Category: Editor’s Choice

2009 in photos (part 1 of 3) – The Big Picture

2009 in photos (part 1 of 3)

The year 2009 is now coming to a close, and it’s time to take a look back over the past 12 months through photographs. Historic elections were held in Iran, India and the United States, some wars wound down while others escalated, China turned 60, and the

via Boston.com: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/12/2009_in_photos_part_1_of_3.html

The year 2009 is now coming to a close, and it’s time to take a look back over the past 12 months through photographs. Historic elections were held in Iran, India and the United States, some wars wound down while others escalated, China turned 60, and the Berlin Wall was remembered 20 years after it came down. Each photo tells its own tale, weaving together into the larger story of 2009

December 14, 2009
face time « shooting from the hip

face time

By popular demand, (actually only Bryan Mitchell requested it) here is the first of “my favorite images of 2009” posts. Due to an equal mix of indecision and narcissism, I will be break…

via shooting from the hip: http://strazz.wordpress.com/2009/12/11/face-time/

By popular demand, (actually only Bryan Mitchell requested it) here is the first of “my favorite images of 2009″ posts.

December 11, 2009
lenscratch: Mark Laita

Mark Laita’s new exhibition, Created Equal:New Work, opens at the Fahey Klein Gallery in Los Angeles on December 10th and runs through January 23rd, 2010. I first saw Created Equal at Fahey Klein in 2006 and was totally engaged by the large diptycs and the juxtaposition of the subjects.

Link: lenscratch: Mark Laita

December 9, 2009
Consequences by NOOR.

From the frontiers of climate change comes Consequences by NOOR. Featuring the work of nine, internationally acclaimed photographers, this exhibition documents the devastating effects of climate change around the globe. These stunning photographs show not what might happen in the future but what is happening today.

Link: Consequences by NOOR.

December 8, 2009
Rimaldas Viksraitis: Grimaces of the Weary Village – The Observer

Rimaldas Viksraitis: Grimaces of the Weary Village | Photography review

These images of abandonment in depressed rural Lithuania mix reportage and voyeurism to surreal and disturbing effect

via the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/dec/06/rimaldas-viksraitis-photography-review

These images of abandonment in depressed rural Lithuania mix reportage and voyeurism to surreal and disturbing effect

December 7, 2009
Showcase: Black and Very White – Lens

Showcase: Black and Very White

He’s trekked through glacial storms, fallen through rifts and awakened on ice that’s drifted to sea. But, Miki Meek reports, Ragnar Axelsson keeps coming back.

via Lens Blog: http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/07/showcase-black-and-very-white/

He’s trekked through glacial storms, fallen through rifts and awakened on ice that’s drifted out to sea. But Ragnar Axelsson just keeps coming back. For 25 years, he has been traveling to small Inuit villages in Greenland’s most remote regions, documenting hunting traditions that are 4,000 years old.

December 7, 2009
Best Multimedia Story From Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar

“They Stole So Much More” from John Adkisson on Vimeo.

via: A Photo Editor – Best Multimedia Story From Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar

December 7, 2009
The Long Haul – The Digital Journalist

by Lucian Read

I’ve been to Afghanistan eight times in the last 18 months. My apartment is slowly taking on the look of a caravanserai. I have more friends in Kabul than Manhattan. My mind is full of snippets of Dari, counterinsurgency strategy and half-remembered warlords, major and minor. My son – not yet quite born – will have a Pashto middle name. I make no claims to being an expert on the place but, God knows, I seem to love it.

Link: The Long Haul – The Digital Journalist

Link to photo essay: Digital Journalist Weblog » Blog Archive » The Long Haul

December 7, 2009
Happy Freakin' Holidays Playlist – WFMU

Happy Freakin’ Holidays Playlist

Behold NYC Bloggers Do the Holidays, a tour of goodies in list and link form. The WFMU contribution, courtesy of Otis Fodder, is a playlist packed with 80 tracks that will either make you freak out or keep you from freaking out, depending on your metaboli

via WFMU’s Beware of the Blog: http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2009/12/happy-freakin-holidays-playlist.html

Behold NYC Bloggers Do the Holidays, a tour of urban goodies in list and link form. The WFMU contribution, courtesy of Otis Fodder, is a playlist packed with 80 tracks that will either make you freak out or keep you from freaking out, depending on your metabolic set point.

Holiday Freak In (2002) and Holiday Freak Out (2006) are compilations Otis pulled together for his special people, and now you’re a special person, too. A guy who really likes Christmas music liked them a lot. You can read that guy’s interview with Otis and commentary while you download. Cuz that’s gonna take a while.

December 3, 2009
On Assignment: Afghanistan in Free Fall – Lens

On Assignment: Afghanistan in Free Fall

Moises Saman has returned to Afghanistan time and again with the hope of documenting the promise of peace and prosperity, which now seem ever more elusive.

via Lens Blog: http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/assignment-17/

KABUL — I was one of the hundreds of young photojournalists who came to this distant country in 2001 to photograph my first war; naïve, a little reckless, and mostly unprepared. At the time, the Taliban ruled most of the country. Only a thin slice of mountainous territory in the north, between Tajikistan and the Panjshir Valley, was controlled by the opposition, the Northern Alliance. My travel companions were Matthew McAllester, who was then a foreign correspondent for Newsday, and Tyler Hicks, a photographer for The New York Times.

