October 15, 2008

To Valued Members, Customers and Partners,

For the past few weeks, Digital Railroad (DRR) has been seeking additional funding required to sustain its current level of operations. To date, those efforts have been unsuccessful. As a result, effective October 15, 2008, the company has initiated a reduction in staff and expenses while it continues the funding effort. Nevertheless, Digital Railroad is committed to the continued support of its customers through this period and has retained adequate staff to support both member archives and image licensing sales through Marketplace.

We will have further information shortly and expect to provide an update to you next week. In the meantime, we are grateful for the loyalty and support that you have demonstrated and thank you for your patience during this transition.

Should you need additional information, please contact us at support@drr.net.

Sincerely.

The Team at DRR

Check out the November '08 issue of SKI Magazine. Cool story about ski resorts and destinations around the world that have made an appearance in nearly 40+ years of James Bond films. Congrats to members Bill Bachmann, John Warburton-Lee and Ross Woodhall whose images are featured. And thank you to our friends at SKI!

Students mingle with speakers at ASPP New England's "Expose Yourself" Mentoring program event.
Photo credit: © Sharon Donahue

On September 30th ASPP New England hosted its first annual career forum, "Expose Yourself: Career Advice from Photo & Visual Media Pros", presented in conjunction with the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Speakers included David Binder- award winning photojournalist and documentary film-maker; Alex MacLean, Aerial Photographer and artist; Liz Linder Photographer and artist; Katherine Hennessy, Photographer’s Representative, Kate & Company; Andrea Ricker, Art Buyer - Arnold Worldwide, Boston Advertising Agency.

Discussing the ins and outs of the professional photography and visual media industry directly from the experts who have turned creativity into career, students learned about marketing yourself, creating a targeted portfolio and how to get and keep clients.

XDRTB.org is an extraordinary effort to tell the story of extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) and TB through powerful photographs taken by James Nachtwey. XDR-TB, or extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis, is a new and deadly mutation of tuberculosis. Similar in creation to multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) but more extreme in its manifestation, it arises when common tuberculosis goes untreated or standard TB drugs are misused. James’ photographs represent these varying strains. Learn more about TB, MDR-TB and XDR-TB, and learn how you can take action to stop this deadly disease.

Photographer James Nachtwey has been covering war and human rights stories for 30 years, traveling from Northern Ireland to Iraq, from the orphanages of Romania to the deadly killing grounds of the Sudan. He knows the power of news photographs to raise awareness and make real change. In 2007, he was awarded the TED Prize, which comes with $100,000 and one wish to change the world. These photographs and this project are his wish.

Learn more about James Nachtwey and the TED Prize.

© Renee Eagan/drr.net

Member Renee Eagan, a Digital Railroad Marketplace Exclusive, talks about her early inspiration and what inspires her today to create a growing portfolio of sophisticated of images.

"It was a treescape in a Russian travel brochure that first inspired me to pursue photography. As a teenager, I thought it was the most beautiful photograph I had ever seen. I soon enrolled in my first photography class. Years later, I earned a degree in photography that provided a strong technical and creative foundation for honing my craft: perfecting the photographic image.

© Renee Eagan/drr.net

I continue to challenge my abilities and learn new techniques by participating in various state-of-the-art workshops. Both my formal education in photography and my ongoing professional development serve as catalysts to my refinement behind the camera and in the digital realm of today.

Presently, I shoot digital fine art and editorial photographs. These are specialties that allow me to enjoy the best of two worlds: working in the studio and on location, arenas that provide continual opportunities for creativity and stylistic expression.

© Renee Eagan/drr.net

When the subject matter doesn’t warrant a realistic representation, I enjoy idealizing it. Using my favorite editing tools, Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop, I transform everyday photographs into bold compositions full of vivid color and striking contrast. After this editing process, each unique image becomes a stock photograph, ideal for projects requiring sophisticated, distinctive graphics."

See the rest of Renee's images in Marketplace.

Polar bear, Ursus maritimus, sow with cub walking on multi-layer ice (freshwater pans formed over the years where the salt is squeezed out of the ice) on the Chuckchi Sea, off the National Petroleum Reserves, Alaska
© Steven Kazlowski/Danita Delimont Agency/drr.net

As part of last night's ASPP West Coast event, I had the distinct pleasure of meeting Steven Kazlowski and getting a personal tour of his current exhibit, The Last Polar Bear, currently on display at the Burke Museum in Seattle, WA. As a trained biologist, Steven made the brave decision 8 years ago to dedicate 6-8 months each year to document the threatened population of Artic polar bears. His efforts have not gone unrewarded: the work is exceptional and has resulted in a book project, traveling exhibit and speaking tours.

