Rick Smolan | |
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 Smolan in Paris in 2024. |
Rick Smolan (born November 5, 1949 [1] ) is a former Time, Life, and National Geographic photographer best known as the co-creator of the Day in the Life book series. He is currently CEO of Against All Odds Productions, [2] a cross-media organization. [3]
Smolan is a 1972 graduate of Dickinson College and co-created the best-selling Day in The Life Series photography series with David Elliot Cohen who are credited for creating the mass market for large-format illustrated books. [4] Smolan and Jennifer Erwitt, co-founders of Against All Odds Productions, have produced a number of global crowd sourcing projects. Fortune Magazine selected Against All Odds Productions as One of the 25 Coolest Companies in America. [5]
More than five million of his books have been sold around the world, many have appeared on The New York Times best-seller lists and have been featured on the covers of Fortune,Time, and Newsweek. [6] Smolan is also a member of the CuriosityStream Advisory Board. [7]
In 2012 Smolan and co-author Erwitt published The Human Face of Big Data, a book in which Smolan and Erwitt used various photographs, graphics, and information to make big data easier to comprehend and absorb on a more personal, relatable level. [6] [Human Face of Big Data] focusing on humanity's new ability to collect, analyze, triangulate and visualize vast amounts of data in real time. [6]
In 2000 Smolan organized The Planet Project: Your Voice, Your World, one of the largest real-time internet polls in internet history, with the aim to get answers from over 1.5 million people in more than 240 countries on how they felt about their lives at the dawn of the new millennium. [8]
From Alice to Ocean is a collection of photographs Smolan took of Robyn Davidson's 1,700-mile trek across the deserts of central and Western Australia that National Geographic Magazine sponsored. Davidson's writings along with Smolan's photographs became a National Geographic cover story. An autobiographical account of her trek was later published in 1980 as a book entitled Tracks, which included some of Smolan's photographs. [9] [10]
In 1996, Smolan and Erwitt published the Day in the Life book 24 Hours in Cyberspace: Painting on the Walls of the Digital Cave, a collection of photographs from 150 photojournalists, with the intention to, over a 24-hour period, chronicle how the internet was beginning to have a profound effect on the daily lives of people around the world. [11] [12] 24 Hours in Cyberspace (February 8, 1996) was "the largest one-day online event" up to that date, headed by Smolan with Jennifer Erwitt, Tom Melcher, Samir Arora and Clement Mok. [13] [14] [15]
In 2003 Smolan and Cohen published America 24/7 . [16] America At Home, UK at Home, and America 24/7 encapsulates various perspectives on life by inviting the public to submit images, and enabled readers to place their own photographs within or on the book. [17]
In November 2007 Smolan and Erwitt published Blue Planet Run : The Race to Provide Safe Drinking Water to the World, a series of photos illustrating attempts around the world to bring fresh drinking water to various communities suffering from lack of clean and consistent water supply.
In 2009, Smolan published Obama Time Capsule, which incorporated photos of Obama's first campaign for presidential office and his first 100 days in office. It includes commentary from various notable people including Arianna Huffington and General Colin Powell. [18] 'The Obama Time Capsule was also published in a form where each book was printed separately and readers could include their own contributions and photos to personalize the individual book they would receive. [19]
Smolan teamed up with Ridley Scott and Kevin Macdonald to "create the first user-generated feature-length documentary film shot on a single day" for YouTube underwritten project Life in a Day. [20] This historic global film experiment enlists the global community to capture a moment of their lives on Saturday, July 24, 2010. Against All Odds Productions, Smolan's company, distributed "cameras to individuals in remote regions of the world in an effort to ensure that the film is as inclusive and representative as possible". [20]
An Australian film based on Davidson's book, called Tracks , was released in August 2013, starring Mia Wasikowska as Davidson and Adam Driver as Smolan. [21] In 2015 Smolan published Inside Tracks:Alone Across the Outback via a successful Kickstarter campaign. [22] The project was released in conjunction with the North American film premiere in late 2014 of the film, and combines Smolan's photographs, excerpts from Davidson's book, images from the film, and an interactive app. [23]
Most recently Smolan and Erwitt created The Good Fight: America's Ongoing Struggle for Justice. The book captures many aspects of the struggles of Americans who have experienced hatred, oppression or bigotry because of their gender, skin color, country of origin, religion, sexual orientation, disability or beliefs over the past 100 years. The book features more than 180 photographs, 63 embedded videos, over a dozen essays plus examples of music and lyrics that accompanied or inspired the struggle.[ citation needed ]
The Good Fight became one of Amazon's top 100 books within a week after it was released, and People magazine chose it as one of the "10 Best Books of the Year". The TED organization sent a copy to all 1,500 members as the official TED Book Club selection. The book won numerous awards including The Independent Book Publishers' “Freedom Fighter” Award, and Ben Franklin Association awards for “History" and “Politics and Current Events".[ citation needed ]
Track or Tracks may refer to:
Robyn Davidson is an Australian writer best known for her 1980 book Tracks, about her 2,700 km trek across the deserts of Western Australia using camels. Her career of travelling and writing about her travels has spanned 40 years. Her memoir, Unfinished Woman was published in late 2023.
