fired

A police officer in Ohio was fired after posting a Snapchat photo of himself using the Ski Mask Lens filter in the app -- a photo the town's mayor says has "troubling racial connotations."

A former US Department of Energy photographer is accusing the US government of firing him for leaking photos of a private meeting between energy secretary Rick Perry and a big coal CEO.

Once a tech darling, GoPro has been struggling in 2016. In addition to less-than-stellar sales that have not matched forecasts, a class action lawsuit, and a massive drone recall, the company has now announced "restructuring" that will eliminate 200 full time positions and cut 15% of its workforce.

It seems the Melissa Click saga has come to an end. A few months after being filmed confronting a photojournalist during a student protest at the University of Missouri, the mass media professor was fired yesterday for infringing on the student's rights.

National Geographic is laying off 9% of its 2,000 employees as it prepares to finalize its "expanded partnership" with 21st Century Fox, a $725 million deal that turns the iconic yellow-bordered magazine into a for-profit publication. The roughly 180 layoffs reportedly represent the largest reduction in the 127-year history of the Society.

A Hungarian journalist and camerawoman has been fired after photos and videos of her tripping and kicking fleeing refugees spread far and wide on the Internet.

In August of 2013, we shared the news that Thomson Reuters had dropped all of its freelance sports photographers in North America in favor of a deal they struck with USA Today Sports Images. But it appears that sad move was only the beginning.

Earlier this week, more members of the photography staff at Thomson Reuters were let go in the multi-national media company’s ongoing effort to downsize and focus its workforce, especially in the imaging department.

Earlier this week, the photography staff of the Orlando Sentinel in Florida was pulled into a meeting in which they were told that their current jobs are disappearing, and they will need to apply to new more 'videocentric' positions by tomorrow, Friday, February 28th.

We're unfortunately accustomed to bad news in the photo industry. That's not to say there's not great news and exciting new products and a bright future ahead, all of those things are there too, but slumping sales and discontinued products are becoming all-too-common reports.

Case in point: it seems flash trigger king PocketWizard is struggling of late, with reports claiming that the company has had to lay off as many as 20 of its 50 employees due to low sales figures and increasing competition out of China.

We all-too-frequently find ourselves sharing stories of police officers abusing the power they have been given by harassing and often threatening to arrest photographers even if they have done nothing wrong.

What we don't hardly ever share -- in fact, a cursory search dug up exactly zero such stories -- is the news that those officers, who are usually 'under investigation' at the time of the original story, have been fired or significantly disciplined in any way. Today, that changes.

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.

Britons tend to take their newspapers a bit more seriously than Yanks, but that hasn't stopped a newspaper chain there from Chicago Sun-Timesing (yes, we verbed it!) its way to ignominy by firing its entire photography staff.

When it comes to major Photoshop alterations, serious news organizations have a zero-tolerance policy, as AP freelance photographer Narciso Contreras recently discovered. After admitting that he had cloned out a piece of a Syrian conflict image, the news agency was forced to 'sever ties' with the Pulitzer Prize winner.

If you've been paying attention to the professional photography industry, you no doubt understand that times are tough and likely to continue getting tougher for newspaper photographers.

Freelance sports photographers who have been on contract with Reuters in North America have been receiving some unpleasant calls over the past couple of days. Apparently, due to a new deal between Thomson Reuters and USA Today Sports Images, they are being systematically informed that their photographic services are no longer needed.

Instagram can be a force for good. For example, the hashtag and Instagram account #litterati has encouraged thousands to pick up trash they find on the street. But as with most tools, it can also do harm, and a couple of day care workers in Virginia recently used the service to those ends, losing their jobs in the process.

Next time you're in a big corporate meeting, particularly one that concerns impending layoffs at the company, it might be a good idea to keep your camera in your pocket. That's the lesson Patch Creative Director Abel Lenz learned yesterday when he was unceremoniously given the boot while about 1,000 of his coworkers listened in on a conference call.

When Sony unveiled its "One Sony" game plan back in March after posting billions in losses, the company highlighted digital photography as one of its three main pillars going forward. It was a bit of a surprise, then, when Sony announced today that it will soon be closing a large lens manufacturing factory in Japan as part of the restructuring efforts.

Before Instagram, there was Hipstamatic. Hipstamatic was one of the pioneers and heavyweights in the retro filter photo app space, but when Instagram came along, the price advantage (free vs. $2), ease of use, filter selection, and built-in social network allowed Instagram to turn into the new 800 lb. gorilla of mobile photo sharing.

The story is strangely similar to the history of Myspace and Facebook, and yesterday the narrative became even more identical. On the same day that Instagram rolled out version 3.0 to its 80+ million members, Hipstamatic laid off all but 5 of its core staff.

Last week we reported that the Sacramento Bee had suspended one …

CNN created quite a stir yesterday after laying off a dozen photojournalists due to the rise of …

Roughly 50 staffers at CNN were given pink slips today, including nearly a …

Last Friday, we reported that Olympus had fired CEO Michael Woodford, claiming that he clashed with the …

Olympus fired CEO and President Michael Woodford today, causing the company’s stock price to take a 17% dive. The …

The AP has sacked photographer Miguel Tovar for "deliberate and misleading photo manipulation" after Tovar cloned out his own shadow from a feature photograph. The Photoshopping came to light after an alert photo editor spotted a strange looking dust pattern in a photo of Argentinian children playing soccer.

Freelance photographer Marc Feldman lost his job when Getty Images discovered that he had sent in an altered golf photo for distribution. But Feldman says that it was all an innocent mistake.

Feldman says he was in the press tent after the event, reviewing some photos. The golfer in the image, Matt Bettencourt, and his caddie came by to look at photos as well. The caddie had suggested that the photo would look better without him in it, and Feldman demonstrated how easily he could be removed.

The photographer said he thought he saved the altered image on his desktop, but somehow accidentally transmitted the image along with his final images to Getty."I certainly did not mean to send both of them to Getty," he told Guy Reynolds, the Dallas News photo editor who originally blew the whistle on him.

It’s a tough job market in New York, and even Spider-Man has difficulty finding job security these days. In this …