Speaking of China, and explosions– here are some images from a Chinese wedding that took place during last week’s terrible earthquake in Sichuan Province. Unbelievable how the scene changes so quickly, and how the photographer keeps documenting. Terrifying.
Check it out here.
The National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) will vote at the end of May on seven amendments to its bylaws, including whether to change its name to The Society of Visual Journalists, Inc. (SVJ). The reason for the proposed change is to acknowledge how the industry and NPPA membership have evolved over the past 50 years. The current name “no longer adequately represents the Association or its membership.”
Check it out here.
With its official launch Wednesday, National Geographic Assignment will represent the following photographers: William Albert Allard, Stephen Alvarez, Ira Block, John Burcham, Jimmy Chin, Jodi Cobb, Pablo Corral Vega, Bruce Dale, David Doubilet, Annie Griffiths Belt, Justin Guariglia, Bill Hatcher, Beverly Joubert, Tim Laman, David Liittschwager, Michael Melford, Michael Nichols, Paul Nicklen, Michael O’Brien, Randy Olson, Jim Richardson, Joel Sartore, Brian Skerry, Steve Winter, Gordon Wiltsie, Alison Wright and Mike Yamashita.
Check it out here.
My wife noticed a huge plume of smoke rising above O-Town today and I decided to chase it down. It was a controlled burn near the lake and it took forever to get there. When I arrived, there were a ton of cars and people lined up to see what it was all about. I don’t have any idea who put this sign up but I thought it was hilarious.
Check it out here.
Portraiture might be the most challenging photographic endeavor. It is a complex interaction between the photographer’s intent, the subject’s preconceptions and ideas, and the viewer’s background. So how do photographers manage to make great portraits? I have long been a fan of Dutch photographer Hellen van Meene. Her portraits of adolescents possess an extremely quiet and forceful beauty.
Check it out here.
Last year about this time David Griffin, National Geographic’s director of photography, and Elizabeth Krist, a senior photo editor, walked into my office and asked if I had any ideas on how we could photograph Stonehenge in a way that would be new and different. It was a natural question. David was already thinking about high-dynamic-range photography, and I’m the digital-tech guy at the magazine. I had an idea, but it came with a catch—I wanted to be the photographer, anything to get out of the office and into the field.
My idea started with a hand-built camera that had caught my interest at Photokina two years earlier—a panoramic film camera that had been adapted for digital use by Dr. Kurt Gilde in Germany. The camera can make a digital image that’s 49×90 millimeters wide using a sliding adapter mounted with a Phase One P45 digital back; three images stitched together result in a file with over 100 megapixels of resolution. I wanted to use this technology to capture three unique exposures at different times of the day and night, then stitch them into a continuous panoramic that showed Stonehenge over the course of time. Coincidentally the panoramic would fit perfectly on a magazine gatefold—three pages of a spread where one page folds in as a flap.
Check it out here. Via Rob Galbraith
Audiences packed the Felix Meritis cultural centre in central Amsterdam to see the winners’ presentations. Boldwill Hungwe (2nd prize, Spot News Singles), a news photographer from Zimbabwe, revealed that his image of an opposition rally in the beleaguered country (above, top) was taken on a digital compact camera, because neither he nor the paper he works for could afford a digital SLR camera.
“I knew that the camera couldn’t shoot a sequence so I had to wait for the right moment,” he told CPN. “Luckily I got the one that told the story the best.” He added that working as a local newspaper photographer in Zimbabwe is difficult due to the restrictions and threat of torture.
Check it out here.
Deb and I had the good fortune to cross paths with James Whitlow Delano because of the Blue Planet Run book and Redux Pictures. His images of China’s desertification caught our eye for the book (They didn’t make the final edit). But more than the subject of the photographs, it was the tone, the feeling and what they convey that held our interest.
I’ve always thought that the highest standard for photojournalism is to create images that serve the publishing environment for the day but that remain relevant beyond the day. Another way of saying this is to make images that are as at home on a museum wall as they are on a page.
James’ photos linger in the mind and the eye.
We were able to catch up with James just before he traveled from his home in Japan.
Check it out here.
