Peak Design Smashes Kickstarter Goal with Slide, Clutch & Anchor Links

BY AL DIAZ
ALDIAZ305@AOL.COM
Peak Design smashed through their Kickstarter goal of $50,000 in less than 48 hours with their newly designed camera strap called Slide, the hand strap called Clutch and the attachment system called Anchor Links. As of Tuesday, July 8, they have up to 3,645 backers with 38 days to go.

Al Diaz and Cindy Seip using the original Peak Design Leash & Anchor
at Zion National Park in Utah. Photo by Angelika Diaz using 
Al's iPhone. PD does not have a strap for that...

About a year ago I switched to Peak Design’s originally designed camera strap, Leash and Anchor after getting tired of being smacked in the face by loose metal hardware on camera straps I used by other manufacturers. Peak Design’s unique quick-connection system and overall versatility of the strap changed how I carry my camera bodies on daily assignments anywhere, from the NBA Finals, spot news, feature, portrait session or last week’s family vacation at Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon. (See more photos at end of review).

The best part of the system, the Anchor, allows for quick removal or attachment and functionality of the Leash, with a variety of ways of attaching or securing a camera body or long telephoto lens. Each Anchor is rated to over 100 lbs (45kgs) of weight and is made from braided Kevlar® cord overmolded with Delrin® thermoplastic.

The length of the Leash is easily adjustable and stays in place after you’ve made the adjustment. It is featherweight and easily configures as a sling strap, neck strap, safety tether, video stabilizer and more.

The original Leash’s smooth webbing glides over your clothing and is very comfortable unless you are carrying a brick of a camera such as the Canon EOS-1D X with a mounted 300mm f/2.8L IS II. Carrying that kind of weight, the strap digs into your shoulder a bit. This has left me wishing for a wider camera strap to distribute the total weight of the gear.

At last, the new wider Slide by Peak Design fulfills that need!

WHAT IS SLIDE?

Slide is a camera strap, but one that's different from every other camera strap out there. Slide is more than just a neck strap, sling strap or shoulder strap. Slide is a new kind of camera strap that incorporates everything we love about existing straps, as well as feedback from thousands of photographers worldwide. More than strong enough to hold 
any pro camera/lens/accessory combo.

In a nutshell, Slide is the most thoughtfully designed camera strap ever created.

SLIDE IS:

• Wearable as a sling strap, shoulder strap or neck strap.
• Quick connecting with one hand, using the patent-pending Anchor Link™ connection system.
• Smooth on one side and grippy on the other, and instantly reversible
• depending on your preference.
• Comfortable even with the heaviest of pro cameras.
• Made of tubular seatbelt-style webbing with padding on the inside for less bulk and a clean, classic look.
• Compatible with ARCA-type tripod heads, so you can place your camera in the tripod without unscrewing anything.
• Quickly customizable and adjustable. It can attach to multiple places on your camera and quickly cinch to fit your body type or activity.

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Cindy Seip likes to change it up by using a wrist strap so she uses the Peak Design Cuff. 

If you like using a wrist strap like Cindy Seip, seen here using the original Peak Design Cuff, Well... PD has redesigned that too by introducing Clutch.

WHAT IS CLUTCH?

Clutch, the only quick-connecting, quick-adjusting camera hand strap ever made, Clutch gives you security when you need it, but also allows instant access to your camera's controls. With materials and hardware inspired by high end climbing gear, Clutch's simple, rugged design can only be described as "dead sexy."

CLUTCH IS:

• Quick connecting with one hand, so you can add or remove it as needed.
• Quick adjusting, so you can tighten it when you need extra security and loosen it when you need to access your camera's controls.
• Low profile and unobtrusive compared to other camera hand straps on the market.
• Made from premium materials and custom hardware inspired by high-end climbing gear.

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Cindy also likes the functionality of the Micro Anchor attachments for use with Leash or Cuff. Unlike conventional straps, Cindy can fit her Canon EOS-5D Mark II into her Ikelite underwater camera housing with the Micro Anchor attached without the hassle of removing a conventional strap only to struggle to get it back on the camera when she is on land. With the Micro Anchors attaching the Leash or Cuff is a breeze.

Underwater portraits by Cindy Seip

Loving the camera strap you use now? Don’t like their attachment system? You can fix that. Peak Design has come out with Anchor Links™ Quick Connectors.

WHAT ARE ANCHOR LINKS?

