Photo: Roman Signer

Today's Friday photo goes out to those craving air conditioning (or at least ice cream) on this steamy July Friday. It's "Tisch (Table)," a 1994 photo by Swiss artist Roman Signer, best known for his "temporary sculptures" such as this large white table bobbing off to commune with the glaciers in Iceland (click "continued..." to see the table's explosive fate). Signer is one of 18 photographers to have made the recently announced shortlist for the Prix Pictet, a major new global photography prize focused on sustainability and sponsored by Pictet & Cie, in association with the Financial Times. The theme of this year's competition is water, and other shortlisted artists include Chris Jordan, David Maisel, and Edward Burtynsky. The winner of the Prix Pictet, who will receive CHF 100,000 (approximately $99,400), will be announced on October 30 at a dinner at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, where shortlisted images will then be exhibited through November 8.

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Last month, we told you about Shoot the Day, online photo community PhotoShelter's plan to set aside this Sunday, July 20, to "focus energy and close the gap between buyer demand and what photographers are shooting," and so it is almost upon us. PhotoShelter has selected the lucky 20 photographers who will spend the day on all-expenses-paid shoots in five image categories, while hundreds of others join photo editors and photo buyers in a day of demonstrations and panel discussions at the Shoot! The Day event in New York City. Among the speakers is aphotoeditor.com's Rob Haggart, former director of photography at Men's Journal, who will present "Editorial Bootcamp" (on how photographers can get the attention of photo editors) before leading a discussion with photo editors from the likes of Time and Travel+Leisure. Rachel Rein, senior art buyer at ad agency Hill Holliday will present "From Start to Finish: Finding the Perfect Stock Photos for a Major Campaign." Those who can't make it to the sponsored events can participate by spending the day taking a whole lot of photos or, for the lazier among us, watching Blowup on DVD.

Last week we told you about GQ design director Fred Woodward's first photo exhibition. Another fellow whose prowess as a photographer has been overshadowed by other impressive achievements? Jack Kilby (pictured at left, around 1960), the late Nobel prize-winning inventor of the integrated circuit, among other things. On Saturday, an exhibition of 58 of Kilby's photographs opened at Southern Methodist University (SMU)'s Meadows Museum in Dallas.

"Kilby printed his own negatives and showed real ingenuity in framing, printing, and cropping his photographs," writes Anne Peterson, the show's curator, in the exhibition notes. "The subjects he chose fall into several categories: cityscape, industrial, landscape, people, as well as abstractions and experimentation with processes." One shot of a woman pushing an infant in a stroller down an otherwise deserted stretch of cobblestones in Germany has the ethereal, shadowy gleam of a decisive moment captured by Henri Cartier-Bresson, while we can't help but scan the landscape of Kilby's 1970 photo of an abandoned farmhouse for a writhing Wyethian woman.

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Hitting the blogs hard right now are the findings that a photo submitted by Sepah News, Iran's Revolutionary Guard's news outlet, had been Photoshoped extensively, adding an additional missile to a launch photo used to show off the country's military might. After the photo was released, it was published on nearly every front page of all the major newspapers across the globe. Although no confirmation of the fakery has been acknowledged by Iran, and isn't likely to come any time soon, the damage has been done at the newspapers who published the image, most of whom either have issued retractions or will be some time today. But while all of this news is circulating, we can't help but wonder why no one is asking the most obvious question: why did Sepah News hire Adnan Hajj in the first place?!

You may know him as the design director of GQ or the art director who made Rolling Stone visually rock, but did you know that AIGA medalist Fred Woodward is also a photographer? His first exhibition of photos is in its final week at one of our favorite photo galleries, Mark Seliger's 401 Projects in New York City, and tonight at 6 p.m., Woodward will be there to speak about the images he captured 22 years ago. The show, "Going Over Home" (a lyrical morsel plucked from the spiritual "Wayfaring Stranger") features a series of photos that Woodward took to accompany Nicholas Lemann's 1986 Atlantic Monthly article "The Origins of the Underclass," which took him from housing projects on the South Side of Chicago to the small town of Canton, Mississippi (Woodward's home state).