CONGRESS is considering a major reform of copyright law intended to solve the problem of “orphan works” — those works whose owner cannot be found. This “reform” would be an amazingly onerous and inefficient change, which would unfairly and unnecessarily burden copyright holders with little return to the public.
Check it out here.
Most assuredly, the AP has a new contract. We first reported about it here (A New AP Contract Emerging? – 5/14/08), and more than one copy came our way from several readers. Of note in their paperwork, was the disparity between pay from bureau to bureau.
You have until June 1, or about 2 weeks, to indicate your intent to object to this or sign it. If you don’t sign by June 1, you won’t be getting any more AP assignments.
Check it out here.
I’m not sure why, but the photos from China that have been devastating. Disaster coverage is familiar to everyone–whether it’s twisted wreckage or a bloated corpse, long lines of refugees or supplies stacked on the tarmac, we’ve seen it before. And we’ve seen people crying over lost homes, villages, loved ones. But somehow not like this:
Check it out here.
With a cut-off time of 10am before the first race of the day, we set up five remote cameras under the inside rail of the track, and another on an observation post beyond the finish line with a high angle general view of the end of the race. Putting in place the gear – five EOS-1D Mark II cameras, an assortment of lenses from 16mm to 200mm, and their little mounting plates was a breeze, about 5 minutes in total, compared to the next step – getting them all to work!
Check it out here.
The question kept coming up. How do you explain the smile? What does it mean? Not only is she smiling, she is smiling with her thumbs-up – over a dead body. The photograph suggests that she may have killed the guy, and she looks proud of it. She looks happy.
I should back up a moment.
This is one of the central images in a rogue’s gallery of snapshots, a photograph taken at Abu Ghraib prison in the fall of 2003. It is a photograph taken by Chuck Graner of Sabrina Harman – posed and looking into the lens of the camera.
Check it out here.
If you’re not festivaled out, you’re going to want to head down to Charlottesville in June, because Look3 seems almost like a photographer’s utopian festival dream. From the 12th to the 14th, all of Charlottesville will be taken over by photography; even the trees (Flip Nicklin’s undersea whale images will be suspended high in the trees along Charlottesville’s outdoor pedestrian mall).
Check it out here.
Mona Reeder, a photographer with the Dallas Morning News, has won a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for domestic photography for her photo essay “The Bottom Line.” Through pictures, Reeder explored Texas’ poor rankings in a number of categories ranging from the poorest counties in the U.S. to environmental protection.
Earlier this year, the project won the Community Service Photojournalism Award from the American Society of Newspaper Editors. (It also was a Pulitzer finalist.)
Kenny Irby interviewed Reeder about the project for Best Newspaper Writing 2008-2009. In this excerpt, Reeder discusses the value of in-depth photo essays and how she developed this one.
Check it out here.
During his long career as a photographer, Flip Schulke covered wars, presidents, rocket launches and the great human drama of the civil rights movement in the American South. But people always asked about one picture in particular: Muhammad Ali standing underwater.
Check it out here.
Ryan McGeeney served seven years in the Marines, including a six-month deployment in Afghanistan, but 10 minutes of photographing the state high school track championships proved to be more dangerous to him.
Hours after his leg was pierced by a javelin at BYU’s Clarence Robison track stadium, McGeeney was fortunate to be able to appreciate the irony.
The Standard-Examiner photographer was struck below the knee by a javelin while shooting the discus event shortly after 9 a.m. Saturday, delaying the events while an ambulance pulled onto the track to take him to Utah Valley Regional Medical Center.
Check it out here.
From Reuters photographer Goran Tomasevic who is near Garmser in Helmand Province, Afghanistan with the U.S. 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit come these 4 frames from a sequence taken when the unit came under fire from Taliban fighters May 18, 2008.
Check it out here.
Simon Norfolk’s presentation was very smooth, this guy has a mind you don’t want to meet in a darkened alley. How this guy gets access to the places he does is a miracle. He basically makes you want to give up photography because the rigor of his ideas sucks all the oxygen out of the room faster than a fuel-air explosion. I think we all felt our innards leaving our mouths at the end
Check it out here.
Every time a new version Aperture or LightRoom gets released/announced you always have a big flurry of ‘which application should I choose?’ posts on all the digital photography forums, and the release of the LR2 beta has been no exception.
Check it out here.