December 29, 2011

James Hetfield lashes out at paparazzi

Metallica front man James Hetfield hit out at members of the paparazzi in Uruguay over Christmas, allegedly hurling stones at the snappers after they failed to leave his vacationing family alone.

The rocker was taking a break with his wife, Francesca, and their kids in the Punta Del Este region of the country when he reportedly lost his temper with local photographers tailing him as he took a moped ride with his 11-year-old son Castor.

Hopping off the vehicle to confront the paparazzi, he exchanged words with the snappers and then appeared to pick up pieces of gravel and started throwing it in their direction.

December 28, 2011

CameraTrace Emails You If Your Stolen Camera is Detected On The Internet


Looking for a lost camera on the web by searching for its serial number in uploaded photos is nothing new (see Stolen Camera Finder), but GadgetTrak’s new CameraTrace service takes it one step further.

For a fee of $10 per camera, the service will actively monitor the Internet for your camera’s serial number. If it ever pops up in a photo uploaded to popular photo sharing services, you’ll get an email notification.

Back in August, GadgetTrak’s manual Serial Search helped a photographer recover $9000 in stolen gear.

CameraTrace.com

December 23, 2011

Where Have All the Photojournalists Gone?


In the middle of last month, Jack Womack, CNN's senior vice president of domestic news operations, sent around a memo to staffers. It was not the kind of memo people like to get right before the holidays. "We... spent a great deal of time analyzing how we utilize and deploy photojournalists across all of our locations in the U.S.," wrote Womack. "We looked at production demands, down time, and international deployments. We looked at the impact of user-generated content and social media, CNN iReporters and of course our affiliate contributions in breaking news. Consumer and pro-sumer technologies are simpler and more accessible. Small cameras are now high broadcast quality. More of this technology is in the hands of more people. After completing this analysis, CNN determined that some photojournalists will be departing the company."

In short, because it was receiving so many photo submissions via its user-generated iReport platform, CNN decided that it could afford to do away with 12 of its full-time photographers. The message at the root of the layoffs was big: In an age when anyone with an iPhone can tweet breaking news pictures, the photojournalist is going the way of the pterodactyl.

"If the game is to be in the right place at the right time, I can't win at that game, because there's only one of me," says Rob Bennett, a Wall Street Journal contract photographer. "I'm resigned to that." Millions of people with smartphones are now in constant possession of cameras. Nobody plans for a 9/11 attack or a Japanese tsunami, and when those things happen, it's not photojournalists who are there first, it's iPhone users. "The iPhone people are going to be there when the bomb goes off, when the house burns down, when the assassination goes down," says Bennett. "They’re going to crush that market, and there's nothing I can do about it."

Indeed, usage of the iPhone 4's camera is surging, according to data from picture-sharing site Flickr. The iPhone 4 is now the second most popular image maker on the site, second only to Nikon's D90 and ahead of every single Canon point-and-shoot. The smartphone camera is so popular, in fact, that even some photojournalists are using it. Michael Christopher Brown, a photographer who flew to Libya to cover the uprising in February, shot an entire series using his iPhone's Hipstamatic app after dropping and breaking his SLR camera. He was still shooting on his phone in April when an explosion sent shrapnel into his chest and killed two of his nearby colleagues, Chris Hondros and Tim Hetherington. "At this point I hesitate using a 'real' camera," Brown told Time magazine a few weeks after his injury. "Using a phone has brought my attention less to the craft and more to what I am photographing and why. So, the question becomes not where I see the phone taking my work, but where the work will take me."

The modern media consumer seems to demand that less attention be paid to the craft. A great photograph is still a great photograph, but a good photograph immediately dispersed through Twitter wins the day. Consider Stefanie Gordon, the woman from Hoboken who in May took what is probably the most famous photo of the Space Shuttle Endeavour's final mission. Gordon wasn't at the Kennedy Space Center with hundreds of other professional photographers, she was on a Delta flight to Palm Beach, where she snapped a few photos with her iPhone and then tweeted them. Within hours her pictures were on dozens of news sites; the Associated Press gave her $500 per, and the next day some of her Twitpics had made it to the front pages of newspapers. "It’s definitely a different experience and something I never expected," Gordon later told Newark’s Star-Ledger. "It was just the right place at the right time."

