Created by five former Apple employees, Fotonaut’s Fotopedia is a much more photographic way to get educated about the world around you, and Fotopedia Reporter was their way of letting anyone contribute to the archive. Be it an encyclopedia entry about The Brooklyn Color Run or a photo essay on slaves in the Antilles, you can showcase your photojournalistic skills by telling whatever story strikes you.

But those stories don’t always strike you at home when you have easy access to Fotopedia Reporter on the Web, so the Fotonaut folks have decided to make it easier on you by releasing a companion iPad app. Read more…

In 2010, then BU journalism student Johannes Hirn put together a photo essay titled “Will Box for Passport.” The essay was based around a boxer by the name of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, better known now as “Suspect #1″ or the “Black Hat bomber” from the Boston Marathon bombing.

According to an NPPA report, once Tsarnaev and his younger brother were listed as suspects, several publishers both large and small found and began using content from the essay without ever ascertaining Hirn’s permission. All the while, Hirn was on the phone with his former BU professor Peter Southwick to figure out how he could properly license the images before websites and blogs began stealing them — it was already too late. Read more…

Ohio University graduate student Sara Lewkowicz recently published a disturbing and extremely controversial photo essay on domestic violence as part of Time Magazine’s LightBox series. The essay, which began as an assignment to document the stigmas associated with being an ex-convict, turned physical when the couple she had been photographing for months got into a violent fight right before her eyes.

The photo essay that resulted has caused no small amount of controversy on the internet, receiving over 1,500 comments from readers, many of which voiced their anger at the fact that Lewkowicz took pictures instead of intervening. Several of the photos show 31-year-old Shane physically assaulting his 19-year-old girlfriend Maggie while her 2-year-old daughter watched — many commenters expressed the belief that, in that situation, her camera could have been better used as a weapon. Read more…

Capitol Hill 60 Minute Photo closed its doors at the end of last year. Given the transformation photography has gone through over the past decade, it hardly came as a surprise. At its core, the success, survival, and eventual demise of 60 Minute Photo is just another familiar story of a business fighting against the moving current of technology. It’s closure, however, reveals something important, something personal. It represents a shift in how we create and preserve our memories and a deepening of the divide between customer and proprietor.
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Everyone knows that mail carriers and dogs don’t mix very well. San Diego mailman Ryan Bradford decided to document his encounters with the canine adversaries along his route using a disposable ISO 400, 35mm camera purchased from Rite Aid. The delightful photo essay that resulted, titled “All the Dogs Want to Kill Me“, shows dogs glaring and barking at Bradford from the other side of fences, doors, and mail slots.
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Photojournalists Mary Chind of The Des Moines Register and Craig F. Walker of The Denver Post won Pulitzer Prizes this year in photography.

Chind’s photo of a harrowing water rescue photo won as the Best Breaking News Photograph. The photo, published July 1, 2009, shows a construction worker dangling above the rapids of a dam, in an attempt to reach a victim in the water. The Pulitzer board say the photo captured “a heart-stopping moment.”

The victim and her husband had gone over the edge of the dam on a boat. Rescuers could not reach the pair with a crane. According to the National Press Photographer Association, Chind took the photo from a nearby bank crowded with rescue workers and firefighters. A worker in a makeshift rig was lowered down towards the water and managed to save the woman after several attempts.

Walker won the Best Feature Photography for his intimate photo essay of a teenager, Ian Fisher, as he entered the Army. Walker documented the young man for 27 months, following him as he recruited, trained, was deployed to Iraq, and finally returned.

The Pulitzer board described Walker’s work as “an intimate portrait of a teenager who joins the Army at the height of insurgent violence in Iraq, poignantly searching for meaning and manhood.” Color versions of Walker’s essay can be seen on the Pulitzer website and the multimedia package can be seen on the Post’s website.