Who Was Marion Franklin?

On October 26, 2007 a photographer was formally sentenced in the US in connection with the fatal overdose of a young woman. In 2003 Marion Franklin was nineteen. She had suffered abuse, her parents split up, she left home and dropped out of school. She graduated from working in fast-food restaurants to earning her living working for a photographer. She modelled nude for him and his clients, and collaborated with him on various projects - including a proposed bondage pay site featuring the pair of them. She went to live near his studio, in an apartment he got for her.

They worked together, their lifestlye at work was bohemian, they partied with each other and with other people in their milieu. The photographer was attracted to Marion, they became friends and, despite an age gap of more than 35 years, he eventually persuaded her to have a kind of affair with him.

Marion's drug use was problematic. The accidental overdose that killed her was put in her drink by the photographer. Between them it was usual for him to help keep her drugged, as she wanted to be. It was also usual for him to use and photograph her in this state, as he did again this last time.

I have to be honest and say I didn't know who the photographer, Bob Shell, was before I first read about this. I work in professional photography and I'd never heard of him. And neither had some of my colleagues. Shell had authored quite a few books, apparently, and worked for a well known photo magazine in the US.

What I read is that he paid a hard-up young girl with issues, one who'd fallen to the fringes of society, to work as a glamour nude and pornographic model for him.

She was far younger than him. She had an obvious drug problem which showed in her face as well as her behaviour. You couldn't be around her and miss it. It was what being around her was about - an endless cycle of getting and taking over-the-counter, prescription, and illegal drugs. Bob Shell supplied her with some of those drugs and money for more, and helped her to stay dosed. He made use of her when she was groggy and when she was out. In 2003 he helped her take too much, called medics too late, and they couldn't resuscitate her. She was dead. She was a damaged kid, who didn't make it. Shell's life is derailed now, Marion's is over.

The prosecution case against Shell was that he deliberately manipulated her drug habit as a way of taking advantage of her, and that this led to her death.

I have to be honest, before the recent press reports I didn't know who Bob Shell was. I hadn't heard of him.

I didn't know Marion Franklin either. And I never will.

Sony Send Customers To Your Kiosk!

SONY UK have launched an online service to direct consumers to your in-store Print by Sony services. The web application can allow users to search either for your SONY Passport and ID photography service, or for your SnapLab or other Print by Sony kiosk.

Mitsubishi Media Ok For Passport!

Back-printed Mitsubishi dye-sub media, including ID media, has effectively been cleared for passport use in the UK, now that the Identity and Passport Service is to insist on new digital grey backgrounds from January 1. The IPS's scanning equipment is less prone to showing up back-printing on passport photos if they've been taken against the new digital grey backgrounds, so IPS is allowing back-printed media again.

Photo Book Award!

The director of the design and development project that led to www.photomart.co.uk's ground breaking new DIGITRANS photo book solution has been awarded a Sonimag Foto-Oscar for his work. Mr. Ignacio Manen's Foto-Oscar was awarded by the organizer of Sonimagfoto, leading Spanish trade magazine Foto Ventas Digital. www.photomart.co.uk's DIGITRANS photo book solution enables you to produce premium hand bound photo books and digital albums at a rate of up to 180 a day (depending on the size of book and the efficiency of your bindery operation). The albums produced in a DIGITRANS studio typically sell for hundreds of pounds each. Currently, www.photomart.co.uk are giving away a free video showing DIGITRANS in action, together with sample digital album software, to anyone who requests one by filling in the online form.

Sony Announce Compact Kiosk!

Sony have announced a new compact kiosk model. The PictureStation Kiosk compact is expected to be positioned between the current full-size PictureStation kiosks, and the diminutive Sony SnapLab. The Sony PictureStation Kiosk compact will not start to become available till December, 2007. It will compete directly with units like Kodak's Picture Kiosk GS Compact, which is already shipping. In the UK Sony has made ground breaking inroads into the kiosk market. ASDA has adopted Sony-based kiosks, and the Japanese corporation has also penetrated the UK's notoriously difficult independent micro-retail segment with SnapLab, their innovative and still unique mini photo kiosk.

Kodak Won't Sponsor London 2012!