If any lucky person with a smartphone can now take pictures for newspapers, what makes a photojournalist a photojournalist in 2011?

"Photographers need to figure out what exactly separates them from pedestrians with nice cameras," says Channing Johnson, a photojournalist who spent time at Michigan's Midland Daily News and Vermont's Valley News before deciding to become a full-time wedding photographer. "If what makes a photographer better isn't clear, then I don't think photographer jobs should be preserved just because they have up until this point. People thought the profession of photography was threatened when autofocus was introduced, but photographers who lasted proved that knowing the technical elements of a camera was the least important part of their value."

Johnson says one thing professionals can offer that amateurs can't is ethics. Not changing the context of an event with a manipulative image, for instance, or not adding or removing anything with Photoshop. "A news organization is only as good as it's credibility," he says. "It's hard to control that when you are getting key content from strangers."

Darrow Montgomery, a staff photographer for D.C.'s alt weekly, the Washington City Paper, says that although photojournalism's decline is "inevitable," professional photographers should never be obsolete. "If the metric for successful image making is being at the right place at the right time, the professional is doomed based on the sheer number of warm bodies with image making whatnots," he says. "But if the metric is to get the best, most telling, evocative picture of a given situation, and to be able to do that repeatedly, then the professional will win almost every time."

Bennett, who is also an adjunct professor at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, was hired to replace a professor who gave up teaching photojournalism because "he said it felt like sending lambs to the slaughter." Bennett, 35, says that though the horizon seems dim for photojournalists, the students he sees aren't dispirited. "They want to learn everything they can," he says. "They're so hungry and excited. And they should be; CNN can do whatever they want. I’m not pissed at them firing photographers. They’re making their best business decision, and nobody is going to change that market force. I just continue to have faith that what I do and what my very skilled colleagues and students do is of value."

Overall, Bennett is "bullish" about the future of photojournalism. But toward the end of our conversation he opens up a bit. "Something you might find interesting is that as bullish as I am, I'm not sure how much longer I can go on being a photographer myself," he says. "I'm tired. It's hard out there right now, because my editors want to save money by not hiring that extra photographer each day, so they've got me doing the work of two people. I could have maybe done it 10 years ago, but now I'm just exhausted."

December 15, 2011

E.L. Woody: King of the paparazzi

Graying and grizzled, E.L. Woody still had the legs to stake out Arnold Schwarzenegger during the ex-governor's recent love child scandal. But all's not well in the 31-year reign of the self-described "King of the Paparazzi."

Loathed by some A-list artists and loved by audiences for his revelations about celebrities, Woody, 65, has long been one of Hollywood's most controversial players in the high-stakes business of fame.

Like most everyone else in mass communication, though -- from studios to newspapers to networks -- he and other paparazzi are not immune to the world's media revolution.

On the front lines or back alleys of celebrity photography since 1980, Edward L. Woody is a study in the changing fortunes of fame.
The goateed paparazzo with a Texas twang has been such a steady fixture in Hollywood that he has even portrayed himself on a couple of episodes of "Entourage," a popular cable TV series about a group of young men negotiating life in showbiz's fast lane.

Daring, combative and savvy to how stars and "paps" need each other, Woody possesses the ability to be confrontational yet sympathetic, particularly with celebrities looking for a break.

"They have to have the photogs. It feeds the ego. Every flash, every click feeds their careers," he says. "It feeds the supernova of fame."
He declares he's an old-school news photographer whose subjects happen to be celebs, but such newsman status hasn't kept him out of faceoffs or near fisticuffs. He has an "attack reel" featuring Sylvester Stallone, Tommy Lee, Drew Barrymore, Snoop Dog and Leonardo DiCaprio expressing antagonism or toward him or his two protégés.
"We're the sleazy paparazzi," Woody said mockingly. "We're the people that don't get invited (by celebrities), but we're the people that they depend on."