Created during the span of this long term project, more than 1000 of Steven's images are available in Marketplace or directly from his archive.

Digital Railroad member Borut Peterlin's photographs of survivors of Serbian leader Radovan Karadžić concentration camps have been featured in The Observer, IO Donna, Corriera della Sera and Mladina Weekly.

Fikret Alic at ruins of his relatives house next door to his own destroyed childhood home above Kozarac.

Top image: Commemoration of survivors of Omarska Concentration camp
Comemoration in the Omarska concentration camp where about 3000 non-Serb were held.

Bottom image: Friday's night scene of Kozarac. All this youths are children of survivors of the camps and ethnic cleansing of Kozarac. They now live all over Europe and return for the summer holidays.

Sudbin Musić (33 years old) is a survivor of Trnopolje concentration camp for non-Serbs. He is portraited on the graveyard in his village Carakovo, where more then 400 civilians were killed by Serbian paramilitary units in 1992. He is taking care of this graveyard. In 1992 at the age of sixteen years he escaped death solely because a Serbian bus driver was a colleague of his father and he recognized him and took him from a bus headed for a Trnopolje concentration camp.

Top image: Serif Velic is a survivor of Omarska and spoke to E.V. in a camp in 1992, again in a treanch in 1995 when he was fighting and again in Kozarac after he had undergoing two operations for a brain tumor resulted from beatings in Omarska. He is praying by a memorial stone where a massgrave of 456 Muslim victims of concentration camps and ethnic cleansing arround Prijedor was uncovered in 2004. Picture is taken in a village Kevijani, Bosnia.

Bottom image: Sabahudin Elezovic (37 years), is a survivor of concentration camp Omarska. His portrait is done on a commemoration at Mountain Vlasic, Koricanske stijene, where his brother and father were killed. He is standing on the edge of a cliff where executions took place.

Top image: Blaževic Ervin - Švabo (37 years) was confined in Trnopolje concentration camp for non-Serbs as a civilian. When he was exchanged to Bosniaks, he joined Bosnian army where he fought until the end. After the war he was one of the first who returned to his hometown of Kozarac, that was completely destroyed. He renovated his house. Few years ago he established a wireless internet connection throughout Kozarac. Kozarac town does not have a running water supply or a landline phones. With his friends he established a wireless connection from Prijedor. He is also a founder and administrator of Internet site That site has almost 9000 registered members and it's a connection between former residents of Kozarac that fled from the war and now they live abroad.

Bottom image: R.O. is an imam at mosque in Kozarac, BiH. In direct vicinity of mosque there is a aqua-park with many pools and a leisure place.

Photo Credit: All images © Borut Peterlin

Learn more about Borut's work in his blog, his archive and in Marketplace.

Check the local magazine racks this weekend for Architectural Digest, The Economist and New Scientist and look for credits by Digital Railroad members JTB Photo, CuboImages and Charles Sleicher.

Caption: National Yoyogi gym, First gym, Tokyo, Japan
© JTB/drr.net

Caption: Villa La Rotonda, Vicenza, Veneto, Italy
© CuboImages/drr.net

Caption: North America, USA, Wyoming. Five members of the original Druid Pack of wolves in Yellowstone National Park
© Charles Sleicher/drr.net

Photographer and author Mikkel Aaland was featured in the Photokina Show Daily discussing Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Adventure and the lessons learned from the experience. As a sponsor of the Tasmania Lightroom Adventure, the images were uploaded to a Digital Railroad archive during the shoot in Tasmania and available for immediate licensing through Marketplace. See images from Angela Drury, Catherine Hall, Jeff Pflueger. Photokina, the world's largest trade show for the imaging industry, is taking place this week in Cologne, Germany. Read Mikkel's complete report from Photokina:

DRR Member Will Austin recently licensed this image through Research Network. The image was requested by National Geographic Books and was selected for the cover of "Travel Guide To Rome."

Interior of St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City, Rome, Italy. Construction begun in 1506 and was completed in 1626, it is the largest Christian church in the world.
© Will Austin/drr.net

Will shares this story about the image and his experience licensing the image through Research Network:

"I was visiting my brother at the time I took the photo, he was studying in the University of Washington's Architecture in Rome program.  I went to St. Peter's several times during my ten day stay, the scale and the beauty is beyond any other place I've seen, but it is difficult to capture with a camera.  This was taken looking up into the dome which rises almost 450 feet up from the point where I stood.  

I really love how Marketplace worked for me here. I just uploaded the photo and the Digital Railroad team did the rest, all for a very fair commission.  I am interested in further developing my archive over the next year and I am very excited about the prospects."

See more of Will's images in Marketplace.