Author: Mark E. Johnson

January 23, 2013

Required Reading?

I bookmarked this a while ago … (wait, does anyone “bookmark” things anymore?) … over at PhotoShelter, Lauren Margolis collected the best blog posts about photography from 2012. Suspect there’s a semester’s worth of reading in there …

Categories Advice & Learning/Journalism/Multimedia/Photojournalism/Tech Talk/Thoughts & Theory

January 23, 2013

Remembering Old Images

UGA alum Todd Robertson made an image more than two decades ago that has started a new life online. The image, of an African-American Georgia State Trooper and a small child dressed in a Ku Klux Klan robe, was made at a Klan rally in Gainesville, Georgia. After more than two years, Robertson and the trooper, Allen Campbell, met and...

Categories Photojournalism

January 23, 2013

Making the Boring Exciting?

Over at Feature Shoot, Alison Zavos has a piece up on Chip Litherland, who shot the football national championship age for ESPN. The pictures are okay, not my style, but the headline really bothers me: Photographer Chip Litherland Makes Anticlimactic Alabama vs. Notre Dame Game Actually Look Exciting. Does it bug anyone else? If the game wasn’t exciting, the photos...

Categories Ethics & Legal/Photojournalism/Thoughts & Theory

January 22, 2013

Fact From Fiction

Markham Nola, the managing editor of Storyful.com, talks about how his organization uses online and social media tools to verify the authenticity of breaking news event reports from unknown sources. Some excellent ideas on how to cross-reference information to verify it. Is this a better system then having known reporters, with known agendas, on the scene? Probably not – but...

Categories At Work/Business & Industry/Ethics & Legal/Journalism/Multimedia/Tech Talk

January 22, 2013

Five Tools for Your Camera Bag

C.S. Muncy lists five essential things in his bag for when he heads out into the streets. If every photojournalist out there collaborated on a list, you might need a Kamaz 43118 to haul it all around. Still, it’s useful to think about what others have found useful. (Thanks to Sean Elliot for the link.)

Categories Journalism/Photojournalism/Tech Talk

January 22, 2013

Shane and Maggie – A Student Project on Domestic Violence

Students often ask me what they should shoot, what stories they should tell, and I always have the same answer: tell stories that matter. The good ones do, they go deep into communities and tell relevant stories that help us understand. Though not one of my kids, Sara Naomi Lewkowicz at Ohio University has dug deep and is in the...

Categories Good Work/Photojournalism

January 21, 2013

Quantity Does Not Bring About Quality

I teach two sections of an introductory course in photojournalism every semester. Last Wednesday, I handed the students their cameras and sent them out to shoot – 300-400 frames, nouns and verbs. Anything they want. This assignment is all about volume – the more they shoot, the more used to the camera they get, the faster they’ll get to story...

Categories Craft/Photojournalism/Thoughts & Theory

January 21, 2013

Unnecessary Roughness – Webinar on Images of Football

FYI … this looks pretty cool. Date: Sunday, January 27th Time: at 1pm EST/10am PST for 90 minutes Title: “Unnecessary Roughness: Football as a Reflection of American Culture in News Photos and Media Images”: Held the Sunday before the Super Bowl, the webinar will focus on a broad range of themes, including power and violence, commercialism, patriotism, militarism and gender...

Categories Craft/Ethics & Legal/Photojournalism/Thoughts & Theory

January 21, 2013

Burnett at the Olympics

I will never deny that I find something magical in David Burnett’s work. After more than 40 years in the business, he is continually pushing to find new ways to tell stories. The early work was straightforward documentary work – this happened, this is why it’s important. His later work, as he’s experimented with older cameras and techniques, has been...

Categories Craft/Photojournalism

January 20, 2013

Remembering Chim

In the mid-part of the 20th century, during what some believe to be photojournalism’s heyday, there were some come clear superstars – Cartier-Bresson, Capa, Bourke-White, Smith and Lange all come to mind easily. But there’s another, known by those in the know as Chim. Over at The New York Times’ Lens blog, Peter Can Agtmael takes a look at an...

Categories Advice & Learning/Craft/Good Work/Photojournalism