Times have been difficult for his small shop, where he employs two other shooters who do a lot of late-night club and street work.
While the digital age has brought a nearly insatiable demand for entertainment news, that hasn't translated into a bonanza for paparazzi, Woody says.

Major media companies are increasingly involved in the celebrity news business, building up their own paparazzi outfits, buying up smaller ones or paying less for independent images. The market is also flooded with amateurs with cameras -- including, Woody says, illegal immigrants -- who sell their work at near giveaway prices.

California has imposed a series of controversial laws restricting aggressive paparazzi, which some legal analysts say impinges on the First Amendment. Meanwhile, celebrities such as Kim Kardashian broker their own exclusive deals with media outlets -- cutting out paparazzi like Woody.

"The Kardashians, they got over $18 million for the exclusive rights to their wedding package," Woody said, referring to Kim Kardashian's recent marriage to NBA player Kris Humphries, which landed in divorce court after 72 days.

"That's where all the big money is."

The era of six-figure or even million-dollar moments -- such as when Sarah Ferguson, then-Duchess of York, was photographed topless with her toes being sucked by American financial adviser John Bryan in the 1990s -- is bygone, he said.

"Those prices don't exist any more," Woody said. "I haven't had a $10,000 sale for a still since Shia LeBeouf's wreck (three) years ago."

Woody's finances have also been stressed by a battle with colon cancer in 2008 and a subsequent infection. His Los Angeles house, which doubles as his office, is facing foreclosure, and he is considering downsizing to a smaller residence.

"It's a tough racket, and it becomes a tougher racket with people dumping photos at such low prices. The paydays are getting smaller and smaller and smaller," he said.

Woody also resents what he calls "the encroachment of the networks on celebrity news."

"They are supposed to be doing real news. There's plenty of stuff out there that's important to the public, but they are filling up programs with news about Lindsay Lohan."

Changing public standards are driving such vagaries of fame, said media psychologist Stuart Fischoff.

"When The New York Times is covering the same story as the National Enquirer and the tabloids are covering, then you know that things have changed," said Fischoff, senior editor of the online Journal of Media Psychology and a retired psychology professor at California State University at Los Angeles.

"The rules have changed and the sensibility has changed, and the standard of taste has changed. It's kind of a moral anarchy," he said. "[The paparazzi] have to worry about that because they made their living being the source of information about the underbelly of society and the deviations that were taking place.

"Now, all of sudden, what was a deviation is normative, and what was the underbelly is now the face of whatever the celebrity wants to do. The dark side becomes the light side, the shadow becomes the persona," Fischoff said. "It's that kind of reversal of fortunes which is problematic for the paparazzi."

Ever since Princess Diana was killed in Paris during a 1997 car chase by photographers, paparazzi also have been targeted by an array of laws in California -- a world capital of entertainment -- that bear down on aggressive behavior.

Under the most recent law -- the third in the last five years alone -- the state imposed additional penalties for photographers who drive recklessly in pursuit of a picture or who swarm or create "false imprisonment" around a celebrity.

The 2010 law was sponsored by U.S. Rep. Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) when she was in the California Assembly. Actress Jennifer Anniston and other celebrities contacted her about how paparazzi conduct was becoming a major safety concern, Bass said.

A recent legal analysis of the new legislation said it violates the First Amendment and that existing laws already address any aggressive behavior by paparazzi.

"In taking steps further than these general laws, lawmakers seek to save the people from their 'appetite to learn about even the most mundane details of the celebrities' lives' and, in the process, trample on the First Amendment," according to the analysis, which appeared in the Loyola of Los Angeles Entertainment Law Review following a recent Loyola Law School forum on the law.

Bass disagreed.

"This law was in no way intended to infringe on the First Amendment rights of the press, but rather impose a penalty on photographers whose motive is to exploit celebrities using devious practices," she told CNN in a written response to questions.

