Rick Smolan

Rick Smolan is an American photographer. He is CEO of "Against All Odds Productions". [ [http://www.AgainstAllOdds.com Official website of production company] ]

Background

Smolan is a 1972 graduate of Dickinson College. He has worked for "TIME", "LIFE" and "National Geographic". Smolan created best-selling [http://www.amazon.com/Day-Life-America-Rick-Smolan/dp/0002553325/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1222300955&sr=1-2 'Day in the Life'] photography series and is CEO of Against All Odds Productions, which specializes in the design and execution of large-scale global photographic projects that combine compelling story-telling with state-of-the-art technology. Fortune Magazine selected Against All Odds as [http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1995/07/10/204249/index.htm"One of the 25 Coolest Companies in America"] . Eight of the company's projects have been featured on the covers of Fortune magazine, Time magazine, Newsweek and US News & World Report.

Photography projects

AMERICA AT HOME and UK AT HOME

[http://www.myamericaathome.com/ AMERICA AT HOME] and [http://www.ukathomeathome.co.uk UK AT HOME] were published in April 2008. For these books, 150 of the world's top photojournalists—and tens of thousands of amateur shutterbugs—fanned out around the United States and the United Kingdom to shoot digital photos of the most important place in their lives: home. These two projects captured the emotions of home: the distinctive rituals, the intimate moments, and all the myriad ways in which we work, play, learn, conduct our lives, and interact with friends, family members and pets as families and individuals transform their dwellings into their homes. Both books offer readers the ability to receive customized dust jackets for their books. AMERICA AT HOME and UK AT HOME were sponsored by IKEA.

BLUE PLANET RUN: THE RACE TO PROVIDE CLEAN DRINKING WATER TO THE WORLD

"Blue Planet Run: The Race to Provide Clean Drinking Water to the World" was released in November 2007. The book provides readers with an extraordinary look at the water problems facing humanity and some of the hopeful solutions being pursued by large and small companies, by entrepreneurs and activists, and by nongovernmental organizations and foundations. The book is a showcase of powerful, inspiring, disturbing, and hopeful images captured by leading photojournalists around the world who documented the human face of the crisis and its possible solutions. One hundred percent of the royalties from this book are being used to provide clean drinking water to people around the world who desperately need it. Kai Ryssdal of NPR's "Marketplace" [http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2007/12/17/blueplanet_smolan_q/ "interviewed"] author and photographer Rick Smolan about why so much of the water we do have is polluted and unusable.

AMERICA 24/7

[http://http://www.247mediagroup.com/projects/america.html "AMERICA 24/7"] was the largest photographic event in U.S. history. Smolan and his long time friend and business partner David Cohen sent 1,000 top photojournalists (including 36 Pulitzer Prize winners) across the United States for a week to create an extraordinary snapshot of American life. 25,000 stringers, students and amateurs also submitted images to the project website. "AMERICA 24/7" hit #5 on the New York Times best seller lists. The Wall Street Journal featured the America 24/7 project on the front page of its MarketPlace section because the book represented the first New York Times best-seller that was ever mass personalized by readers. More than 21% of book buyers made custom covers featuring photos of their families, friends and pets.

Other works

24 HOURS IN CYBERSPACE: PAINTING ON THE WALLS OF THE DIGITAL CAVE

One of Smolan's more famous projects is "24 Hours in Cyberspace". Held online on February 8 1996 it was "the largest one-day online event" up to that date. [ [http://www.baychi.org/calendar/19970909/ "24 Hours in Cyberspace" (and more)] ] "The project brought together the world's top photographers, editors, programmers, and interactive designers to create a digital time capsule of online life. The original website is still available online, frozen in time, at [http://undertow.arch.gatech.edu/homepages/virtualopera/cyber24/SITE/htm3/site.htm "24 Hours in Cyberspace"] " [ [http://www.baychi.org/calendar/19970909/ "24 Hours in Cyberspace" (and more)] ] A photographic exhibition was unveiled at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History on 23 January 1997, featuring 70 photos from the project. [ [http://archive.southcoasttoday.com/daily/02-97/02-22-97/b02li072.htm The human face of cyberspace, painted in random images] ] It was introduced by then Vice President Al Gore. [ [http://itv.net/archive/cyber/cyber.htm 24 Hours in Cyberspace: Smithsonian] ] [ [http://icaa.eu/company/Cisco/article/14104.html Cisco Systems And HP Sponsor Smithsonian Exhibit] ] who had written the [http://undertow.arch.gatech.edu/homepages/virtualopera/cyber24/SITE/htm3/toc.htm?about"Earthwatch"] essay for the project. [ [http://www.baychi.org/calendar/19970909/ "24 Hours in Cyberspace" (and more)] ] [http://www.myamericaathome.com/customcover/mediainquiries "Ted Koppel's ABC Nightine"] devoted an entire evening the project and [http://www.usnews.com/usnews/letters/articles/961021/archive_010196.htm "US News and World Report"] featured the project on their cover. The San Francisco Examiner ran a front page story about the project, entitled [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/e/a/1996/02/09/NEWS8420.dtl&hw=smolan&sn=002&sc=643"A Wild Cyberspace Marathon: On-line event lauds digital revolution"] .