Anchor Links are designed to work with or without battery grips, and strong enough to hold any pro camera/lens/accessory combo. Anchor Links are quick connectors that let you take the PD lightning-fast and uber-secure connection system and put it on any standard camera strap. Keep the strap you love, and make it better.

ANCHOR LINKS ARE:

• Super strong. Each Vectran®-corded Anchor can withstand over 200 lbs. of force, strong enough for any pro rig. Each package includes 4 Anchors and 2 Links.
• Low-profile, lightweight and unobtrusive. Plus, the Delrin® Anchor disks will never scratch your camera body.
• Adaptable to any standard camera strap, from your brand new OEM strap to your Dad's vintage leather strap he used in college. Works with straps up to 12mm wide, which is a nearly-universal pro camera strap standard.
• The same connection system used on all Peak Design straps.

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To pre-order the new Peak Design  Slide, Clutch or Anchor Links,  support them on Kickstarter: pkdsn.com/ks. The gear can be preordered at a significant discount from it's future planned retail price.

If you want to get a hold of other Peak Design products right away, visit Peak Design and order directly from them. If you use my discount code: diaz You'll get 10% off everything at their store.

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AND FINALLY... 
A few family vacation pictures taken last week while using Peak Design gear at Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon in Utah with Cindy, James Bartek, 
Angelika and Al Diaz.

Miami Herald Photojournalist Tim Chapman Retires

Illustration by Marco Ruiz     

By Al Diaz
aldiaz305@aol.com
Smack in the middle of Miami’s Cocaine Cowboys and their illegal drug trade I decided to buy a police scanner. Within hours, the purchase propelled me into harms way, launched my career and allowed me to meet photojournalist Tim Chapman.

The year 1979, a lone Miami Police officer staking out a Little Havana home calls for back up when the suspects inside decide to flee with their illicit drugs. Not far to drive from my childhood home, I arrive hearing sirens blaring, tires screeching and see guns everywhere.

Miami Police check Tim Chapman's credentials in 1979.

In the middle of all this madness I see a photographer in the middle of the street standing face-to-face arguing with a cop. I shoot a picture. The officers supervisor approached the rookie cop and said to leave Chapman alone, he’s seen more action than you have.

The next day Chapman’s photos are spread across the front page of The Miami Herald and mine on the AP wires.

After 40 years on the job, Tim Chapman is retiring from The Miami Herald on December 31. He’s covered wars, hurricanes, riots, earthquakes, mass exoduses from Cuba, kidnappings, plane crashes, death and mayhem including Guyana’s Jonestown massacre in 1978.

He’s been on vacation this week, Chapman’s last day on the job actually working? December 21, just in case the Mayan Prophecy of an apocalypse were to come true and it needed to be covered.

Photo By Bill Cooke    

By Carl Hiaasen
Miami Herald Columnist
Friend and Accomplice
There’s not enough space on this page for every Tim Chapman story, but most are true. He’s been a legend in this business for decades. With retirement he ascends to mythic.

Yes, he once drove cross-state in a Herald van with a loaded gun, a bloody knife and a severed alligator tail. Yes, he once used the lens of a company Nikon to batter some macho fool who’d tried to push him off of public property. (Tim then straddled the poor twit and snapped off 36 frames.)

Yes, he once tested an electric dog collar on himself before fitting it on his Labrador. (The sight of Tim flopping on the kitchen floor was all that the dog needed to see; from then on, the animal came running whenever Tim called).

And, yes, he once paid a voodoo priestess in Haiti to put a curse on an unpopular photo editor back in Miami -- and, yes, it worked.

The line between fearless and crazy is hazy, and sometimes we weren’t sure if Tim had crossed over. It wasn’t because of a death wish that I always asked to ride with him; I just knew that he always went where the big news was. Always.

One afternoon, during one of Miami’s bloody episodes of civil unrest, Barry Bearak and I rode into the riot zone with Tim, who wore a flak jacket and told us to stay low in our seats because of the sniper fire. Whenever he’d jump out to shoot pictures, we’d dart around interviewing bystanders.

After about an hour Tim decided he was in the mood for (I swear to God) watermelon. So he screeched to a halt beside a fruit stand on one of those smoldering streets, and there he purchased two freakishly large melons.

As he walked back toward the car – and he took his sweet time – Barry and I were debating which of us was going to drive after Tim got shot.