"The tactics paparazzi use to obtain photos of celebrities are often careless and create a severe risk to the public," she wrote. "The paparazzi began engaging in high-speed pursuits and causing near accidents merely to take photos, more recently with actress Tori Spelling who was involved in an accident due to the paparazzi's over-aggressive conduct."
As one might expect, Woody is a fierce critic of the anti-paparazzi laws and the celebrities who seek them.

"People think that the paparazzi, while individually may be unsavory, their entire product is believable," he says. "It has veracity because they know we're not going to go out and make something up."

His work, he says, represents "the voice of the people."

Woody's office walls are covered with a proud mess of newspaper and tabloid clippings bearing his photographs of Charlie Sheen, Brad Pitt, Elizabeth Taylor, George Clooney, Paris Hilton, among others. Two computer monitors flash similar scoops.

Sitting behind his desk, the longtime paparazzo speaks with bravado. He boasts a treasured archive and says he's the oldest pap still working the Hollywood night scene.

In fact, his best work is done at 2 a.m. -- when the bars close and celebrities are likely to get into trouble, he says.

"We're getting the news like the way real reporters used to do it," Woody said. "I'll tell you, we got beat up and harassed and cops put on us and security guards put on us, but we finally got respect when guys like Mark Wahlberg realized what value we are and put out the word to their buddies."

Wahlberg, an actor, is executive producer of "Entourage."
While Wahlberg wasn't available for comment, Beverly Hills public relations specialist Elliot Mintz says he always encourages his celebrity clients to speak with Woody, whom he described as the oldest and longest working paparazzo in Hollywood.

"He doesn't spin or trade out a story. He's old guard," said Mintz, 66, who worked as a Los Angeles radio show host and KABC entertainment reporter in the 1960s and '70s.

Woody isn't like some paparazzi who "are out there to get the mean money-shot, which is out to humiliate" a celebrity, Mintz said. "That's their purpose, how can we make those people look bad. That's not Woody's purpose."

Credit Woody's work ethic and longevity to his Green Beret background in the Vietnam War, where he served from 1968 to 1969 as a special forces medic and later a platoon and company commander who helped train 1,700 Montagnard mercenaries, a hill tribe that fought alongside U.S. and South Vietnamese forces.
It was during his tour in Vietnam that he learned photography from comrade and Army photographer Robert Skinner, who taught him the finer points on a Leica single lens reflex camera and eventually joined Woody on the 5th Mobile Strike Force. Woody also attributes his interest to his father, Burtis, a World War II veteran who later joined the Air Force and trained as a photographer.

After Vietnam, Woody held odd jobs and toured the United States on his Triumph motorcycle, shooting photos for Easy Rider magazine. By 1979, he moved to the California hub of celebrities -- Malibu -- to edit and write in Easy Rider's offices there.

While also working security and production jobs at a Malibu music venue called the Trancas Roadhouse, he began taking pictures of visiting celebs and musicians: Nick Nolte, Don Johnson, Kris Kristofferon, Ali McGraw, Eddie Van Halen, Bob Seger.

Hundreds of Woody's photographs covered the walls of the roadhouse, and soon he was such good friends with actor and fellow motorcycle enthusiast Jan Michael Vincent that Woody was taking his photo for a People magazine spread in 1983 and living on Vincent's Malibu ranch down the road from the Easy Rider office.

After living on friends' couches or house-sitting in Malibu, he moved to Hollywood in 1989 and continued his celebrity photography.

Woody stopped using film in 2004. Today, he says, the real money is in video. He and his two photographers now tote hand-held video cameras.
"Have you ever noticed that paparazzis have never been proved to be liars. Why? Because video tells the story," Woody said.

As one of the first paparazzi to use video -- he insists he was the first, in 1993 -- he has a library of 100,000 video clips of celebrities, plus more than a million still photographs.

His PopTvDotCom YouTube site summarizes his daily scoops as a promotional catalog. His clients include TV entertainment news broadcasts, newspapers and magazines, which he declined to name for competitive reasons.

