Author: Thomas Hawk

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Was the Iconic Shepherd Fairey Obama Hope Image Taken by Freelance Photographer Mannie Garcia?

Was the Iconic Shepherd Fairey Obama Hope Image Taken by Freelance Photographer Mannie Garcia?I shot the above photo of the HOPE posters back when Shepherd Fairey had a show in town late last year and plastered San Francisco with various images of his.

Tom Gralish over at the Philadelphia Inquirer has a blog post out today where he claims that the iconic and famous Obama HOPE Image, which now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery and is credited as being created by artist Shepherd Fairey, may have actually been taken directly from a photograph taken by Freelance Photographer Mannie Garcia. Although I’m not aware of Garcia ever being attributed as the source of this image, Gralish did a great bit of his own detective work to come up with this conclusion. I have not seen any comments anywhere yet from Garcia on the image which will likely go down as one of the greatest and historical works of art of the past century.

Interestingly enough, it also appears that the original photo was not taken at some philosophical moment where Obama was contemplating the future of our great nation or delivering some great speech, but rather when he was probably listening to either Republican Senator Sam Brownback or possibly actor George Clooney.

From Gralish:

“The photo was made by freelance photographer Mannie Garcia who was on assignment for the AP in April of 2006, where a National Press Club news advisory alerted the media that, Academy Award Winner George Clooney will address National Press Club on hisrecent visit to war-torn Darfur and will release video footage from his trip to Sudan. Clooney will be joined by U.S. Senators Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), co-sponsors of S. 1462, The Darfur Peace and Accountability Act, and co-sponsors of amendments to increase funding? for peacekeeping operations in Sudan.”

So, it looks like the image that poster artist Shepard Fairey said looked presidential, telling the Washington Post: “He is gazing off into the future, saying, ‘I can guide you,’ ” actually showed our new president listening to George Clooney. Or, probably more likely, fellow Senator Brownback.”

Richard Prince would be proud.

In related news today, it was also uncovered that the famous “Joebama” poster, created by artist Joe Reifer, interestingly enough, also was lifted from a photograph of Reifer taken by yours truly in 2007 at the Lucky JuJu Pinball Gallery. 😉 (If you’d like to create your own Obama Hopeish poster from your own image you can do that here).

Update: It seems, from Garcia’s website, that representatives of Fairey’s yesterday confirmed that the original image did in fact come from one of Garcia’s photographs:

The Danziger Gallery which represents the artistic works of Mr. Fairey contacted me on the 21st of January 2009 to inform me that my photograph was in fact the basis for the artwork that has become better know now as the “HOPE” and “PROGRESS” posters., thanks Claytonia!

Update 2: NPR has a podcast audio interview with Fairey where he discusses this image from yesterday here. Thanks, David!

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Zoom In Online Launching New Photography Video Show Viewfinders

The video above is a sneak preview clip of a new photography video series being produced by Zoom In Online. Zoom In Online is an excellent photography news and resource site and I’m excited to learn today about the new video series that they will be launching.

For their first video episode, Zoom In Online interviews photojournalist Keith Bedford. Bedford covered the Obama campaign from its beginning all the way through to election night as a professional photojournalist. Some of the images of the campaign in the sneak preview video above are fantastic, really strong reportage.

The new show officially premieres on February 1st. Congrats Sophia on the new series!

I love seeing more professionally created photography video series showing up online. My Pal Marc Silbur also recently just launched his new video series Photoshow as well. I blogged about that a few weeks ago. I did an interview with Marc while shooting the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco that you will be able to see there in the near future.

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10 Reasons Why You Should Sign Up for FriendFeed

10 Reasons Why You Should Sign Up for FriendFeed

I haven’t blogged a post specifically about FriendFeed recently, even though it is probably the number one place where I spend time on the web these days, and thought I’d take a moment to put together a quick list of 10 reasons why you should sign up for FriendFeed.

Many of you are already on FriendFeed, but I’m surprised that so many of my photography friends especially still have not signed up for the service yet. Why do I want you to sign up for FriendFeed? Because I want to make sure that I’m seeing all of your great photographs, blog posts, tweets, etc.

On with the list.

1. Because it’s easy to sign up for FriendFeed and even if you don’t use the service, signing up for it allows your work better exposure on one of the fastest growing communities on the web. Signing up for FriendFeed takes less than 5 minutes and very quickly you can link your Flickrstream, Zooomrstream, Facebook account, Twitter account, blog, etc. and have all of this information aggregated for your friends in one place.

Even if *you* don’t use FriendFeed, building a FriendFeed profile allows other people who do the ability to see your stuff. I used to go to Flickr/Zooomr etc. to see my friends/contacts/etc. photos. Now I browse them through FriendFeed. If you are not on FriendFeed, there is a good chance that I and lots of others are not seeing your work. Even if FriendFeed is not for you, sign up for it any way so that people can see your stuff.

2. Because by signing up for FriendFeed, your work will get better exposure across the internet. FriendFeed was built by a bunch of ex-Google guys — some of the very early Google guys. These guys know how Google works. They know how to make sure that FriendFeed content is indexed for search engines.

