controversy

Millions of people -- including many world leaders -- took to the streets of France this past weekend to show solidarity in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack. The gathering in Paris, the largest in the history of France, made the front pages of major newspapers around the world.

One ultra-orthodox Jewish newspaper decided to cover the story a little differently, though: it's front page photo was a manipulated one that left out female world leaders.

Update: Please see below for new developments.

Singer Justin Bieber is the new face of Calvin Klein, and a number of new advertising photos and videos have been published in recent days as part of a new #mycalvins campaign. The black and white photos are causing a bit of controversy though: a leaked unretouched version of one photo suggests that quite a bit of Photoshop was used to alter Bieber's appearance and... proportions.

Guardian columnist Jonathan Jones is a master of sparking controversy in the world of photography. As you might remember, he's the guy who keeps arguing that photography is not art... a year after calling it "the art of our time."

His latest target is the above photograph showing Prince Harry shooting with a Fujifilm X100 during a trip to Lesotho in Africa. Jones argues that it's "as arrogant as any colonial portrait."

Here's a strange incident that's causing a stir online and in music communities: at a recent concert by the metal band Every Time I Die, a fan named Micah Barnes decided to climb onto the stage to try and snag a selfie with the lead singer. Guitarist Jordan Buckley would have none of it, and decided to put an end to the photo shoot with a swift kick that sent the smartphone flying into the air.

Flickr is apologizing for its decision to sell Creative Commons photos as wall art. The images have been pulled, and all sales made with CC photos will be refunded.

Grab your popcorn, folks. There's an interesting royal rumble happening over at The Guardian between columnists Sean O'Hagan and Jonathan Jones. The main question on the table is: "Is photography art?"

Flickr -- a site that sometimes seems like the punching bag of the photo community -- is again taking heat from photographers, this time over their recent announcement that people can select from millions of Creative Commons-licensed photographs to buy as wall art.

The photos are being sold for profit, but none of that profit will go to the photographers who took the shots, and some of these photographers are speaking up about what they see as an injustice.

French photography magazine Selektor recently found itself embroiled in a controversy when it posted a list of 100 photographers to follow on its Tumblr blog -- a lineup that included only 8 women.

Three time Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post photojournalist Michel du Cille was saddened to find out yesterday that Syracuse University decided to 'uninvite' him from a workshop because he was in Liberia covering the Ebola epidemic 21 days ago.

He calls the response 'alarmist,' while Syracuse argues that their first responsibility is to protect their students.

We received a tip today from a reader who asked us to take a look at the official portraits for the Miss World Philippines 2014 candidates. The tipster had harsh things to say about the images, saying the creator, "must've been bored or high when he post-processed these photos."

Update: Canon tells us that "The 'Director' spot bears no relation to the individual profiled in this story," and that it is "a completely fictional character."

Canon's big "See Impossible" marketing push has received quite a bit of mockery from the creative community, as people hoped for more from the hyped-up countdown than an ad campaign and a couple of inspirational videos.

There's also a new development that hurts Canon's efforts even more: it turns out that one of the two people featured by Canon didn't actually shoot with Canon, and he's calling the company out on it.

The US Forest Service is under fire today after proposing a set of rules that would put strict restrictions on photographers and filmmakers who want to ply their trade in wilderness areas. The rules subject potential projects to an approval process with permits costing as much as $1,500 while fines for breaking the rules would run around $1,000.

Getty Images photographer arrested #Ferguson pic.twitter.com/ScOaHO8bjY— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) August 18, 2014

The photograph above, tweeted out by Huffington Post justice reporter Ryan J. Reilly, shows Getty photographer Scott Olson being taken into custody by Ferguson police while covering the ongoing protests and riots sparked by the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown, an unarmed African American man who was shot and killed by police on August 9th.

Mumbai-based photographer Raj Shetye currently finds himself the focus of the kind of social media ire that nobody wants to experience. The source of this outrage is a fashion photo shoot he recently published on Behance (it has since been removed) that depicts an Indian woman fending off the advances of several men on a bus.

Students at the University of York in the UK spent their graduation day yesterday Tweeting images of a controversial offer by school photo agency Success Photography.

When they went on the agency's site to select their graduation picture options, in addition to how many wallet size prints they wanted and whether or not they wanted a digital download, the site also allowed them to select "Digital Slimming" and "Digital Complexion and Smile Enhancement."

David Jay, founder of PASS and Shoot and Share, is taking some heat yet again after he posted the above status on Facebook.

The big social networks seem to have a hard time determining what is and is not inappropriate, and to their PR detriment, they seem to make the wrong judgement time and again. The latest case in point comes out of the Instagram camp, that this week decided to disable a mommy blogger's account for posting 'inappropriate' photos of her kids that seem completely innocent.

Following up on the story that angered many in the photo world, it seems that Kanye West and Annie Leibovitz have cleared the air after the comments he made earlier in the week during a Cannes Lions panel.

About a month ago, Leica debuted the touch-friendly, aluminum unibody Leica T: a hand-polished beauty that, despite the standard (read: REALLY!?) Leica price tag has been received pretty positively. Well, by some people at least.

There is one company that was less-than-thrilled when they saw the Leica T, however, and that company's name is AppCam. According to AppCam, the operating system on the Leica T is almost identical to the AppCam OS... the same OS that they tried to shop out to Leica two and a half years ago.

Utah’s Wasatch High School is drawing international media attention after it was discovered that the school had Photoshopped some of its students' yearbook pictures to show less skin, presumably in the name of modesty.

As a the Senior Photo Editor at TakePart, Lauren Wade sees a lot of over-Photoshopped images of impossibly-proportioned models. And being as familiar as she is with the practice, she's surprised at the amount of retouching that people are ignorant of.

