Photo News Blog

To balance my other post today about citizen journalists, or ‘journazens’ as I like to call them, here is a story about the good things that can come from bloggers and the like: 

In another political photo controversy today, California congressional candidate Howard Kaloogian was exposed by a group of bloggers to have used a photo of an Istanbul street on his Web site claiming it was taken in Baghdad. Even worse, Kaloogian used the photo as an example of how things were returning to normal in the war-torn city. Kaloogian blames his webmaster for mixing up the photos.

San Diego Union Tribune article

The blog exposing the photo and here

Wiki entry on Kaloogian and the incident 

The Boston Herald published Justice Scalia’s controversial hand gesture on its front page today. For those not familiar with the story, read this. The Herald even talked to ‘The Sopranos’ star Joseph Gannascoli, AKA Vito Spatafore, who said it was an obscenity. I’ll admit that I’m a bit rusty on my studies of Sicilian hand gestures, but I’d have to lean on the side of obscene on this one. For a Supreme Court justice, regardless of obscene or not, it is certainly inappropriate. Click on the thumbnail to view a larger version of the page.

UPDATE: The church has apparently fired the photographer, who had freelanced for the church’s newspaper for a decade, for releasing the photo to the Herald.

The church newspaper editor explains the firing:
“It’s nothing personal,” added Pilot editor Antonio Enrique. “I need to try and find people I can trust.” 

Herald update story here

Interesting article by Michael McNamara, executive technology editor for Popular Photography magazine. McNamara basically says anyone can take a picture, but that doesn’t necessarily make them a photographer. This concept is particularly important in this time when citizen "journalism" is starting to catch on. Some sort of distinction needs to be made between fully-trained journalists and citizen journalists. Maybe someone will invent a catchy new word for citizen journalists and citizen photographers that would help clarify things a bit. Citijourns? Journazens? Photojournazens?

Popular Photography article

UPDATE: And it’s articles and headlines like this that irk me a bit. No, having a camera phone does not in fact make you a photojournalist.

I found this image on Michael Fuchs’ Dispatch from the Razor’s Edge blog and it intrigued me. It was shot in London at the March for Free Expression. What is this contraption the policemen are carrying? It looks like a Nikon digital SLR with a side-mounted video camera and a flash all mounted on one device. They have something in their pockets too. Batteries? Hard drives?

I’ve tried shooting video and still at the same event, and it wasn’t easy. Anytime I picked up one camera, I wished I had the other. It was a mess. I guess this is one way of getting around it. Anyone know how this rig is set up? Anyone?

Original image 

Some third-year photo students at U. of Washington have made some decorative improvements to the once bare walls inside a Seattle hospital. The class project was to photograph "hope." One student even asked a few patients and doctors to add their own photos. 

"It makes people feel comfortable and familiar and they feel at home in a situation that can be very anxiety producing here," says Peggy Weiss, Harborview’s Art Program Manager.

Students Take On Challenge To Photograph Hope

I love this photo taken by Josh Meltzer. Apparently the BOP judges did too. They named the Roanoke Times photographer the Photojournalist of the Year for the under 115k circulation. There must be something in that Roanoke water because fellow Times staffer Kyle Green won third place. AP photographer David Guttenfelder was the PJoTY for the above 115k circulation category.  

NPPA story

Full still photo winners list

UPDATE: I have to say congrats to my co-worker Eric Albrecht for winning an honorable mention in the Enterprise category for this photo. 

When Gerard Van der Leun came across Ansel Adams’ name on some photos in the Los Angeles Public Library, he wasn’t doing a search for landscape photography.

I don’t normally associate Ansel Adams with parking lots or small format images at all. Like you, Adams means the classic evocation of the great American wilderness in photography to me. It never crossed my mind that he had photographed any of the cities of men, much less Los Angeles. But there it was.

Ansel Adams’ Lost Los Angeles Found

Los Angeles Public Library 

This looks like an interesting exhibit about socially conscious photos at the Art Institute of Chicago for those in the Windy City area. Runs through June 11.

AIC - The Concerned Photographer 

Sun-Times review

What the insurance companies and Scripps is doing to Rocky Mountain News photographer Steve Nickerson is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. He suffers from a rare, debilitative disease but has found a treatment that is helping, but the insurance company says it is "experimental" and refuses to pay. At $35k per treatment per month I wouldn’t want to pay either… unless I were an insurance company whose job it was to deal with these sorts of things! Former colleague Mitch Albom writes a passionate and well-researched column describing Nickerson’s plight.

Albom’s column

The photographer hopes you do.

