Home » Resource Center: Photo-Related

Resource Center: Photo-Related

Aaron Siskind Library - Photographic Resource Center, Boston University
Photographic Resource Center, Boston’s vigorous and independent photo non-profit, fulfills part of its wide-ranging mandate by offering superb research resources based in the Center’s Aaron Siskind Library. Open to all, the library houses over 4,000 photographic books and 80 periodicals from around the world, with a detailed online list of the holdings. The PRC’s many other activities are designed to engage a broad public with the art and ideas of photography. Located on the campus of Boston University, the PRC offers its members and the wider public up to eight annual gallery exhibitions, research resources based in the PRC’s Aaron Siskind Library and other unique events. If that were not enough, the PRC also hosts a web-based photo discussion forum, publishes In the Loupe, its stylish newsletter, and offers the annual Leopold Godowsky Jr. Color Photography Awards. Vigorous indeed!

Camerapedia
A free-content encyclopedia modeled on Wikipedia, Camerapedia looks to be an excellent resource for the hardware side of the history of photography. It is also a repository of information about all still camera brands and models. To learn more about this project, read the About Camerapedia.org page.

Digital Camera Resource Page
Although no longer publishing new content, Digital Camera Resource Page offers an archive of honest, straightforward camera reviews. Clear, side-by-side comparisons of various cameras lay it all out, detailing maximum resolution, zoom, LCD type, price range, and such. Next, check out the FAQs for great tips on shopping for a digital camera. The site continues to host active forums, with users sharing tips on everything from how to take a great picture to where to get deals on cameras and equipment. Keep in mind that this site was targeted toward the general consumer rather than the higher-end buyer.

Directory of Photo Historians - Arkansas State University
Minimalist in design, this site is a simple and useful database of working photo historians from around the world. Assembled by faculty at Arkansas State University, the list features names, contact information and areas of interest for those researching the history of photography. The fact that the list is so extensive that we are warned about long download times is heartening – and underscores the need for just such a tool for contact and exchange.

The Golden Hour
This is a tool for identifying that specific time of day when the light can transform any subject as if by magic, but it is also invitation for photographers to explore the Golden Hour in different locations, climates and seasons. The tool features longitude and latitude, sunrise and sunset readings, universal and local times for locations users can choose from a drop-down menu. This site offers a kind of armchair magic: watching the sun transit through the sky on the other side of the world.

Go Pro Cameras
To see the company’s amazing home page montage, captured in eye-popping detail, is to understand why Go Pro cameras have become synonymous with first-person views of extreme situations. This small, tough high-resolution camera can record a walk to the edge of a volcano, or a climb up the side of a crumbling glacier (see Go Pro’s Vimeo channel on the site to take in all the gravity defying permutations of “extreme”), but as Go Pro Hero devices make their way into more and more hands, we may yet begin to see some of the more artistic possibilities of a up-close, high-resolution first person narratives.

Lenscratch
With an ambitious goal of writing about a different photographic project every day, Lenscratch creator Aline Smithson and her excellent editorial crew offer something substantial: consistently good, in-depth writing on photography and an inclusive space for the diverse work of contemporary photographers. The blog is considered to be among the best its of kind by the likes of Source Review, Wired.com, Rangefinder and InStyle Magazine.

Library of Congress - Searchable Photograph Collections
The Library is a treasure house of remarkable and varied photographic collections that document the history, society and culture of the United States. Their comprehensive site is intelligently designed to help researchers access the 12 million photographs in the collections. Anyone can look through and download images online or at the LoC’s reading room in Washington D.C.

Light Journeys
The Light Journeys gallery showcases the talent of Australian women artists working in the field of photo-media. The intention is to show the wired world selected works by women and to create a focal point for artists, curators, galleries and enthusiasts interested in the development and culture of contemporary Australian photography. Curated by U.K Frederick and Lee Grant, a new artist, either emerging or established, is featured each month with a solo online exhibition.

Light Research
Light Research is photographer and writer Robert Hirsch’s sophisticated business card. Here, Hirsch’s many, many approaches to photography are laid out, including consulting on analog and digital imagemaking, photo education curriculum, facilities and their construction, curatorial services, grant writing, E-commerce solutions for artists, not-for-profit management and website development, to name a few. Some of the more intriguing areas of the site illustrate Hirsch’s writing – he is the author of a good number of photo-related books, articles and reviews – and his work as an artist. Exhibitions of Hirsch’s photographic meditations on war and trauma, Manifest Destiny, and the American landscape, among others, are presented in sharp looking slideshows and documentation videos.

