Kick Me!

You might remember the Kickstarter project we plugged a while back for Harold Feinstein's retrospective project.

Well, the campaign was a success, the book was published, and it's on my desk as I write. Harold is a humanist—a "people person"—and the book is a fine, honest collection of black-and-white pictures in mid-century style and in the humanist tradition. I don't think there's a bad shot in the book, and every page brings something good to look at. You can see a few pictures from the book at the web page.

Although a man of many accomplishments, this is Harold's first retrospective.

And get a load of those endorsements. Some real heavy hitters speaking up for Harold! Those are what book blurbs should be. Wow. Check out A. D. Coleman's comment—he said it better than I have.

The Paris picture of Peter's that we published on Valentine's Day put me in mind of this nice blog post by Harold Feinstein. It gives us the measure of the man.

Start me up
Here are a few other Kickstarter campaigns that have come to my attention recently:

• Bill Schwab of Dearborn, Michigan, has almost reached his ambitious goal of $30,000 to help continue his dream of creating a photo retreat on the 10 acres of land he owns in the northwoods of Michigan.

• Waqas Farid started photographing customers at the "dollar store" his father had operated in urban New Jersey for twenty years, as the store faltered in the poor economy. Then, after relocating to Qatar, he realized he could do a parallel project at his uncle's convenience store in rural Pakistan. Waqas needs to reach his goal of $5,000 to fully realize his project, mainly to fund another trip to Pakistan—and he has dreams beyond that as well.

My email has been down all morning following a power outage, but I'll have a couple of illustrations by Waqas to add to this post as soon as I'm back up and running.

• We're too late to help plug this one, but maybe you might want to know about it anyway: "Doctor Popular," a 'zine fanatic, was successful in his Kickstarter campaign to help publish his own 'zine.

• Bruce Wodder, with his colleagues Peter Bosco and Douglas Underdahl, is making a film about the American photographer George Tice. George, if you don't know the name, is an art photographer with many books under his belt who was partly responsible for both the view camera and platinum printing revivals in the 1970s.

This is a film I want to see.

Mike
(Thanks to Doug Howk, Richard Sintchak, and Justin Watt)

Ed. Note: As a point of policy, I don't allow people to propose their own pictures for the "Random Excellence" feature or propose their own Kickstarter projects for a mention on TOP. I get more than 100 emails a week asking me to help promote peoples' work, projects, or products, and we publish an average of 18 posts a week. That should make it easy to understand why we can't help everybody, no matter how deserving the work might be.

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
A book of interest today:

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Richard: "I kicked in on Feinstein's book too, and love it! Also contributed to Bill Schwab's kickstarter project too (and alerted Mike to it though not sure if it was my email and/or others that helped). Hope it gets funded so I can get out there and attend a Photostock some day."

Mike replies: My usual policy when multiple readers send the same tip is to thank only the first one by name. But I'm grateful for all tips, and all tipsters...so thanks to you too.

Bill Bresler: "I just kicked in a contribution for Bill Schwab's project. Not only is he a great photographer, he's a heck of a human being. His annual Photostock, which I attended for the first time, is a great gathering of photographers of all stripes and formats. I'm a newspaper photographer for about 60 hours a week and I like to think that my personal work is art. Photostock recharged my batteries. I still feel it."

Comments

[Doug]

I was delighted to contribute to Harold Feinstein's book project and my faith was rewarded when I received my signed copy back in December. It is a wonderful book in all respects, more than worth it's price.

[Michel]

Thanks to TOP I have this book on my coffee table. I also attended the book launch and gallery opening where i met Harold Feinstein. I let him know I had your blog to thank for knowing about his work. The gallery owner and publisher of the book explained to Harold that a lot of the traffic to his kickstarter page came from TOP.

[Patrick Perez]

As regards the quotes on the book by Harold Feinstein, it reminds me of your penchant for neologisms. IIRC, it was Spy Magazine that coined the phrase 'logrolling' for the practice of authors trading book jacket blurbs.

My term for said practice (which I coined) is 'quid pro quote'. Pass it on! (and I'm not suggesting that Feinstein's blurb are anything of the sort but genuine endorsements, based on the photos I saw on his site).

Patrick

[David]

MIke, MIke...please, look at my work? It's on Flickr, Tumblr, Myspace, Facebook and The Walmart chat forum..

Please, man, I really need a break and my street shots taken at art fairs are edgy and ripe with mimes.

(off topic..I love Feinstein's work, congrats on that)

[Sergio Bartelsman]

Looks like Feinstein´s book is inevitably going to find a place in my shelf.

[Shane]

On the theme of Kickstarter, have you seen this inexpensive attachment that turns your iphone into an incident light meter? http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jamesflynn/luxi-incident-light-meter-adapter-for-iphone?ref=category

I just noticed it today; really hoping it succeeds!

[Phil Maus]

Harold Feinstein's photographs have had a profound affect on me and the way I look at, read and perceive photographs. His work has struck me speechless and made me realize anew the full emotional potential that can be contained in a simple black and white photograph, or a series of them.

I need to go back now and reevaluate every core belief I ever had about photography, photographs and seeing photographically.

Thanks a lot Mike! I was doing just fine until I saw this! Now that I have, I will never be the same....

[David]

ok

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv5FwzRBc_Y

[Roger]

I contributed to Luxi.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jamesflynn/luxi-incident-light-meter-adapter-for-iphone?ref=live

An iPhone as an incident light meter? What's not to like?

[Mark Olwick]

I'm very excited about Bill Schwab's project. He's a great photographer and a great guy, and I think this is just the sort of workshop facility that will providea a creative, nurturing environment for like-minded individuals.

[Rory Earnshaw]

It's great to see Bill's campaign reaching it's goal, he's a guy who has freely given a lot to many photographers.

[Richard Sintchak]

Bill's passed its funding goal this morning!!