Taschen

Day to night

There are some places around the world that exist as much as images as they do in concrete, stone, steel, or the rugged lay of the land. The Palio di Siena, the Kumbh Mela Festival in India, the Grand Canyon, the Campanile di San Marco in Venice, the Tulips of Amsterdam: these natural and man-made sites are fixed pictures in our collective consciousness, frozen in time and space as hallmarks of who and where we are.
Photographer Stephen Wilkes set out to rethink these iconic landmarks. Vast and extraordinarily detailed, his images capture not just the location, but rather a day in the life of that location. Wilkes’ process is intensive, waking before dawn and shooting up to 2,000 frames from a stationary vantage point, which are then painstakingly edited together to form a seamless collage. For every site, he also has to capture the same space without anyone in it. That empty image becomes, in Wilkes’ words, the “the naked plate” on which he overlays the details from all the other images.
With shifting light and shadows moving across the tableau, the final results are epic panoramas of life and earth in motion. Traffic hums, crowds come and go, clouds gather, the streetlights come on. Amid all the flux, intriguing vignettes of lives and societies emerge. Groups of tourists at Sacré Coeur pose for selfies, their backs turned to the building; a man is apprehended by police on Santa Monica Pier; and a woman in Coney Island goes out for an early morning walk along the beach. Stitching together thousands of successive snapshots, Wilkes also allows thousands of stories to co-exist in one image. The pictures become portraits not only of hailed and ancient landmarks, but also of group behaviour, the random incident, and the humble routine. The landmarks become our shared heritage not as frozen, immovable images, but as steadfast bastions of a living, evolving humanity.
Find out more over at Taschen today!

Musicnotes

“CITY OF STARS” FROM ‘LA LA LAND’ NAMED AS MUSICNOTES 2017 SONG OF THE YEAR

Musicnotes, Inc., the market leader in digital sheet music, announced this month that award-winning songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Paul along with composer Justin Hurwitz are the recipients of the 2017 Musicnotes Song of the Year Award for their enchanting song “City of Stars” from the movie ‘La La Land’.
The Musicnotes Song of the Year Award is presented each year to the songwriter and publisher of the best-selling sheet music, and “City of Stars” became Musicnotes’ top-selling song in 2017.
“We’re excited about receiving this great Musicnotes honor, along with our wonderful collaborator, Justin Hurwitz!” stated the songwriting duo Pasek and Paul. “We’ve been partnered with Musicnotes since 2014, and knowing that ‘City of Stars’ was named as Song of the Year is incredibly meaningful.”
Shortly after “City of Stars” won the 2017 Golden Globe for Best Original Song in a Motion Picture, Benj and Justin gave an exclusive Musicnotes Song Spotlight interview featuring a behind-the-scenes story of how the song came to life.
Pasek revealed in the Song Spotlight interview that “City of Stars” is all about “wanting the city to embrace you” and wanting those who are looking for love to find what makes them truly happy.
Benj Pasek and Justin Paul join a star-studded list of Musicnotes winners, including Leonard Cohen (“Hallelujah”), Lukas Graham (“7 Years”), Vanessa Carlton (“A Thousand Miles”), Linda Perry (Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful”), Evanescence (“My Immortal”), Marcus Hummon, Bobby Boyd and Jeff Hanna (“Bless the Broken Road”), and Adele (“Someone Like You”).
“They are incredibly gifted songwriters, and Musicnotes is honored to recognize them,” began Kathy Marsh, CEO of Musicnotes. “Their song ‘City of Stars’ will forever more be known as the Musicnotes best seller of 2017.”
For more Pasek and Paul arrangements, visit Musicnotes.com

Alibris

About Alibris.com

Alibris.com describes themselves as “a vibrant marketplace” which focuses its energy on the three fastest growing areas of worldwide media, which are listed as online sales, textbook rentals, and out-of-print books, music, and movies.

How Does It Work?

According to their website, the creator of Alibris began selling rare books in a traditional brick-and-mortar bookstore and eventually realized that he could not only branch out in his personal sales, but also create a worthwhile destination for customers searching for rare books, if he just joined together with other rare book sellers across the country, and eventually across the world.
Alibris.com says their own personal warehouse stocks 100 million titles, but you can also choose to support thousands of independent sellers from around the world. When shopping, you can click the “See All Copies” link and you will pull up a page which displays all sellers offering that item. You can then sort through the sellers by rating, price, and condition.

In addition to their book selection, the website also promises a comprehensive inventory of music and movies, whether you are looking for new and popular selections or others which are older and hard to locate, as well as the ability to rent popular textbooks at discounted prices off the cost of purchasing them outright.
Customers are also promised that all of their independent sellers, no matter where they are from, are required to maintain strict codes of service, in order to stay true to their customer satisfaction guarantees.

Cost/Price Plans

Using their website to search for certain products or locate independent sellers of various products is completely free. The prices of products available on their website will vary widely, especially since they provide access to extremely rare books.

Refund Policy

Customers who use their website to purchase a print book, movie, or music item have the first 60 calendar days of their purchase in which to return their purchase for a refund. Alibris will provide you with a mailing label to return your item, and the item should be wrapped in its original packaging, along with a return authorization page which must be downloaded and included in your packaged return.
Items which are returned more than 60 days after the date of purchase, or which are returned without the authorization form will unfortunately not be accepted for return, and a refund will not be provided.
Customers who are renting textbooks have 21 days in which to return their textbooks without incurring any charges, if they books are lesser quality than they were advertised on their website.

Customer Service Contact Info

Customers who wish to contact Customer Service with questions, concerns, or complaints can do so by phone at 510-594-4586 or by submitting them directly to their website through the Contact Us link.

Reputation

Unfortunately this company does have a long list of complaints recorded online, and many of them – if not most of them – cite very similar problems. It seems the most common problem with this company has to do with shipping, and the problems which stem from that.
Customers who had both purchased and rented items said that the shipping took an extremely long time, to the point where students were already involved in their classes without ever having received their book and where purchasing customers were told that either their purchase was ultimately cancelled or that their book was simply “lost in the mail.”
The problem which then results from these complaints is that Alibris.com apparently refuses to return the money from these unhappy customers, saying that since they didn’t return their rental or purchase during the prescribed return period, they were not eligible for a refund.
Most reviews stated that Alibris Customer Service refused to accept the extremely delayed shipping time or the failure of receiving the book at all as an excuse for not returning the book during the time period required by their policies.
Visit Alibris Today.