One thing that we love about the lectures for the SPORT exhibit has been the wonderful assistance provided by the Women Sports Foundation, who helped us bring some incredible athletes to share the podium with photographers. They introduced us to Aimee Mullins who came to speak with Howard Schatz, and Laila Ali who spoke with Mikki Willis.

Last night was another great pairing - this one with a female athlete AND a female photographer - the lovely lenslady Marla Rutheford and the bubbly Olympic medalist Jessica Mendoza.

From the way these two ladies played off of each other and cracked each other up you would think you were a fly on the wall at a fun sleepover, not in the room with innovating industry leaders.

For all the laughter and fun the two were very serious in their discussion of their experiences and the not so charming realities about making it in the industry of sports photography.

Marla spoke to the challenges she has faced in developing a trust relationship with her subjects, resorting to charm, intellect, a lot of humor and even a little fibbing so they would feel comfortable posing for artistic semi-nudes.

Jessica discussed the wake-up call moment she had when one of the first images of her in circulation was digitally enhanced by the publishers, causing her to question whether or not her appearance should play such a central role in the coverage of athletics.

They both shared captivating stories about these and other turning points in their extraordinary careers.

...and try as they might they could not stop cracking each other up!

At the end of the day we were just thrilled to be in the presence of such positive, accomplished and inspiring ladies.

(All photos © Unique for the Space)

Jimmy Chin came to the Space to offer an IRIS Nights Lecture about his unique form of sports photography. What's so unusual about Jimmy's work you might ask? First of all he comes off as the nicest most unassuming guy you could ever meet.

He's almost cartoon character cute with an ever-present smile and a talent for understatement that would be hard to beat.

You would never guess by looking at him that he has climbed to the top of Mt. Everest a few times...and skied down from the top! Yes - this is him dutifully recording his friends walking across a ridge so that they could get to the best face to ski down. That little thing popping up from the ridge all the way to the right is a human being.

Jimmy said "we encountered a few minor obstacles getting across..." which meant that they had to rappel down one side of a gap in the ridge more than 40 feet until they could get the right angle to SWING to the other side of the gap - AT 28,000+ FEET!!!! - where they could keep creeping along until they got to this side:

Then they skied down at a descent angle of more than 50 degrees.

The whole time he described this as is it were the most normal thing in the world. Or should I say the most normal thing at the TOP of the world.

And here's an intimate little portrait of the top of the world. The weather gets a little weird 5 miles up - who knew?

Can you tell what this is? Sure! Just a person walking across some rickety ladders strapped to each other to form a rickety bridge that I wouldn't walk across at 10 feet no less 28,000.

But THAT is what these crazy mountain people do!

A couple of Jimmy's mountain goat friends came to lecture to show support, including Emile Hirsch. Back in January Jimmy led a weeklong all-star Summit on the Summit expedition up Mount Kilimanjaro to bring awareness to the climate summit. Emile joined as did Jessica Biel, Lupe Fiasco, Isabel Lucas and Elizabeth Gore.

That kind of activism takes dedication.

Emile was kind enough to pose afterwards with his mountain mentor Jimmy.

So that was what Jimmy and Emile did on their Winter vacation...while I caught up on my Tivo'd episodes of Heroes.

Last night was our 30th IRIS Nights lecture!

We had two very special guest lecturers, Academy Award winning producer Corinne Marrinan and blind photographer Bruce Hall.

The subject of the evening was a short film directed by our own Neil Leifer, co-produced by Neil and Corinne, and featuring Bruce Hall along with two other blind photographers (Pete Eckert and Henry Butler) called "Dark Light: The Art of Blind Photographers."

I didn't know about blind photographers until I heard about this film. The subject matter was introduced in a very artful way in the film, through interviews with a number of well-known photographers talking about their skepticism or curiosity about how a blind person can even be a photographer.

Bruce and Corinne discussed the unique case of each of the three, as each of them has a different kind of blindness.

Peter Eckert lost his sight later in life, so he had a lifetime of 20/20 memories to draw on to create his ethereal, painterly images.

(photo by Peter Eckert)

Henry Butler has been completely blind since he was a baby, so his pictures arise out of his musical sense of timing and his connection to people he meets.

(photo by Henry Butler)

Bruce has been legally blind since birth - he has 5% of normal vision and can only see blurry shapes unless he brings something a few inches from his face...

(This is Bruce literally reading a note from his Doctor explaining his condition.)

...so he takes pictures with a sense of what he might be capturing, but then has to look at large prints of the images (or enlargements on his monitor) to even see what happened.

Corinne-who in her spare time has been a writer on CSI for the past few years- was completely charming and kept drawing great stories out of Bruce with her innocent-sounding questions.

(photo by Damon Webster)

Then we got to see more of Bruce's amazing underwater photography.

...including the one that Bruce said Neil Leifer loved of the glowing Garibaldi off the coast of Catalina Island...

Bruce then veered into his other work: his ongoing (life) project documenting life with his twin sons who are profoundly autistic.

This one is his favorite.

And that was a wrap!

What a great pair! Thank you so much for your Joie de Vivre Corinne!

And your wonderful work Bruce!

(All photos © Unique for the Space except where noted)

Living legend Art Brewer graced our Space Thursday night and was one of the nicest guys you could ever meet. He was totally down-to-earth, mellow, funny...and he actually showed up with a crew!

The last time we had so many people in the green room (really our Reading Room) was when David Hume Kennerly brought his whole family along to man his book-selling table!

After a brief intro to the intro by Annenberg Foundation Exec Director Leonard Aube, who spoke about the unexpected success we've had with our IRIS Nights lectures, Art came out, sat down and starting rolling out waves of images and stories for our delight.

Many of the pictures he showed were dominated by cascading walls of blue...

Others showed the secret inner life of tuberiders...

And some were portraits of the many surfers that are Art's real 'crew' - many of whom he has known since he started shooting waves as a teen!

Despite the driving rain outside, the house was full! Many of the guests seemed to be off-duty surfers coming to check in on their pal. And one or two of his photos actually had some land in them!

But the majority of what we saw were these incredible shots of little humans braving giant waves - accompanied by some incredible stories of the guy in the water shooting them!

Afterwards Art graciously took questions (and generously gave answers) to the faithful assembly...

...and then sat and signed books, meeting folks and cracking jokes.

Here he is signing a vintage issue of Surfer - the magazine that published his first cover shot when he was 16 years old.

Dude...how rad is that? (sorry...I had to!)

(all pictures © Unique for the Space)