He didn’t even get grazed, of course, because he always knew how long to stay, and when to run. Once we were in a Nassau crack house talking to (who else?) crackheads, when Tim turned to me and quietly said, “It’s time to go.”

Our interview subjects had been speculating as to the potential resale value of Tim’s camera gear and, unknown to me, two of them had gone to a bedroom to get guns. Tim and I took off, only to find that our driver had already fled the neighborhood. 

Most important: The photos that Tim took inside that house, way before crack cocaine ever reached America, were phenomenal.

Wise photo editors let Tim do what he did best, which was cover the news. The one radio dispatch guaranteed to pitch him into a seething rage: “Hey, Tim, we need some feature art.”

You did not send Chapman to take pictures at Art Basel. You did not send him to shoot a Dolphins game. You did not send him to the freaking Silver Knights.

You sent him to fires and wars and plane crashes and mass suicides in Guyana. You sent him to crawl the jungles of Nicaragua with armed rebels. You sent him to shoot the guarded island mansion of a crooked prime minister (where he rented a plane and flew in low “with the sun at our backs”).

You sent him to a triple-homicide in Medley (or was it a quadruple?), where he bustled around as cheerily as Martha Stewart in an herb garden. I remember because I was there.

Nobody who ever set foot in the Herald newsroom loved hard news more than Tim Chapman, or fought harder to get it into the paper. The business has changed, but Tim never did, never would.

And those of us who got to ride with him in those kick-ass days cherish every harrowing memory.

Tim Chapman's send off party at The Miami Herald                                      Photos By Al Diaz

Rick Hirsch with a Miami Herald spoof page for Tim Chapman 

Jordan Levin with Tim Chapman

David Landsberg, President and Publisher with Chapman

Photo Editor David Walters hands Chapman a cigar lighter.

The boss, Roman Lyskowski hands Chapman a copy of  The Exile Experience
on the Cuban Exodus.

Chapman plunges a cigar in his going away cake and mocks lighting it up.

Heat Beat Knicks Advance to Next Round

Miami Heat's LeBron James scores over Knick defenders in
the second quarter of Game 5 in the first round of the NBA Playoffs

View a Miami Herald photo gallery of Miami Heat vs New York Knicks in game five. CLICK HERE.

The Miami Heat's Dwyane Wade passes to Chris Bosh to score in the second quarter.

The Heat's LeBron James at mid-court with the Knicks Amar'e Stoudemire at mid-court after the Heat win 106-94 to finish the series

CLICK HERE for Miami Herald photography gallery.

10 Tips for Photojournalism Students: How to Succeed Visually and Financially

Students attending the lecture delivered by photojournalist Al Diaz at the SPJ Region 3 Conference received a copy of the National Press Photographers Association's News Photographer magazine. Perfect timing for the cover story on Freelancing in 2012 Who Would Want To? and What Does it Take to Survive? Think Tank Photo founder Deanne Fitzmaurice is seen on the cover. The ladies are holding Digital Holster camera bags provided by the seminar's sponsor Think Tank Photo.

By Daniel Reimold

dreimold@gmail.com

By his own admission, Al Diaz shoots better than he speaks.  The award-winning photojournalist and Miami Herald staffer began his presentation at a recent SPJ Region 3 Conference at the University of Florida by admitting that while his oratorical skills may lack gusto he hoped the photos he planned to show and the stories behind them would resonate.

And they did. Diaz delivered a kick-butt talk with stirring images to boot.  Below is a top 10 sampling of the wisdom and witticisms he shared with j-students, profs., and advisers. 

10 Steps to Succeed as a Photojournalist in 2012

1) When you wake up, consider yourself on assignment.  Shoot every day.  As Diaz put it, “Don’t just shoot for class.  Shoot for yourself.”  Early in the talk, Diaz mentioned with a smile that when people ask him when he stops shooting, his two-word answer: “I don’t.”  People laughed when he said it.  But I didn’t get the impression he was joking.

2) Develop your own style and vision, while also mastering the basics.  Take visual arts classes.  And visit museums to get a firsthand glimpse of how artists capture and present elements such as lighting, composition, and depth of field.

3) Embrace photojournalism as a business.  The days of surviving and thriving as simply a staff photographer at a single news outlet are over.  Set up multiple revenue streams that include editorial and commercial work such as wedding photography, holiday and business portraits.

4) Self-promote, humbly not arrogantly.  Set up a professional website featuring a portfolio of your work.  Be present and active on social media.  Blog within reason about assignments and photojournalism news of the day.