On a recent afternoon, one of his two protégés, Steve Brodersen, 40, was on a routine hunt for another video scoop.

Brodersen looked like he could be an undercover narc on a TV police drama: He sported a long beard, long hair to his shoulders, wrap-around sunglasses and a black bowler.

After making the rounds in West Hollywood and Beverly Hills, along Melrose Avenue and Sunset Boulevard, Brodersen had no luck.
Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes weren't home. Neither was Christina Aguilera.

He drove to Coldwater Canyon Park, where Heidi Klum, Jessica Alba and Gwen Stefani often take their children.

Instead, he found a knot of fellow paparazzi standing outside their parked Priuses, killing time.

Brodersen drives a Prius too. After 20 years as a pap, he began driving the hybrid to save money when gas hit $5 a gallon a few years ago. He was spending $100 on a tank of gas for his Tahoe every two and a half days. Now he drops $30 in the tank every six days.

His paychecks just aren't what they used to be, either.

He remembers making $15,000 a month a few years ago. Now it's $3,000 to $4,000. He attributes the trend to the recent recession.

For example, many tipsters now sell information to everyone but claim they are passing along an exclusive.

Why do they stretch the truth? They need cash.

"I'm in it right now because I'm still making money and I like doing it," Brodersen said. "I'd rather do this than sit behind a desk."

Later that evening, an example of the rise of reality shows played out when Woody's other lensman, Henry Trappler, 46, was discretely stationed under a canopy outside CBS Studios waiting for the principals of "Dancing With The Stars" to exit.

The contestants and dancers are big sellers: TV outlets just can't get enough of the video shot by Woody and his protégés of the performers hitting the clubs and restaurants after the show.

Trappler had a fairly productive evening: He collected footage of host Tom Bergeron and pro dancer Tristan MacManus ambling outside the studio. Trappler was the only one peppering them with questions on the sidewalk.
He had to wait 90 minutes for his next target: Kristina Kraus, a hair stylist in a tight dress and heels from Orange County, California, who's on the dating reality show "Sweet Home Alabama" and prefers the nickname "O'C-licious."

Who?

It didn't really matter.

She and a friend had just walked out of a restaurant near the studios, and Trappler asked her flattering questions about how she liked the show.
Woody, however, tried to bait her with questions about whether she thought the Kardashians had any particular talent.

"Kim has one song," Kraus responded. "They exude this glamazon lifestyle."

That wasn't the quote that Woody sought.

"She's nothing to us," Woody said of Kraus. "But I'll get my dig into the Kardashians every chance I get."

December 9, 2011

Judge: Blogger Is Not a Journalist

Woman ordered to pay $2.5M for online defamation

In what could end up being very bad news for outspoken bloggers across America, a federal judge has decided that a blogger was not acting as a journalist when she accused an Oregon lawyer of acting unethically and illegally as a trustee in a bankruptcy hearing.

The judge denied Crystal Cox's request for legal protections customarily offered to journalists, and a jury subsequently ordered her to pay $2.5 million for defaming lawyer Kevin Padrick and his company. The judge said there was no evidence that Cox—who describes herself as an "investigative blogger"—had media credentials, an affiliation with any "recognized news entity," or that she had made any attempt to tell both sides of the story.

The judge's ruling displays a "cramped and myopic" view of journalism, the director of the University of North Carolina center for media law and policy tells Reuters.

"There is no accepted definition of journalism or who is a journalist," he says.

"Judges have wisely shied away from wading into that debate unless they absolutely have to." Cox plans to appeal.

December 6, 2011

Katy Perry Photos at Center of $3 Million Paparazzi Showdown

Celebrity photography agency Mavrix has gone after yet another company in its tenth copyright infringement lawsuit in the past two years.

 

Katy Perry is at the center of $3 million legal showdown between celebrity photo agency Mavrix and CraveOnline Media, a company it accuses of pilfering copyrighted images of the singer and profiting off of them on its websites.

It is the tenth such copyright infringement lawsuit that the company has filed in the past two years against defendants such as MSNBC's website (which was eventually dropped) and The Daily Mail of London.

