A friend of ours sent us this Photoshop Tutorial Rap video and we can’t decide whether it’s brilliant or awful. Right now we’re leaning towards “brilliant.”

Check it out and tell us what you think in the comments below.

Here is a trailer for the promotional video produced by Magnum Photos to promote Bob Dylan’s 2009 record, “Together Through Life.” When Dylan’s management contacted Magnum Photos about licensing an image from Bruce Davidson’s iconic “Brooklyn Gang” series for the cover of the CD, Magnum’s director of publishing, broadcast and film, Michael Shulman, pitched Dylan and his record label, Columbia Records, on the idea of producing a multimedia piece to promote the album. Producer Adrian Kelterborn, a member of Magnum’s in-house multimedia production team, Magnum In Motion, worked with Shulman and the label on the piece. It was shown on Amazon.com to draw attention to the album release.

This and other image licensing projects were featured in “(Re)Sales Opportunities,” in the January 2011 Money Issue of PDN. Subscribers can log in to PDNonline to read the story here.

The son of a Canadian photojournalist who was tortured and killed in an Iranian prison in 2003 will be allowed to proceed with a $17 million claim against the government of Iran, the Montreal Gazette has reported.

Stephan Hashemi, son of the murdered photojournalist Zahra Kazemi, filed suit against Iran, its supreme leader Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei and two government officials who allegedly authorized the torture of Kazemi. A Canadian citizen, she was arrested for taking photographs in Tehran during a student protest.

An Iranian doctor who has fled the country said in 2005 that he examined Kazemi after her arrest and saw evidence that she had been beaten and sexually assaulted, according to the Gazette.

The government of Iran sued to block the Hashemi’s lawsuit last year, citing Canada’s State Immunity Act that protects foreign governments from civil claims in Canadian courts.

But a Superior Court judge in Quebec has allowed Hashemi’s claim to go forward on the grounds that it is “a rare exception,” the Gazette reported. The newspaper also said that the decision is subject to appeal, so it may be years before Hashemi’s claim is heard, if at all.

While on assignment for the New York Times in Tunisia, Magnum photographer Moises Saman was attacked by a group of police officers, a post today on the Times’ Lens blog said.

Saman was photographing police as they beat a protester when the officers turned on him. Saman suffered “mild” injuries, the report said.

Earlier this month, European Press Photo Agency stringer Lucas Dolega was killed in Tunisia during protests that led to the dissolution of the government of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. Dolega was shot with a tear gas canister at close range and later died of his wounds in a hospital.

Related: Photographer Dies of Injuries In Tunis

Nigerian Photographer Dies in Blast; CPJ Reports 44 Work-Related Journalist Deaths in 2010

The Aftermath Project, an organization that awards money to photographers pursuing post-conflict documentary projects, announced a special $65,000 grant cycle funded by the Howard G. Buffet Foundation. Up to three grants totaling $65,000 will be awarded to photographers to fund stories about the Sahrawi, who are indigenous to a disputed section of the Western Sahara and are struggling for independence.

According to the grant guidelines, the projects funded by the grants will address “the aftermath issues that frame [the Sahrawi’s] ongoing struggle for independence, both in refugee camps and in diaspora.”

One of the awards will be made to an African photographer.

The Howard G. Buffett Foundation, which supports global health, humanitarian and conservation initiatives among other projects, is administered by Howard Graham Buffett, the son of investor and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett.

Grant-winners are expected to donate prints to both the Aftermath Project and the HGBF, and to provide images for educational programs developed by the two organizations.

The deadline for applications is March 25, 2011.

More information and to apply visit www.theaftermathproject.org.

“Restrepo,” the documentary co-directed and co-produced by photographer Tim Hetherington and writer Sebastian Junger, has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary. The nominations for the 2011 Oscars were announced this morning in Los Angeles.

“Restrepo,” which tells the story of a platoon living and fighting in a forward operating base in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley, was first shown at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary. It was released in theaters in 2010 and was also broadcast on the National Geographic Channel.

Last year’s Best Documentary Oscar went to “The Cove,” a documentary directed by photographer Louie Psihoyos, about dolphin hunting in Japan.

Photographer Scott Toepfer‘s 2011 Trailer 2 video hypes his photo project and upcoming short film called, “It’s Better In The Wind,” which was shot on location throughout the western U.S. (The project re-imagines the long distance motorcycle treks of the 1960s/1970s.) Trailer 1, launched ten months ago, was a teaser for Toepfer’s photo book and exhibit that debuted in L.A. this past August. The stills for both were shot using 35mm film, and Toepfer solicited funds and support for the book on Kickstarter. The video trailers are comprised of Canon 5D Mark II footage, and the 15 minute short film due out this summer is a mix of Super 8 and Canon 5D Mark II footage. (Toepfer says that by using a combination of video teaser/slideshows, Web 2.0 social marketing, blogger/Web interviews/features, he’s managed to increase his Web site traffic by 500 percent.)

The nearly simultaneous publication recently of three photo essays from Afghanistan in three different publications stirred up some partisan debate last week on Michael Shaw’s BagNews Notes blog. Shaw noted that the three award-winning photojournalists who shot the stories – James Nachtwey, published in Time; Tyler Hicks, published in The New York Times; and Louie Palu, published in the Toronto Star-  had all been embedded with helicopter medavac units, and all showed them tending to wounded soldiers.

“Is this pure coincidence?” Shaw wrote, “Or, does it illustrate (too well, in this case) the acumen of the Pentagon in the mediating of war access? Either way, in the aggregate this is a stunning display of American chauvinism given the intimate framing of the war in such a redundantly heroic narrative, all eyes on our warriors as saviors on high.”

