On Assignment: Arlington Cemetery – Lens Blog – NYTimes.com:
Doug Mills’s gripping and emotional image of Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s burial — showing family members embracing in a glowing light and children kneeling before the casket — was the result of one of those risky but rewarding choices. It was published across five columns at the top of the front page in Sunday’s late edition.
Inventing Twenty-First Century Photojournalism – PDN:
As the debate over the future of journalism—how it will be created, distributed and paid for—rages in boardrooms and in the media, the role of photojournalism is rarely discussed. When newspapers talk about charging for content distributed online, there are clearly no guarantees that a new online revenue model will reinvigorate traditional photojournalism clients.
PDN recently sat down with VII Photo Agency managing director Stephen Mayes to discuss how the agency’s business is evolving and to get his take on photojournalism in the new millennium.
Keeping a Visual Diary in a War Zone – At War Blog – NYTimes.com:
Christoph Bangert adds: When I spent about two months on assignment for The New York Times in Baghdad this year, I proposed to Stephen Farrell, who was in charge of At War’s predecessor, the Baghdad Bureau blog, that I post one picture online every day during my stay in Iraq.
Essay: Cowboys and Photojournalists – Lens Blog – NYTimes.com:
While watching the 4-H youngsters going about their business at MontanaFair in Billings this month, I was struck by a parallel. Here I am in 2009, at a fair ground: a photojournalist, making pictures of cowboys in every direction I look. Don’t any of us know that none of us are supposed to exist?
Do we ever go back? | uncommons:
Routine is something photojournalists do not have often. Assignments change daily, as do the locations we work in and the people we meet. I’m working an early morning spot news rotation, but two days last week I joined an overnight police ride-along. Hours that normally start at 6:30 am ended again at 6:30 the following morning. It’s exciting, if not tiring; yet always rewarding. We’re adapted to constant change, and that change often is the fuel that keeps us moving.
Photojournalist Enters ‘Surreal’ North Korea in Ruse – TIME:
In 2007 and 2008, photojournalist Tomas Van Houtryve visited North Korea by infiltrating a communist solidarity delegation. In the first of a three-part TIME.com series, he reports on the elaborate ruse that is required to enter the world’s most isolated country.
Showcase: The Bang Bang Club (Part 2 of 2) – Lens Blog – NYTimes.com:
In the second of a two-part series on the Bang Bang Club — a group of four young photographers who unblinkingly chronicled the upheaval in South Africa in the 1990s — Greg Marinovich recalls the torment of watching deadly violence unfold before him. In an instant, he had to decide whether he could do more good by intervening personally or by chronicling the moment to let the world know what was happening. His pictures of a man being burned alive won a Pulitzer Prize in 1991. Readers are cautioned that this scene and several others in the audio slide show are quite disturbing.
Essay: Storytelling With Pictures – Lens Blog – NYTimes.com:
I was nine years old, living in a small town in south Florida, when I read Grey Villet’s “The Lash of Success” in Life magazine — one of the very few extras my family could afford. The pages of Life were filled with images of President John F. Kennedy, the space program and rising stars of television. Yet it was the subject and style of “Lash” — about a businessman sacrificing his humanity in pursuit of success — that had the greatest impact upon me. I have never forgotten it.
Photojournalists Rally To”Save Steve’s Family”:
The photojournalism community is rallying online to help one of its own, Steve Coddington of the St. Petersburg Times, who for more than a year has been taking care of his wife, Marian, after she suffered a brain aneurysm and four hemorrhages in less than a month.
Sports Shooter Q & A: with Matt Mendelsohn:
I decided that a Q & A would be a good format to discuss Matt Mendelsohn’s story and photographs of Lindsay Ess. This Q & A was conducted via Instant Message and covers a wide range of topics concerning his story, the media, self-image and balancing writing and making photographs while reporting this personal project.
Sports Shooter Destination: Antarctica- ‘Hell yeah you go.’:
Two lenses break the first day. MkII quits halfway in. The insurance-provided 50D is blasted to smithereens by water cannons. You think, I should be more careful. But not too careful. I don’t want to miss pictures. You take fewer chances, but the 30D suffers a sticky shutter anyway. A battery charger dies. Card reader fails inexplicably. WTF? You seal up the 30D with duct tape and blow through 120,000+ frames with what you have. And when you arrive home with lighter bags— just a borrowed 20D and one working lens left — you console yourself. Say it’s OK. Cause it was all worth it.
Q & A: The New York Times’s Damon Winter : CJR:
Splashed across the front page of yesterday’s New York Times was a four-column photo of a man shouting at Sen. Arlen Specter at a town hall held earlier that morning in Lebanon, Pa., taken by photojournalist Damon Winter, who won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography. The photograph neatly illustrated the recent trend of angry voters—usually white and usually seniors—confronting their senators and congressmen with practically apoplectic rage over health reform and other matters.
AFTER STAFF – David Leeson, on leaving newspapers and rediscovering old passions | RESOLVE — the liveBooks photo blog:
David Leeson is known for a lot of things — his Pulitzer-prize winning photojournalism, his trailblazing video storytelling, his photo blog of intimate self-portraits. What he’s never been known for is pulling punches. After 30 years on newspaper photo staffs, his departure from the Dallas Morning News last year was difficult, and he doesn’t pretend otherwise. But he’s also reconnected with old passions through his new endeavors, and thankfully shares that experience with the same intimate honest.
remembrance | Redlights and Redeyes:
Defeated, I drove to my second murder assignment of the day – and all I was given was a photo assignment to head to the home of the aforementioned Dejuan Williams to see if there was anything to photograph at all. I found the home finally, not because I had the address, because I didn’t, but because I found the 18 year-old’s faded blue Buick parked in the driveway with a few roses and some hand written notes on it.
Amazing work by Seamus Murphy. Here’s the gallery:
Seamus Murphy: A Darkness Visible – Digital Journalist.
Here’s a link to the story introduction:
Seamus Murphy: A Darkness Visible – Story Introduction:
Seamus Murphy describes photography as “part history and part magic.” This brief description could be a title for Murphy’s entire archive, as he is the embodiment of the soulful photojournalist. A native of Ireland, he has worked extensively in the Middle East, Europe, Russia and the Far East, Africa, North and South America, and has to date won six World Press Awards. Murphy’s work spans years and continents, but we have chosen to concentrate on the area that captivated him perhaps the most in recent years—Afghanistan. His recent book, “A Darkness Visible,” published in 2008 by Saqi Books of London, is a retrospective of his work in that country since 1994.
The Enemy Among Us – The Digital Journalist:
For the next 10 days I watched daily life of soldiers and locals unfold, took cover from incoming fire, went on patrols and listened vicariously to intelligence gleaned from radio chatter between Taliban fighters led by their notorious commander, Abdul Rahman. His goal was to maneuver a re-take of the town. Charlie Company was here to make certain that didn’t happen. The game was one of cat-and-mouse.