Mavrix accuses CraveOnline's Idontlikeyouinthatway website of reproducing, publicly distributing and publicly displaying "copyright protected photographs belonging to Mavrix on numerous occasions" without its permission, writes Courthouse News Service.

Mavrix claims it commands as much as $100,000 for a celeb snapshot and that by illegally using their copyright-protected photos, CraveOnline and its subsidiaries, "have driven massive traffic to their website in part due to the presence of the sought after and searched-for celebrity images.
"As such, content websites may effectively monetize the content on their websites by securing eyeballs on the sites which translates to ad revenue; this is in distinction to traditional pre-Internet print media who could only monetize content by selling it to end users."

Mavrix seeks $3 million in damages for copyright infringement and an injunction to stop CraveOnline from using its photos in the future.
In a similar case in Oct. 2010, Mavrix sued Fanpop, the operator of a network of online fan clubs, for posting 21 of its photographs showing a bikini-clad Perry on vacation in a bikini. That case was settled for an undisclosed amount.

Litigious-happy Mavrix was also involved in a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling this past August which gave the go-ahead for these sorts of claims to be filed in California courts. The court found that because Mavrix's legal targets focused "on the California-centered celebrity and entertainment industries,” it naturally had a connection with California and thus, the paparazzi shop got permission to bring lawsuits in the state.

November 25, 2011

Paparazzi reluctant to have the media focus turned on them

One of the UK's biggest paparazzi agencies has itself become the target of a media frenzy after a week in which a succession of witnesses at the Leveson Inquiry turned the spotlight on to those behind the camera.

Big Pictures, notorious for its employees' dogged pursuit of celebrities, was in a state of lockdown yesterday after being named this week in celebrities' complaints to the inquiry about alleged invasions of their privacy. It may yet see paparazzi asked to contribute to the inquiry on press ethics and practice.

Staff at the agency, which is managed by the self-styled "Mr Paparazzi" Darryn Lyons, pictured, were under instruction not to answer any queries from the press – an unusual position given their normal relationship with the print media. Photographer and agency chairman Mr Lyons is "filming in Australia", a spokeswoman said, and will not be returning to the UK or be available to comment until April.

Harry Potter author J K Rowling told the judicial inquiry how she had taken legal proceedings against Big Pictures after photographs of her walking with her 18-month-old son appeared in three newspapers.

A photograph showing her son's face was published in the Sunday Express, despite assurances from the agency that the picture would not be reproduced after an initial publication in a Scottish newspaper. Big Pictures defended its claim and paid damages only after a Court of Appeal decision ruled in Rowling's favour three years later.

Other celebrities this week gave evidence against paparazzi, complaining of incidents of intrusion which sometimes bordered on physical intimidation. Hugh Grant told how he had to seek an injunction against photographers staking out the house of Tinglan Hong, the mother of his child, and Sienna Miller described being hounded by as many as 15 photographers.

Industry insiders say that demand from the public for celebrity scandal has flooded the streets of London with photographers, crowding the market. Snappers under pressure from their editors, their agencies and also financial imperatives have used more intrusive methods.

Sienna Miller told the inquiry on Thursday: "As a 21-year-old, I was followed down a dark street by 10 to 15 men with cameras. Because they had cameras, it was all apparently legal, but take away the cameras and all you have is a group of men following a woman."

The irony of celebrity witnesses having to pass by photographers outside the Royal Courts of Justice on their way in and out of the inquiry has not been lost on some observers. The inquiry reached an agreement with photographers before witnesses arrived to remain in a "pen" and a spokesman said that they, the press pack, had been very well behaved.

November 18, 2011

Kevin and Jennifer Mazur Injured in Car Crash That Kills Woman

A Lindenhurst couple sustained injuries after a car driven by a Selden woman hit the couple's SUV early Friday morning at Montauk Highway and Great Neck Road in Copiague, police said.

