PhotoShelter Bails on the Stock Photo Biz

Effective October 10, 2008, PhotoShelter will no longer be trading in the stock photography commodities market. What? You're an artist, you say? Your photography isn't a commodity? Okay. If you say so. But if, for some purely (Ugh!) commercial reasons, you're considering making a few extra bucks with the fruits of your camera, you might start considering some of it as such. i.e., as a commodity.

Personally, I'm neither shocked, surprised, nor saddened by PhotoShelter's decision. There's an explanation on the web regarding why they've gotten out of the stock photo biz but, frankly, I'm not much interested. Bottom line: PhotoShelter's foray into stock photography is history. RIP.

I was, however, taken back by a collateral-damage casualty of PS's decision, namely, the demise of their most-excellent blog, "Shoot! The Blog."

But like a phoenix rising from the ashes of corporate destruction, Rachel Hulin, PhotoShelter's pink-slipped former blog attendant, has created a new blog in order to keep doing what she was doing for PhotoShelter... Only more! And more better I'll bet! (Sorry for the bad English.)

We won't be jonesing for our daily fix of Hulin's picks. (Her picks of pics, that is.) I'm guessing Rachel's new blog will soar even higher now that the excess-baggage of corporate sky marshals and flight controllers--the ones she once needed to appease--has been jettisoned.

So here's some big fat good luck wishes to Rachel and her new supersonic blog-craft!

You can visit Rachel's new blog by clicking HERE. It's also listed in my Blog Roll. Oh yeah, that's a pic of Ms. Hulin up at the top. Nice photo. Easy on the eyes. No. I didn't snap it.

Shorpy's Blog

For the few of you who semi-regularly visit this blog, you've probably figured out I'm more than a little interested in history and things of a historical nature including, but not limited to, all things photographic.

As such, I was happy to discover the photographic wonderments of Shorpy: The 100-Year-Old Photo Blog. (Hat tip to Pop Photo's State of the Art blog for pointing me to Shorpy.)

No, the Shorpy blog itself isn't 100-years-old. D'uh. Blogs didn't exist 100 years ago. Neither did the internet... except, perhaps, in the futurist minds of writers like Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, although I don't believe either of them ever wrote about it. (But I could be wrong.)

Instead, Shorpy is a photoblog featuring high-definition images from the first half of the 20th century. The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a 14-year-old boy who worked in an Alabama coal mine and ironworks in the 1910s. I doubt Shorpy could ever have dreamed his name and likeness would someday grace the masthead of something called a "photoblog." But who knows? Perhaps Shorpy, like Verne and Wells, was somewhat precognitive? Stranger things have happened!

At the top is a picture of a young, grease-soaked, Shorpy, photographed by Lewis Wickes Hine, standing front-and-center amongst a group of his (also quite young) co-workers at the old mine and ironworks. Hine is one of my all-time-favorite editorial photographers. His images of child labor in turn-of-the-century American industry, as well as his photo-documentation of the construction of the Empire State Building in New York City, are indelibly etched in the history of American photojournalism.

If you're like me and you enjoy viewing photographic glimpses of the past, you'll probably spend some quality time at Shorpy: The 100-Year-Old Photo Blog.