The key to creating a good photo-based service is to fill a need that isn't being filled by any other app or website -- a task increasingly difficult as more and more players enter the market. Still, once in a while someone stumbles on an idea that is just the right mix of concepts to create a service really worth your while, and Exposure seems to be just that.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Photojournalists Mary Chind of The Des Moines Register and Craig F. Walker of The Denver Post won Pulitzer Prizes this …