5) Retain the rights to your images.  Diaz repeatedly stressed the importance of copyrighting your work, along with keeping track of the whereabouts and use of your older, archived shots.

The message featured beneath images on his own site:  
“COPYRIGHT NOTICE All multimedia content, photographs, text, video, sound and music within ALDIAZPHOTO.com is copyright protected by Miami photojournalist Al Diaz and/or the stated publication and are presented for web browser viewing only. No images are within public domain. Nothing contained within this site may be reproduced, downloaded, stored, copied, manipulated or altered for broadcast or publication. Nothing may be redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium  without prior written permission from Al Diaz and/or the stated publication. Using any image as the base for another illustration or graphic content, including photography, is a violation of copyright and intellectual property laws.”

6) Enmesh yourself within the larger photography community.  He recommended joining the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA), Editorial Photographers, the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP), and Professional Photographers of America (PPA).

7) Don’t wait to be handed an assignment.  Develop, pitch, and undertake your own projects, for your employer and yourself.  Advantages: You get the chance to follow your passions and do work you’re excited about.  You can earn a rep as an independent thinker, someone with the foresight to simply be let loose on the waiting-to-be-photographed world.  You have the opportunity to stand out by building up a body of work that represents a particular style or content niche.  And you are motivated to stay visually sharp, always looking for the next potential project.

8) Learn and love video along with stills.  Become a multimedia whiz, adept at capturing, quickly stitching together, and presenting narrative slideshows, still-and-video mash-ups, and full-on video reports.  These presentation options also seem to be great for organizing and featuring your own work on your portfolio site.

9) Dress appropriately, depending on the assignment.  Don’t wear sandals and shorts to shoot a funeral.  Don’t wear a shirt and tie or super stilettos to shoot a construction site.  Think ahead about the type of scene you’ll be entering, the people within it, how long you will be on site, how much you will be moving around, and what the temperature will be.  Bottom line: Attempt to fit in while still projecting professionalism and ensuring comfort and ease of motion.

10) Never work for free.

Dan Reimold, Ph.D., is a college journalism scholar who has written and presented about the student press throughout the U.S., Southeast Asia, and in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. As the Student Press Law Center Report notes, “Reimold’s work allows him to track the pulse of America’s college papers and identify student press trends.”

He is an assistant professor of journalism and the co-coordinator of the journalism program at the University of Tampa, where he also advises The Minaret student newspaper. Along with maintaining CMM, Reimold serves as the college media correspondent for PBS MediaShift and the “Campus Beat” columnist for USA TODAY College. His first book on college media, Sex and the University: Celebrity, Controversy, and a Student Journalism Revolution, was published in fall 2010 by Rutgers University Press. His forthcoming textbook Journalism of Ideas is due out in spring 2013 by Routledge. Read more here

Interview with a HURRICANE

Going wide in the storm.

Mark Wallheiser is interviewed on 97.9ESPN Tallahassee by Brien Sorne.
Dated 05052012 http://tallahasseetalks.com/listen 

By Mark Wallheiser 

mark@markwallheiser.com 

To me there only one way to cover most anything and especially the only way to cover a hurricane is ditch the 70-200 and pick up the 16-35. Going wide in the storm forces one to interact with the survivors to get to know them, empathize with their plight and bring a piece of their personality to the film plane. 

Don’t get me wrong, I have a 70-200 slung over one shoulder and in many instances it makes the best frame in a series but after editing for my “Interview with a Hurricane” exhibition opening at 621 Gallery in Tallahassee May 6th through the 26th almost always the 70-200 was quickly followed up with the 16-35. In the film, pre-zoom days, it was the 24mm. 

It’s interesting going back and editing negs 25-30 years later for the exhibit and seeing how I shot, the progression and in most cases read my notes and IDs that I almost always stuffed in my negative envelopes. The first few hurricane notes were hard to read because the ink had run until I discovered that pencils don’t bleed in the rain. 

Interview with a Hurricane is a 50 print exhibition curated by Kenny Irby of the Poynter Institute, from the 16 hurricanes and 11 tropical storms I’ve covered since landing in Tallahassee in 1981. 

Sunday May 6^th from 3 until 5 pm, stop by the Nan Boynton Gallery inside 621 Gallery for the official opening.  

The show runs the month of May leading up to the 2012 hurricane season and is showcasing my photo reportage over the past 30 years. Cold beer and wine is part of the lure, of course.