Mark E. Johnson – Page 5 – Visual Journalism

January 2, 2021

Two Hundred Fifty Things a Photojournalist Should Know

In 2018, architectural critic and designer Michael Sorkin published a list of Two Hundred Fifty Things an Architect Should Know. Sorkin, who wrote for the Village Voice for many years, was an early victim of the pandemic. I heard excerpts of his list on a podcast one evening in the spring and it got me to noodling. Every few mornings,...

Advice & Learning/Business & Industry/Craft/Journalism/Photojournalism/Thoughts & Theory

November 23, 2020

Making the Invisible Visible

This NPR piece by Richard L. Harris, ostensibly a review of a new monograph of Mary Ellen Mark’s lifetime of work, may have given me a theme for my spring Documentary Photojournalism course. As journalists, we are charged with shining light into the dark corners of our world – to make the invisible visible. Given how dark our world has...

Advice & Learning/Good Work/Photojournalism

September 30, 2020

The Value of Metadata

My colleague Kyser Lough sent this along – a look back in time to when Jose R. Lopez photographed Ruth Bader Ginsburg on her first day on the Supreme Court. Why is this important? Aside from it being a very strong image, it was his ability to find that image, 27 years after it was made – this is a...

Business & Industry/Journalism/Photojournalism/Tech Talk

August 21, 2020

App Failures and Lost Images

Within the last week, two significant coding errors wreaked havoc on Photographer’s who relied on a pair of popular imaging platforms. It appears that image.canon was hit with a ransom ware attack and an Adobe Lightroom update wiped out images and presets for users on iOS. This is another example of why why it’s critical that you establish and execute...

Business & Industry/Photojournalism/Tech Talk

August 18, 2020

Ethics, Automation and the Humanist Disconnect

A lot of turmoil swirling around Magnum, one of the pre-eminent photographic agencies. This piece by Andy Day asks a lot of questions and is a must-read for those of us in the industry right now. At the end, he lists a series of questions that Magnum must answer about the images (particularly of children documented in sexual situations) within...

Business & Industry/Ethics & Legal/Photojournalism

August 12, 2020

Road Trip Portraits

I love this idea to do portraits through a truck’s windows. That Brian Bowen Smith ended up putting 11,000 miles on his 1958 Ford F100 while criss-crossing the country this summer … well, that just makes it so much cooler. Time to tune up my 66 Mustang, I think …

Craft/Good Work/Photojournalism

July 28, 2020

Control, Don’t Clean

My mentor and friend David Sutherland delivered the same message to first-year photography students at Syracuse University for four decades: Fill your frame. Control your backgrounds. Wait for moments. I still teach this mantra today (though I add a fourth: Care). My friend Stanley Leary has written about his mentor and friend, Don Rutledge, and the way he used backgrounds...

Advice & Learning/Craft/Photojournalism

July 25, 2020

Seattle County Court Orders Media to Turn Over Raw Material

A King County judge Washington state has ordered that the Seattle Times and several television stations turn over all photos and videos f a May 30 protest. Local officials have said the material is necessary for the identification of individuals who committed crimes after breaking off from the main protest. The National Press Photographers Association has issued a statement that...

At Work/Business & Industry/Ethics & Legal/Photojournalism

July 23, 2020

Associated Press Switching to Sony for all Still and Video Photojournalist

If you ever needed a sign that mirrorless was the future, it’s today’s news that the Associated Press is moving to Sony equipment for both their still and video photojournalists. While not a huge sale (or lease, more likely), the impact on both profesisonals and amateurs of this move could be immense. Canon and Nikon have had a stranglehold on...