, both personal and professional.

However, NBC Universal says the image was theirs to use freely. “The photo at the center of this claim,” read a statement, “was licensed to Universal and the studio was entirely within its rights to use it in Couples Retreat.”

Krupnik, now a make-up artist, says she never would have given away the rights to a stock photo agency (which in turn sold it to the filmmakers) if she had known they would use it in a “quasi-pornographic context.”

The flyer produced by the Saskatchewan Party

A Canadian lawmaker has apologized for using an image of the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center buildings to promote a pig roast fundraiser.

The Saskatchewan Party used the photograph above as the background to a flier that promoted a talk from New York City Fire Chief Richard Picciotto, one of the many to go into the burning buildings, and one of the few to make it out.

But the image, from the 2001 terrorist attack where almost 3,000 people died, has drawn heavy criticism.

Frank Dwyer, a spokesman for the FDNY, said “the use of images of the attacks for political or monetary gain, like the image on this poster, is in bad taste.”

Canadian lawmaker Sandra Morin agrees. “To use a graphic image of the burning twin towers – in which thousands of people tragically died – to raise political dollars, is both shocking for its lack of respect and disturbing for its lack of judgment,” she said.

The backlash has prompted Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall to issue an official apology. Nancy Heppner, the Party member who approved the idea, said the image “was not chosen with any malicious intent or it was never our intention to appear insensitive or offend anybody.”

So what do you think? Should pictures of 9/11 be allowed to promote $50-a-plate fundraisers, or is it insensitive and in poor taste to use them at all?

Photo by Miloslav Druckmüller

Could the image above really be the most dramatic image ever taken of a solar eclipse?

Taken by astrophotographer Miloslav Druckmüller, the photograph is deemed by many to be the finest example of solar eclipse photography ever produced. The image was captured in August 2008 as an eclipse loomed over Bor Udzuur in Mongolia, and Druckmuller had mere seconds to snap the image before losing the opportunity.

“Solar eclipse photography if one of the most difficult tasks of astronomical photography,” says the scientist/photographer. This is due to a number of reasons, including the fact that an eclipse’s extreme contrast makes it almost impossible to capture in a single image, but also because there is very little time to work with. If anything goes wrong, says Druckmüller, “it may take years to get an opportunity for a new experiment.”

Scientists have been working on developing new and more effective ways of capturing images of the sun’s corona (the plasma “atmosphere” visible to the naked eye during an eclipse), and Miloslav Druckmüller has the incredible job of hunting down solar eclipses and photographing them using some of the coolest photographic technology around.

To see more high-quality, high-resolution images of eclipses from around the world, visit Druckmüller’s website.

Soccer Player Brandi Chastain. Photograph © John Todd 2010. All Rights Reserved

In the latest episode of “Advancing Your Photography,” Marc Silber sits down with acclaimed sports photographer John Todd to talk about what it takes to capture great action images in sports.

As one of the most respected photographers in the world of sports and soccer, Todd’s clients include Nike, the U.S. Soccer Federation, and the Maverick’s Big Wave Surfing Contest. He is also the team photographer for Major League Soccer’s San Jose Earthquakes and the U.S. Men and Women’s Soccer Teams.

With images that capture the spirit and drama of some of the world’s most gifted athletes, John Todd has made a career out of taking big, bold, beautiful photographs. This also makes him the perfect mentor to photographers who want to improve their game.

Watch the interview and you’ll learn all about:

1. How to Approach a Sports Shoot — Whether you’re photographing your nephew’s youth soccer game or handling a World Cup match with international superstars, John offers important advice on how you should prepare for your shoot. Watch the interview and you’ll learn what he means when he says he approaches every shoot as if it were a “globe.”

2. Simple and Clean — Hear what John has to say about what he considers to be the two most important aspects of an image that pops out and wows.

3. Visualizing the End Result — Echoing photography icon Ansel Adams, John touts the philosophy of preparedness. Hear what he has to say about “seeing with your mind’s eye” and picturing exactly what you want your photograph to look like… before you ever press a button.

To see more of John Todd’s tips and techniques on how to improve your sports photography, be sure to watch the latest episode of “Advancing Your Photography” with Marc Silber. Also, check out more of John’s amazing work over at www.JohnTodd.com.

David Ziser’s new book, Captured by the Light

Photographing a wedding is one of the most challenging jobs a photographer can have. Not only are you trying to frame the beauty of the ceremony, but you are also in charge of capturing and memorializing the most important day in a person’s life. In his new book, Captured by the Light: The Essential Guide to Creating Extraordinary Wedding Photography, David A. Ziser offers an in-depth look at what it takes to master this art form.

Ziser, a world-renowned wedding photographer, is noted as a leading lecturer and teacher of photography. He is a staple at photo conferences and expos around the world, is a regular contributor to Professional Photographer magazine, and is one of less than 100 people worldwide who have been distinguished as a Fellow by the American Society of Photographers.

His new book shows that wedding photography is more than just a job, it’s an art. This is showcased in the book’s 288 pages, which match detail, example and instruction alongside shots from actual weddings. In it he offers unique, usable advice on everything from lighting, posing and composition, to thoughts on how to photograph large groups and what sort of equipment works best.

This make Captured by the Light a must-have for both seasoned professionals and those looking to start a career in wedding photography.

Make sure to check out Ziser’s photography blog, Digital ProTalk, which is a favorite of digital photographers everywhere. There you can purchase his new book, or hang around to see some of his popular web-cast presentations.