Back To Shooting: I need to write things down: “I neglected to enter POY this year, because I thought I only had a couple images worth entering, both in the pictorial category. I forgot that when I left Lincoln, I thought I might have a good sports portfolio. So for your viewing pleasure, here’s what I could have entered, if I had stayed on top of things.”
The Photographs Not Taken: “The Photographs Not Taken is a collection of essays by photographers about the times they didn’t use their camera. “
CONTEXT – This Week in Arts and Ideas from The Moscow Times: “The pictures come from a new coffee-table book, ’20th Century Russia in Photographs: 1900 to 1917,’ which covers the turbulent period in hundreds of full-page archival images, ranging from high politics to gritty documentary photography to family portraits.
The book is part of an ongoing project by state-owned gallery Moscow House of Photography to collect and catalogue historically interesting photographs taken over the last century. It’s planned that another four books will follow, loosely divided into the pre-war period, World War II, the Khrushchev and Brezhnev eras and perestroika to 2000, the gallery’s director, Olga Sviblova, said in an interview on Sunday.”
Getty Images – News Blog » Blog Archive » The Assassination of Benazir Bhutto: “As the former prime minister’s car surged forward, I pushed out of the way, ahead of her vehicle. I needed to adjust my camera. In the melee, the shutter setting had been bumped down to 1/15th and 1/8th of a second, giving the photos an unintended impressionistic look.
I turned on my flash, but just before resetting the lens, I turned and glanced back at her car.
That’s when I heard three shots. I knew from the sound that they were fired close to her car. I watched her drop down through the sunroof. Instinctively, I raised my camera, my finger pressed down on the shutter, starting to shoot without looking.
Just as the camera came up in front of my face, the bomb went off.”
whats the jackanory ?: London calling: “I did a shoot for Sunday Times on the 3rd Jan. The wold champion female track cyclist. A Brit. Big hopes for the Olympics. Great ! A job immediately after the new year – it gets your confidence up and your new year is out the traps. I got £250 fee. One of my very first commissions ever was for The Sunday Times in 1993. My fee was £250. In 15 years they have held down their costs 100%. What an amazing achievement. The chief picture editor of the whole newspaper – a man I’ve never even heard of or met – so the boss over and above the PE’s in all the sections/magazines – was so impressed with my picture that he got his p.a. to call me and ‘ask’ me if it was alright if they could hold on to the pictures for a little bit longer as they were so good he felt that they were very syndicatable. How long for? Not long, just a while, well until after the Olympics. Is there going to be a split in it for me? We’d give you 10%. The institutional disrespect for photographers and photography cannot be over emphasised.”
Navel gazing – Reuters Photographers: “At various times some of our photographers and picture editors have talked about how the eyes, hands and even feet can be used as the subject of pictures. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I give you the ‘middle way’ – the human belly as a means of self expression.”
China: “citizen journalist” beaten to death – Boing Boing: “Wei Wenhua was beaten to death after he snapped photos of a confrontation on the street between village residents and authorities. His death has sparked controversy in Chinese media, and the blogosphere:
Wei Wenhua was a model communist and is now a bloggers’ hero — a ‘citizen journalist’ turned martyr. The construction company manager was driving his car when he witnessed an ugly scene: a team of about 50 city inspectors beating villagers who tried to block trucks from unloading trash near their homes.
Wei took out his cell phone and began taking pictures. The city inspectors saw Wei and then attacked him in a beating that lasted five minutes. By the time it was over, the 41-year-old Wei was slumped unconscious. He was rushed to the hospital but was dead on arrival.”
House kicks up an investigation : Updates : The Rocky Mountain News: “By resolution, the House said: ‘The special committee will investigate the circumstances surrounding the incident that occurred between Rep. Douglas Bruce and a member of the press on the floor of the House of Representatives on Jan. 14, 2008.’
House Republicans on Monday had condemned Bruce for kicking the photographer and promised a tight rein on their new colleague to ensure such an outburst ‘never happens again.’”
From the first day to now, a Sense of Community – Sense of Community – Flint Journal: “Steve Jessmore,48, has created the Sense of Community photo column since April 2004. After more than 170 columns, today marks its end. Jessmore is leaving The Flint Journal to become photo editor at The Sun News in Myrtle Beach, S.C. ”
(Via APAD.)
