Category: Photojournalism

  • Pictures of the Year Judging Begins in Columbia – – PopPhotoFebruary 2008

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    In or out? With 45,000 images to get through, there’s barely enough time to capture a frame in the dimly lit room before judges decide whether an image stays or goes. It’s raining outside at the University of Missouri, but in Tucker Forum it’s sunny, cloudy, hot and cold as each image has its moment to shine on the big screen.

    With fewer than a dozen spectators in the audience, the rain kept most from attending the first day of public judging during the 65th annual Pictures of the Year International competition. But that will change over the next three weeks, as students and professionals from across the country will join a group of 12 judges from around the world as they select winning images in each of this year’s 48 categories.

    Check it out here.

  • POYi judging underway – Waitin’ On a Moment – by Tim Gruber

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    POYi judging started yesterday and the results are starting to trickle in.

    Check it out here.

  • What I Never Learned In School Part II « A Little News

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    I remember covering a fire once and the home owner came over to me and a TV journalist and demanded that we leave and stop taking advantage of him. You will run into that. This man was very mad at us for just being there. We tried to explain our job but his emotion made him unreasonable. I had a friend who was attacked at the scene of a fatal accident when a family member literally assaulted him. Thankfully a deputy was nearby and came to his aide. I was shoved by a drunk and enraged family member while covering a house fire. I have been at other scenes when the family members were very accepting of my presence and understood what I was doing. There is just no way to predict how people will react under pressure.

    Check it out here.

  • EastSouthWestNorth: Top 10 News Photo Of The Year Was Faked

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    “This is a photograph that everybody is familiar with.  When I first saw it, my eyes lit up: the Tibetan antelopes and the train on the Qinghai-Tibet railroad appeared simultaneously in the eye of the camera.  This was such a precise and decisive moment!  Thus, this photograph was selected as one of the top 10 most memorable photographs of 2006 and its author received innumerable honors … but on the day before yesterday, I suddenly discovered that there was a very obvious line at the bottom of the photograph.” On February 12, an essay titled Liu Weiqiang’s award winning photograph of the Tibetan antelopes is suspected of being fake was posted to the world’s largest Chinese-language photography forum Unlimited sights and colors.  This post quickly drew more than 10,000 page views.  As of 7pm last evening, there were 120,478 page views and 1,524 comments.  Some netizens even compared Liu with “Tiger Zhou.”  Could it be that this photograph was the result of PhotoShop manipulation?

    Check it out here.

  • pictures. » stories in search of tellers.

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    Photos by Rob Finch

    “Stories are in search of tellers. And when a story grabs onto you, that’s the one you should be telling.” – Storyteller Alton Takiyama-Chung recites one of his favorite quotes.

    Check it out here.

  • Magnum Blog / The Khmer Chronicles / Issue Nr 6: You've got 5 minutes – the photo blog of Magnum Photos

    Basically I start by making sure there is at least ONE usable picture. No risk taking… Autofocus, straight flash, no fancy composition, the accused smack in the middle of the frame, 5 or six shots. That’s it… Switch to the M8, ambient light (the last firmware update finally delivers acceptable white balance results), 320 ISO (too much noise higher up), 2.8, 30th/ second and MOVE, change position, go to the back of the pack, slide to the right, push back into the pack again, move back and go to the left where the judges are, go straight back towards the accused, frame, focus and… finished. It’s over. The 5 minutes are gone. We’re politely asked by the security guards to leave the room… Hoping we didn’t screw up and that there is something a little different to show. There are about 60 frames on my cards, 40 of which are really useless.

    Check it out here.

  • Photographer's Journal: A View of Chad's Refugee Crisis | The New York Times

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    Photographer’s Journal: A View of Chad’s Refugee Crisis, by Noor photographer Jan Grarup.

    Check it out here. Via APAD.

  • Wandering Light: Solitude

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    I spent two hours on a tour of the Sacramento County Jail today. They are beginning to open the facility up to public tours.

    I’ve been in the booking areas before and I have had quick visits to different prisons. But here I had this intense feeling of solitude as I walked from floor to floor taking pictures.

    Check it out here.

  • To pap or not to pap? – Reuters Photographers

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    And everytime Madonna’s car stopped it would send photographers and cameramen into a frenzy – abandoning their vehicles on the roads and rushing towards her car with cameras hanging from their shoulders. It was surprising that no photographer got injured, either as a result of the crush or the baton-wielding policemen.
    This time too, most of us had no choice. Either we follow her and get her pictures or not get pictures at all. And irrespective of the organisation we belonged to, considering this news-worthy ,we all followed her, though with varying degrees of intensity. It made by stomach churn, to see some enthusiastic bikers almost come in the way of Madonna’s speeding carcade.

    Check it out here.