When you search for "Thomas Hawk" on the Googler what comes up? My blog, my flickr account and then my FriendFeed account. My FriendFeed account is indexed above my Zooomr account, my digg account, my Twitter account, my Facebook profile, Linked In, etc. It’s ahead of everything except my blog and Flickr. Same goes for individual posts that I have linked at FriendFeed. By having a FriendFeed account you make sure that your content is better indexed into search engines.

3. Because FriendFeed is a superior platform for monitoring your Flickr and Zooomr contact photos. When you watch your friends/contacts photos on FriendFeed instead of Flickr/Zooomr you see *all* of the photos that they upload, not just the last five. You can also create custom lists. You can, for instance, create a list of only your friends who are neon photographers, or graffiti photographs, or San Francisco photographers, or… well you get the idea. You can customize your friends/contacts into more categories letting you better watch their photography by your own custom photography channels.

What’s more, FriendFeed not only includes all of your contacts photos in their photostream, it also includes their faves as well. Over the past six months, some of the best photography I’ve seen has come from other photos that my friends are faving. Your friends have great taste. This is a better way to monitor both their photography and the photography that they love and like.

4. Because FriendFeed is going to be big and when you sign up for it 6 months from now or a year from now you might not be able to get the domain there you want.

Remember when gmail first came out (hint, some of the guys that built Gmail for Google are behind FriendFeed). And remember when everybody rushed there to get the best email address. I sure wish I would have. Because then I might have been able to get thomashawk(at)gmail.com. Instead, by the time I got around to signing up for gmail, thomashawk(at)gmail.com was already taken — so now I’ve got the pain in the ass gmail address of thomashawk22(at)gmail.com. I wish I had signed up for gmail earlier and secured my email address. Fortunately I signed up for both Twitter and FriendFeed early and was able to secure both http://twitter.com/thomashawk at Twitter and http://friendfeed.com/thomashawk at FriendFeed.

Even if you don’t want to use FriendFeed today, you might want to in the future and you’ll be happy you got your custom url. Since signing up for FriendFeed is free and easy, at a bare minimum you should try to secure the best domain name you can for yourself there here and now today.

5. Because if you like Twitter, you’ll love FriendFeed. With FriendFeed you can follow your Twitter Friends and even filter to only see your Twitter friends if you want. What’s more if your friends have a particular good tweet, it will get promoted to the top of your screen. If you are tired of seeing a Twitter you can hide it. Earlier this week FriendFeed even built a tool that will automatically import all of your Twitter friends directly into your FriendFeed account. Using the FriendFeed settings you can also have your FriendFeed posts automatically post back to your Twitter account.

Earlier last week when Apple announced that Steve Jobs was stepping down for medical leave, I was one of the first people on the internet to post this on Twitter. But guess what, I didn’t post it on Twitter at all. I posted it on FriendFeed and instantaneously it was posted to my Twitter account. Look at the time stamps on both posts, 1:37pm, the exact same.

6. Because FriendFeed is a *kick ass* search engine. Want to see a bunch of interesting articles about photography? Just search for "photography" on FriendFeed. What a great bunch of interesting stories and articles on photography. Try a search on anything else that you’re interested in. Apple, Microsoft, Obama, TiVo, whatever. Search is really good on FriendFeed today (remember it was built by ex-Google guys).

But search is going to get even better down the road at FriendFeed. Social Search is the future of search and being able to filter your search results by your friends/family as well as community consensus using "best of day" sort of features will make FriendFeed one of the best search engines on the internet. More and more I’m finding great stories to blog about using search on FriendFeed.

7. Because you can hide anything that you don’t want to see on the site. Have you ever been on a site and wished that you didn’t have to see a thread anymore. I know in some Flickr Groups there are threads that I wish I could hide. Especially threads that get bumped over and over and over again. If I don’t care about the latest debate, or the latest silly thread I have to just keep ignoring it. Not at FriendFeed. A simple hide will ensure that you never see that thread again. You can not only hide individual threads, you can hide threads by person, by source, etc.

A lot of people that are not used to FriendFeed tell me that they like it but that it’s too noisy or busy. That they see too much stuff that they don’t want to see. Learn to manage this by hiding content. Very quickly you’ll have a stream customized exactly to what you want to see.

8. Because FriendFeed lets you get rid of your RSS reader. Are you using an RSS reader? Is it clogged full of uninteresting content? At FriendFeed the most liked/commented/interesting stories get bumped to the top. If you follow a feed by someone who is not on FriendFeed yet? No problem. Just make an "imaginary" friend for them and you’ll see that stuff too.

Having your RSS feed filtered by human editors makes for a far more interesting experience. I abandoned my Google Reader account about 8 months ago and haven’t looked back since.

I think FriendFeed still needs to build a tool to let you import your OPML file directly into FriendFeed and match it up with existing accounts and imaginary friends to make this even better, but at least for me FriendFeed has completely replaced my RSS reader and I consistently get to read and consume better and more interesting content filtered by my social network.