Lightstalkers
Resources, leads, links and leaks posted by photographers for photographers. Personal recommendations for everything from body armor to camera bags, processing laboratories to travel agencies.

Luminous-Lint
Luminous-Lint is the result of one man’s laudable mission to get us all involved in the creation of “the world’s leading collaborative knowledge-base for the history of photography.” Although complex, the site is very user-friendly. Information is organized by searchable sections that include themes, photographers, techniques, galleries and dealers, as well as times lines. Luminous-Lint makes very good use of the web’s elastic nature: each link in these sections unfolds into an amazingly rich page of historical and practical information, closely connected with other pages - including eclectic photo galleries - in order to give the most complete picture possible. The most original feature of Luminous-Lint is its very personal and direct requests for input; the site is dotted with areas for feedback and ways to get involved in building the content. The interactive nature of the site, somewhat like a Wikipedia for the history of photography, opens the door to an original and more comprehensive way of researching and displaying photographic history.

Marketing Photos - Mary Virginia Swanson
Marketing consultant, author and educator Mary Virginia Swanson uses her blog space to assemble and disseminate valuable and current information about photographers, photography, and the art market. The daily, annotated posts cover a wide range of photo-related information and events, and testify to Swanson’s experience and understanding of ways of the photography world. Among the useful features of this superbly organized site are the clearly identified categories of information, such as Approaching Deadline, Approaching Events, Funding for the Arts, and Swanson’s own picks MVS’s Musts.

New York Public Library Digital Gallery
The fabled New York Public Library’s sophisticated site offers free online access to a fascinating collection of three hundred thousand digital images. Amazingly, they are not all about New York!

Photo District News Online - PhotoSource
An indispensable resource, PDN Online’s comprehensive site literally covers the “waterfront” of information relevant to photographers. Its front page is dedicated to extensive photo news coverage, product reviews and features, but there are also links of several PDN initiatives and alliances- each a distinct and valuable source in its own right. PDNedu is a support system for emerging photographers, offering news, photo critique forums, features, contests, portfolios galleries and examples of photo-essays from students around the country. PhotoServe is a “visual database of the world’s best photographers,” a sort of society page that keeps track of assignments, exhibitions and awards of establish photographers. The site includes a monthly portfolio gallery that comes complete with a search engine for its archives. PhotoSource is PDN’s all-in-one professional photography directory, full of national and international industry resources. There is also a link to IPN, the Independent Photography Network, an organization that provides stock photography from independent photographers and small agency reps. PDN shows its support of photographers of all types through its generous gallery space. Here you find all levels of photographers and photojournalists- established, emerging, or even “legendary”. Online only features as well as in-depth reporting for subscribers.

Photo Histories
Photo Histories’s creators are doing the important work of capturing what is essentially the oral history that documents the culture of photography in the 20th century. The site is indeed full of fascinating stories from a cast of “tell it like it is” characters who have been witness to the major events of the last century. The content is skillfully presented in the form of interviews, slide shows, first-person accounts and even book reviews that each bring to life a time and place, often with rueful humor. Photo Histories was created out of an admitted sense of nostalgia for the golden age of (analogue) photojournalism, a project bent on preserving the stories and spirit of an era rapidly vanishing into an uncertain (and digital) future. Given that this was the time when photography came into its own as a powerful medium for documenting events and provoking change, the site’s authors are providing a useful historical anchor in this present age of all powerful and infinitely malleable images.

Photoblogs
As the name suggests, this site is all about photo blogs; in fact it is an exhaustive list of photoblogs, managed in a wiki format and may be the closest thing we have to a hub for the ever-expanding universe of photography–related web logs.

Photograph Magazine Formerly Photography-Guide.com
Photograph maintains its useful and well-constructed compendium of listings for photographers and photo lovers with scrupulously up to date information tracks a very wide range of people, events and resources. Their resource page, for example, offers rare and valuable listings for such things as appraisal and conservation services, while their calendar lists current local, national and international photo events. Be sure to investigate their rich Links page and the 'Eye On The Scene' announcements.