Eastman Kodak Company is withdrawing from top-tier sponsorship of the Olympic Games after Beijing 2008, meaning the corporation won't be the Official Imaging Sponsor at London 2012. Kodak's Director, Brand Management, Elizabeth Noonan said: "We have enjoyed a long, fruitful relationship with the Olympic movement and the IOC [International Olympic Committee, the organizer of the Games], and we wish them every success in the future" The corporation will discontinue top-tier sponsorship of the Games after 2008.

Photo-Me Charge For Failed Break-Up!

Photo-Me is to show a substantial charge on its next interim report in relation to the collapse of the company's breakup following failure to find a buyer for its vending division. The charge relates largely to professional fees incurred.

Genius Of Photography!

Starting from October 25th at 9pm BBC Four is to screen "The Genius of Photography", a six part TV series described as "the most comprehensive look at the most influential art form in the world". A feature of the series will be interviews with well known photographers including William Eggleston, Nan Goldin, Robert Adams, David Byrne, Juergen Teller, Andreas Gursky, and many more.

Bumper Day Of Photo Workshops!

Online trade photographic supplier www.photomart.co.uk is to hold a bumper day of photo workshops in its huge London showrooms on November 28, 2007. Billed as an "Anniversary Day", the day-long programme of workshops is to celebrate the second anniversary of the opening of this major photographic venue. An all-star cast of photographers - including Jon Gray, Keith Trainor and Elmira Watts - will present a variety of photo workshops sponsored by manufacturers such as BOWENS, ExpressDigital, Fujifilm and SONY, on topics ranging from Event Photography to Studio Lighting, Colour Management, Wide Format, and Workflow Productivity. Free food and refreshments will be provided throughout the day, and www.photomart.co.uk are giving 15% off most accessories and consumables purchased at the workshops. Additionally, representatives of many major brand manufacturers will be on hand to extend show specials to attendees. A single ticket grants entry to any workshop, and all are presented twice on the day (once in the morning, once in the afternoon). You should be able to attend at least two. Tickets, priced at just £50 +vat, can be booked from the www.photomart.co.uk website. Just type the search code "TICKETANN" into the site's Search Box. Book now, and we'll see you there!

Sony World Photography Awards!

SONY are sponsoring the new global awards that will become the Oscars of the photography world. The World Photography Awards will be awarded at Cannes on April 24, 2008. The Awards are open for entries from now till mid-January 2008. Entries will be judged in eleven categories by an Academy of photographic experts. Professional as well as amateur photographers may enter.

New Mid-Price Kata Bags!

Kata have added a very welcome range of mid-priced offerings to their excellent range of photographers' protective bags. The new range, called the DPS Digital Photo System, includes backpacks, shoulder bags and pouches.

Kodak Paper & Chemistry To Go Up!

Kodak are to increase the prices of their professional photo chemistry and sheet paper from December. Increases of around 10% are expected. The corporation is saying that falling demand means they manufacture less, which pushes unit costs up.

New Kodak Compact Kiosk Gs Offer!

Only till the end of November, www.photomart.co.uk are offering Kodak's new Compact Kiosk GS at a special introductory price, and supplying the first roll of media as a Buy-One-Get-One-Free offer! Kodak´s new Picture Kiosk GS Compact is an ideal kiosk solution for retailers, photo labs and pharmacies. It is a compact, affordable unit that shares its distinctive and immediately recognized branding with its larger siblings (such as the Kodak Picture Kiosks installed in branches of Boots all around the country, and advertised on television). Kodak remains one of the most recognized and trusted brands in the world. You can put that brand to work in your shop!

Bookbinder Wanted!

Major photographic distributor www.photomart.co.uk is seeking a craft book binder for occasional work in London E17. The job might suit a retired, semi-retired or self-employed book binder. The work will involve being trained on a new suite of manual bindery equipment for the production of specialist photo books, assisting with the installation of the equipment at customer premises, operating and demonstrating the equipment for customers, and training customer staff to use it. CVs by email please to lewis@photomart.co.uk.

Kodak Launches Improved T-Max 400

Kodak is saying that T-MAX 400 is now the sharpest, finest grained 400-speed black-and-white film in the world. The corporations is claiming fine-grain equivalent to an ISO 100 film for this latest iteration of ISO 400 T-MAX.

