New home page image from the Lewis/Gehry portfolio.

It’s been an odd fall.  The election, the economy, the weather. The leaves disappeared inside of a week and the temperatures dropped to the 20′s and 30′s skipping over the 40′s and 50′s.  Much of my work was wrapped up in longer projects involving lots of retouching and computer prep or portrait assignments that are embargoed and won’t see the light of day until first published.  Well, today, one of the larger assignments came to fruition, my work photographing Frank Gehry’s newest building – Lewis Library at Princeton University.

I had posted a few images on the blog previously, here and here, but now I can let ‘em rip.  A few images follow and I’ve put a complete gallery on my web site.

Lewis Library as seen through Richard Serra's "The Hedgehog and the Fox"

Southeast Elevation

North Elevation, Main Entrance

Newfield, NJ, November 8, 2008

I got one of those emails the other day that makes you shake your head and wonder.  It reminded me of a couple of others I’ve received over the past few years.

jon,

I am writing to say I attend the Rhode Island School

of Phototography and am also a amatuer [sic] photographer

like yourself. I was wondering does your teacher tell

you that your pictures are too “cliche”? I take the

same type pictures and thats [sic] what I have been getting.

sincerely,

mike

What do you see here?

All Images this post: © 2008 M. E. J. Newman

A butterfly?  A chicken by Peter Max?  The results of the 2008 Presidential Elections?  If you answered the last option you are correct.  How so?  Here’s how.

Take the 2008 election results as normally presented.

Hmmm… more red than blue.  How can that be?  Didn’t Barack Obama win? The problem is a traditional map ignores popluation density.  Let’s rescale the map based on popluation.

Look’s goofy but it’s a more accurate representation in comparing red states to blue.  It’s easier to see how Barack Obama won.  But no one state is ever 100% democratic or 100% republican.  In fact, it’s rare for a county to be 100% of one party.  So, let’s start with a county based map and finesse it by using red, blue and shades of purple to indicate how a county’s vote was divided.

Now, let’s factor in population density by county and voila:

Odd looking but it is a more accurate representation of how everyone in the lower 48 voted last week.

For more information:  Mark Newman’s Web Page

If you are interested in how information is displayed I also recommend Edward Tufte’s classic book, Envisioning Information.

I got word this week that an annual report I worked on early this year just received an honorable mention in the 2008 MarCom awards competition.  The MarComs are an initiative of the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals.  My work was in Mathematica Policy Research’s 40th Anniversary Report and it involved photographing twenty-eight people in Princeton, NJ, Washington, DC and Philadelphia, PA.

Here are a few of the images:

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Photo District News, November 2008 Issue

Actual Cover on the Left, True Cover from Page One on the Right

I received my November Photo District News today and was immediately confused.  It was underneath some mail in our front entryway.  We have a mail slot in our door so all mail falls to the floor.  Wiping the mail aside I saw the PDN logo, the date, the magazine’s bar code and the USPS mailing label but it looked to be a Canon ad.  Hmmm… must be the back side.  I flipped it over. Nope, that’s a Leaf ad on the other side.  That’s odd.  Maybe it’s a special advertising issue?  Open it up, nope again, it’s a regular issue but the cover is not on the cover.  The actual cover is an ad; it’s not an insert, a tear-away ad nor on a different paper stock to separate it from the magazine.  The cover is an ad.  The true cover is on what would be page one.  What?