If you're a photojournalist who covers stories in dangerous places, here's something you should know: don't try to bring bulletproof vests or gas masks through airports in Thailand, as they're considered "war weapons." At least two journalists (including one photographer) have found this out the hard way over the past two years.
We tend to treat the ethics of taking photographs in a very much black and white fashion. We judge "He should never have shot that" or alternatively "She is on firm ground shooting that, it is OK" and then arguments revolve around that, never resolving anything.
Two police officers in Georgia were fired after videos showing them brutally beating a motorist spread like wildfire on social media. A criminal investigation has been initiated over their conduct, and photos of the two officers have emerged in the media.
From time to time when I read about Street Photography, I hear the opinion that street photographers exploit people on the street by taking their picture without asking. This opinion raises some valid questions about the ethics of Street Photography, but also shows the double standards we follow in the media.
An interesting story about ethics in photojournalism has emerged today: the New York Times has published a correction to a major story, saying that the original main photo had a picture frame removed from the scene because it was causing glare.
President-elect Donald Trump held an off-the-record meeting with about 25 media executives and anchors in Trump Tower on Monday. At the gathering, Trump shared some complaints about the outlets' coverage of him, including the use of unflattering double chin photos.
A group of 18 major journalism associations have banded together to publish an open letter to President-elect Donald Trump, asking that the new administration take steps to protect freedom of the press in the United States.
The New York Times is launching a big project to bring its journalism to the world of immersive 360-degree videos. With "The Daily 360," the Times will now be sharing one 360-degree video per day to report on stories around the world.
Here’s a fascinating piece of journalism published today by the New York Times.
Journalism is under threat from all sides. The last few years have been some of the most dangerous in history for journalists around the world; they have been killed, injured and detained in record numbers. But journalists are under threat from within as well, as some media companies seem content to eat their own.
Remember Melissa Click? She's the University of Missouri professor who sparked an outcry after being filmed confronting photojournalists and calling for "muscle" to remove them from a public area during an on-campus protest in November 2015.
Well, Click was charged with assault yesterday for her actions.
Photojournalism is having a bad year in Canada. There have been a number of major layoffs and murmurings of layoffs that have some people calling photojournalists "an endangered species."
World Press Photo today announced major changes to its prestigious photo contest for 2016. There's now a new code of ethics, the first time the 60-year-old contest has published such a thing, as well as revised rules and detailed guidance for entries.
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.
Several thousand people attended a rally in Mexico City yesterday to denounce the killing of a Mexican photojournalist over the weekend.
A new idea by Hillary Clinton is going viral on the Web, and this one has nothing to do with government policies. While walking through the streets during the Independence Day parade in Gorham, New Hampshire, yesterday, Clinton's aides used ropes to contain and control photographers and others members of the press corps. Photos of the unusual "wrangling" quickly went viral online after being shared by reporters.
The 2015 Pulitzer Prize winners were announced today, and the photographers that were awarded with journalism's highest honor were freelance photographer Daniel Berehulak of the New York Times and the photography staff of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“World Press Photo is committed to supporting and advancing high standards in photojournalism and documentary photography worldwide.”
That's what the "About The Foundation" page on the World Press Photo says. Now follow this timeline of recent events.
Charleroi is a town of about 200,000 people in Belgium that has fallen upon some tough times in recent years due to increases in unemployment, poverty, and crime. Italian photojournalist Giovanni Troilo pointed his lens at the city last year, capturing a gloomy photo essay titled "The Dark Heart of Europe." The images were recently awarded 1st prize at the prestigious World Press Photo contest in the Contemporary Issues category.
The contest, which already got a black eye after 20% of the finalists were disqualified for unethical photo editing, has another messy problem on its hands: the town is accusing Troilo of staging his winning photos.
Last week we reported that an Arizona realtor has become the first in the US to receive Federal Aviation Administration approval for using a drone for real estate images. Yesterday, CNN announced that it has also received a nod of approval from the FAA.
The news company says it will partner with the FAA to "advance efforts" in using camera drones for "news gathering and reporting."
In a show of solidarity with photojournalists who are seeing their jobs disappear, some reporters in the UK are resolving to not take assignments that should go to professional photographers.
Last week, the BBC College of Journalism opened up their training website to the public. Full of educational resources created by and for the internal BBC team, these professional videos and guides run through a number of circumstances and suggestions for approaching visual journalism.
There was a gap in time between the first newspapers and the rise of something called 'photojournalism." Photography was still in its infancy (or not even invented yet, in many cases) when many of the major newspapers came to be, and so the front page that would greet the informed citizen contained only words.
They're eerie, crowded and overwhelming... and they're a good reminder of why the words "photo" and "journalism," when combined, create something pretty incredible.
In a world where cell phone photography and videography is as prevalent as it is, CNN’s iReport has manage to become a fairly successful citizen journalism service, allowing users from across the globe to upload their eye-witness and breaking news. The service essentially crowdsources breaking news, but iReport is about to take it a step further than even the smartphone allows for.