So she thought she'd shed some light on the matter by taking classic paintings and applying the same sort of Photoshopping we see done to fashion models today.

Since late 2013, the White House and the White House Press Corps have clashed several times over. We've covered this briefly in the past, but if you're still not sure what's going on, how it came to be and why exactly members of the press have gone so far as to call the administration's policies regarding press access "Orwellian," this exposé by ReasonTV may help clear things up for you.

Photographer and filmmaker Ami Vitale has been to Guinea-Bissau three times -- in 1993, 2000 and 2011 -- for the Alexia Foundation, bringing back powerful photographs that show a different, more hopeful side of Africa.

And yet, somehow, three of those images have this week become the viral face of a Twitter campaign meant to raise awareness about a group of Nigerian girls who were kidnapped from their school by a terrorist organization called Boko Haram in mid-April.

Is Amazon attempting to patent an age old photography lighting technique? A recently published patent seems to suggest that, and it's getting some photographers up in arms.

Back in 2012, the Republican Study Committee caused widespread debate over intellectual property law after publishing and then pulling a paper on copyright reform. Derek Khanna, the conservative staffer behind the paper, was fired by the committee shortly afterward.

He may have lost the platform afforded by the RSC, but Khanna is still pushing to have his views on copyright reform heard. His latest writings continue to cause quite a discussion on how copyright should be handled in the United States.

Last week, Terry Richardson found himself at the center of yet another controversy when model Emma Appleton tweeted a screenshot that showed a crude message allegedly from Richardson himself. Whoever sent that message offered to exchange a Vogue shoot for sex, but it turns out that person wasn't Terry Richardson.

Back in the hot seat again is none other than photographer Terry Richardson, who is this time being called out on Twitter by model Emma Appleton for allegedly offering a Vogue photoshoot in exchange for sex.

There are two sides to every story, but in the case of Ohio copy machine repairman and aerial videography hobbyist Kele Stanley, his side is drastically different from that of the police who arrested him for flying his camera drone over the site of a car crash.

If you're into Golf, you might have heard about this controversy over the most recent cover of Golf Digest. Apparently, the magazine erred when it decided to put Paulina Gretzky (daughter of famed hockey player Wayne Gretzky and fiancé of pro golfer Dustin Johnson) on the cover instead of an actual... you know... golfer.

But rather than get caught up in all that, Orlando-based photographer Cy Cyr decided to spoof the cover instead.

Well, if it isn't another tale of a photo contest scandal. Earlier this year, it was the World Press Photo winner, now it's the Sony World Photography Awards -- Youth Award. You would think that after a while people would learn, but it doesn't seem that way.

The photograph above by Chinese photographer China’s Fuyang Zhou just won $120,000 as the Hamdan International Photography Awards (HIPA) overall grand prize winner. The theme was "Creating the Future," and you can see why the photo won: it's a wonderful composition that captures the spirit of that theme. And yet, something seems off about it...

The Terry Richardson debate can be summed up in two sayings, one used by the anti-Richardson army and the other used by the pro-Richardson crowd: "There's no smoke without a fire" and "Tried and convicted in the press." That many allegations can't just spring up out of nowhere, says one group, while the other argues that undue amounts of sensational press attention does not evidence make.

However, for the first time ever, Richardson himself is speaking out, addressing the Allegations in an op-ed published by the Huffington Post in which he calls the entire ordeal an "emotionally-charged witch hunt."

Earlier this week, a 24-year-old model came forward to share her own personal Terry Richardson nightmare (Warning: Explicit content), sparking yet another boycott Terry Richardson response from outraged readers who would like major publications to stop hiring Richardson so readily.

Earlier this morning, we received a tip from a reader (who has chosen to remain anonymous) that Doug Gordon -- who was embroiled in a nasty plagiarism scandal along with Jasmine Star late last year -- is still presenting at WPPI, despite having officially withdrawn in October.

iStock, which is owned by Getty Images, is in the process of notifying some nine thousand users that they owe Getty money because an error with the payment system overpaid them in September and October of 2013.

John Stanmeyer of VII won the World Press Photo of the Year on Thursday with this magnificent image of migrants in Djibouti trying to get a cheaper cell phone signal from neighboring Somalia.

It looks like a movie poster, but not for the reasons that I complained about last year.

After last year's controversy over the winner of the World Press Photo of the Year, all eyes were on the organization as they announced the winner of this year's contest.

But while general consensus from the photo community seems to be that John Stanmeyer deserved this year's award, talk of conflicts of interest and the high percentage of disqualifications due to photo manipulation are plaguing the contest.

Dear Facebook,

I saw a video you posted a short while ago regarding wedding photography. You know the one: a 21-second long video containing a montage of wedding snapshots. At the end of the video, you zoom out to show that all those images were on a Facebook user’s wall and the user was so thrilled that she updated her status with “Thanks everyone! Amazing pics!”

I was okay with it up until that point. After all, everyone attends weddings and we all tend to take snapshots and share them on Facebook. Nothing wrong with that. But then, you included something at the end of the video that surprised me. You wrote the words: “Why have ONE photographer when you can have a hundred?"

And then you added that cute little blue thumbs-up icon, you know, just to “like” it further.

Yesterday we featured a far too common headline that went something like "*insert newspaper here* fires all photographers." This time, it was an entire chain of local UK papers, and like the Chicago Sun Times before it, the chain is planning to replace these pros with freelancers, submitted photos and reporters with smartphones.

These kinds of headlines and stories make us sad, because we believe that the newspapers are making a grave mistake in undervaluing photography and the professionals who call it their vocation, but one Guardian writer has caused an uproar by holding to the exact opposite opinion.

Overland Park, Kansas became the focal point of many a photographers' ire this week when it was announced that, from now on, professional photographers would be required to purchase permits if they wanted to shoot in any of the city's public parks.