Visual Journalism

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

January 5, 2022

Alexia Grant Competition

This one is near and dear to my heart … the call for applications to the Alexia Grants has been posted they open on January 11. There are student and professional awards available, the latter is $20,000 to support a proposed project. Disclosure: I was a first year student when Alexia Tsairis was killed in a terrorist bombing aboard Pan...

Categories Competitions/Good Work/Photojournalism

September 7, 2021

Adapting Coverage

The Associated Press’ Emilio Morenatti lost one of his legs while covering the war in Afghanistan. This year, he covered the Paralympic Games in Tokyo, reconnecting with a soldier he met while in the hospital and connecting with others. Connection is one of the most critical parts of good storytelling, Morenatti has a genuine way of doing that.

Categories At Work/Good Work/Photojournalism

September 7, 2021

Parisian Wanderer

A new book and exhibit of work by Henri Cartier-Bresson is out and Blind magazine’s Bill Shapiro has a report. Shapiro reintroduced me to the word flâneur: (A) French word describing a person who strolls without a goal while carefully observing everything around him. In other words, a connoisseur of street life. I want that on my business card.

Categories 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

August 4, 2021

Small Town Wyoming, A Century Ago

Sarah Blackwood has a great piece up at The New Yorker looking at a trove of work done by Lora Webb Nichols a century ago. Anyone with an interest in portraiture or documentary work (done on a hyper local scale) needs to take a look. Beautiful compositions help us see what life was like in a copper mining town. (Thanks...

Categories Good Work/Photojournalism

August 3, 2021

Native American Identity Through the Native Lens

From NPR, information on a new effort to take back the visual story of Native Americans.

Categories Ethics & Legal/Photojournalism/Thoughts & Theory

August 2, 2021

It’s the Little Things

Great gallery of images from the Associated Press looking at the details that make up the Olympic competition. It is always the little things that separate out the good from the great, how would you apply this to your own work? Does it manifest itself in your compositions, the way you handle edged and corners? Does it show up in...

Categories Craft/Good Work/Photojournalism/Tech Talk

April 13, 2021

When a Lens Is Too Sharp

Nice piece by Michael Johnston at The Online Photographer about portrait lenses. I will admit I obsess over sharpness (and nervousness in bokeh, but that’s different issue), but this line really resonated with me: What’s a portrait but a sympathetic presentation of a person’s appearance? In 1989, I bought a used Nikkor 105 mm f/2.5 AI-s lens and it still...

Categories Craft/Photojournalism/Tech Talk

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