  • BBC NEWS | World | South Asia | Picture power: Tim Hetherington

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    British photographer Tim Hetherington talks about his photograph of a US soldier in Afghanistan which has won the 2007 World Press Photo Award.
    The picture shows an American soldier in a bunker in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley during fierce fighting with the Taleban.

    Check it out here.

  • road trip: weather report….

    i am sure that all of you know that the photography licensing business as we know it, is  going through dramatic changes…Getty Images, heretofore the largest photo  licensing agency in the world, is up for sale..so far, no takers….even though they grossed around 800 million dollars last year, they “lost” 31 million….Corbis is losing money in licensing….so is Magnum (a very small “player” in the  mega image sales arena)..so are all photographic agencies…the traditional licensing agencies  are  now subject to getting slammed by the the biggest “storm” to come out of the skies ….EVER!!

    Check it out here.

  • Celebrated Conflict Photog Reveals True Identity – Digital Chosunilbo

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    Those who followed the story of the 23 Koreans kidnapped in Afghanistan in July last year may remember the name Kim Joo-seon, a Korean freelance reporter who went where no other Korean reporters were allowed to go. Kim scored an exclusive interview with Taliban commanders in the Ghazni region, the base of the Taliban militants, and filed story after story and photo after photo for the Chosun Ilbo, though few people knew who she was.
    Now “Kim” has finally revealed her true identity: Jean Chung. “I hid my real name because of my parents,” she said. “I’m the only daughter in my family. My parents would have a heart attack if they knew I was in Afghanistan. They still think that I was in India.”

    Chung has built a successful career as a photojournalist. After graduating from the department of Oriental Painting at Seoul National University’s College of Arts, she traveled to the U.S. and studied photojournalism at New York University and the University of Missouri.

    Check it out here.

  • Street Photography in an Image-Filled Age – City Room – Metro – New York Times Blog

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    In our media-saturated culture, everyone is a picture-taker and image-maker, adding a new wrinkle to the work of those who practice the time-honored tradition of street photography.

    “It’s harder and harder to take a picture without somebody in the picture who’s also taking a picture,” the Brooklyn-based photographer Gus Powell said on Tuesday evening, explaining that the mere act of taking a photo hardly makes him stand out in a crowd. “We all take pictures — that’s what we do. It’s more that your camera doesn’t look like a phone — that’s the bigger issue.”

    Check it out here.

  • Newspaper Photo Angers Heavily Armed Mayor – PDNPulse

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    New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin is miffed that the New Orleans Times-Picayune published a photo of him and the police superintendent clowning around with a couple of assault rifles at a press conference Tuesday.

    Check it out here.

  • Gray Matters: Respect those who came before us.

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    I constantly receive emails from photographers commenting on the photographs on my member page and those that run with my column. Some try to give me tips on how to improve my photos. Some tell me my snaps suck. The most recent email suggested I give up working in black & white. The writer said it was a cop out. He suggested I challenge myself more so my work has room to progress.

    Now… I am not some kind of prima donna who thinks his sheeot does not stink. I am also not above taking constructive criticism about my photography. And I might be a full-time photo editor because I am not good enough to be a full-time photographer. But even so, some of us ol’ timers are getting a little pissed off about the total lack of respect the Internet affords you punk kids.

    Several photographers I’ve talked to commented on the Internet and how it opened the gateway for photographers with little or no experience to become experts on everything from lighting techniques and lens selection to business practices and copyright law. If you have ever heard the expression “the long arm of the law,” I want you to know the new version of that saying could be “the long arm of the Internet.”

    Check it out here.

  • Big Sky – Real Life – Real News

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    I got out of the office to clear my head and shoot another small town feature. When I find myself getting frustrated with work, and the photography stops being fun, I just wonder out and shoot something completely useless. And somehow after this type of exercise everything seems new, and holding a camera is fun again.

    Check it out here.

  • Waitin’ On a Moment – by Tim Gruber » Sharing “War Stories”

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    Sometimes all the planning in the world can’t prepare you for the spontaneity of life. Every shooter hits their highs and lows during a shoot. It’s a given. The low came for me on the very first day. It wasn’t justified since at that point I didn’t even have a single frame in the bag. The key for me was to start shooting and a bag of Red Vines. Discouragement can come easy if you’re looking for it. It’s a roller coaster that’ll take you to the highest of highs and darkest of lows. The low serves as a reminder that nothing comes easy. The high tugs at my heart and reminds me instantly why I do this.

    I love it.

    Check it out here.

  • The Wild Weird World of Sports: Wrestling With Good Photo Ops

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    A fun, weird, extended photo trip started nearly a month ago with an unlikely beginning: midget wrestling.

    Check it out here.

  • They Shoot Presidential Candidates, Don't They? – PDNPulse

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    We are still not sure when photog John Harrington sleeps. Between last night and this morning, he managed to shoot John McCain’s victory speech in Virginia, interview other photogs about how they shoot and transmit their pix on the campaign trail, and turn that footage into an insightful seven-minute video.

    Check it out here.