Why shouldn’t MY potato picture sell for more than $1,000,000?

by Posted in Humour, Photographers Leave a comment

Source: This Photo of a Potato Sold for Over $1,000,000

I came across the article below today. Co-incidentally I, too had recently taken a picture of a potato. At almost 6ft by 6ft his picture is much larger than mine so if you’re paying per square inch it would be much more valuable. Also I’m not as well known as he is. Still I’d think mine should fetch at least $100,000. 🙂

Check out this photo of a potato. It may look like a rather ordinary photo, but it’s one of the most expensive photos in the world: it sold last year for a staggering $1,000,000+.

The photo, titled “Potato #345 (2010),” is by photographer Kevin Abosch, who charges huge fees to shoot portraits of famous business people in the Silicon Valley tech industry.

Business Insider reports that Abosch’s “iconic black backdrop” portraits have become a sort of status symbol among the elites of business and entertainment — the rich and famous pay over $150,000 for a photo shoot with Abosch, and up to $500,000 if commercial usage is included.

In addition to shooting pricey portraits, Abosch is also a fine art photographer, and that’s how the potato photo came about.

“Kevin likes potatoes because they, like people are all different yet immediately identifiable as being essentially of the same species,” his studio tells PetaPixel. “He has photographed many potatoes. This one is one of his favorites.”

A self-portrait by Kevin Abosch.The sale came about when a wealthy buyer who collects Abosch’s work was visiting the photographer’s Paris home in 2015. They saw the photo — a 162x162cm print mounted on dibond — hanging on the wall and inquired about purchasing it for their collection.

The price was non-negotiable: €1,000,000, or about $1,083,450 with today’s exchange rate. The buyer agreed to the price and purchased the photo, making it Abosch’s largest sale of a single image to date.

The price is a far cry from the $6.5 million that was allegedly paid for Peter Lik’s “Phantom” photo, but the sale price places this photo in the top 20 of most expensive photos of all time: it’s almost exactly the same price that was paid for Edward Weston’s “Nautilus (1927)” at a Sotheby’s New York auction in April 2010.

(via Business Insider via Bokeh)

Manhattan street scene

by Posted in Buildings/Structures, People Leave a comment
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The sign says “595 Fifth Avenue”, which would put this somewhere around 48th Street. What caught my attention was the size of mural, which you get a sense of from the much smaller figures passing by. At a quick glance it looks as if the picture is over-saturated – but it isn’t. The mural is just very bright and contrasty.

Taken in February, 2012 in New York with a Sony NEX-5n and 50mm f1.4 Canon lens in Leica Thread Mount. The more I look back at the these pictures the more I like this lens. I’ll have to give it a try again. I didn’t know how to use focus magnification and focus peaking in those days so I didn’t do a very good job at wide apertures. I think I’d be able to do a better job now.

First snow storm of Winter 2015-2016

by Posted in Landscapes Leave a comment
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If you think you’ve seen this picture before – you probably have. I seem to take pretty much the same picture every year after the first serious Winter snowfall. What’s different this time around is that it’s January 23. Last Winter the first decent snowfall was on 28 November (and the snow amounts were pretty similar, maybe a little bit less then)! Another thing that was different is that last year there was more snow up here than farther South. This time Manhattan got almost twice as much (24 inches) than we did (about a foot). Luckily it was a light, soft, powdery snow and, at least up here, there was very little wind so there were no power outages.

Following the weather forecasts in the run up to the storm I was once again struck by the fear mongering. OK, it was a pretty bad storm (maybe about the second or third worst historically in New York City). But we’ve been through this before many times. Sometimes I think the media should just say “There’s going to be a storm. It’s going to be pretty bad. Get prepared! We’re now ending all storm coverage. See you again after it’s all over”. It’s not even as if they’re accurate. The forecasts went up and down all week with different sources saying different things. As late as a day or so before some sources were saying that we could get 1-4 inches rather than the foot or so that we eventually got. Just goes to show that weather forecasting is still a very inexact science. I know a bit about this as my wife was for many years the spokesperson of the World Meteorological Organization.

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Birdhouse – now looking a bit sorry. We’ll have to repaint it next year.

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View across the snowy patio.