Author: Mark E. Johnson

April 5, 2007

Leicas, free film and a pixelated future

It’s an odd day here in Athens. This morning, I took four boxes of frozen Fujicolor film out of the freezer and brought them to work. In a few short hours, I’ll be handing out the seven year old film to some of my students who are experimenting with their parents 35mm cameras. I’ve moved this film from freezer to...

Categories Advice & Learning/Tech Talk/Thoughts & Theory

April 4, 2007

USA Today has been assimilated …

In this era of rights-grabbing work-for-hire contracts, USA Today was a refreshing break. A fair wage for one-time usage, a payment schedule for re-use on the web or in print. It was a good deal – the paper got high quality work from respected journalists and those journalist received decent pay for their work. That’s changed according to an article...

Categories Advice & Learning/Business & Industry

April 4, 2007

twitter.com – World's Greatest Time Suck

I listen to a couple of podcats each week (MacBreak Weekly and This Week in Tech) and they’ve been yammering on and on about twitter.com … so I decided to try it. There is no reason to do this. Absolutely none. Yet, here I am … So, there must be a reason … right? Productivity monitoring, perhaps?

Categories Tech Talk/Thoughts & Theory

April 4, 2007

The New York Times – on the move, literally

The Gray Lady is pulling up stakes – and moving in to a news building in the city that never sleeps. After a century at 229 West 43rd Street, staffers are beginning to move to a new tower at Seventh Avenue and 41st Street. Why is this important? The new building represents as much of a philosphical shift in the...

Categories Journalism/Multimedia

April 3, 2007

Saving Texas newspapers

Vicki Vaughn of the San Antonio Express-News writes that newspaper expers are saying they “must engineer their own transformation” in a story about a Texas editors meeting. Say it together – progress or perish. Choose one, then do it well.

Categories Business & Industry/Multimedia

April 3, 2007

Biased photos in Cleveland?

Ted Diadiun at the Cleveland Plain Dealer takes on the question of biased political photos in a recent column. Readers had been complaining that images of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice always seemed to make her look bad, so he asked the photo editor to take a look at the last year’s worth of published images. The results will …...

Categories Ethics & Legal/Photojournalism

April 3, 2007

Top 10 Web Design Tips

This has been out there for a while, so it’s not really new, but Jakob Nielsen has updated his “Top 10 Mistakes in Web Design.” Good reading if you’re about to build (or rebuild) your web pages. He’s done this for a few years – see the 2005 version, the 2003 version, the 2002 version, the 1999 version and the...

Categories Advice & Learning/Graphic Design

April 2, 2007

Karen Ballard talks about photographing Sadam Hussein's arraignment

Photojournalist Karen Ballard was chosen to photograph the arraignment of Saddam Hussein six months after he was found in a spider hole. In a video posted on PhotographyChannel.tv, she talks about what happened that day and some of her impressions.

Categories Good Work/Multimedia/Photojournalism

April 2, 2007

Camera wonks or photographers?

Some of you already know of my affection for “elitist” cameras (like my recently departed Leica, the last of my usable film cameras … *sigh*). But I hope I have always stressed the importance of the tool only in relationship to the final product – that the image is what matters most. There’s a comic strip out there and today’s...

Categories Advice & Learning/Photojournalism/Thoughts & Theory

April 1, 2007

Arm Wrestling

During our UGA Weekend Photojournalism Workshop we heard many of the editors cajoling us to use longer lens, to get away from the wide angle zooms and explore the beauty of the 70-200 mm lens. Scott Lewis has posted an audio slideshow from the 2005 Arm Wrestling Championships that has some great, tight, indoor images – a good model on...

Categories Good Work/Multimedia/Photojournalism/Tech Talk