A recent glut of feature stories on the death of the American newspaper has temporarily made the outmoded form of media appealing enough to stave off its inevitable demise for an additional 21 days, sources reported Monday. “People really seem to identify with these moving, ‘end-of-an-era’-type pieces,” Washington Post editor-in-chief Leonard Downie, Jr. said. “It’s nice to see that the printed word is still, at least for now, the most powerful medium for reporting on the death of the printed word.” Downie added that the poignant farewell Op-Ed he recently penned was so well received that he will be able to hold onto his job for up to six more days
Stock library Getty Images has released the first in an ongoing series of podcasts featuring its award-winning team of photographers. In the podcasts, snappers such as John Moore talk over the story behind their most striking images.
Clearly I should already have known who Vanessa Winship is. I mean, she won the first World Press Photo award ever given in the arts category; she’s exhibited at Visa pour l’Image, Les Recontres d’Arles, and the Leica Gallery; oh, and did I mention…she makes beautiful, beautiful images.
Which brings us to the reason for this piece. Recent reports of overzealous edge-burning and the removal of extraneous limbs in backgrounds caused the editors of Sports Shooter to put out a call for opinions. Here’s mine: I think that directing the reader’s eye “in the moment”, like Cartier-Bresson, is always preferable to doing it after the fact in the darkroom, like Smith.
So, the “burn rule” as I see it is: The more you screw with it the more it becomes about you. In the worst cases it can be a downright lie. Photojournalists who use technology after the moment to “polish” a moment usually end up having a column written about them.
The bottom line is this, if you are presenting work as the truth when in reality, it is not; you have only yourself to blame. Former Photojournalism sequence chair at Western Kentucky Mike Morse said it best, “you are either in the truth business… or you are in the entertainment business.”
I spent some more time with Russ and some with his family this evening. Russ was rummaging through his burnt down house for a while trying to find anything that survived the flames. A couple things of interest made it. The bible, Book of Mormon, Sim City CDs and some wedding photos.
This month we focus on Preston Gannaway, a staff photographer at the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Colorado. While driving from New Hampshire to Colorado earlier this month, Gannaway learned that she had been named the recipient of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Photography. The 30-year-old photographer was recognized for her picture story, “Remember Me,” which she created while on staff at the Concord Monitor. In April’s installment of “Behind the Lens,” Gannaway talks about her career as a newspaper photographer, and the hard work and dedication that went into her Pulitzer-winning picture story.
A newspaper photo of evidence in last year’s high-profile Warren Jeffs trial has prompted a new statewide rule in Utah against photographing non-public evidence in courtrooms, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.
The newspaper reported that the Utah Judicial Council, which sets policy for statewide courts, approved a rule “prohibiting news photographers from taking courtroom pictures of exhibits or documents that are not part of the official public record.
“The rule, which becomes effective Nov. 1, stems from a photo taken March 27, 2007, by a Deseret Morning News photographer during the rape as an accomplice trial of Warren Jeffs, leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints polygamous sect.”
The Sheriff’s Office in Shelby County, Tennessee, is warning locals to turn in anyone who takes too many pictures of bridges or shopping malls, because they might be scouting for Al Qaeda, who are clearly slavering at the opportunity to make a gigantic media splash by getting up to some serious naughtiness on the “iconic Hernando DeSoto Bridge.”
“You can’t just say no to Annie.” That was part of the explanation given by 15-year-old superstar Miley Cyrus after photographs were made of her “backless” and clutching a blanket by Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair. (A VF behind-the-scenes shot is above.) “I think it’s really artsy,” she told the magazine at the time. “It wasn’t in a skanky way.”
But by yesterday, Cyrus was backtracking. “I took part in a photo shoot that was supposed to be ‘artistic’ and now, seeing the photographs and reading the story, I feel so embarrassed,” she said in a publicist’s statement. She further criticizes the magazine in a People article, as the more financially minded press mulls over the fallout expected to hit Cyrus’s Hanna Montana phenomenon and its parent company, Disney.
In the late ’90s, pop-culture historian Bill Geerhart had a little too much time on his hands and a surfeit of stamps. So, for his own entertainment, the then-unemployed thirtysomething launched a letter-writing campaign to some of the most powerful and infamous figures in the country, posing as a curious 10-year-old named Billy.
Why’s that you ask? To distance myself from my work and constantly ask myself, “What is art?” Is dance an art? Is the dancer or choreographer the artist? Is a landscape painting an art? Is photojournalism an art? Is portrait photography an art? I struggle with these questions constantly and the answers are usually, “No.” Though occasionally, “Yes.”
Q. I currently am a “freelance” photographer (without pay) with a newspaper. I have not signed anything with the newspaper. Am I subject to work-for-hire provisions?
WAWONA TUNNEL is a passageway from civilization to natural splendor. The tunnel, dug through a hill on the south side of Yosemite National Park in the 1930s, hides the coming view like a mile-long blindfold.
And then you’re there. Pale, curvaceous granite rocks dance in the skyline. Dozens of people stand along the edge of the pull-off, called Tunnel View, trying to capture the scene. Some snap two quick shots with disposable yellow cameras, and others set up their tripods for hours, watching the light strike Yosemite’s monoliths. On the left, El Capitan, a rock climbers’ mecca, appears the tallest. The Half Dome and Sentinel Dome arch upwards in the center. And the two Cathedral Spires sit on the right next to the sometimes gushing Bridalveil Fall.
Many people know these sights by name, but more know them by sight alone, as captured through the lens of the legendary American photographer Ansel Adams.
The different photographs that The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald ran this week of a Vietnamese girl with a massive facial tumor raise questions of when a picture is exploitive of its subject or offensive to us as readers.
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation announced the recipients of it Fellowship grants for 2008. Among the 190 awards, seven went to photographers
Consider photography. As art-school photographers continue to shoot on film, embrace chiaroscuro and resist prettiness, a competing style of picture has been steadily refined online: the Flickr photograph. Flickr, the wildly popular photo-sharing site, was founded by the Canadian company Ludicorp in 2004. Four years later, amid the more than two billion images that currently circulate on the site, the most distinctive offerings, admired by the site’s members and talent scouts alike, are digital images that “pop” with the signature tulip colors of Canon digital cameras.
I am back in Afghanistan for the fifth time in two years. I have a lot in common with the British, Canadian and American soldiers deployed in the country. Like many of them, I have been here before and I have been under fire. And, dubious though the honour is, I am a member of an even more exclusive club: I have been shot during a gunfight.
There are differences between us, too. I am a photojournalist, not a soldier. I carry cameras and a notebook, not a gun. In the heat of battle, I am trying to stay alive, not trying to kill. The biggest difference – the one that surprises all the soldiers I meet – is that more than volunteering to be here, I overcome many obstacles to be an observer in this war zone.
