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(Courtesy The Empty Quarter, Dubai)

'Tis the season for Paris Photo, where 102 galleries and publishers from 23 countries are taking part in the world's leading photography fair. This year's fair, which runs through Sunday at the Carrousel du Louvre, spotlights Arab and Iranian photography with a three-part project curated by Catherine David. Among the first orders of business was the announcement of the winner of the BMW - Paris Photo Prize for contemporary photography, a $15,000 award given annually to an artist whose work best embodies a given theme. The 2009 theme, tied to BMW France's ad campaign, was "When was the last time you experienced something for the first time?"

The winner is Karijn Kakebeeke, a Dutch photographer who is represented by Dubai gallery The Empty Quarter. Kakebeeke, 35, is known for photojournalistic images like "Khadija's Dream" (2006, pictured above), her prizewinning work that records the moment when a girl named Khadija first played with a soccer ball. Today Khadija is a member of Afghanistan's first female soccer team. For Matthias Harder, curator at the Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin and a member of the 2009 BMW - Paris Photo Prize jury, the image shows "a glimpse of happiness," he said in a statement. "Kakebeeke's genre scene convinced the jury owing to the controversial nature of the topic chosen and its relevance to the given theme."

Are your photos worth thousands of words? Thousands of dollars? Thousands more photos? Pulitzer Prize-winning photo editor Stella Kramer will help you get the picture—and figure out where to sell it—at mediabistro.com's one-night Photography Portfolio Review on Wednesday, December 16 in New York. Come to get your book critiqued and edited, stay to learn practical information and insider tips on how to get magazine jobs and build a career as an editorial freelancer. A more dynamic, lucrative portfolio is a click away.

As an occasionally working photographer and filmmaker, this writer has gotten questioned by the authorities why he's taking photos, been asked to leave, and has seen a hand or two come into the viewfinder. Sadly, confrontation is like kryptonite, so backing down and running away is par for the course with him, even if we were in the right all along. Fortunately, as found by way of Design Info, there are people like Shawn Nee, who has put together the fascinating and valuable photographers' rights site Discarted to help chronicle instances where professional and amateur photographers alike have been threatened, abused, or arrested by perhaps less-than-informed authority figures in the US. This week, Nee himself made the news with his recent run-in with two police officers after he tried to take a few photos inside a Los Angeles train station, landing in stories about the incident on outlets like MSNBC and getting into a fight with CNN's Rick Sanchez, who sided with the officers. The whole thing got such attention because, not known to the police, Nee was wearing a hidden camera the whole time and managed to capture the irritatingly uncomfortable event in its entirety:

Are your photos worth thousands of words? Thousands of dollars? Thousands more photos? Pulitzer Prize-winning photo editor Stella Kramer will help you get the picture (and figure out where to sell it) at Mediabistro's one-night Breaking Into Editorial Photography seminar on Monday, December 7 in New York. Students will learn about how to get coveted magazine jobs and build a career as an editorial freelancer. Here's your chance to hear tips on creating a dynamic portfolio, what photo editors at top publications are looking for, and when it pays to get representation; registration is a click away.

(Photo: Prix Pictet)

It's been quite a year for London-based photographer Nadav Kander. In January, he made a splash with the special inauguration issue of The New York Times Magazine, which devoted its entire feature well to his 52 full-page color portraits of "Obama's People." The quirky portfolio garnered him the title of International Photographer of the Year in the International Photography Awards, announced last month during the Lucie Awards Gala. Kander's latest honor spotlights a body of work far beyond the Beltway. He is the winner of the 2009 Prix Pictet for his photographs of the life and landscape along the banks of China's Yangtze River, which he traced from its mouth in Shanghai to its source—about 4,000 miles away—in Qinghai Province. Kander was presented with the CHF 100,000 (approximately $98,000) award by former United Nations Secretary Kofi Annan at a ceremony held last week in Paris.

Now in its second year, the Prix Pictet is a Pictet & Cie-sponsored global photography competition that seeks to promote sustainability. This year's theme was "Earth." The twelve photographers shortlisted for the 2009 prize included Andreas Gursky, Edward Burtynsky, Naoya Hatakeyama, and Ed Kashi, who was awarded the 2009 Prix Pictet Commission. The American photographer will travel to Madagascar and produce a series of photographs to bolster the work of Azafady, a charity that works to eradicate poverty, suffering, and environmental damage in the island nation. An exhibition of work shortlisted for Prix Pictet is on view through November 23 at the Passage de Retz in Paris and then tours to Thessaloniki (December), Dubai (January), and Eindhoven (March). Go here for an online preview.

Previously on UnBeige:

Try as we might, we just can't escape Iowa, can we? We found this bit of interesting over on Jessamyn West's Librarian.net blog, which lead us to learn that David Chipperfield is particularly camera shy. Story goes is that West was visiting the Des Moines Public Library, a beautiful structure designed by the starchitect, and decided to take a few photos. She was stopped almost immediately by a library employee and later, upon contacting the branch by email, was told the policy was put in place to not allow photographs of the building without permission, with this bit of explanation: that Chipperfield is "very sensitive to photos being taken and the possibility of them being used for commercial purposes." While we understand the starchitect's and the library's concerns, and who isn't familiar with the crack down on photography inside and out of buildings anymore, this particular policy seems more than a little uncomfortable, given that it's a public structure paid for by taxpayer dollars, and unlike say a federal courthouse, is intended to be entirely open arms and overtly welcoming. And in any instance of these anti-photography policies, shouldn't there be some sort of enforcement-only-when-needed plan in place when it comes to discerning between the person with the small point-and-shoot taking a few quick snaps and the other lugging in some big Hasselblad setup? But we digress. There are a lot more interesting thoughts to read over on Archinect's post about it and in the Flickr comments on the one photo West managed to grab before she was shut down.