Photojournalistic ethics are serious business. While there are many styles of photography where heavy post-production is not just acceptable, but commonplace, the world of news demands accuracy and truth, and it is accuracy and truth that some are claiming were given a backseat to shock and sensationalism when The Daily Mirror decided to use a stock photograph to illustrate a front page story.
Reuters global sports picture editor Gary Hershorn announced yesterday that his position at the agency had been eliminated, and so, starting April 1st, he will no longer be working for the company.
In the space of a few days, two major newspapers have been sold from their corporate entities to billionaires. On August 3, The New York Times Co agreed to sell The Boston Globe to John Henry, the owner of the Boston Red Sox, for a pittance of $70M. And on August 5, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos agreed to buy the Washington Post for $250M.
Earlier in the year, billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, investigated buying the Tribune Company, which operates the Los Angles Times and Chicago Tribune.
Less than two months after the Chicago Sun-Times closed up its photo department and disbanded its staff photography team, a newspaper chain in Georgia has done the same.
Southern Community Newspapers Inc. (SCNI), a chain of seven Georgian newspapers (five dailies and two weeklies), is completely shutting down its photo department and putting photo-making responsibilities in the hands of its reporters.
Avoid all the signs that it’s a hard time for photojournalists. Four years later your determination may pay off in a reduced job market.
My last two semesters of journalism school were riddled with accounts of massive editorial layoffs in the country’s most distinguished newsrooms.
When the Chicago Sun-Times unexpectedly laid off its entire team of photojournalists last week, Al Podgorski was one of the photographers hearing the bad news at the meeting. Having worked for the paper since 1984, Podgorski's image-making instincts kicked in, and he shot the photograph above showing his colleagues learning that they were being laid off.
The photographer in the center of the frame is John H. White, the renowned photojournalist who joined the Sun-Times in 1978 and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1982.
Columbia University has announced the winning photographs of both the Breaking News and Feature Photography Pulitzer prizes for 2013 -- all of which depict the heartrending civil war in Syria. At first glance that may not seem like a big deal, but when you consider that the Breaking News prize wasn't awarded to one, but five AP photographers jointly, the power of these photos begins to sink in.
Magazine and newspaper stories have traditionally revolved around the writer. A writer would pitch stories and was almost always the architect of the piece. When the story needed visuals, a photographer or illustrator would be brought in, often after the story was finished. This order of operations placed the writer in the driver's seat.
The primacy of the writer was reflected in the leadership of the publication where editors, responsible for direction and content, rose from the ranks of authors. During the nineteenth century, when publications were gray tomes celebrating the written word, this was a perfect arrangement. Artwork accompanied the story, augmented it, clarified it, attracted attention to it, but always served a subordinate role. Photography was the appetizer to the article's main course -- the words.
This striking photo, taken by Magnum photographer Paolo Pellegrin, has been making the award rounds recently, sweeping up first and second place trophies for the photog's mantle. According to the description, the photo portrays a "former Marine Corps sniper," and is part of a series of photos taken in a rough part of Rochester, NY called "The Crescent."
Pellegrin's ethics, however, are now being called into question by a BagNewsNotes article, which points out that the man in the photo, Shane Keller, was neither a sniper nor does he live in The Crescent -- he was headed to a shooting range at Pellegrin's request, as part of a portrait shoot.
On April 8, 2011, Senator Jon Kyl was quoted on the Senate floor as saying, "If you want an abortion, you go to Planned Parenthood, and that’s well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does."
This is not a post about abortion or Planned Parenthood. This is a discussion about veracity and why it matters in photojournalism. In fact, about 3% of Planned Parenthood’s services are abortion-related. When Sen. Kyl was confronted with the facts, his office responded with “his remark was not intended to be a factual statement.”
Here's a slightly-oldie but a very-goodie: New York University photography professor Fred Ritchin gave this keynote address last year at the "What's Next?" event put on by Foam. He shares his thoughts on the past, present, and future of digital photography and how it impacts the world around us.
The New York Post sparked a firestorm of controversy last week after publishing a photo of a man about to be struck by a subway train. People around the world were outraged that a photographer decided to photograph what had occurred, that he had sold (or, in the photographer's words, licensed) the photo to a newspaper, and that the paper decided to publish it with a sensationalist front page story.
Corbis, one of the largest photo agencies in the world, has agreed to acquire Demotix, a crowd-sourced citizen journalism photo agency that was founded in 2008. Corbis had already picked up a piece of the young agency through an investment last year, but now it has decided to purchase the whole company outright. The acquisition price was not disclosed.
Yesterday we shared a piece by photographer Kenneth Jarecke on why Instagram isn’t fit for photojournalism. Now, …
A couple months ago we shared an app called Foap, which allows people who take pictures with their phone to put the images up for sale for $10 a pop. If Foap is the bane of microstock photographers, then Scoopshot is the bane of photojournalists.
It's an app that helps phone photographers easily sell their images to news organizations. After all, when a local story happens, it's often random passersby that are on the scene first with phones out and camera apps loaded.
Vince Devlin over at the University of Montana has the fascinating story of …