When working with the incarcerated youth of Washington State, Steve Davis used the camera in different ways and to different ends. He conducted his own long-term portrait project concurrently with workshops offered to the detained youth.
There is a story, probably true, about two well known Magnum photographers, a story going back a couple of decades, I’m sure. Henri Cartier-Bresson, one of the founders of Magnum, was greeting Bruno Barbey, just five years older than myself, at one of the meetings in Paris. The two embraced in that modern European manner, hands about each other’s torso, when suddenly Cartier’s hands went from a gentle touch to something more akin to a frisk. And within a few seconds, he pushed back from Bruno, and exhorted, “But where is your CAMERA?!”
Stephen Mayes introduces the discussion topics, including the motive and the intent of photographers who cover war, and the responsibility of the audience viewing the resulting images to learn, react, and engage. Tim Hetherington and Gary Knight continue by debating the crisis in photojournalism — is there one, and if so, what is it?
Tim Hetherington is a British photographer, writer, filmmaker and television journalist who has captured the chaos and tragedy of the Liberian civil war in his new book, “Long Story Bit by Bit: Liberia Retold” (Umbrage Editions, 2009). He has combined reflective, square-format documentary photography with oral testimony and memoir.
Hello blog folks, it’s been a while. One year to be exact… one long crazy year. This time last year, I announced my project called The Big Picture, hoping, of course, that it would do well. It has really blown me away how well it has done. I will happily take some of the credit, but much of the success belongs to the photographers who consistently deliver amazing imagery that makes choosing and editing both a pleasure and a difficult task.
Canon has released a firmware update for the EOS 5D Mark II that enables manual control of ISO, aperture and shutter speed while the camera is set to capture video. Firmware v1.1.0 also disables the depth of field preview button when playing back photos or accessing the on-screen menus and corrects various bugs.
I could probably do about 1,000 blog posts on Juliana Beasley and still have more material to share. She is a person who seems to be so completely comfortable with herself, without pretention, without worry about how people with react to her unwavering stare into worlds the most of us haven’t entered. She does it all with enthusiasm, sensitivity, and grace. And she has made me her champion. Juliana has recently been selected as a receipient of the Aaron Siskind Individual Fellowship.
Adopting the persona of a Belgian chocolate magnate, complete with disguise and funny accent, Tomas van Houtryve made his second trip to North Korea in February 2008. Despite his credentials as a foreign businessman keen to invest in the country, he faced hours of interrogation, was threatened by apparatchiks, and at one point was almost exposed as a journalist. His bold tactics gave him access to factories, hospitals and government offices, some of which had never before been seen by a Western photographer. He was also able to catch a fleeting glimpse of the lives of ordinary people.
“It’s amazing,” he said. “We just kept updating the story as it went along, and it was there instantly, for everyone to read.”
And he didn’t seem to mind that he was paid exactly nothing for his lifetime of experience and the article. It’s a tough time to be a journalist but, hey, it beats working for a living.
When people ask me how they can become a photographer, I almost never mention cameras, lenses, or technique.
I say, ‘If you want to be a photographer, first leave home.’ As Paul Theroux, a great writer and friend, further advises, “Go as far as you can. Become a stranger in a strange land. Acquire humility.
One of the most interesting aspects of the scandal is the revelation that old-fashioned scoops can still sell papers. Many publishers have assumed that in the Internet era, “exclusives” stay that way for about three seconds, so they are not worth pursuing. Instead, they have shifted the emphasis of their papers toward analysis or opinion.
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO sounds as if he’s slightly allergic to Los Angeles. It’s not just that this celebrated Brazilian photojournalist has been sniffling since he arrived in the city, explaining: “I was born in a tropical ecosystem. I’m not used to these plants.” It’s also that he peppers his description of the city with words like strange and crazy, noting that he was mesmerized by the sight of the endless stream of automobile traffic as his plane made its descent.
You might think your job sucks, but at least your boss wasn’t insane enough to remove all the chairs and install security so an alarm goes off if you don’t walk fast enough.
This one game provided a few outs for me…luckily my chance of shooting with a wider lens from directly behind home helped me land the home plate leap. He was called safe. It was one of those moments where I felt the lens snap out of focus for a brief milli-second – spurring a frantic chimping session.
VJ Workshops, in partnership with Brooks Institute in Ventura, Calif., has launched a tuition-free multimedia workshop to be held at the Ventura campus of Brooks Institute from July 30 thru Aug. 2, 2009.
Responding to the current U.S. economy and the state of the newspaper industry, VJ Workshops Founder and Executive Director, Paul Myers, developed the multimedia workshop to provide college students and professional journalists with strategies for storytelling in the ever-changing media landscape.
We’ve come out of EOS-1D Mark III AF testing retirement just long enough to put the camera’s revised AF calibration and firmware v1.2.5 through its paces, to see if Canon’s changes add up to improved tracking performance.
In all, Josh Haner, a Times photographer and picture editor, found that he could not winnow the selection to any fewer than 406 exceptional Polaroids, all of which are presented here. The gallery itself makes the case. This much creative energy ought to be given the film it needs to thrive.