TIME magazine’s new cover story looks at the life of Nobel Prize-winner Aung Sang Suu Kyi since Burma’s military regime released her from house arrest in November. TIME.com has a video interview with photographer Platon, who describes the lengths he and reporter Hannah Beech had to go to in order to meet with their subject inside Burma, where most foreign journalists have been banned.  His tale involves disguises, a car chase, and a meeting with a woman who is revered as a heroine both inside her country and around the world.

Also on TIME.com you can see some of Platon’s color and black-and-white portraits of Suu Kyi.

© Vogue/Photo by Mikael Jansson

Condé Nast CEO Chuck Townsend told staff at the publishing company last week that its magazine business is doing well despite the recession, and ends 2010 with 3,000 more ad pages than its competitors. Townsend announced the success in his year-end memo to staff, according to MediaWeek.

Photographers who shoot for Condé Nast publications–those who don’t have lucrative contracts with the publisher, that is—know that the company hasn’t shared these economic windfalls with its contributors. Their day rates are low, their contracts demand extensive re-use of images and they don’t want to pay extra for additional content created for their iPad editions.  But photographers aren’t the only ones who sacrifice payment in exchange for the exposure they hope to get from having their names in the pages of Vogue, Glamour, Architectural Digest or Conde Nast Traveler. Fashion models help Condé Nast by working for far less than they could make in non-editorial work.

Buried among the documents filed in the lawsuit brought against the modeling agency Next by three of its former models is an earnings statement that shows how little Vogue and Vogue Paris pays fashion models  – and how long they take to pay.

Models Anna Jagodzinska, Anna Cywinska and Karmen Pedaru allege that Next stole earnings from them and, since they left the agency in April, has failed to pay them money they were owed by clients with outstanding bills. As evidence, lawyer filed Jagodzinska’s account statement at Next, dated April 23, 2010.

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Last week TIME magazine called Brazilian photographer Mauricio Lima “Wire Photographer of the Year.” This is the first year TIME has singled out a wire photographer for recognition.

A former sports photographer, the Sao Paulo-based Lima joined AFP ten years ago and has worked in Latin America and the Middle East, among other places.

According to TIME, Lima’s photos from Afghanistan stood out among “the millions of images” coming through the wires this year. It was Lima’s first trip to Afghanistan, during which time he spent a month embedded with Marines in Helmand Province, and another month working on his own while based in Kabul.

Lima told TIME that his goal in Afghanistan was “to document the lives of ordinary people in this extraordinary situation,” which he accomplished by creating “parallel stories, the ones behind the headlines.”

In a gallery of Lima’s images posted on TIME.com, TIME photo editor Phil Bicker commended Lima on his pastel color palette, which Bicker said was perfect for the “dry, dusty landscape and ancient culture” of Afghanistan. Lima noted that “capturing real colors and lights” in his images and using “very little post production” were keys to his work.

To read more about Lima’s work and see a gallery of his images visit:

http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,2039390,00.html

Still life photographer Dwight Eschliman produced two Lego stop-motion animations for WIRED Magazine’s iPad launch issue. Eschliman says Wired ended up using the first one, Lego iPad, and the Lego Lamborghini piece became a fun outtake. Eschliman says he used two cameras tethered to two capture machines overhead two side-by-side Lego sets (he used the Hasselblad H2 w/ PhaseOne P65+). He started with all of the pieces on one side and simply assembled the Lego Car one piece at a time. “Take picture on right, move piece to left, take picture on left. Repeat 801 times.”

One interesting aspect of publishing “PDN Photo of the Day,” our photography blog, is seeing which photographs and photographic subjects attract the largest number of readers. Often our readers enjoy photographs that we find interesting and beautiful, then share the posts with friends, and the audience for a particular entry grows exponentially. Other times a post we’re particularly excited about receives a more modest response for one reason or another.

As the year drew to a close, we decided to get in touch with the editors of four photography blogs published by major newspapers to see which of their posts were the most-viewed this year. (more…)

A cutting commentary on Wall Street bonuses in tough economic times from photographer Cary Wolinsky, who collaborates on political art projects with a set of triplets known as the performance group TRIIIBE. TRIIIBE’s first solo show in New York City opens January 8, 2011 at the DODGEgallery.

Photographer Austin Walsh and his collaborators at Tight Salad produced “Believe,” a video about Mike “Grandpa Mike” Babick, who for 46 years has been elaborately decorating his home in Prairie Village, Kansas, with animated Christmas displays. About 250,000 tourists visit the house at this time of year. In the video, Babick explains why he firmly believes in Santa Claus.

Warning: This video contains grinning doll faces, teddy bears that move and mechanized gingerbread men, which may not be suitable for viewers who find that kind of thing creepy.  Happy holidays.

You can find more of Tight Salad’s videos on Vimeo.

If you have a video you want us to consider for PDN Video Picks, send us a link at editor@pdnonline.com.

This short piece by Dan Saelinger plays with the visual possibilities of melting popsicles. Created as a test, the video expanded on the concept of one of Saelinger’s still-life photographs.

Popsicles from Dan Saelinger on Vimeo.

If you have a video you would like us to consider for PDN’s Video Picks, just send a link to editor@pdnonline.com.

If you’re looking for some good reading over the holidays then check out PhotoShelter’s list of their Favorite Photo Blog Posts of 2010.

The list is a hodgepodge of photo industry posts from a variety of blogs, subdivided into 9 different categories. And, we might add, three stories from our very own PDNPulse blog made the cut.

Check out the full list on PhotoShelter’s A Picture’s Worth blog.

Not to minimize police harassment of photographers here in the US, but that’s nothing compared to the pain and suffering of Burmese photographers at the hands of that country’s regime.

According to a report in the Burmese opposition news site Irrawaddy, a Burmese court sentenced photographer Sithu Zeya to eight years in prison yesterday for photographing the aftermath of the April 15, 2010 bomb blast in Rangoon. The blast killed 10 and injured 70.

Zeya’s actions were violations of the country’s Immigration Act and Unlawful Associations Act, Irrawaddy reports. The photographer’s lawyer says he will appeal the conviction, because it was based not upon eyewitness accounts of Zeya’s actions, but upon a confession that Zeya reportedly made “during interrogation.”