Author: Mark E. Johnson

August 5, 2011

Staying Motivated

Times are hard out there – but you know that already, don’t you? Over on the Poynter Institute’s site the other day was a chat session with Manny Garcia, executive editor and general manager of El Nuevo Herald about how you stay fired up, how you draw inspiration. Worth going through the transcript. (And, yes, I’m aware I’m Poynter-heavy of...

Categories Advice & Learning/Business & Industry

August 5, 2011

NPPA Student Clip Contest Deadline is August 7

It’s that time of the quarter … if you published created great work in May, June and/or July, you have until August 7 to enter it in the NPPA’s Student Clip Contest. Clips need to fit into one of the following categories: news, sports, feature single, controlled portraits, multiple picture story or multimedia. I helped with judging an earlier quarter...

Categories Competitions

August 5, 2011

Is It the Gear? Or the Photographer?

I will always, always say the latter. Even the cheapest stuff out there today is comparable, if not better, to what our predecessors had a few decades ago. Case in point, say you come across a guy shooting with an old Konica film camera covered in goofy stickers: You’d think he makes goofy pictures of his friends in Tokyo bars,...

Categories Craft/Photojournalism/Tech Talk

August 4, 2011

Mountain Workshop is Filling Fast

A recent note from Jim Bye at Western Kentucky University says the 2011 edition of the Mountain Workshops is already more than 50% full. If you’re thinking about it, think faster.

Categories Advice & Learning

August 4, 2011

The Autobiographical Documentary

NPR’s Picture Show has a gallery of images and an interview with Stephen Shames, who has been photographing boys growing up in The Bronx since the late 1970s. A personal project that came out of a magazine assignment, Shames says in the article that he has been searching, “through photography for what I didn’t have as a kid with my...

Categories Good Work/Photojournalism

August 4, 2011

Thrifty Photography

Neat article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy about Jenna Isaacson, a laid-off photojournalist who put together a grant from Goodwill and donations from a Kickstarter campaign to take on a project of visiting thrift stores in 32 states. Between the two funding sources, she raised about $14,000 to rent an RV and travel across the country to tell the story...

Categories Business & Industry/Good Work

August 4, 2011

Icons for Signs

This is pretty cool … Pentagram, a design firm with offices in New York, handled all the signage for the new(ish) New York Times building – and the way they did it is pretty cool. There are over 800 unique signs in the building, all using archival images from the Times’ library. Now I really want to go see the...

Categories Graphic Design/Journalism

August 3, 2011

Newspaper Nail Art

I’m going to get in trouble for this but, honestly … I think this is kind of cool. (Thanks to PartyLikeAJournalist.com for the lede.)

Categories Good Work/Thoughts & Theory/Video

August 3, 2011

Internship Opp in New Jersey

I’m a little concerned about the “stipend” mentioned in this, but the opportunity to work for and/or with Ed Kashi is pretty tempting. Talking Eyes Media is looking for two interns to work three days a week out of their offices in Montclair, N.J. One position is a production intern, the other a research intern. (Thanks to Stanley Leary for...

Categories Advice & Learning/At Work/Business & Industry

August 3, 2011

A Photographic Bucket List

Scott Bourne over at PhotoFocus has an interesting post up about creating a photographic bucket list. A “bucket list” is a list if the things you want to do before you, well, kick the bucket, so to speak. I have to admit, I’ve done so many cool things over the years that coming up with some would be hard. But...

Categories Advice & Learning/Journalism/Photojournalism