photojournalist

I’ve spent the past week down in Ferguson, MO covering the protests and police response. What I never expect was to find myself embarrassed to photograph but it happened on Tuesday 8/19/14.

American freelance photojournalist James Foley was allegedly executed yesterday, an atrocity that was revealed in a horrifying video released by the militant group ISIS (The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria).

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.

I’m writing this from the perspective of someone who is trekking through the process. I’m not sitting on a high horse. I can’t even afford a horse.

It is often said that you have to be partially insane to be a creative. I’m not sure if that idea is influenced by the odd forms of modern art, or if someone recognized the risk of choosing fields with high unemployment rates.

Three years ago, in late July of 2011, freelance news photographer Philip Datz was arrested by the Suffolk County Police Department in New York for “obstruction of governmental administration” because he was recording the conclusion of a police chase from a safe distance away.

Last we told you about the case, the police were dropping the charges and officers were going to have to go through "media relations training," but the case has gone much further than that in the intervening three years.

What is 'freedom'? This seems to be one of the main questions at the center of photojournalist Kitra Cahana's recent TED Talk in which she tells the stories of the nomadic, homeless youth she spent many months documenting.

Born in Jerusalem, Israel, Michelle Frankfurter is a documentary photographer from Takoma Park, MD. Before settling in the Washington, DC area, Frankfurter spent three years living in Nicaragua where she worked as a stringer for the British news agency, Reuters and with the human rights organization Witness For Peace documenting the effects of the contra war on civilians.

Since 2000, Frankfurter has concentrated on the border region between the United States and Mexico, and on themes of migration.

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Acclaimed photographer Amy Toensing recently sat down with National Geographic, for whom she is a frequent contributor, to talk about her craft and offer insights into the world of photojournalism.

Heart-breaking news came out of Bangui, Central African Republic today. It has been confirmed that 26-year-old French photojournalist Camille Lepage, who we had the honor of interviewing just six months ago, has been killed while covering the ongoing crisis there.

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.

"Documentary wedding photography" is a style of photography which a small, but growing, number of couples are turning to for their wedding day. Of course, there have been photographers documenting life ever since there has been photography. In the last 10 years or so, more and more couples have decided against the traditional style of endless posed group photographs and portraits, and are commissioning photographers who do not direct or pose people during the day.

This style of wedding photography has attracted a fair number of news photographers and photojournalists, who have been doing exactly that in other areas of life. I've spent 16 years working as a photojournalist for The Times newspaper in London, and thought I'd post some pictures to illustrate how that experience has shaped how I now approach photographing a wedding.

At an estimated 60,000 years old, the indigenous culture of Australia, the Aboriginals, are estimated to be the oldest still-surviving culture on the planet. And in the above video world-renown photographer Amy Toensing shares her experience photographing this incredibly unique culture for National Geographic, delivering an extremely heartfelt talk about the hardships the Aboriginal culture has continually faced since their land was colonized in 1788.

As photojournalists, we live the good life, getting the rare chance to make pictures for a living. While that is all fine and good, being a human first is always most important. There is no exception -- especially in the case of spot news.

When a square mile of earth swept west into Oso, Washington, leaving 36 (and rising) dead, media from local and national outlets hastily mobilized to the rural area to cover one of Washington’s most catastrophic natural disasters. In times of great sadness, tragedy and personal loss to others, a journalist’s job is to clearly, accurately and respectfully report the story to an audience, keeping dignity at the forefront. While “clearly” and “accurately” smack of journalism school requirements, “respectfully” is often passed over.

In a yet another tragic loss for the photojournalistic community, acclaimed German AP photographer Anja Niedringhaus lost her life Friday in eastern Afghanistan when an Afghan policeman opened fire on the car she was sitting in.

As Jim Morrison once said, "Whoever controls the media, controls the mind." There is power in an image, and the press often become persona non grata in a conflict that is socially and politically charged. This is what is happening in Crimea right now, as photojournalists Kilian Fichou and Laetitia Peron revealed in a recent article on the AFP Correspondent blog.

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.

It took photojournalist Jo-Anne McArthur 13 years to compile the photography found in her book We Animals, but it will take only moments for your emotions to run the gamut between deeply moved and sickened while scrolling through her work.

Effective today, a new civil code in Hungary makes it illegal to take a photograph without obtaining permission from everybody in the photo, making street photographers' and photojournalists' jobs infinitely more complicated and opening the door for a landslide of litigation.

As a photojournalist, there are many moments where you have to answer a simple ethical question: do you take the photo, or do you try to help? This happens a lot in more tragic events, and conflict photographers are often accused of making the wrong choice.

Which is the right and wrong choice is up for debate in any given situation -- a photo might spark change on an international level after all -- but one thing is for sure: we don't often hear about photojournalists putting down the camera and choosing to help right then and there. That, however, is exactly what happened in the case of Miami Herald photojournalist Al Diaz in February of this year.

Another of the photographers who had been bravely providing coverage from the front lines of the Syrian conflict lost his life on Sunday when a Syrian air strike dropped a barrel bomb on a rebel-held area of Aleppo.

