Los Angeles-based photographer Autumn de Wilde shares her secrets on finding new ways of looking at familiar spaces and places in Rookie Mag:

I am a photographer. In my search for found backdrops and interesting locations over the years, I have dissected Los Angeles. Over and over I look at the streets, the signs, the new and the old buildings. Every day I look for something I may have overlooked. In L.A., the beautiful and the ugly are spread out before you like an enormous garage sale. If you are curious about becoming a photographer, or you just like to take pictures, I’m writing this to remind you that you will never know your city. You will develop patterns, and like a well-behaved racehorse you will go round and round your designated track, but I want you to look sideways and upside down. I want you to find the secret life of the landscape of your city.

This was such a helpful article, because my inclination is to always go somewhere new, to ride the train to a stop I’ve never gotten off at before, and take photos in places that I’m completely unfamiliar with. So it was interesting to think of what I could do in places that I am very familiar with and push myself to see things in new angles and new lights. Perhaps I’ll do that on my forty-five minute walk home from work one day this week.

Photo credit: Autumn de Wilde

People take pretty pictures of pretty people. Curious as to what’s next? Like,when all the pretty people have been photographed. What’s left?

I should clarify. When I asked, “What’s left?” I meant, what’s left for those who’ve built a career behind this type of work. I know what’s left for me. I guess I am curious as to when we start demanding more than a pretty picture.

-Kameelah Rasheed, Photographer, Writer, Teacher

Wow, it’s been quite a while since I last updated Innervisions, hasn’t it? I’ve had a fairly busy summer, and it’s all photography related. Yay! Let’s recap the last month or so…

+Showed work at The Fridge for Collective (R)evolution, a fundraiser for the DC Youth Slam Team. Lots of poets and painters and musicians and dancers crammed into a tiny, wonderful space in D.C.’s Capitol Hill/Barracks Row neighborhood.

+Showed work at 5th Annual East of The River exhibit at Honfleur Gallery in D.C.’s Anacosta neighborhood. The show closes Sept. 9th, so catch it while you can!

+Met with the ladies of Mambu Badu to map out the rest of 2011 and 2012 too. (Don’t you love our new logo, courtesy of the lovely Alice Wonder?) Stay tuned you guys. It’s about to get major.

+Been volunteering at FOTOSPACE, a new gallery space created by the same people who started FOTOWEEK DC. Come see “Speaking to Silence,” a new exhibit featuring work by Marcus Bleasdale, Platon and Stephanie Sinclair. We’re open Thursday through Friday, 12-4pm.

+Got an awesome email about a project I can’t talk about just yet. But it’s pretty cool and  I can’t wait till it comes out.

Also, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point you in the direction of some great photography projects:

+Kinfolk Magazine: “a community for artists who believe in small gatherings.” I dig it.

+Brian Ferry: His photos of his every day life in London are a visual treat.

+Street Etiquette: Lightweight obsessed with this style blog. Lovely photography as well.

Last Monday, L.A.’s electro-pop-funk-New Wave duo J*DaVeY teamed up with Philly rock band Elevator Fight (fronted by the awesome Zoe Kravitz) at D.C.’s Black Cat and gave one of the best live shows I’ve been to in a while. Check out some of the photos I shot:

On March 11, 2011, a magnitude-8.9 earthquake hit off the shore of Japan, unleashing a 23-foot (seven-meter) tsunami and leaving enormous destruction in its wake.

Hundreds have been killed in this disaster and thousands have been left homeless, as the tsunami swept through, causing mass destruction and setting off widespread fires that burned out of control.

San Diego-based photographer/blogger extraordinaire  Sui Solitaire is currently raising money to benefit survivors of the devastating earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima power plant that struck Japan in the spring.

For every $5 that you donate to the American Red Cross, you will get one entry to win several pieces of beautiful art. Two of my prints are included in this benefit as well.

Untitled, 2010, (approx.) 5 1/2″ x 7 1/2″, digital print on watercolor paper  © Danielle Scruggs

Untitled, 2010, (approx.) 5 1/2″ x 7 1/2″, digital print on watercolor paper © Danielle Scruggs

That means the more you donate, the better chances you have of collecting some truly great pieces of artwork.

Of course, every dollar counts, so give what you can and donate today!

