Annie Leibovitz & Strobist

This post is a bit of a two-parter, the first part introducing you to one of my favorite blogs, Strobist. Strobist was started by Baltimore Sun photographer David Hobby and in a nutshell it’s dedicated to helping budding photographers to ramp up their ability through the use better lighting. Visit Strobist and you’ll find more than 600 articles and posts about small systems lighting, including an On Assignment section where Hobby shows his actual assignments from the Baltimore Sun, including set up pictures showing how he set up the lights, the finished product itself, and his thoughts on how you can achieve the same end result in your own real world situation. The On Assignment section has in the ballpark of 60 assignments for you to learn from, and this section, and Strobist as a whole, is an extremely valuable resource for you budding young photojournalists. I can’t encourage you enough to visit this website from time to time.

Part 2:

The second part, of this two parter, is a behind the scenes look at part of the process behind Annie Leibovitz work for Vanity Fair’s July issue, which features Bono as a guest editor. The July issue focused on the RED campaign, which works to raise funds from various RED theme products to benefit Africa related causes.

To put this issue together Leivovitz traversed the globe to shoot a slew of global leaders and icons with the idea of illustrating the chain of events that stems from someone such as Bono raising awareness about an issue, such as AIDS in Africa, and finally ends with someone finally funding and creating change around that issue. One of many reasons I like this issue was that Leivobitz was able to illustrate a very complex issue and unify, visually, a very diverse group of people using a very simple setup comprised of one or two lights, a chair, and some red background paper.