Category: Business & Industry

January 5, 2022

A Craftswoman of Photography

I shall admit the name did not resonate with me at first, but the work … the work certainly did. Sabine Weiss, the last of the “humanist” photographers, died on December 28, 2021, according to a New York Times piece by Clay Risen. “From the start I had to make a living from photography; it wasn’t something artistic,” Weiss told...

Categories Business & Industry/Craft/Good Work/Photojournalism

August 4, 2021

Racing Through and To History

For several years, we ran a photojournalism workshop at the Petit Le Mans sports car race, not far from our campus in Athens, Georgia. My students, predominantly women, rolled their eyes when I explained what we were doing. Then they came back to class afterwards with their eyes wide open – it wasn’t about cars or crashing, it was about...

Categories Business & Industry/Good Work/Photojournalism/Thoughts & Theory

April 4, 2021

On Getting the Shot

Two quotes in this interview with Getty Images’ Elsa Garrison by Hannah Foslien that stood out to me: For me, the way I look at it is, if I didn’t get it, then I wasn’t meant to get it. You can’t let that frustration of a missed picture carry over into your next assignment, because then you’re self-sabotaging. And this:...

Categories Advice & Learning/At Work/Business & Industry/Good Work/Journalism/Photojournalism

March 30, 2021

Charging You to Invoice

This is a new one to me – McGraw Hill is now charging independent contractor to submit invoices. They are deducting 2.2% for an administrative fee when submitting invoices via their platform, which is the only way to bill them. Out of curiosity, what would happen if the contractors added a 10% administrative fee to their invoices? I understand that...

Categories At Work/Business & Industry

March 10, 2021

The Family Business

Touching story by Alix Strauss in The New York Times about the 80 year history of Fred Marcus Studios. Now run by a third generation, they’ve done more than 30,000 weddings since opening in 1941.

Categories At Work/Business & Industry/Good Work/Thoughts & Theory

January 8, 2021

Inside the Capitol

I am still processing the events of Wednesday. Three journalists from The New York Times, including photojournalist Erin Schaff, wrote up their experiences from inside the building. It is terrifying.

Categories At Work/Business & Industry/Photojournalism

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,...

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

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...

Categories 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...

Categories 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...

Categories Business & Industry/Ethics & Legal/Photojournalism