PASSAGE TO VIETNAM: THROUGH THE EYES OF 70 PHOTOGRAPHERS

[http://www.amazon.com/Passage-Vietnam-Through-Seventy-Photographers/dp/1885559003/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1222300776&sr=1-1 "Passage to Vietnam: Through the Eyes of 70 Photographers"] Seventy award-winning photojournalists with unprecedented access to every corner of Vietnam created an intimate portrait of this intriguing country, 20 years after the war's end. Commentary by Fortune magazine editor Colin Leinster, Pulitzer Prize-winner Stanley Karnow and noted travel writer Pico Iyer accompany the stunning visuals. The project resulted in both a large-format illustrated book as well as an award winning CD-ROM described by The New York Times as "the most beautiful CD-ROM ever." The project was created in partnership with Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s Interval Research. The Wall Street Journal's Walter Mossberg calls Passage "a thing of beauty."

ONE DIGITAL DAY: HOW THE MICROCHIP IS CHANGING OUR WORLD

[http://www.amazon.com/One-Digital-Day-Microchip-Changing/dp/B0001Q5UBW/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1222300880&sr=1-1 "One Digital Day: How the Microchip is Changing Our World"] was published in June 1998 in conjunction with the celebration of Intel's 30th anniversary. No invention in history has spread so quickly throughout the world, or revolutionized so many aspects of human existence, as the microchip. Little more than a quarter century since its invention, there are now nearly 15 billion microchips in use worldwide -- the equivalent of two powerful computers for every man, woman, and child on the planet. The microprocessor is not only changing the products we use, but also the way we live, and, ultimately, the way we perceive reality.One Digital Day is the result of a unique project designed to make people aware of the thousands of microprocessors we unknowingly encounter every day. Rick Smolan, and his partner Jennifer Erwitt sent 100 of the world's most talented photojournalists around the globe on July 11, 1997. Their mission: to depict intimate and emotional stories of how this tiny chip-a square of silicon the size of a fingernail, weighing less than a postage stamp -- has transformed our human culture forever. The book features more than 200 compelling photographs, taken on that single day, revealing a world that only science-fiction writers once dared envision. Thanks to microchips, it is a world where science, entertainment, business, health, sports, education, and countless other fields are progressing faster than we can imagine. How pervasive is the microchip? If you took the microchips out of every application in which they are now used, the results would be stunning and frightening. Microwave ovens, dishwashers, and many other kitchen appliances would stop working. Televisions and VCRs would fade to black; stereos would grow mute; and most clocks would stop. Cars wouldn't start, and airplanes would be unable to leave the ground. The phone system would go dead, as would most streetlights, thermostats, and, of course, a half-billion computers. And these are only the most obvious applications. Every factory in the industrial world would also shut down, as would the electrical grid, stock exchanges, and the global banking system. Pacemakers would stop, too, as would surgical equipment and fetal monitoring systems in obstetrics wards. This infinite variety of applications is vividly illustrated by the images captured for "One Digital Day."

THE PLANET PROJECT: YOUR VOICE, YOUR WORLD

[http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2000_Nov_16/ai_67009082 "The Planet Project: Your Voice Your World"] , was the largest real time online poll in Internet history. 3,000 pollsters were sent to the most remote places on earth armed with Palm Pilots containing 220 questions in 8 languages aimed at determining what it means to be a human being at the dawn of the millennium. The 8-language web site was visited by 1.6 million people from 241 countries who answered more than 28 million questions. 'The Planet Project' generated 781 million media impressions worldwide.

FROM ALICE TO OCEAN

In 1977 National Geographic assigned Smolan to photograph a story about an Australian woman, Robyn Davidson, who traveled across Australia with camels. Davidson later wrote a book about it, "Tracks" (1980), in which she revealed her romantic relationship with Smolan. Smolan's photography appeared both in the magazine and"Tracks" which has become something of a travel classic [Peter Hulme, "Travelling to write (1940-2000)" in "The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing", Cambridge University Press, 2002, ISBN 052178410X. See pages 90-93 "New forms (or, the leopard, the giant sloth, and four camels)" - in which Hulme considers three books as the most significant turning points of a new generation of travel writers emerging in the 1970s] . In the early 1990s, Smolan published his pictures of the trip, in "From Alice to Ocean"; which has the distinction of being the first interactive story-and-photo CD made for public release.

Notes

External links

* [http://http://www.myamericaathome.com/customcover/about Biography]
* [http://cfserv.dickinson.edu/magazine/winter04/feature4.html America, Moment by Moment:Rick Smolan ’72 shapes the largest collaborative photography project ever] - Dickinson College
* [http://www.transmitmedia.com/svr/vault/smolan/smolan_transcript.html Interview about "24 Hours in Cyberspace"]
* [http://wiredforbooks.org/ricksmolan/ 1986 audio interview with Rick Smolan - RealAudio at Wired for Books.org]
* [http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/rick_smolan_tells_the_story_of_a_girl.html TED: Rick Smolan: A girl, a photograph, a homecoming]
* [http://www.fastcompany.tv/video/americas-photographer-0 "Fast Company Video Interview"]