Suffolk County Police said Kevin Mazur, 50, of Lindenhurst, was driving his 2007 Cadillac Escalade eastbound on Montauk Highway just east of Great Neck Road at 2:40 a.m. when he was struck by a 2007 Chevrolet Cobalt.

Selden resident Janine Colarossi, 22, the driver of the Chevrolet, was traveling westbound and veered into Mazur’s lane, according to First Precinct detectives who are investigating the crash.

All three were transported to Good Samaritan Hospital in West Islip, where the Selden woman was later pronounced dead.

Mazur, and his wife, Jennifer Mazur, 37, who was a passenger in his vehicle, were also taken to Good Samaritan for treatment of non-life-threatening injuries, poiice added.

The SCPD impounded both vehicles for safety checks, and the First Precinct's investigation is continuing.

Detectives are asking anyone who might have witnessed the crash to contact the First Squad at 631-854-8152.

November 1, 2011

Demi Moore allegedly attacks photographer

Demi Moore wouldn’t let a little thing like the break down of her marriage get in the way of having a good time this Halloween.

According to US Weekly, the 48-year-old mother of three was in a "festive mood" at actor Mike Meldman's Halloween bash in Beverly Hills on Friday, partying with the likes of Cameron Diaz, Eli Roth and Todd Phillips.


"She was having fun, [and] she drank," a source told the website. "But she wasn't the belle of the ball. Everyone at the party was drunk!"

Everyone except her husband that is. Perhaps Kutcher, who spent last Thursday trying to avoid the press at a GQ party in NYC, was scared of psychical retaliation from his reportedly jilted wife.

Earlier that same day, Moore was involved in an altercation with an over-zealous photographer, TMZ reports.

Moore was leaving Jessica Nail Clinic in West Hollywood's Sunset Plaza after getting a manicure when she was approached by the paparazzi.

X17’s photographer claims Moore screamed obscenities at them, though an eyewitness painted a different picture, telling GossipCop.com that an extremely aggressive photographer "physically jumped in front of [Moore], basically entrapping her, pushing his body and camera into her so she couldn't walk or move."

The photographer has since filed a battery report, claiming Moore struck him as he tried to shoot her, a law enforcement official told TMZ. According to the site, the West Hollywood Sheriff's Department will investigate.

October 18, 2011

Canon U.S.A. Introduces The New Canon EOS-1D X Digital SLR Camera



Canon has announced a new DSLR today combining the 1D and 1Ds line of DSLRs into a single camera: the EOS-1D X.

This beastly DSLR is an 18-megapixel jack of all trades. It’s full frame, but still shoots 14fps using 61 autofocus points and a 252-zone metering system. ISO can be boosted up to a whopping 204,000.

There’s a large 3.2-inch LCD screen on the back, and a futuristic optical viewfinder that offers things such as a dual-axis electronic level and an on-demand grid.

For remote shooting and file transferring, there’s a handy built-in wired LAN connection. In terms of video, camera can also do 1080p recording at 24/25/30fps, along with 720p at 50/60fps.

The 1D X will cost $6,800 when it’s released in March 2012.

Read the press release from Canon HERE.

October 17, 2011

The Self Esteem Act: Parents Pushing to Pass Anti-Photoshop Laws in the US

A Lancome advertisement featuring Julia Roberts caused a stir back in July after it was banned by the UK for being too “Photoshopped”. Now a couple in the US are trying to bring stricter regulation to the United States. Seth and Eva Matlins, founders of Off Our Chests, have started the Self Esteem Act:
We’re asking for support to pass federal legislation requiring advertising and editorial that’s meaningfully changed the human form through photoshopping or airbrushing to carry “Truth in Advertising” labels. The labels will simply state that the models shown have been altered. No judgments, no morality, just clarity.
[...] Photoshopping, airbrushing, digital manipulation isn’t the issue. The issue is too many look at these images and theink they should look LIKE these images. And they can’t…because they’re not real.
So let’s call a duck a duck and modified picture a modified picture. All we’re asking is that if you do it – you tell us you did.
They’re currently trying to raise 10,000 signatures for the petition, which can be signed here.