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Here goes this week’s selection of some of the photos that caught my attention of Flickr. I hope you enjoy them. As before, there’s a great deal of Black & White images on this pick. I’m always amazed at what the lack of color just by itself can transmit.

Congratulations to all the photographers. Great works here.

Don’t forget to go to the photo pages and leave your comments. I’m sure the photographers appreciate it.

Five Stars of the Week

This image represent not only itself, but it’s a small sample of what is one of the most creative, beautiful and brilliant photostreams on Flickr. Rosie’s talent goes well beyond words, and coming from someone so young. Memorize her name. You’ll be listening to it again in a few years. I’ll try to get her on PhotoNetcast to share some of her experiences. My Five Stars of the Week.

 All thumbnails copyright of respective photographers. Used with permission.

A few days ago I got one of those emails from a generalist photography magazine (a very large publication I might add) trying to convince me to subscribe to their print version for a very attractive price. It’s the old marketing technique, enrolling subscribers at a loss for the first year and hoping they’ll remain subscribed after that for a substantially higher value. I mean, I’m sure that what they were charging for 12 issues of the magazine would not even cover the shipping costs.

I have to confess that the offer was so appealing that I almost went for it. But then…

I was subscribed to them once, maybe up to 2 years ago, and at the time decided not to renew my subscription for a number of reasons:

1. News way too old – By the time I actually had the opportunity to grab it and go though the news sections, chances are I would have read all about it online before and would just skip these sections entirely.

2. Uninteresting content – A couple of articles would probably grab my interest, and I would definitely enjoy admiring some of the photographic work, but in general the interesting:uninteresting ratio was just too low.

3. Advertisement everywhere – Do I need to say more? Every third page would be a full page ad, not to mention the smaller ones sprinkled everywhere. Scratch what I said above about my money not paying even for shipping, the ads pay for everything.

If i were to rip from the magazine the pages that actually interested me, the number would not be so great. I did not subscribe again.

All this got me wondering what would I enjoy in a printed photography magazine. Not news, I can get them online; not technical articles, i can definitely get them (and better ones) online; certainly not the ads, although I don’t mind them when not in exaggerated numbers.

Now, if instead we start talking about photographic studies, photographic essays and, to a large extent, photojournalism/documentary work, that I would enjoy. That I would pay to get in print. Sure, all of these are also available online, but in this case I would prefer the print. Call me old fashioned.

A number of publications like this still exist, but are getting fewer and fewer, unfortunately.

Now comes my question to you…

How much would you pay, if anything, for a print magazine, well edited and curated, showcasing quality work in the form of essays and photojournalism?

And just out of curiosity, what do you enjoy more on a photography magazine (generalist or specialized)? Leave your thoughts on the comments…

Flickr Stats

Just a small reminder that from today, June 1, Flickr will stop delivering historical statistics data (hits, refferers, etc) for photos and videos and allow access only to the previous 28 days.

If you’re interested in keeping thesa data, and if for nothing else at least for historical reasons you should, relevant files can be downloaded either in CSV or Excel format for each month up to May 2010. I still can’t understand why files have to be downloaded one at a time and there is no option for bulk download (at least that I could find), but ok, better than nothing.

But you have to act fast, the files are only available until today, June 1, 12pm PDT (8pm GMT).

Here goes this week’s selection of some of the photos that caught my attention of Flickr. I hope you enjoy them.

Don’t forget to go to the photo pages and leave your comments. I’m sure the photographers appreciate it.

Five Stars of the Week

At first this image can be overlooked without a second glance. After some time admiring it, I got caught on the tensions created by the irregular posture of the model, the unexpected and creative use of a helmet on what could be considered a nude portrait (definitely something you don’t see everyday) and the contrast between the model’s skin tone and the prop. A very creative and masterful capture. My Five Stars of the Week.

Not much time to write this one, so no comments, but here goes a list of worth reads (+ a fantastic video) from this past week:

• 10 Tips to making your first photo book – Beyond Megapixels
• 10 Tipps zur Hochzeitsfotografie (in German) – Kwerfeldein.de
• SoFoBoMo published – A Roadtrop Through SE Australia – Neil Creek
• Help!  I’ve Been Infringed! – Photo Attorney
• Styling: Pure Hell or a place to “shine” – Yuri Arcurs
• Creative Partnerships vs. Self-Motivation – Rasmus Rasmussen
• 5 Tips to Get Followed on Twitter – JMG-Galleries
• Letting Things Marinate – PhotoWalkPro
• Making Fine Art Prints: Signing – Epic Edits (check also the other posts of Brian’s series on Fine Art prints)
• How to Price Assignments: Price High and Give Your Clients an Experience – DSLRBlog

(via Thomas Hawk’s Digital Connection)