• Freelance photographers who shoot for the Associated Press will now get a 25 percent cut of the fees the AP collects for licensing their images beyond the AP’s regular photo wire.

    But the AP is also asking freelancers to do more work than in the past – to file their entire take with the AP, including caption information, within five days of their assignment.

    Check it out here.

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  • New FLDS site, a letter from Sam Roundy

    Dear Governor and Madam Judge:
     
    I am eighty years old. I’ve lived in Texas for almost a year and have been a member of the FLDS Church for fifty-six years. My purpose in writing this letter is to counter the false propaganda that has spewed forth from the Texas authorities.

    Check it out here.

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  • I’m a professional stock photographer, and just this morning, I was greeted by two FBI antiterrorism agents who wanted to question me regarding shooting in the Port of Los Angeles two weeks ago. When I was down there, a private security guard in a pickup truck chased me out of the area and onto the freeway. After he stopped following me, apparently he filed a report with the FBI.

    Check it out here.

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    Rochester Institute of Technology, and Leica Camera, proclaimed May 6, 2008 as Leica Day. The daylong event, hosted by RIT, was celebrated with speeches, lectures, tours, slide shows, seminars and parties. Andreas Kaufmann, the CEO of Leica Camera in Solms, Germany was there do donate 20 classic Leica M4-2 and M4-P cameras, each fitted with a brand new Leica Summarit-M lens (valued at $50,000), to RIT’s School of Photographic Arts and Sciences “to assure that analog photography continues to be a key element of photographic education at the highest levels.” Eastman Kodak Company also donated 400 rolls of their new Portra 400NC film to help support the program.

    At the event, Kaufmann took the time to give us some insight about what’s happening at Leic

    Check it out here.

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  • It was one of the most arresting images of last year. A majestic male mountain gorilla, his body flecked with blood, splayed out lifeless on a stretcher that 15 park rangers were struggling to bear through the jungle of eastern Congo.

    The massacre of the silverback Senkekwe, along with five other rare apes, made the cover of US magazine Newsweek under the headline “Gorilla Warfare”. In Britain, the “Murders In The Mist” prompted The Sun to launch its own campaign, and around the globe people wrote in to media outlets, telling of the sleepless nights and trauma the images had caused.

    For Anneke van Woudenberg, the Congo specialist for Human Rights Watch, it was a case of gritting one’s teeth. “Kill a mountain gorilla in Congo and it gets much more coverage than five million dead,” she says. “It irks me every time.”

    Check it out here.

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  • Keith tried to take a picture on the Red Line in LA, and was told that he was breaking the “9/11 Law” by a metro worker who swore at him and threatened him with arrest when he asked what the “9/11 Law” was.

    Check it out here.

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    If you’re well connected, you would’ve received an invite yesterday to RSVP for a private preview on Friday for Dalek’s only exhibit this year, Overweight, at Washington D.C.’s Irvine Contemporary.

    Check it out here.

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  • Meanwhile, the Gigapan continued to take photos. They’d ruined the panorama, of course; the first guard got in front of the camera at one point and obstructed the view. They reiterated that we were going to be arrested, so I finally tried to shut off the camera. But the damn thing wouldn’t stop taking pictures. It never occurred to me that I’d have to learn how to abort a panorama under pain of arrest, so I fumbled for about a minute as it kept shooting pictures. (I think I heard Wright laughing at this point.)

    I managed to shut the camera, and started to disassemble the Gigapan from the tripod as a fourth security person arrived. He was dressed differently than the other three people, and had a former-marine-turned-middle-management air about him.

    Check it out here.

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    The included RF remote-control is ideal for easy, stealth-style photo shooting.

    Check it out here.

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  • Here are the GOLD winners from last weekends SPD awards in Photography.

    Check it out here.

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  • The idea behind Nik Software’s Viveza is quite simple. It implements what they call the U Point technology that allows for really easy and fast as well as precise and smooth color refinement, light adjustment and image enhancement that was previously possible only through a somewhat difficult and tedious editing process that involves a lot of layer masking or complicated selections. The U Point technology in Viveza now makes it painless to absolutely control certain portions of an image.

    Check it out here.

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  • It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. At the risk of sounding terribly cliche, I have to say that my understanding of war, the pain of war, the humanity that is able to rise above war, the valiant spirit of mothers and children caught in the midst of war….were ever so slight until I stumbled upon the miraculous work of the award-winning war photographer called Zoriah.

    Check it out here.

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  • These days, authors, artists, and photographers are likely to find one or more of their creative works used without permission. One defense to the purported infringement is often that it is a “fair use.” The challenge then is determining whether the unauthorized use is an infringement or fair use. While only a court of law can make that decision, understanding what makes a use “fair” will help you protect your work.

    Check it out here.

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  • Sometimes you only have a split second to take a famous photograph. One of my favorite stories that Michael shared with me about his father was when Ansel made perhaps his most famous photograph Moonrise, Hernandez, NM. This photograph is the highest sold at auction to date having sold at at Sotheby’s for $609,600 in 2006.

    According to Michael, Ansel saw this wonderful scene and pulled the car over to take the photograph (Michael was with him). Ansel then put his glass plate into his camera to make his exposure. Before Ansel even had time to pull the plate out and shoot a second exposure on the reverse side, the moment was lost. A one shot opportunity.

    Check it out here.

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    “How do I become a working photographer, and where do I get started?” I get asked that a lot. Turns out, there are as many answers as there are professional photographers. Here’s how John did it. Not John Doe, but John W. McDonough, one of the premier staff photographers at Sports Illustrated.

    If you’re not familiar with his name, you know his work. For more than 25 years, “Johnny Mac’s” photography has graced the pages of SI (including 70-some covers), each one depicting his vision, dedication and talent. From Super Bowls and Final Fours to the Olympics and the World Series, he’s lived a sports shooter’s dream. And it all began here in Arizona. Sort of.

    Check it out here.

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  • Software updates for almost all of its digital SLR software has been posted by Canon. Among the programs updated are Digital Photo Professional (DPP), EOS Utility and Picture Style Editor.

    Check it out here.

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  • Not every moment can be a Kodak moment, photojournalist Vincent Laforet said, which is why sometimes a photographer’s job is to make “something out of nothing.”

    Check it out here.

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  • HIMANSHU Vyas has won the IFRA Gold Award for News Photography for this picture of an Indian woman from a village near Jodphur breastfeeding a fawn and her daughter at the same time.

    Check it out here.

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  • The Story Behind the Photographs

    Each image awarded by World Press Photo tells its own story. But there is much more to tell. About what it was like to work in a war zone, or what restrictions were placed on a photographer at a major sports event. Or about what happened before and after a winning image was made. In our interviews with prize-winners you can hear the full story, first-hand.

    Check it out here. Thanks to Chris for the tip.

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  • Photography books seem to be finally having their heyday. With access to the distribution, promotion and production of books through online sources, it seems weekly I’m dazzled by another self published photographer and at the same time overwhelmed that I’m being so finicky about putting out my own. One could trace the enthusiasm to the gang at Photoeye, or the Dashwood Books, maybe even more likely is Martin Parr and Gerry Badgers excellent History of Photobooks books or perhaps simply the big publishers Aperture, Steidl, Schaden, Chronicle, Nazreali or the newer ones Loosestrife, Radius, etc., add to the mix fantastic Photobook blog 5b4 and it’s easy to see a small part of ‘why the boom’.

    Check it out here.

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