Fluffy Last Minute Holiday Gift Idea

Thursday December 17th, 2009

Down to the wire on Holiday gift ideas? Natalie Young, one of our  Los Angeles photographers, just informed us that you can receive her photo book in time for Xmas if you order by this Sunday (or the 23rd, if you’re in LA). And who wouldn’t want charming black and white dog photographs for the holidays? It’s called Georgia & Sabine, named for this dachsund duo:

Options for the 60-page book include either a soft cover version, or a special limited edition hardcover of 100 presented in a slipcase with an original silver gelatin print, which is signed by the artist.

The book includes an essay  by Mindaugas Kavaliauskas, director of the Kaunas Photo Festival, who describes the book thusly: “Georgia and Sabine stands out of thousands, if not millions, of pet photographs because of its simplicity and intimacy.” I certainly find it reminiscent of some of my favorite Elliott Erwitt dog photographs.

A few more of Natalie’s images:

You can purchase the book directly from Natalie’s fine art website. Just click on the “Books” link.

Aside from producing books of canine intrigue, this past year Natalie was named one of the Top 50 Photographers in PhotoLucida’s Critical Mass competition, as well as being nominated for the Santa Fe Prize for Photography. She was also in a  show with blogger/photographer Amy Stein, both featuring their animal photographs.

Natalie’s commercial work can be found here, and below is a sampling of the “tradtional” side of her work.

So we seem to cover all of the cute bases for the holiday: dogs and babies (and my apologies to those who don’t find them cute)!

-Neil Binkley

Under Cover Of Twilight

Tuesday November 24th, 2009

If you have any teenagers in the house, or happen to read the news, then you’ll know that the second Twilight movie just opened to wide release last Friday. The sequel is a quantifiable hit, attracting fans who camped out two nights before the film’s premiere, and drawing in some $70 million its first night in the U.S. This is more than any other opening night in film history.

Stephenie Meyer, Twilight‘s author, was certainly caught off-guard with the success of her book series (91 weeks on the New York Times’ bestseller list). And so was Roger Hagadone, photographer of three of the hardbound books’ covers (above).

Roger had shot half a dozen covers for Little, Brown, and Company, the book’s publisher, before he was approached to do the Twilight series. Twilight was was “just another book at the time,” according to Hagadone.

So it came as a bit of  a surprise when he started getting emails from the books’ fans, wondering how he had come up with the covers and what they meant. Hagadone says that the publisher prefers to leave these details to people’s imagination, so he has to keep a tight lip.

Obviously, the covers have intrigued millions of fans worldwide, including one who created an homage to Hagadone’s image from the first book’s cover.

Even the hand model for the Twilight cover (holding the apple) has made some celebrity for herself, charging $30 for fans to have their picture taken with her at a recent convention, and she was even featured on MTV’s website.

Ironically, the Twilight photos are a little bit of an excursion from Hagadone’s typically humorous, conceptual advertising photography, such as his ad for the popular Discovery Channel tv show, Dirty Jobs:

And here’s a few other photos from recent email promos:

Roger Hagadone is repped by Doug Truppe and featured as one of  Wonderful Machine’s New York photographers.

-Neil Binkley