Photography

To be clear, Wes Anderson did not set out to direct his new movie via e-mail. Even if that's precisely how the writer-director's stop-motion animation version of Roald Dahl's beloved children's book "Fantastic Mr. Fox" -- a jaunty visual joy ride that features voice characterizations by George Clooney, Meryl Streep and Jason Schwartzman -- ultimately came to be, Anderson never intended to become an in-box auteur. That choice was made all but inevitable, however, by the Oscar nominee's unorthodox decision to hole up in Paris for most of the shoot's one-year duration while principal photography commenced across the English Channel at London's venerable Three Mills Studios.

Thanks to a gift of 543 photographs from an anonymous donor, the Palm Springs Art Museum is transforming its photography collection and expanding its exhibition program. The donation surveys camera art from the mid-19th to the late 20th centuries, with pockets of strength in early photography and Pictorialist images by artists such as Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen and Julia Margaret Cameron. It also includes views of Egypt and Palestine taken by Francis Frith in the 1850s, street scenes of early 20th century Paris by Eugene Atget, dramatically modern compositions by Edward Weston, experimental pieces by Lyonel Feininger and poetic landscapes by Harry Callahan.

Paul Simon can kiss his Kodachrome goodbye: Eastman Kodak Co. is discontinuing the storied 74-year-old color film. As photographers gravitated to digital cameras and newer film, Kodachrome sales plunged to less than 1% of Kodak's total film sales. About 70% of the company's revenue now comes from digital sales. Kodachrome labs worldwide have dwindled to just one, Dwayne's Photo in Parsons, Kan., which will offer the service through 2010.

When you shoot photos on the train, the most important step is to turn off your flash, or somehow cover it. Otherwise, the reflection from the train window will frost every shot. The best photo perches are the vestibules, or open spaces, between cars, or the outside platforms in first class. Take a jacket and stake out a place early. The dome cars also provide great vantage points.

It's been a tough few weeks for West Coast geniuses. Still reeling from the death of David Foster Wallace, I was startled to see that photographer Bill Claxton passed away on Oct. 11, the day before his 81st birthday. In the nearly 20 years I've been writing about culture, rarely have I met a guy as unimpeachably cool as Claxton. He didn't do anything as radical as reimagine the literary novel, as Wallace did.

When Kiefer Sutherland and the crew of Fox's "24" traveled to South Africa earlier this year to shoot the two-hour opener to Season 7, they brought cameras and a hobbyist's enthusiasm for capturing anything that wandered into view. The results -- literally thousands of digital photos -- have been culled into an exhibition that will open Monday at the Paley Center for Media in Beverly Hills.

Like any other proud parent, two-time Oscar-winning actress Jessica Lange has a "million-and-twelve color snapshots" of her three children. But when daughters Shura and Hannah and son Walker were little, Lange decided she would document their growing up with more "substantial" portraits. "I had an old Nikon," says the star of such films as "Frances," "Tootsie" and "Blue Sky."

The J. Paul Getty Museum, best known for its contested antiquities, Impressionist irises and gorgeous grounds, has been diversifying in gruesome black and white. Since 2003, the museum has bought up several photographic prints that count among the 20th century's most iconic journalistic images of death by violence: Malcolm Browne's picture of the 1963 self-immolation of a Vietnamese Buddhist monk; a print from the Zapruder film of the 1963 shooting of John F.

Edward Steichen's career was a play in three acts. Act 1, The Artiste, lasted until World War I; Act 2, The Professional, was between the wars; and Act 3, The Curator, came after World War II. The second act was the most creative because commerce was best suited to his temperament. "When I first became interested in photography . . . my idea was to have it recognized as one of the fine arts," he once said. "Today I don't give a hoot in hell about that."