Inside Rush Limbaugh's Wedding, and other Photo Blog News

Rush Limbaugh, fist-pumping groom, and, oh yeah, the bride

Sleek onservatism is A-OK

A military color guard for a veteran broadcaster

Rush ignites controversy

 It may well be that Donna Newman is the finest wedding photographer in the country...perhaps the world. I say this because she managed to make Rush Limbaugh look pretty good at his recent wedding. Thanks to Michael Shaw at Bag News Notes for collecting a few of Newman's photos from the ceremony...and pointing out that at this particular wedding it was the groom, not the bride, who seemed to shine brightest. It's quite a visual change-up, since most of the time we're used to seeing Rush puffing on a cigar on a golf course or looking like a gas bag that's about to explode. (Aside from these wedding photos, I can't think of all that many attractive pictures of Rush. What's up with that?) At any rate, as Shaw points out, not that many people have military honor guards at their weddings....


At the New York Observer, John Gorenfeld adds a bit of interesting info to the ongoing controversy about Time magazine's cover image of the 18-year-old Afghan girl whose nose and ears were cut off by her husband as punishment for fleeing his home. The image was an important and powerful editorial choice--all of a sudden a newsweekly cover mattered again, the way they used to every week--because it offered an instant rationale for the US to stay in Afghanistan: What will happen to women like Aisha if we pull out? The image caused a lot of worried talk, presumably because it was shocking, but probably because it raised difficult questions for opponents of the war. The photo itself was visually acceptable to most viewers, I think, in part because it immediately calls to mind one of the icons of magazine photojournalism: Steve McCurry's shot of a young Afghan girl at a refugee camp in Pakistan during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. (It's interesting to compare and contrast the effects of the two photographs and the issues they illustrate.) Gorenfeld points out that Time failed to disclose that the writer of its cover story, Aryn Baker, is married to an Afghan man tied to businesses that might profit from a US military presence in Afghanistan.

Finally, the Huffington Post asks its readers to vote on whether they think this new print ad from Proenza Schouler has been retouched to eliminate the model's waist. (My vote: maybe a little, but not necessarily at all. The optical illusion of tiny waists is something that good photographers can create with light, pose, and clothes.) Anyway, as the piece points out, top models do come with tiny waists.