Category: Photojournalism

February 17, 2021

On Gordon Parks

We can never learn enough about Gordon Parks. R.C> Baker at The Village Voice wrote up a brief on an exhibit of his work and included this, in talking about one of Parks’ iconic images: “That’s the photograph I made of her, in the government building, in front of the American flag, with a broom in her hand and a...

Categories Advice & Learning/Good Work/Photojournalism

February 17, 2021

An American Project

Arghhh … the High Museum in Atlanta has an exhibit of Dawould Bey up according to an NPR piece by Karen Michel. Only running through March 14 and I’m not sure how comfortable I’d be – unless they’re doing private showings …

Categories Good Work/Photojournalism

January 18, 2021

Accidental Art

Interesting look at how we have been interpreting news images in the same way as fine art over the last few years. Now I need to poke through the accidental Renaissance Reddit thread …

Categories Craft/Photojournalism

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

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...

Categories 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...

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

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 …

Categories Craft/Good Work/Photojournalism