December 1, 2009
Platon: Photographs of World Leaders : The New Yorker

Portraits of Power

In 1976, Richard Avedon went to Washington to photograph Henry Kissinger. As Avedon was leading him to his mark, Kissinger said, “Be kind to me.”Artists have been making portraits of the mighty for centuries—from Velázquez’s Philip IV to Lucian Freud’s El

via The New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/online/multimedia/2009/12/07/091207_audioslideshow_platon

This past September, when nearly all the world’s leaders were in New York for a meeting of the United Nations, Platon, a staff photographer for this magazine, set up a tiny studio off the floor of the General Assembly, and tried to hustle as many of them in front of his lens as possible. For months, members of the magazine’s staff had been writing letters to various governments and embassies, but the project was a five-day-long improvisation, with Platon doing his best to lure the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chávez, and Muammar Qaddafi to his camera.

December 1, 2009
The Visual Student » Dave LaBelle, The Lesson

Dave LaBelle | The Lesson from Francis Gardler on Vimeo.

This video is an excerpt from Francis Gardler’s Ohio University masters project on Dave LaBelle, one of his teachers from Western Kentucky University. The video features interviews with LaBelle and several of his students. Gardler is a former Photojournalist-In-Residence at Western Kentucky.

Link: The Visual Student » Dave LaBelle, The Lesson

November 29, 2009
100Eyes: Beware the Consequences of War | 100 Eyes Photo Magazine

First I must warn you that this exhibition includes some “graphic images”. These are images that were not composed to conceal the results of violence. I urge you not to recoil and ask you to study these images. Try to conjure them up whenever you see a newspaper headline reporting deaths or injuries. Even if it is demoted to the back pages because too small a number of people were affected, or happened too far away.

What has been concealed in this essay are the captions. They are located every dozen or so images. This is to challenge you to face the horrible reality of conflict without immediately consulting the caption to make sure it was the other side that was the perpetrator. Alongside the images appear testimonies gathered from Israeli and Palestinian survivors, which chain the images to the context of loss.

Link: 100Eyes: Beware the Consequences of War | 100 Eyes Photo Magazine

November 28, 2009
The Insiders

Insight Timer – Meditation, Relaxation and Sleep

12 million people use Insight Timer to sleep better, reduce anxiety, improve their happiness and learn to meditate. With more than 35,000 free titles, Insight Timer has the largest free library of sleep tools, music tracks, and guided meditations on earth

Link: http://insig.ht/2009/11/the-insiders/

In an attempt to avoid this fate, I knew that it was essential at my stage of development to photograph regularly somehow. After considerable to-ing and fro-ing, an accommodation was eventually reached, one that was more on my terms: I began bringing a camera along to work, photographing my surroundings. And as this project progressed and I slowly learned my craft, I became increasingly fascinated with other photographers who had been in a similar situation, those who had found themselves recording their own jobs:

November 23, 2009
Showcase: Emptied but Still Secret – Lens

If one hears ghostlike murmurs while looking through Christopher Payne’s photographs in “Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals,” it may be because the people who once occupied these imposing and forbidding places are still among us. But they no longer dwell within the fortresses — or were they sanctuaries? — into which Mr. Payne now guides the reader.

Link: Showcase: Emptied but Still Secret – Lens Blog – NYTimes.com

November 23, 2009
A Photo Editor – Frank W. Ockenfels 3 Interview

Frank W. Ockenfels 3 Interview – A Photo Editor

Frank Ockenfels is the kind of photographer who does everything well. From his black and white to his color; from passport photos to 4 x 5; photographing men and photographing women; it’s all equally good. He’s also the kind of guy you throw a really diff

via A Photo Editor: http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2009/11/20/frank-w-ockenfels-3-interview/

Frank Ockenfels is the kind of photographer who does everything well. From his black and white to his color; from passport photos to 4 x 5; photographing men and photographing women; it’s all equally good. He’s also the kind of guy you throw a really difficult assignment to because with all the different films and formats he’s bound to get something great.

November 20, 2009
The Visual Student » Documenting Hunters Point: Alex Welsh

Alex Welsh is a 2009 graduate of San Francisco State University with a B.A. in photojournalism and minors in history and Middle Eastern studies. Welsh recently won gold in the Documentary category of the 64th College Photographer of the Year competition for his work in Hunters Point.

Link: The Visual Student » Documenting Hunters Point: Alex Welsh

November 20, 2009
On Assignment: Asia in the Blink of an Eye – Lens

photos By STEPHEN CROWLEY

President Obama, whose motorcade has been as long as 71 vehicles, is always at least 30 cars ahead of the four-person photo pool trailing him as he tours Asia. I really wanted a whimsical picture of the president as he walked past the “No Smoking” sign in the Forbidden City, but his Chinese police escorts blocked the shot as his entourage swept by.

Link: On Assignment: Asia in the Blink of an Eye – Lens Blog – NYTimes.com

November 19, 2009
64th College Photographer of the Year | Winning Images

Link: 64th College Photographer of the Year | Winning Images

November 14, 2009
Statesman photographers recall their coverage of the Fort Hood shootings – Collective Vision | Photoblog for the Austin American-Statesman

Statesman staff photographers Jay Janner, Rodolfo Gonzalez and Ricardo B. Brazziell recall their photo coverage of the Fort Hood shootings and aftermath in this video produced by Jenni Jones.

Link: Statesman photographers recall their coverage of the Fort Hood shootings – Collective Vision | Photoblog for the Austin American-Statesman

November 14, 2009