While covering the pre-election violence in the Thai capital of Bangkok, renowned photojournalist James Nachtwey was shot in the leg, reports the Wall Street Journal. Fortunately, according to a report in TIME, it seems the photog wasn't badly injured and returned to work soon after being shot.

In the last days I received multiple requests to translate my posts for foreign readers, as they have very limited information about the happenings in Ukraine. This material describes events which took place in Kiev on January 22nd and 23rd.

Sharing and distribution is appreciated.

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.

Photojournalism jobs may be disappearing in real life, but they're thriving in at least one corner of the Interwebs. A handful of participants in the online version of "Grand Theft Auto" have decided it's more fun to document virtual felonies than commit them and have formed a team of street photographers.

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.

A few days ago, we shared the tragic news Reuters freelancer Molhem Barakat, who some were claiming was as young as 17-years-old, had been killed while photographing a battle in Syria. Since then, Reuters ethics and business practices have been called into question by an outraged journalistic community that has even gone so far as to start a Change.org petition demanding that the news organization take responsibility for the young boy's murder.

While cover a fast food workers strike at the National Air and Space Museum last week, photographer Kristoffer Tripplaar was forcefully brought down by no less than three security guards when he accidentally bumped into one of them in an attempt to protect his equipment.

Photographers around the country are banding together to figure out the best way to help out a once-prominent photojournalist who has ended up homeless and panhandling on the streets of Manhattan.

French newspaper Libération is about to score huge brownie points with photographers the world over. At a time when newspaper photography jobs are disappearing and some newspapers are replacing professional photojournalists with iPhone toting writers, Libération is removed all photos from one of its issue as a show of support for photographers.

Camille Lepage, 25, is an independent French photographer living in South Sudan. She works on long term projects about topics that do not make to the mainstream media and looks at the consequences of the politics on the populations.

For over a year now, documentary photographer Camille Lepage has been photographing the struggles of South Sudan. As a new country, sovereign since 2011, South Sudan can be considered a hotbed for social, political, and religious conflicts. These conflicts are laid bare by Lepage through a strong, intuitive eye and a determination to get her shot.

Her two on-going bodies of work, You Will Forget Me and Vanishing Youth (which are on display below) contain stirring imagery that speak of the violence, and the religious and cultural dissonance that permeates this young country and its people.

In a move that is completely legal and yet already has some people wondering just how much bad press the Chicago Sun-Times is looking to absorb, the beleaguered newspaper is putting the 'striking, one-of-a-kind photos' in its archive up for sale... you know, photos taken by the photojournalists the paper sacked in May of this year.

Media outlets may need to start considering the possible psychological effects of difficult assignments on their photojournalists in the wake of an Australian photographer's claim of crippling post-traumatic stress.

After watching the movie "The Last Samurai" at a theater back home in Southern California (where I'm originally from), my curiosity for Japan inspired me to go and discover what it's like. I took a couple of vacation trips out there and met a lot of good people before I found a job that sponsored my working visa to officially let me move out to Japan in 2005.

One year ago, in August of 2012, New York Times photographer Robert Stolarik was arrested for allegedly using his camera flash to interfere with police during an arrest. However, after taking a look at the evidence, it's the police officer who is in hot water and may face up to 7 years in prison after being indicted on three felony counts and five misdemeanors.

Conflict photographers like Michael Kamber and Louie Palu have spent years covering the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. They've lost friends, been very nearly killed themselves, and come back with incredible (and sometimes hard to stomach) photos.

Both of their work is currently on display alongside many of their peers' at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington DC, and in the short video above, they share the stories behind some of their most moving imagery. (Note: the above video contains some strong imagery)

Detroit police are investigating an incident last week in which a photographer for the Detroit Free Press was arrested and had her camera seized while covering a police action.

Photojournalists in the Philippines are accusing a National Geographic photographer of pushing and kicking a newspaper photographer at a recent press event.

Nineteen young men. Fathers, brothers, and sons. Friends and fiancés, teammates and drinking buddies. These are the men who were lost on June 30, 2013 in Yarnell, AZ during an event labeled the Yarnell Hill Fire.

I knew most, if not all of these men by sight, some by name, a small handful I knew very closely, sharing laughs with them and their families over the years. Over the past 72 hours or so, I have had the privileged to watch first hand as the city of Prescott and the state of Arizona has been joined by the world in remembering and honoring these fallen firefighters.

Prosecutors in Reno, Nevada, have dropped charges against a newspaper photographer arrested and injured while trying to cover a house fire last year.

Tim Dunn, photo director at the Reno Gazette-Journal was taking photos and video at a four-alarm fire on June 18. 2012, when Washoe Count Sheriff's deputies told him to clear out. Dunn says the deputies then shoved him to ground and pushed his face into the gravel. He later showed facial injuries he said were caused by the rough treatment.

Back in 2010, we shared some statistics from CareerCast's annual list of the best and worst jobs, and things weren't looking good for the photography profession. At the time, "Photographer" ranked 126th of 200 on that list, with "Photojournalist" coming in near the very bottom at 189th. Sadly, in the intervening years since we last shared the info, things haven't exactly gotten better.