Shaw wrote that he didn’t want to “take anything away from the thoroughly accomplished” photographers, only to critique how “big media” has filtered coverage of the war. The New York Times did not respond to our requests for comment; a spokesperson for Time would say only that the publication of the three stories “is pure coincidence. To suggest anything otherwise is completely inaccurate.”

But at least one of the photographers cried foul, and passionately.

“It just makes me angry. [Shaw has] taken one photo out of an entire essay, and used it to suit his argument. What he’s saying is important, but he misused my photo” to say it, Palu says.

Contrary to what Shaw wrote in his original post (which Shaw has since amended), The Star didn’t hire Palu to shoot the story. He says he took the medevac embed last fall as part of his Alexia Grant project to document the social, cultural, and political fabric of the Kandahar region. The Star picked up his story-which included more than medevac pictures–afterwards. Part of Palu’s motive for taking that embed, he says, was to get access to civilians. And the medevac embed was one small part of a six-month trip to Afghanistan.

“I’m not defending the military or Pentagon,” he says. “Obviously, the images [Shaw selected] are good publicity [for the US military,] but I’m showing a lot more than heroic medics. I’ve shown civilians people ripped apart, and soldiers missing their legs, with no medics tending them”

In other words, he says, he’s made a lot of photographs of military and civilian casualties that don’t make the military look good at all. But photojournalists covering the war just can’t seem to win, he says. “If we cover just dead bodies and dead soldiers, we get criticized…We’re finally showing casualties, and getting criticized for showing casualties because we’re showing medics saving them.”

The Star‘s Foreign Editor, Colin MacKenzie, said Shaw’s blog post “takes us back to the beginning of the embed debate, at the dawn of time. Yeah, you’re covering your team, in effect. Implicit with the embed is, you’re with your guys, and that’s the price you pay for access.

“The images are implicitly rah rah because you are rescuing people. If it was the only coverage that The Times and Time magazine and The Star were doing, it [Shaw's criticism] might be a fair accusation. But none of the organizations have confined our coverage to rah rah embed stuff.”

After PDN contacted Shaw about Palu’s comments, Shaw added a note to his post clarifying when Palu shot the images, but he told PDN via email, “I’m less concerned about HOW they got there than THAT they ARE there and what effect they have, once there, on the public mind and the behavior of the citizenry.”  The blog is concerned with published images and the messages they convey, he says; film critics don’t interview  movie stars before writing reviews, and he doesn’t  interview photographers.  “That’s not to say that I don’t also have a lot of opinions about the powers that be and how corporate media, the military and the government are extraordinarily sophisticated about visual messaging (by commission AND omission) in the shaping of public opinion. I do, I don’t hide it and I don’t apologize for it. “

He notes that he’s familiar with Palu’s work, and knows him as “someone who has no qualms about speaking truth to power.” But he’s concerned with the military’s control of news. “It’s the frustration over the military’s media control and censorship, combined with big media’s recent attraction to uncomplicated ‘personal interest’-type pieces.… that, I believe, has produced such a strong and confirming response to my post from shooters and citizens alike.”

Shaw adds, “I’d go so far as say that, if only a fraction of Louie’s work from Afghanistan had been published flat out (especially his earlier work from the South), and we didn’t have the media filter to contend with, the US would probably have withdrawn several years ago.”

--David Walker
(images, top to bottom: © JAMES NACHTWEY FOR TIME; © TYLER HICKS/THE NEW YORK TIMES; © LOUIE PALU/ZUMA PRESS; )

The London Mail reports that a greeting card designer has been sued for distributing a card showing a dog dressed up to look like Che Guevara in the iconic image by Cuban photographer Alberto Korda.

According to the newspaper, Korda’s daughter filed a copyright infringement claim in France against Takkoda, a British greeting card company owned by designer Kate Polyblank. Polyblank’s husband reportedly shot an image of a neighbor’s dog for the Takkoda greeting card.

The Che Guevara photograph, popular among students around the world as an iconic image of revolution, has appeared on millions of posters and t-shirts since Korda shot it in 1960. The photographer, whose real name was Alberto Diaz Gutierrez, died in 2001.

While we await word from the French courts on this claim, you be the judge. Is this illegal copyright infringement, or fair use?

©Scott Kelby

“Hey Aaron Rodgers, you owe me $250!” That’s what Photoshop guru and photographer Scott Kelby was saying — with tongue planted firmly in cheek — after the Green Bay Packers quarterback crashed into Kelby on the sidelines of Sunday’s NFC Championship game and broke his Gitzo monopod.

And then I see it—-the bottom half of my monopod is gone!! Ripped off at the stem. So I’m right in front of Rodgers, and I yell, “Hey…..Rodgers….you broke my monopod!” And he looks at me, and I guess he sees my Bears earmuffs, and says “Too bad, Bears fan!” And I said “Hey, you’re buying me a new Monopod!” And he looks at me says, “Yeah, right.” and I’m all “Yeah, we’ll just see pretty boy.” (from Scott Kelby’s Photoshop Insider.)

While the incident with Rodgers did happen — the Packers QB was sprinting for the end zone in the first quarter when he slid into Kelby on the sidelines — the above conversation is, of course, fictitious. Though’s Kelby’s monopod snapped in half, his more expensive gear — Nikkor 400mm f/2.8, 24-70mm f/2.8, and Nikon D3 — got muddied but survived.

Read more about Kelby’s scrape with the Super Bowl-bound QB here.

©Scott Kelby