Claim your reward here 

Mr. Laforet has posted the automator script and some detailed instructions in this SportsShooter message board thread. Turns out Apple had a little more to do with his Olympics workflow than I had originally believed.

Via SportsShooter 

The New York Times has recapped the finally-concluded saga between a man who sued a street photographer for selling his image. The photographer won the case.

NYT story here 

Following in the footsteps of POYi, the Association of Photographers has announced their yearly awards. Interesting choices. Everything seems very European, if that helps with the description and isn’t too offensive.

About the contest:

The AOP Photographers’ Awards were launched in 1983 and over the years have grown to become one of the highest accolades within the professional photographic industry.  Over 3,500 images are submitted annually by AOP members and the work is judged purely as photographs by a panel of highly respected professionals, including photographers and commissioners from advertising agencies, design groups and magazines.  Competition is tough and the high esteem in which the judges hold the awards, and the high standards they have maintained over the years, make the Gold, Silver and – from this year - Bronze awards extremely precious to the photographers who receive them. 

Awards here 

British photojournalists weigh in on who they look up to. No pictures, but it’ll at least give you some names to Google if you haven’t heard of these people already.

Independent Online story 

Forbes has compiled a list with photos of the most dangerous countries in the world. As expected Iraq and Afghanistan made the cut. Several African nations - Sudan, Liberia, Ivory Coast, etc. - also made the list. Forbes gives some rather obvious tips about what to pack if planning a trip to one of these countries:

We cross-referenced the resulting 14 countries with the Travel Warnings published by the State Department as part of its Consular Information Program. If you plan to visit any of them, we hope you get plenty of danger pay, are equipped with the latest body armor and have an excellent life insurance policy.

Full story here 

PDN’s list of the top up-and-comers for 2006 is out.

See it here 

British filmmaker and producer Jerome Olivier has a seven minute clip of his movie "Missing Pages" on his site speaking-pictures.com.

Speaking-pictures.com hosts the first seven minutes of “Missing Pages (amended version),” a 24-minute short shot entirely with a digital still camera and manipulated using a method dubbed “fotomation.” Jerome’s technique brings new perspective and depth to the mediums of photography and film, compelling viewers to perceive a narrative in a new way while enthralling with flashes of astonishing three-dimensional visuals, artful camera movement and incredible images. All of this takes the fascinating time-travel thriller at its center to the next level.

It’s a pretty cool movie. I’d like to see the full 24-minute version. Some of you may have seen another movie made entirely with a Canon 20D. This is similar, but more effects are used with each still photo to give it the impression of movement.

View "Missing Pages" here

New York Times contract photographer Vincent Laforet estimated that before shooting digital, he spent 15 percent of his work time actually making pictures. After digital, that time dropped to 5 percent. Looking to reclaim that 10 percent of shooting time at this year’s winter Olympics, Laforet changed his workflow by hiring an editing/transmitting assistant and using Apple’s photo editing software Aperture.

Eager to optimize his chances for getting the story in Turin, Laforet decided to create a new digital workflow that would keep him behind the camera as much as possible. It was very much an attempt to restore in his cover strategy the primary shooting responsibility of the traditional analog news photographer, whose job was generally finished when he handed off a roll of film.

Is it just me, or was hiring the assistant a bigger factor in saving time than using Apple Aperture? Who cares what software the assistant was using? Laforet certainly didn’t. He was too busy shooting. As long as the best photos got transferred back to the newspaper, what does it matter if the editor is using Photo Mechanic or Aperture? I think we’d all be able to increase our shooting time if we had a personal editor to do all the tedious work while we shoot pictures.

Story from Apple

Laforet’s personal homepage 

Another great photographer has passed away recently. Gordon Parks, best known as a photographer for his work dealing with poverty for LIFE magazine and as a filmmaker for directing "Shaft," died today. He was 93.

Story from MSNBC 

PDN Legends Online 

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

A photographer who said he "shot up smack" to get closer to the street people he made portraits of has been found dead in his Woolloomooloo home. Peter Darren Moyle, 41, was found dead in his Bourke Street Housing Department unit at 5.30pm on Sunday.

In 2002 he was the subject of an award-winning documentary, Painting With Light In A Dark World.

Story from SMH

Moyle’s photos 

This isn ‘t exactly photojournalism, but it’s really freakin’ cool. Scott Haefner has a website full of photos and instructions on constructing a rig to take pictures from a kite. He actually suspends a digital camera (Nikon D70!) between two kites and takes fisheye, panoramic, or standard pictures using his personally-constructed remote control.

Scott’s Web site 

Story from Make:blog