The Ten Legal Commandments of Photography
I. Anyone in a public place can take pictures of anything they want. Public places include parks, sidewalks, malls, etc. Malls? Yeah. Even though it’s technically private property, being open to the public makes it public space.
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By DAVID W. DUNLAP
I began photographing the poster operation. After about two minutes, one man asked me why I was taking pictures. “Because what you’re doing is illegal,” I replied.
He answered, “Breaking cameras is illegal, too, but if you don’t stop taking pictures, I’ll break your camera.” He modified “camera” with an adjective I am not permitted to repeat here. I identified myself as a reporter from The Times. “I’ll break your camera,” he said, using that adjective again, “and you can print that in your paper.”
Check it out here. Via Shoot the Blog.
Photojournalists— #4 on the list:
Photogs like Dead Rising’s Frank West and Disaster Report’s Keith Helm embody what every photojournalist wants to be; in the thick of the action, kicking some ass (objectivity be damned), and taking the controversial shot that blows a worldwide conspiracy wide open. Sure, some war photojournalists get to take some pretty gripping shots, but most are stuck taking pictures of blue-haired elderly ladies complaining at town hall meetings or sleeping in their car waiting for Britney Spears to leave her house and (hopefully) leave her baby on the roof of the car as she drives off to Starbucks.
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I started shooting this series my first trip to Iraq and always enjoy the diversion of shooting while stuffed into the back of a Humvee. It helps keep the mind off things that tend to happen while riding in the back of a Humvee. And usually, as a journalist, you end up sitting in the seat that is on top of the gas tank. Not the best place to be if something bad is to happen.
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An aspiring filmmaker at Eastern Washington University says he never meant to prank the New York Times when he posted a video online March 16th.
“Pawley P” says he wanted to make a clip that looked like he interrupted a woman’s basketball game by playing a popular song from the 1980’s.
The prank of drawing attention to the Rick Astley song “Never Gonna Give You Up” is known as Rickrolling-and it happened to be the topic of an article being written by a New York Times reporter last week.
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There is only one 50mm f/1.0 lens in production today. It is the legendary Leica f/1.0 Noctilux, which is also the fastest rangefinder lens IN THE WORLD. Cue Tenacious D. You can pick a Noctilux up new for, oh, about $6,000. But you’ll need an M-series Leica to pair it with.
Another 50mm f/1.0 lens you can find with a little scouring is made by Canon. This one works with the EOS system, and has been out of production for a few years. This thing also retails for about 5-6k.
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Bert Teunissen’s Domestic Landscapes is one of my favourite photography books, and I had wanted to talk to Bert about his work for a while. A little while ago, I finally sent him an email to ask, and he agreed to an interview.
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Katsumi Watanabe is the definitive photographer of Tokyo street life, known for his four decades of relentless focus on the hustle and bustle of Tokyo’s Shinjuku district. With a background as a photojournalist, Watanabe became a familiar face along the seedy side streets of Kabukicho and in effect gained insider status and behind-the-scenes access to many of the neighborhood’s forlorn storefronts and clubs. The Watari Museum’s current posthumous exhibit of a portion of Watanabe’s archives (easily over thousands of photos) serves as an authoritative, if unofficial history of the extremities of Tokyo’s social and cultural life.
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This month we focus on John Moore, a senior staff photographer with Getty Images based in Islamabad, Pakistan. Before joining Getty, Moore was a staff photographer with the Associated Press, and was on a team that won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News Photography for their coverage of the war in Iraq. Having lived in Nicaragua, India, South Africa, Mexico, Egypt and Pakistan, as well as the United States, Moore estimates that he’s worked in over 80 countries throughout his career. Most recently named Magazine Photographer of the Year in POYi, Moore was awarded two first place prizes at the 2008 World Press Photo Contest for his coverage of Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. Taking some time while on a layover in Johannesburg in route to Zimbabwe, Moore provides some insight into what it’s like to work as an international conflicts photographer.
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Judging in the Still Photography and Web categories of NPPA’s Best Of Photojournalism competition started today at the contest’s host site, The Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg, FL, and it’s NPPA’s biggest Best Of Photojournalism contest to date.
Check it out here.
Haje Jan Kamps experiments with microstock, and discovers that while he sold three times more photos, he earned 40 times less money from the micro stock sales than from a full-on agency – with the exact same photos on sale…
The lesson? If you’re a decent photographer, stay the hell away from micro-stock: The bigger agencies treat you better, pay you more, and actually make an effort to sell your photos on a bigger scale.
Check it out here.
China’s crackdown on dissent in Tibet — and, well, everywhere else within its borders — makes Beijing an odd choice as host city for an international gathering dedicated to competition in the “spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.” So it’s no surprise that the Beijing Olympics logo is getting a few enhancements by culture-jammers.
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Freelance photographer Roddy Mackay was told he was shortlisted for the Young Photographer of the Year category in the prestigious national awards at the end of February – only to be told soon after that judges had decided to withdraw the prize because the overall standard of entries in the category was “not good enough”.
Mackay, 25, who was shortlisted for the award alongside Edinburgh Evening News photographers Ed Jones and Dan Philips and picture agency SNS Group’s Craig Williams, said the judges’ decision to withdraw the prize had damaged him “mentally and physically”.
He said: “I’ve made a decision to burn my pictures and speak out publicly about their lack of support. As a young photographer I feel very, very passionately about the way I have been treated.”
Photos by Andrea Bruce – The Washington Post
The city’s police chief, Col. Faisal Ismail al-Zobaie, a husky man with a leathered face and a firm voice that resonates with authority, ordered an aide to shut his office door. He turned to his computer. Across the screen flashed a video, purportedly made by the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq.
In the video, branches are thrown into a pit the size of a coffin, then doused with kerosene and ignited. The camera pans to three blindfolded men, kneeling, mouths sealed with tape. Six armed men in black masks stand behind them. One declares: “These three men fought and killed al-Qaeda. We will punish them according to Islam.” The masked men then kick the three into the burning grave.
Zobaie angrily turned off the video. “How can we show mercy to those people?” he asked. “Do you want me to show mercy to them if I capture them?”
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The town of Mooresville, Ala., has done itself no favors by demanding a $500 fee from professional photographers who dare take pictures of its historic buildings.
After a photographer was told to stop taking photos in a public place, he wrote a letter to the local paper, unleashing a flood of bad press.
The Huntsville Times reported last week: “Huntsville photographer Don Broome said Wednesday he was standing in a public street in Mooresville taking pictures of the town’s historic buildings when he was served a notice that advised him to ‘cease photography and leave immediately.’”
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. For The Love of Light: A Tribute To The Art of Polaroid gathers the work of twenty-five photographers from ten countries, on five continents in one breathtaking volume of photos produced with the their precious Polaroids. The book will be available in July, and hopefully will be such a roaring success that it will lead a world wide Polaroid revival and force the parent company to reconsider its stance on phasing out their film.
Check it out here.
The woman behind the camera at Abu Ghraib.
by Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris
Specialist Sabrina Harman took hundreds of pictures, she says, to “just show what was going on, what was allowed to be done.” Photograph by Nubar Alexanian.
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The AP threatened to sue Brian C. Ledbetter for reproducing their photos without authorization. But they didn’t ask permission before they grabbed Ashley Dupre’s pictures.
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