9. Because the site is technically excellent, very rarely has downtime and loads very fast. There’s something about a fast loading consistent site that I love. I’ve clicked on FriendFeed pages tens of thousands of times and have rarely had any trouble at all. I find the site technically to be faster and more consistent than Flickr, or Twitter, or really any of the other sites where I spend a fair amount of time.

10. Because there is a *great* community of interesting people on FriendFeed. Community on any social network is important. And FriendFeed has one of the best communities around. I’m not going to name names, but there are so many interesting people doing interesting things on FriendFeed engaging in conversations every day. Jump right in and get to know them. They are a friendly and welcoming bunch… well, for the most part. They are funny, interesting, unique people. Sometimes conversations can get heated. Sometimes people say things that they shouldn’t have. But I find it always engaging. The developers behind the site are also very active in the community.

So there you go. I want to see your work on FriendFeed. If you sign up to FriendFeed, or if you’re already on FriendFeed and I’m not already following you, your photos, etc. there, please leave me a comment on this post with your FriendFeed link so that I can add you as a contact there. If you want to add me as a contact on FriendFeed you can do that here.

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Drobo Requires Your Serial Number to Access Their Help Forums? That’s Really Lame

Drobo Requires Your Serial Number to Access Their Help Forums, WTF

So yesterday on one of my four drobos all of a sudden one of the lights went red. Usually this means that the drive may have gone bad (I’ve replaced one already). When I went to check on the drobo in the dashboard though, in this case it was showing that a drive was not in that bay when there clearly was one. So I took the drive out and reinserted it back into the drobo and the drobo recognized the drive again. But after I did this drobo began the process of re "protecting my data." The drobo messages reminded me that I could continue to use my files while this protection was going on but that I shouldn’t remove any drives during the process. I had an estimated time of recovery of about 32 hours. I love my drobos by the way and have been very happy with the job they do storing my photos.

So this morning I got up as I always do and went to upload some photos to flickr (my to be uploaded photos are kept on this drobo). Unfortunately, when trying to access that folder I got the following error message: "The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error." And so that’s why you’re seeing this screenshot this morning instead of new photos from me.

It looks like the drobo is still in the process of recovering (it says 22 hours remaining though and I feel like it should be further along as it’s been about 16 hours already) so I don’t want to try and reboot it or anything — but I can’t access any of my photos on this unit which is worrying me a little bit this morning.

So the first place that I like to try to go to start troubleshooting things like this is in community help forums. I often find that simple searches in community forums can often help you find the answers that you are looking for. Basically what I want to know is this. If I reboot my drobo during the recovery process (because I think it is stuck and has hanged somehow) will I risk losing data.

The problem with drobo’s community forum though is that you can’t read it without first registering with the site by giving them your email address and clicking on a confirmation email back from them. Personally I hate those kind of policies. Half the time the confirmation email ends up in your spam folder, sometimes you never get it, other times it takes an hour to get a simple email confirm. But because I need the help I went through that registration process. When I got into the system I checked off that I didn’t want their newsletter or other spamy sort of things and then went to upload my avatar (which I could not because I got an I/O device error on the same drobo). It asked me for my flickr ID which I thought was kind of cool and I put in thomashawk but got an error saying that they didn’t recognize my flickr ID. Oh well.

So I’m all ready to finally access the support forums but when I try to go into them I get still another screen denying me access. This time it wants me to put my *serial number* into the drobo system before I can have access. WTF? Are you kidding me? Why in God’s name should I be required to enter a serial number in order to access a help forum? That’s about the lamest thing I’ve ever seen. What, are they worried that people that don’t really own drobos are going to troll the forums talking about how to fix drobos? I can think of no reason why I would need to enter a serial number in order to access these forums.

So that’s were I am now. I crawled under my desk to try to see if I could ready the serial number anywhere on the back of my drobo but I can’t. So after I finish this blog post I’m going to need to go get a flashlight and crawl around under my desk some more to try and see if I can read it anywhere on the unit. Wherever it is printed it must be pretty small. Hopefully I actually get into the forums and hopefully I’m able to get this drobo back online at some point today and upload some new photos to Flickr so you don’t have to keep seeing this lame screenshot above.

Update: it turns out the serial number is actually on the bottom of the drobo on a sticker. I lifted one up while under my desk and got it and am now in the forums. Hopefully I get this one resolved soon.

Update: I searched in the forum and found this thread. which seemed to indicate that if a protection was hanging that I could shut down the drobo and restart it. So I did that and now all of my data is back. The drobo is no longer protecting my data though and the top bay (where there is a 750GB Seagate drive) is showing red and empty again. I think I may be having issues with this drive and will probably need to replace it. I’ll order another drive today and see if this fixes the problem. It’s great that I was able to find an answer to my question in the community support forum, but I still think it’s really lame that you have to enter a serial number to access it. I can understand the email verification to protect against spam, but even here I’d think they should let you browse, search and read the forums just not post to them without verification. But the extra step to require a serial number is lame. It prevents people who don’t own drobos from researching them. The less barriers to information the better I say.