Photography and International Conflict
Photo Histories’s creators are doing the important work of capturing what is essentially the oral history that documents the culture of photography in the 20th century. The site is indeed full of fascinating stories from a cast of “tell it like it is” characters who have been witness to the major events of the last century. The content is skillfully presented in the form of interviews, slide shows, first-person accounts and even book reviews that each bring to life a time and place, often with rueful humor. Photo Histories was created out of an admitted sense of nostalgia for the golden age of (analogue) photojournalism, a project bent on preserving the stories and spirit of an era rapidly vanishing into an uncertain (and digital) future. Given that this was the time when photography came into its own as a powerful medium for documenting events and provoking change, the site’s authors are providing a useful historical anchor in this present age of all powerful and infinitely malleable images.

Photography and International Conflict - Photo Editors
Part of The UCD Clinton Institute for American Studies, Photography and International Conflict project is dedicated to addressing the challenges that the current media scene offers to photo editors. While the project, in general, deals with the many complex issues surrounding conflict photography, the “Practices” section considers what the accelerated pace of change in the digital era means for photo editors. Video interviews with photo editors from the Guardian to Magnum delve into the daily challenges of doing good, ethical work in a world inundated with images coming from everything between the large agencies to citizen photojournalists.

Photojournalism Links
Compiled by the very resourceful Mikko Takkunen, Photojournalismlinks is a wide-ranging and comprehensive list of links to all things related to photojournalism. Presented on a tidy site that features images from newly added sites, the links are divided into a large list of descriptive categories, each with an eclectic mix of entries. Photojournalismlinks now operates under the banner of TIME.com's Lightbox photoblog, where Takkunen is an editor.

Photolinks
A free directory and portal service committed to making photographers as visible as possible. The site includes comprehensive national and international photography directories, articles and tips, and a “find-a-photographer” search engine.

Professional Women Photographers
Founded to assure the advancement of women photographers, the non-profit Professional Women Photographers organizes exhibitions, workshops and networking opportunities for its members, and for the visibility and recognition of women photographers in general. PWP organizes an annual call for entry from its diverse membership, as well as an annual international call for entry, both of which are distilled into an online exhibition on their site. Other community-building events, from the PWP include a monthly lecture series, student exhibitions and a program to provide mentoring and photo classes to children and teens at risk in New York City. An organization that has been building women photographers’ visibility and possibilities since the beginning of the women’s movement in 1975.

UCD – Photography and International Conflict
This project of the Clinton Institute for American Studies at University College Dublin takes a scholarly approach to exploring the complex and intimate relationship between conflict and photography. Here, war and the way we portray it is examined through a historical lens, with essays that look at the way photography has been used throughout America’s major conflicts of the 20th century. This is balanced by different theoretical interpretations of the ethics, economics and points of view that inform images of conflict. The project’s Case Studies section helps to ground the academic discussion with some more specific investigations of the influence of photography on the understanding of conflict events.

Women in Photography International – Reference Library
For over two decades this group has been advocating for women’s photography and working for its increased visibility in the world. An example of the scope of their enterprise is the Women in Photography International Archive, now housed at Yale’s Beinecke Library. Created by the archive’s curator, the WiPI site includes an online reference section of bibliographies by and about women photographers and their art, an amazing resource for researchers. In fact, the WiPI’s busy website is packed with resources and useful information, a reflection of the organization’s commitment to supporting women photographers through the entire process of creation. There is WiPI Member’s Network Board, a forum for exchange on a range of photo topics and areas of interest. The site is also home to f2, an e-Zine that assembles news, new photo projects, business tips and book reviews related to women photographers (and women in general). Other useful sections include a member database searchable by photographic specialty and an ongoing series of juried online exhibitions.

Zeroland Photography Directory
This searchable online directory lists Web sites that focus on the arts or have artistic value. This particular link leads to the site’s photography sections. Categories include awards, black and white, daguerreotypes, digital photography, fashion photography, history of photography, journals, montage, museums, photojournalism, pinhole photography, and stock photography. Surf to the root URL to find other (non-photography specific) topics such as art history, art movements, artists, auctions, galleries, journals, libraries, museums, news, resources, and writers.