From the good people at Aperture Foundation:

Robert F. Kennedy’s death shook the country to its core and for millions of Americans, including Paul Fusco, seemed to represent the end of hope. In 1968, Fusco was a staff photographer for Look magazine. He was commissioned to document all the events surrounding the funeral, including the eight-hour journey from New York to Washington, D.C., on the train that carried Kennedy’s coffin. On June 8, HBO will release a documentary, One Thousand Pictures produced by Jennifer Stoddart that chronicles that day Fusco photographed. On the occasion of the release, Aperture is honored to host a program featuring photographer Paul Fusco, Jennifer Stoddart, and James Danziger to discuss the images made and the ongoing influence of their impact on individuals.

In 2008 Aperture published Paul Fusco: RFK during the fortieth anniversary of Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination in Los Angeles while campaigning for the presidential nomination, is the long-awaited follow-up to Fusco’s acclaimed RFK Funeral Train, a body of work heralded as a contemporary classic. This historical new publication features over seventy never-before-seen images, many selected from the untapped treasure trove of slides that comprise the Library of Congress’s Look Magazine Photograph Collection

Paul Fusco a member of Magnum Photos since 1974, began his career photographing for the U.S. Signal Core during the Korean War. He studied photojournalism at Ohio University and his work has been widely published and exhibited, including exhibitions at the Photographers’ Gallery, London, and the International Festival of Photojournalism, Perpignan, France.

If you’re going to be in New York (or don’t mind sneaking out of work a bit early and hopping on the Bolt Bus or Amtrak), this seems like a can’t-miss event!

Event info: One Thousand Pictures Panel Discussion with Jennifer Stoddart, Paul Fusco,and James Danziger
Monday, June 6, 2011 // 6:30 pm // FREE

Aperture Gallery and Bookstore
547 West 27th Street, 4th FL
New York, New York
(212) 505-5555

(Photo by Paul Fusco)

Before gaining fame as a director of classic films (A Clockwork Orange, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Lolita, The Shining [a personal favorite], among several others), Stanley Kubrick worked as a photographer for Look magazine, the biweekly publication that was a lot like Life, except with more photos and less articles.

In 1949, at just 21, he was sent to Chicago for an assignment: “Chicago, City of Contrasts.” Take a look at more of these fascinating (and cinematic, no?) images below.

(Photos by Stanley Kubrick)

(h/t to The Chestnut Orange)

Okay, so this is the coolest thing ever: a camera bag that’s cute enough to double as a purse. I don’t always want to bring a camera bag or giant tote bag when I know I’ll be out and about with my cameras. Well played, JoTotes. The Millie bag is kind of perfect.

Check out the store here.

So.

As you may know from reading the handy bio to your right, I am a photographer. However, my camera started to malfunction a few weeks ago and it will be in the shop until I can come up with the $200+ to get it repaired. That’s neither here nor there, though. You see, when my digital camera went on the fritz, I returned to my old love, my first love, the camera that started it all: my Pentax K1000. Actually, this is my father’s camera, which I have, ahem, permanently borrowed. It is the camera he used to teach me how to take photographs and for that, it is priceless to me.

I won’t lie. I miss my Canon Rebel but returning to shooting on film has actually been rather gratifying. It has reminded me to slow down, to take my time with composition, to make sure I’m waiting for the right moment, the right light, the right framing. This might come off a bit ironic considering how I was just praising the joys of iPhone photos, but contradictions are what make life great, right?

I definitely don’t think one form is better than the other. Both film and digital photography have their purposes. Both have their pros and their cons. But shooting on film, on a camera that isn’t so temperamental, has been quite a joy.

Also, check out www.film-grain.tumblr.com, a great blog that exclusively features photography shot on both color and black and white film.

(Photos by Danielle Scruggs)

I have a confession: I’ve had a bias against iPhone photos—well, all cellphone and smartphone photos—for as long as taking pictures with a phone has been in vogue. Too many times, I’ve been inundated with blurry, grainy, indistinguishable images that were supposedly my family members, cute boys in bars, or parties I missed. Whenever I saw people whip out their iPhones or Blackberries at concerts, lectures, rallies, etc., I cringed inwardly.

That is, until I came across this gallery of images from LIFE.com. Many of these images are beautiful, powerful, mysterious, quirky. They’re all of the things that photos taken with film cameras or digital SLRs can accomplish as well.

What truly matters is your eye. What moves you. What inspires you to capture the moment happening in front of you. And it really doesn’t matter what kind of camera you have at your disposal when you look at it like that, right?

I’m learning to be less of an SLR snob and appreciate the finer points of camera phone photography. Now, who wants to gift me an iPhone?

(Photo by Stephanie Roberts)