New Mitsubishi Portrait Printer!

www.photomart.co.uk is offering the new Mitsubishi CP-3800DW portrait printer to customers NOW! at a very special introductory price, strictly as an advance order item! Mitsubishi will give www.photomart.co.uk an advance shipment of these printers in November. The full-production unit will not otherwise be generally available till March 2008. The new Mitsubishi CP-3800DW is a best-of-class portrait printer that beats the pants off most of the competition. It has a light weight of not much more than 14kg and is extremely small and compact, making it ideal for event photography. It's fast, producing a borderless 8"x12" in just 35 seconds. It's roll-fed to eliminate paper pickup problems. It's front-loading (on a slide-out tray) and has a convenient cassette ribbon instead of fiddly spools. During printing the paper doesn't protrude from the printer until after it is printed - in theory this can help to reduce dust intake to the head. And you can print 6"x8"s on it too, from the same roll as 8"x12". Cost per print at the time of writing is lower than on most competing models. The only boxes this printer doesn't check are that there is no matte media option, and you can't print 8"x10" and 8"x12" from the same roll. (If you need those features, then you need the SONY UP-GR700. But you'll need deep pockets to buy that, you won't be able to carry the UP-GR700 very far, and you won't be able to keep it in a small space!)

BUMPER DAY OF PHOTO WORKSHOPS!

Online trade photographic supplier www.photomart.co.uk is to hold a bumper day of photo workshops in its huge London showrooms on November 28, 2007. Billed as an "Anniversary Day", the day-long programme of workshops is to celebrate the second anniversary of the opening of this major photographic venue. An all-star cast of photographers - including Jon Gray, Keith Trainor and Elmira Watts - will present a variety of photo workshops sponsored by manufacturers such as BOWENS, ExpressDigital, Fujifilm and SONY, on topics ranging from Event Photography to Studio Lighting, Colour Management, Wide Format, and Workflow Productivity. Free food and refreshments will be provided throughout the day, and www.photomart.co.uk are giving 15% off most accessories and consumables purchased at the workshops. Additionally, representatives of many major brand manufacturers will be on hand to extend show specials to attendees. A single ticket grants entry to any workshop, and all are presented twice on the day (once in the morning, once in the afternoon). You should be able to attend at least two. Tickets, priced at just £50 +vat, can be booked from the www.photomart.co.uk website. Just type the search code "TICKETANN" into the site's Search Box. Book now, and we'll see you there!

Jessops Staff Wanted!

www.photomart.co.uk is actively targeting people with experience at chains like Jessops in our latest recruitment drive! So, if you have at least one year's recent experience with any photo retailer, in any capacity in any branch, and you would like to work with www.photomart.co.uk in London, email your CV and a covering note to our Managing Director, lewis@photomart.co.uk. We have a variety of different positions available, including floor sales positions in our photographic showrooms in London, telesales positions in our friendly, human call centre (with prospects!), field sales positions servicing the whole British Isles, processing and printing positions in our photo labs, and shop assistant vacancies in our photographic retail outlets in East London. We're looking for people who would like to apply their enthusiasm for photography, and their knowledge of it, in their day-to-day work. We have a future for people like that, and we'd love to meet you to discuss it! So get that CV off today to lewis@photomart.co.uk. Closing date for applications is November 30, 2007. We look forward to hearing from you!

Bumper Day Of Photo Workshops!

To celebrate twelve months in our massive new London showrooms, www.photomart.co.uk is to hold a bumper day of photographic workshops on Wednesday, November 28, 2007. This ANNIVERSARY DAY will include workshops by Keith Trainor, Elmira Watts, Jon Gray and others, and will feature events for BOWENS, ExpressDigital, Fujifilm , SONY and many, many, more! A single £50 +VAT ticket for the whole day can be booked through the www.photomart.co.uk website!

Passport Photo Enforcement Again!

