January 5, 2016 The Last Peels Elsa Dorfman is retiring after shooting with the same oversized Polaroid camera for 30 years. Categories Photojournalism/Tech Talk/Thoughts & Theory
December 10, 2015 Why Some Lenses Cost $1,799 We are at that point in the year where a bunch of kids are turning in their gear and need to go buy their own. It’s a wonderful support system we have here, but it also shelters them from understanding the costs of this stuff. Which means when they finally wander over to one of the online retailers and start... Categories Advice & Learning/At Work/Business & Industry/Photojournalism/Tech Talk
December 2, 2015 Eye Tracking Your Obsession Interesting video made by Canon to promote one of their printers … Not without some criticism, as well. I have a touch of experience with eye tracking (mostly from hanging around very smart people who do it like Sara Quinn and my college Bart Wojdynski), so I think this stuff is really cool. My dream is to take entries from... Categories Advice & Learning/Graphic Design/Photojournalism/Tech Talk
November 19, 2015 Reuters Goes to All JPGs Michael Zhang at PetaPixel is reporting that Reuters has issued a directive to all its photojournalists to only submit images that were shot as JPGs in the camera – no more raw files allowed. (Side note: Why do we always capitalize RAW? It’s not an acronym so far as I can tell.) Why would the wire service want to give... Categories Ethics & Legal/Photojournalism/Tech Talk/Thoughts & Theory
November 3, 2015 Seeing Beyond Your Vision Peripheral vision plays a big role in photojournalism. The ability to look at one thing and see what’s happening all around it allows us to build better stories, to see what others might not. The New York Times’ Angel Franco took a Widely camera to Cuba 20 years ago and the way he used it is fairly unique. For another... Categories Craft/Journalism/Photojournalism/Tech Talk
November 2, 2015 There is a Time … … and it was yesterday that you needed to check the time settings on your cameras. Dig into those menus and set your clock back an hour. This is also a good time to check the minutes setting, too, as many modern cameras have a tendency to drift. At least until the Swiss start making cameras, checking the time stamp... Categories Business & Industry/Photojournalism/Tech Talk
October 27, 2015 Forcing Visual Variety If this ever goes into production, I may require it of my kids so I never have to see another photo of Tate Plaza or the Arch. Camera Restricta from Philipp Schmitt on Vimeo. On my additional feature request list would be facial recognition so we can limit the number of selfies you take. Categories Photojournalism/Tech Talk/Thoughts & Theory
October 26, 2015 Are We Ready for DRM on Photos? That’s a good question to start pondering, because according to Rob Price at Business Insider, the Joint Photographics Expert Group (look at their acronym to determine if they’re important) is looking at incorporating digital rights management technology into web-accessible images. Will this change everything for the better, allowing us to protect our work and receive the compensation we need to... Categories Business & Industry/Ethics & Legal/Photojournalism/Tech Talk/Thoughts & Theory
October 9, 2015 Going Light I hate talking about tea, but I’m fascinated with it, too. It’s this never ending internal battle between the journalist in me saying it doesn’t matter and the geek in me saying yeah, it does, because if it’s right, it disappears … my mind is a loud place, some mornings. The folks at VII Photo Agency asked seven of their... Categories Photojournalism/Tech Talk
October 5, 2015 The Pursuit of Technique Mike Johnston at The Online Photographer put up a post on photographic techniques and it’s worth pondering for a while. He started a list of things to know, it barely scratched the surface as he admits: Allow me to name just a very few of the many things you might think you need to know: exposure; focus accuracy and depth-of-field;... Categories Photojournalism/Tech Talk/Thoughts & Theory