Yes, it's National Design Week, but it's also a busy time for the world of photography. On Monday evening, Lincoln Center's newly spiffed-up Alice Tully Hall was filled with photogs for the presentation of the Lucie Awards. This year's honorees included legendary fashion photographer and art director Jean-Paul Goude, photojournalist Gilles Peress, and the multi-talented Mark Seliger, who was recognized for his achievement in portraiture.

The evening's dramatic tension came in the-envelope-please-style announcements of winners in award categories including curator/exhibition of the year (Sarah Greenough for "Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans," on view through January 3 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art), fashion layout of the year (Harper's Bazaar for Terry Richardson's "Thriller Fashion" portfolio), and print advertising campaign of the year (the dreamy "We Are Animals" Wrangler campaign, photographed by Ryan McGinley). Also feted at the Lucies were International Photography Award winners, among them Nadav Kander (International Photographer of the Year), Elliott Willcox (Discovery of the Year), and Rachel Papo (Deeper Perspective Photographer of the Year).

The shutterfun rolls on with today's kick-off of the PDN PhotoPlus Expo, featuring the latest and greatest in photography, at New York's Jacob Javits Center. The Nikon booth never fails to make us all light-headed and covetous, so we'll focus on the photographers themselves, including talks by Harry Benson (who will probably be happy to autograph copies of the November issue of Architectural Digest if asked nicely), Joel Meyerowitz, James Nachtwey, and Eileen Gittins.

Previously on UnBeige:

The votes are in, and the winner of Nikon's annual Small World Photomicrography Competition is...Arabidopsis thaliana! You know, the thale cress anther? OK, it's the male sex organ of a small flowering plant, and enterprising Estonian Heiti Paves, a scientist at the Tallinn University of Technology who is probably of no relation to celebrity hairstylist Ken, managed to photograph a bunch of them under 20 times magnification (resulting in the photomicrograph pictured above). "As part of my work as a research scientist, I have been taking photographs through the microscope for almost 30 years to observe the processes in living cells," said Paves, whose winning image reminds us of a painfully inflamed devil strawberry. "I have spent a lot of time to capture nice pictures worthy of submission to the Nikon Small World Competition." Way to put that pricey confocal microscope to good use!

Always on the hunt for art historical allusions (however unintentional they may be), we particularly enjoyed the above top finishers. James Hayden of Philadelphia's Wistar Institute captured fourth place for his ultra-closeup of a swirly anglerfish ovary (above, at left)—or is it a pseudocolored overhead shot of Robert Smithson's "Spiral Jetty"? Meanwhile, New Zealander Lloyd Donaldson won eighth place for his Brice Marden-esque skeins of color (at right), which are in fact cotton fibers daubed with berberine sulphate and magnified a couple hundred times. Go and project your own frame of reference on all of the winners and honorable mentions here.

As followers of the UnBeige Twitter feed were among the first in the world to learn, photographer Irving Penn died yesterday at the age of 92. Whether capturing the artful drape of a Balenciaga gown, Saul Steinberg with a bag over his head (at left), an underwater welder ill at ease on land, or a piece of chewed gum on the sidewalk, Penn imparted his subjects with a distinctive, graphic grace that convinced the viewer to take a longer look. Among the lessons to glean from his New York Times obituary? Don't be afraid to do it yourself! Writer Andy Grundberg explains:

Mr. Penn's first assignment [as assistant to Vogue art director Alexander Liberman] was to supervise the design of Vogue's covers. Sketching several possible photographic scenes, he was unable to interest the staff photographers in taking them, so he took to the photo studio himself, at Liberman's suggestion. The first result was a color still-life photograph of a glove, a pocketbook and other accessories, published as the cover of Vogue on Oct. 1, 1943. Mr. Penn's photographs appeared on more than 150 Vogue covers over the next 50 years.

In World War II Mr. Penn drove an ambulance in Italy. Arriving in Rome in 1944, he spied the artist Giorgio de Chirico carrying a shopping bag of vegetables home from the market. "I rushed up and embraced him," Mr. Penn recalled in Passage. "To me he was the heroic de Chirico; to him I was a total stranger, probably demented. Still, he was moved and said, 'Come home and have lunch with us.' For two days he showed me his Rome." During those two days Mr. Penn made his first black-and-white portraits, beginning what would become a celebrated archive of the leading artists, writers, and performers of the second half of the 20th century.

Previously on UnBeige:

This year, the Lucie Awards moves its annual celebration of great photography to the newly renovated Starr Theater at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall. Honorees at the October 19 gala will include legendary fashion photographer and art director Jean-Paul Goude, photojournalist Gilles Peress, and the multi-talented Mark Seliger, who will be recognized for his achievement in portraiture. A lifetime achievement award wil be presented to Turkish photographer Ara Guler, and the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund will be honored with the spotlight award for its significant impact on the landscape of photography. As if bestowing shimmering statuettes upon that bunch wasn't exciting enough, the ceremony will also showcase the finalists for the International Photography Awards and announce the winners of the 2009 International Photographer of the Year, Discovery of the Year, and Deeper Perspective Photographer of the Year awards. Check out the below video for a brief slide show of the nominees' work...

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