For the third year in a row, the former Passport Office (Now the Identity and Passport Service), is to attempt to enforce its controversial and disruptive 'new' standards for passport photos from January 1, 2008. The main change planned for 2008 is strict refusal of photos taken against a standard white background. However, the IPS is finally giving up on rejecting backprinted media. And the service has confirmed it has no plans to take passport photos itself in the foreseeable future. "There are no intentions to remove the requirement for all applicants to provide good quality photographs with their applications", the IPS said. The majority of photographs rejected by the IPS are those taken by the applicant themselves in photo booths. The new regulations have been a major factor contributing to the death of the photo booth market, and the present troubles of PhotoMe. The apparent arbitrariness of some of the new passport photo rules, confusingly sporadic enforcement, and continual U-turns by the IPS have eroded the credibility of Passport Service regulations over the years. In particular, the industry is quietly peed-off that, in its opinion, the most irksome new rules arise from the inadequacy of the scanning equipment chosen by the IPS rather than any inherent deficiencies in the actual photos presented to it. The whole backprinting issue has been a debacle. IPS scanning equipment couldn't cope with backprinting. No other territory in the world required passport photo media without backprinting, so manufacturers had to face the prospect of producing media just for the UK, or exiting the UK market. Some dived through hoops to find ways to supply non-backprinted media into the UK economically. Others took the issue into account when deciding to exit the UK market. All of this has turned out, through the IPS U-turn, to have been an unnecessary farce. (That particular regulation was only ever sporadically enforced anyway.) The issue of off-white backgrounds has similar origins in the peculiarities of the IPS's scanning equipment, rather than in any inherent unsuitability of photos on a white background for passport use. Now every studio in the country, every photo lab offering passport service, pharmacies and post offices, all need to switch to off-white backgrounds of 5% - 10% grey! Surely, given the vast scale of ID photography in the UK, the economic cost to the country of these years of farcical to-ing and fro-ing far outweighs whatever the cost of putting right the IPS's scanning equipment would have been?

Darkroom Deal!

www.photomart.co.uk believes that anyone using the photographers' workflow productivity software, ExpressDigital DARKROOM, for business use should really be taking advantage of the optional Anytime Access support package. We believe this so strongly that we've introduced a very specially priced bundle of the UK edition of DARKROOM Professional with Anytime Access support. Anytime Access support is like having a DARKROOM expert sit right beside you. Available 24/5, it means that ExpressDigital support can view and control DARKROOM on your computer over the Internet while they talk to you on the phone. It also assures you of free upgrades to cover things like drivers for new printers and cameras. The edition of DARKROOM that www.photomart.co.uk sells is fully UK localized, with currency in £ sterling.

Ricky Turrel Gives Mpa Talk!

Popular and well-known event photographer Ricky Turrell will be the speaker at the next MPA London & Essex Region and BIPP Brentwood Group meeting. The meeting will be held on Wednesday, October 17 at the Maylands Golf & Country Club, Colchester Road, Romford RM3 0AZ. For more info contact barney.photo@dial.pipex.com or call 01268 794 561. Ricky will be talking about his approach to event photography, marketing, and the use of the web to drive business.

Darkroom Rebate!

A rebate of up to £150 can be claimed by anyone buying an edition of DARKROOM before October 31, 2007. The rebate is available by mailing in a downloadable form. For the UK edition of DARKROOM Assembly we're rebating £150, or £75 for UK DARKROOM Professional , and £25 for UK DARKROOM Core. To download the rebate form, just go to www.photomart.co.uk and click on our "Computers & Software" tab. Click on the ExpressDigital banner that shows on the top of the page and the rebate form will open in your Adobe Reader. Fill it out, and mail it off to the address on the form.

Event Photography Awards!

www.photomart.co.uk, in association with ExpressDigital, will present the MPA's Event Photographer of the Year awards at the British Professional Photography Awards ceremony on Sunday, October 28, 2007 at the Hilton Hotel Newcastle Gateshead. www.photomart.co.uk is one of the leading sellers of professional photographic equipment and supplies in the UK. The company's wide range of offerings includes event photography equipment such as fast dye sub printers, dye sub media, and portable power for location kit. ExpressDigital is the US company behind DARKROOM, the leading workflow productivity software for photographers. DARKROOM is the software of choice for sports & event photographers in the UK. ExpressDigital DARKROOM is distributed in the UK by www.photomart.co.uk The MPA (Master Photographers' Association) and BIPP (British Institute of Professional Photographers) are the leading organizations for full time professional photography in the UK. Their annual BPP Awards are the UK's premier professional photography honours. Event photography awards will be presented in two categories, UK and Overseas.