Dell EMC is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, and Round Rock, Texas, United States. Dell EMC sells data storage, information security, virtualization, analytics, cloud computing and other products and services that enable organizations to store, manage, protect, and analyze data. Dell EMC's target markets include large companies and small- and medium-sized businesses across various vertical markets. The company's stock was added to the New York Stock Exchange on April 6, 1986, and was also listed on the S&P 500 index.
Elliott Erwitt was a French-born American advertising and documentary photographer known for his black and white candid photos of ironic and absurd situations within everyday settings. He was a member of Magnum Photos from 1953.
Robyn Charles Miller is an American video game designer who is the co-founder of Cyan Worlds with brother Rand Miller. He served as co-designer of the popular computer game Myst, which held the title of best-selling computer game from its release in 1993 until the release of The Sims seven years later. He also co-directed and co-lead designed the sequel to Myst, Riven, which was the best-selling computer game of its year of release, 1997. Miller composed and performed the soundtracks to both games. He also acted in Myst, portraying one of the antagonists, Sirrus. He co-wrote the first Myst novel, The Book of Atrus.
24 Hours in Cyberspace was "the largest one-day online event" up to that date, headed by photographer Rick Smolan with Jennifer Erwitt, Tom Melcher, Samir Arora and Clement Mok. The project brought together the world's top 1,000 photographers, editors, programmers, and interactive designers to create a digital time capsule of online life."
America 24/7 was a photography book published by DK in 2003 about culture and life in the United States. It depicts life of Americans from every U.S. State.
Nigel Holmes is a British/American graphic designer, author, and theorist, who focuses on information graphics and information design.
David Elliot Cohen is an American author and editor who has, over a 30-year span, created more than 70 photography books. He is probably best known for the best-selling Day in the Life and America 24/7 series of photography books that he co-created with Rick Smolan.
Mia Wasikowska is an Australian actress. She made her screen debut on the Australian television drama All Saints in 2004, followed by her feature film debut in Suburban Mayhem (2006). She first became known to a wider audience following her critically acclaimed work on the HBO television series In Treatment (2008). She was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female for the film That Evening Sun (2009).
Jackie Estrada is an American comic-book convention organizer, book editor, co-publisher of Exhibit A Press, administrator of the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, and past president of Friends of Lulu.
Sandy Smolan is an American feature film, television, and documentary film director.
The London Eye Mystery is a children's mystery novel by English author Siobhan Dowd. First published in 2007, it tells the story of how Ted, a boy with Asperger syndrome, and his sister Kat, solve the mystery of how their cousin, Salim, seemingly vanishes from inside a sealed capsule on the London Eye. In 2017, Robin Stevens published a sequel, The Guggenheim Mystery.
John Curran is an American film director and screenwriter.
Matthew Naythons is an American photojournalist, physician and publisher. Naythons trained as a medical doctor, and began working as a photojournalist in the 1970s. During his photographic career, he founded an NGO, and later became a writer and publisher.
Tracks is a 2013 Australian drama film directed by John Curran and starring Mia Wasikowska and Adam Driver. It is an adaptation of Robyn Davidson's memoir of the same name, chronicling the author's nine-month journey on camels across the Australian desert. It was shown at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival and the 70th Venice International Film Festival 2013. It premiered in Australia as the opening film at the Adelaide Film Festival on 10 October 2013. The film has been shown at several other film festivals, including London, Vancouver, Telluride, Dubai, Sydney OpenAir, Dublin and Glasgow.
William DeKay is a freelance Canadian photojournalist.
Sandra Eisert is an American photojournalist, now an art director and picture editor. In 1974 she became the first White House picture editor. Later she was named Picture Editor of the Year by the National Press Photographers Association in its annual competition. She contributed to 1989 earthquake coverage that won a Pulitzer Prize for the San Jose Mercury News. As of 2012, she has her own business providing strategic planning for startups.
Cotton Coulson was a photographer known for his work for National Geographic magazine.
Mark Simon Wexler is an American documentary filmmaker and photojournalist.
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