…fredman eyes the visions…: Tefillin: “I finally edited this project, which I shot when I was interning at the Star-Ledger, I hoped to finish it while working there, but things ended and I didn’t have a chance to edit it during my final week. I learned a few important lessons — don’t gather too much audio and start editing audio quickly as you gather it, otherwise it becomes harder and harder to get around to it and finish the job. “
Gray Matters: Don’t burn your bridges.: “One of my more gregarious coworkers started what can only be characterized as a rant. He talked about his belief that newspapers are a vital part of our democracy. He talked about how we have strayed from our mission, chasing after every shiny object that comes our way. He talked about how it seemed the industry was afraid to stay the course. He talked about how we need to find out how to monetize our product on the Internet. He talked about how newspaper people were different. We have a mission he said. We love what we do. We would do it for less if we thought it would help. We would stand in the rain, snow, sleet or heat if we thought it would help the story. “
Best Seat in the House | The Seattle Times, Rod Mar: “I had such a blast at what ended up as the final Seahawks game of the season.
Snow, the playoffs, a natural grass field, and Green Bay’s legendary Lambeau Field all made for an incredible environment in which to shoot photos.
As many of you know, Seattle got run over by the Green Bay Packers, 42-20.
And as the old cliche’ goes, ‘the game wasn’t as close as the score indicated’.”
family/friends: bosses: “i do not have a boss anymore….i never did like having a boss, but i pretty much always got along with them anyway….respect…authority….needed a job…..
you are looking at my first two bosses…in reverse order….Robert E. Gilka, left, former Director of Photography at National Geographic Magazine and Rich Clarkson, former Director of Photography at the Topeka (Kansas) Capitol-Journal…Clarkson hired me for the newspaper right out of the University of Missouri graduate school and Gilka hired me 7 long long long years later at National Geographic….”
PAM PLATT: Flurry over a photo prompts explanation: “Some of the comments registered by angry, offended and/or baffled readers: ‘Awful,’ ‘an embarrassment,’ ‘horrible decision,’ ‘poor judgment,’ ‘distasteful,’ ‘a mystery’ and ‘shame on you.’
I have to admit I was a little baffled by the response. Aren’t sports the province of the ubiquitous fanny pat? Aren’t players in each other’s faces all the time during athletic matches? Yes and yes. So what’s a little game-time hug in that universe?
Well, apparently this photo crossed a line for some readers, some of whom demanded an apology and/or an explanation.”
(Via Romenesko.)
Bruce kicks photographer, takes oath : Updates : The Rocky Mountain News: “But his patience snapped as photographers from the Rocky and Denver Post crouched before him to shoot his picture as he stood for the House’s morning prayer.
Bruce told Rocky photographer Javier Manzano ‘Don’t do that again,’ and then gave him a swift kick in the knee.
Asked by reporters in his office about the incident, Bruce said his kick was warranted and that he had warned the photographers not to take his picture during the prayer and Pledge of Allegiance.
‘In 21 years, I don’t think there has ever been an instance where I had to do something to stop somebody from behaving in such a coarse and disgusting way,’ Bruce said.”
Local News | Weyerhaeuser, environmentalists argue logging’s effect on floods | Seattle Times Newspaper: “The Seattle Times photograph, by Steve Ringman, was taken with a 20-mm wide-angle lens a few days after the storm hit. At the hearing, Weyerhaeuser’s Godbout said the slope looked less steep when seen from a different perspective, and — on a screen — he showed a corporate photograph with a different view of the slides and slope.”
(Via Conscientious.)
The four best online and multimedia professional journalism groups | Will Sullivan’s Journerdism: “Now, on to The Four:
* The Online News Association
* The National Press Photographer Association
* The Society for News Design
* Sports Shooter”
There are profiles of six photographers on Canon Europe’s professional website. Most interesting to me was the profile of Swedish photojournalist Per-Anders Pettersson, who has been doing fascinating work from the Congo (that’s his photograph above), where millions of people have died in conflict since 1997 with almost no international attention. You can read Pettersson’s profile and see his photos (and a video) at this link.
The other photographers profiled are: Kai Pfaffenbach, Martin Eisenhawer, Bill Frakes, and Alessandra Meniconzi.
SF Gate:
Rotting corpses, starving babies, burned-out villages. Those aren’t the kinds of images kids at San Anselmo’s Sir Francis Drake High School usually see when they crowd into the gym for an assembly.
But they got an eyeful one recent morning when Mark Brecke, a resourceful San Francisco photographer who’s spent a decade documenting mass murder and ethnic cleansing, served up a sobering tutorial on genocide. He showed slides from the decimated Darfur region of Sudan, where he lived for five weeks with roving rebels of the Sudanese Liberation Army, and from the camps in neighboring Chad, where survivors find refuge from the slaughter and forced starvation that has killed more than 400,000 people since 2003.
“These images are not easy to take, that’s for sure,” said Brecke, a soft-spoken, fair-haired man in his late 30s, showing a picture of a partially decomposed body lying in the dirt. “But they’re necessary. Because you are witnessing a mass crime scene, if you want to call it that.”
Here.
