Author: Mark E. Johnson

July 29, 2013

Tumblr Shuts Down a Blog – for Copyright Violations

It warms my heart that Tumblr is taking copyright violations seriously and shutting down blogs with multiple violations. The tone of this Dan Lyons piece on HupSpot, though, has me concerned – it almost becomes a defense of the violator. Here’s the law: If I create something, I own it. You, no matter who you are, cannot use it unless...

Categories Business & Industry/Ethics & Legal/Photojournalism

July 29, 2013

Bad, Bad “Journalism”

I posted this to Facebook already, but it deserves more airing. This is easily the worst interview I’ve ever seen conducted. Hands down – there’s no journalism being done here, this is an attack on author Professor Reza Aslan. If you want to question his credentials and whether he is qualified to write a book titled Zealot: The Life and...

Categories Advice & Learning/Ethics & Legal/Journalism/Thoughts & Theory

July 29, 2013

Stop What You’re Doing, Do Something Else

Eric Maierson over at MediaStorm put up a post about getting better at storytelling. Several good ideas embedded in here, some of which have more to do with changing yourself than your subject matter. Going forward, I want to challenge the notion that the only way to do things is the way I’ve done them in the past. Yes, there...

Categories Journalism/Multimedia/Photojournalism

July 26, 2013

Well, They Got Something Right …

When an Asiana Airlines jet crashed during landing in San Francisco earlier this month, it was major news for fairly obvious reasons. Unfortunately, in an effort to be first (and not be RIGHT), KTVU aired the names of the four crew member son the cockpit as soon as it had “confirmed” them. The “confirmation,” it turned out, came from an...

Categories Journalism/Video

July 26, 2013

NPPA Short Grants Now Taking Applications

From the release: The National Press Photographers Association is pleased to announce the 2013 Short Grants program, six grants of $3,000 each that will be awarded to support photojournalists who are creating compelling picture stories in their communities. The grant is designed for funding projects small enough in scale that the bulk of the work can be accomplished in two...

Categories Advice & Learning/Business & Industry/Craft/Good Work/Photojournalism

July 26, 2013

Next Generation Video Storytelling Workshop

The National Press Photographers Foundation has opened registration for the 2013 Next Generation Video Storytelling Workshop. This year’s even runs from September 13-15 and is at the Science Museum of Minnesota in St. Paul. Lots of good people on the program.

Categories Journalism/Multimedia/Photojournalism/Tech Talk/Video

July 26, 2013

Out of Eden

National Geographic’s John Stanmeyer has a series of posts up on a story he’s working on that go into the details of what it takes to complete this type of work. Egads. It takes a lot of effort to kill a Toyota Land Cruiser, so to take out several of them … on one assignment … when you’re not in...

Categories At Work/Photojournalism

July 25, 2013

Brand New 200 Year Old Lenses

I know this isn’t aimed at me in any way, shape or form, but you can now contribute to an already-funded Kickstarter project to reproduce mid 19th century Petzval lenses. They look pretty cool and if I wanted a semi-unique way to do a portrait series I’d probably go down this path. Why “semi-unique?” They wanted to raise $100,000 to...

Categories Tech Talk

July 25, 2013

Go Walk Your Newsroom

Jack Limpert writes about his days working in the Detroit UPI newsroom. Which got me thinking about my days in my last newsroom, which was almost as archaic as what he recalls. It does give us a good lesson – you don’t learn much from a screen. Sure, there’s information on a screen, but not a lot of knowledge. As...

Categories At Work/Good Work/Journalism/Photojournalism

July 25, 2013

Hasselblad’s In Space

Over at Wired.com, Adam Mann has the story behind the Hasselblad cameras that NASA used during Mercury and Apollo missions, including a few details I didn’t know. There’s also a link to all of the photos shot during all of the Apollo missions – an amazing collection of public domain images. (Thanks to Doug Greene for the link.)

Categories Photojournalism/Tech Talk