Revisiting the project was actually a last-minute change of plans. "Driving home one night, I was listening to a discussion on the radio about Barack Obama and religion when I heard it said that maybe part of the problem was simply that many people in this country had never been inside an African-American church," writes Woodward in the show notes of what prompted him to look back at his contact sheets of Sunday services enlivened by full choirs, electric guitars, and people dancing in the aisles. "They were just mothers and fathers, relatives, and friends—people willing to risk everything for the promise of something a little better in this life for the ones they loved. I felt lucky to know them. It was only six days in my life, but it changed me forever."

Although our fingers were crossed for Lord Krishna and his trusty cell phone, Smithsonian has chosen otherwise. The grand prize winner of the magazine's fifth annual photo contest is Abhijit Dey of Barrackpore, India, who snapped this shot (at left) of six-day-old Betka Tudu receiving blessings from fellow members of the Santhal tribe in the Indian village of Purulia. Call us cynical, but we could totally see this toward the front of Vogue as a jewelry ad (John Hardy, perhaps? Add a blue bar and it's very Tiffany & Co., color in some of those bracelets in dark orange and it's instant Hèrmes!). Meanwhile, readers preferred older, fully clothed, American excited kids, choosing Rhonda Weiderhaft's photo of a pair of Little Leaguers in antipodal emotional states at the bottom of the final inning. Go here to see the finalists and winners in each of the six categories, culled from 7,000 entries from 50 states and 82 countries.

Welcome back from the long weekend. Here's to hoping it was restful for you and yours. But enough small talk, as we're here to shovel news, aren't we? First up comes a story sure to aggravate both people from the No Spec crowd (albeit in a tangential way), as well as any professional creative types. It's the story of Tony Alter, a guy who lives in Virginia and works as a press photographer for the local Newport News paper, who gave the makers of the latest Hulk film one of his images off of Flickr to use in the opening credits, without paying him a dime. As Design Info notes, "The Incredible Hulk has grossed $111.5 million and counting," which is exactly what we were thinking. It's one thing to help out a friend with a project, or do something you enjoy without expecting a paycheck, but when Universal comes knocking, you should at least push to get a buck or two from them, right? Even if just for the good of the industry?

After 80 years selling rugs, innovation can be difficult, but Karastan is looking to make a statement with its new marketing campaign (cleverly themed "Make a Statement"), and so they challenged students at a handful of art and photography schools nationwide to get out their cameras and start snapping rugs—Karastan rugs, of course, in three specified settings: a residential/home environment, a public place, and an "American" setting. While the scare quotes around "American" seem an invitation to hijinks, the students were up to the task, and the Karastan Rug-ged America Photo Contest is now asking you to help choose the winners. Through July 15, visitors to the contest website can select favorites in each of the three categories. The winning schools (one in each category) will be awarded $3,500 in cash. And of course, all participating schools get a free rug. We've posted a few standout contest photos after the jump, including the Magritte-means-Tony Soprano "American" environment created by students at Maine Photographic Workshops.

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Earlier this year, we told you about photographer Chris Jordan's keynote presentation at the Greener Gadgets conference in New York City. A few weeks after that event, Jordan (who we've described as "an eco-warrior version of Andreas Gursky") addressed the 2008 Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) conference crowd, presenting his "portraits of American mass consumption" that help people to wrap their brains around staggering statistics such as the 40 million paper cups used daily. Stand back from one of his works depicting the number of people who die from cigarettes and its 400,000+ tiny cigarette boxes form "Skull with Cigarette" the 1886 Van Gogh painting that also happens to grace the Chip Kidd-designed cover of David Sedaris's new book, When You Are Engulfed in Flames. Below we've posted the newly released video of Jordan's TEDTalk.

Getty Images is one step closer to being acquired by private equity firm Hellman & Friedman in the deal valued at $2.4 billion that we told you about back in February. At a special meeting held today at Getty Images' Seattle headquarters, the company's stockholders voted to adopt the merger agreement, under which stockholders will receive $34.00 in cash for each share of Getty Images common stock. The company affirmed today that it expects the deal to close during the week of June 30.