Steichen: The Times reports that the $2.9M Steichen sale is just the tip of the iceberg.

Sugimoto: Holland Cotter reviews Sugimoto’s retrospective at the Hirshhorn.

Hiroshi Sugimoto, the celebrated Japanese-born photographer, designed the installation for his own retrospective at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden here, and it is inspired. The first half of the show is light, cool and stylishly sparse. The second half seems dusky and cushioned, as if it were set in a temple or a spacecraft, with pictures shining like windows in the dark.

Spirit Photography: Cliopatria provides scholarly links on spirit photography.

Best blogs? Maybe you have so much free time you can afford to read some European Weblogs (from HNN).

Foreign Competition: Fast Company reports that 40-45% of respondents to their online competition survey expect employment challenges in the next five years from China and India.

Open Competition: Disruptive competition for software jobs doesn’t just come from abroad (though you can try it for yourself if you want). The open source software movement releases software for free. (But free software isn’t really free; trust me, I know.) As time goes on, the quality and care with how you write software will become an ever bigger factor in whether you can pay your mortgage.

Globalization and Competition: “First, you concentrate on making something cheaper than anybody else. And when you can no longer make something cheaper than anybody else, you concentrate on making something better than anybody else. And when you can no longer make something better than anybody else, you concentrate on making something different than anybody else. That’s the innovation economy.” (More…)

Fine Printing Workshop: There’s still time left to sign up for Stephen Johnson’s Fine Art Printing Workshops. Maybe next year…

Camera Club: Carole Berney responds to the “Fine Art v. Camera Clubs” thread by echoing some of my own feelings on the subject: “the [competition] format could encourage staleness, formulaic pictures, and a slavish adherence to rules.” Though I’m still grumpy about NCC, and will vent soonish.