Is it more invasive just because some of us don't have a press pass

An interesting prespective over at Media Shift which asks if journalist's photos from Haiti are an invasion of Privacy.

Michelle May,who has just returned from the country says that

a rumor is circulating among volunteers that we should remove any photos of our time at the hospital from Facebook and other websites, unless we had received permission to take photographs.

This ethical debate is inspired by the ability of anyone to easily create and distribute media such as photos, videos or blog posts. Professional media have long been training their cameras and mikes on the victims of natural disasters, but now anyone can do it, too. Is it more invasive just because some of us don't have a press pass?

What is England

An exciting new photography project has just been launched in the UK.

Entitled What is England,it will feature 50 photographers with each of them representing one of the 50 counties in England. Their brief is to represent their own style of photography as well as their nominated county. Some live in the county they represent and some are discovering or rediscovering it for the first time.

There will be four groups of pictures issued across the year featuring the themes,Group,Work,Play and Urban resulting in 300 images by January 2011.

Ht-Mark Page

Iranian picture wins the world press photo award

The winners of the World Press Photo awards have been announced and the top prize has gone to Italian photographers Pietro Maaturzo with his iconic picture of a women shouting in protest from a rooftop in Iran during last years elections.

The competition attracted over 10,000 entries from 6,000 photographers.

You can see some of the images here at the BBC news site

People are no longer interested in war images they are only interested in celebrity

I have just been listenig to the veteran war reporter Donald McCullin on the Radio 4 today programme.

He has an exhibition of his work at the Imperial War Museum North In Manchester which I will most definitely be paying a visit to.

A fascinating interview which he ended by saying that people are no longer interested in war images they are only interested in celebrity

Icon AP photos of the Noughties

Some good pictures to remind us of the decade as its international regional photo editor, Odd Anderson presents a selection of his icon images.

They include chaotic scenes at the funeral of Yasser Arafat,the hooded Iraqi prisoner comforting his son behind barbed wire and George Bush pulling a face as he finds the door locked at a Beijing press conference

Check the images out here

Be careful what you photograph

A rather worrying trend for photographers makes the front of the Independent this morning as the paper reports that

Police have been accused of misusing powers granted under anti-terror legislation after a series of incidents, ranging from the innocuous to the bizarre, in which photographers were questioned by officers for taking innocent pictures of tourist destinations, landmarks and even a fish and chip shop.

As a keen photographer it is rather concerning that,Police are using powers engrained within the Section 44 authorisation zone which allows them to allowed to stop and search anyone without having to give a reason.

More than 100 exist in London alone, covering areas such as the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace and other landmarks.

says the paper which gives the case of Jerome Taylor who relates that

I was on the South Bank of the Thames trying to compose a shot of the Houses of Parliament last week when two police officers stopped me.
Despite living in London for the past five years I had never photographed the Houses of Parliament before. I wish I'd never bothered. Just as I'd finished fine-tuning my first composition, two officers appeared. "Excuse me, sir," said one. "My colleague and I would like to perform a stop-and-account on you. Don't worry, you haven't done anything wrong."

New York Times photo is a question of ethics

The above image from yesterday's New York Times has created some controversy under the topic of ethics.

It shows a teenager driving at 60 miles an hour with both hands steadily gripping a phone, while the lone limb of a passenger reaches over to steer the speeding car.

According to Blake Fleetwood,the photographer Dan Gillsaid he shot the picture on another assignment for the NYT last November for a story about teenagers and HIV.

"I tagged along with three students and the driver was texting. It's not often we as journalists are allowed into someone's personal life.
"Is it safe? Probably not, but as journalists we are not here to judge or direct, only to observe and to tell the story"

Why newspaper front pages are special

Terry Connor thinks that the print edition of a paper is special.

Writing at the Newspaper project he says that after remembering

The heartbreaking moment caught in time when firefighter Chris Fields carried the body of baby Baylee Almon from the rubble of the Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, 1995.
The fiery Twin Towers just seconds after two airplanes crashed into them and minutes before the buildings collapsed into an enormous cloud of dust on Sept. 11, 2001.
The smiling face of then President-elect Barack Obama holding hands with wife Michelle and daughters Malia and Sasha as thousands cheered on election night 2008.

adding

There are few, if any, of you reading these words who cannot recall those photographs or other front-page images that made an impression yesterday or yesteryear. Whether they have national or international impact or are as local as a hometown high school celebrating a state championship, memorable front-page photos are part of our culture and will be for many more tomorrows.

Images from L'Aquila

There have been countless images from the tragedy of the Italian earthquake but maybe this which featured as the Daily Dish's image of the day sums it up

Pluto, as the plaque on his neck says, looks for his owner through the streets following a violent earthquake two days ago in the Abruzzo capital L'Aquila on April 8, 2009. Hopes faded Wednesday of finding more survivors from the worst earthquake in Italy in 30 years as the death toll climbed to 260 and the country prepared to bury the victims. By Filippo Monteforte/AFP/Getty Images.

Some great photography

The Telegraph has a remarkable seeries of photographs which capture a suicide bombing in Sri Lanka.

The paper says that

The suicide bomber had approached the ministers on a bicycle before the explosion which killed three local politicians and three students

World Press Photo 2008

Via the Indy

A picture of an armed sheriff moving through an American home after an eviction due to a mortgage foreclosure

It was taken by American Anthony Suau for Time magazine and maybe sums up the mood of 2008

Photojournalism festival

The International festival of Photojournalism is taking place in Perpignan this week)Hat Tip Frontline Blogger)

Would love to be able to attend but at least it can be followed by blog

The first goal of the festival is to reinforce the importance and value of press photography… Each year, new, ever more enthusiastic, photographers come on the scene. In Perpignan, thousands of professional photojournalists are offered an opportunity to meet with their peers, talk about their work or their profession (during the symposium), and talk sales with photo agencies and get hands on experience with new technologies

A shocking bit of photoshopping

Make of this what you think




Ht-Chris Paul

Can you spot the difference

Much indignation about Iran's testing of interontinental missiles yesterday but that wasn't the only story coming out of the country.

The New York Times Lede column reports

As news spread across the world of Iran’s provocative missile tests, so did an image of four missiles heading skyward in unison. Unfortunately, it appeared to contain one too many missiles, a point that had not emerged before the photo appeared on the front pages of The Los Angeles Times, The Financial Times, The Chicago Tribune and several other newspapers as well as on BBC News, MSNBC, Yahoo! News, NYTimes.com and many other major news Web sites.

but

Today, The Associated Press distributed what appeared to be a nearly identical photo from the same source, but without the fourth missile.

and the reason for the difference? Well it's all the fault of the Iranian's

Agence France-Presse retracted its four-missile version this morning, saying that the image was “apparently digitally altered” by Iranian state media. The fourth missile “has apparently been added in digital retouch to cover a grounded missile that may have failed during the test,” the agency said. Later, it published an article quoting several experts

When or if to publish

A good article over at Poynter online which looks at the decision making process over the New York Times' front page last week which showed a photpgraph of a Zimbabwe baby photographed with casts on both legs,a victim of the political violence there.

As always there are many decisons to be taken over whether to publish.In this case the safety of the victims being of paramount importance.

Because of the risks to both journalists and the subjects of their coverage in Zimbabwe, The Times did not identify either the photographer or the child and decided not to publish the photo on its Web site.

The paper got permission from the child's mother to publish and vindicates its decison by quoting the amount of interest that the article recieved.

the paper is looking into how it might facilitate readers' interest in helping the child and others in similar circumstances.

It seems that in this case the paper can be applauded on its decison

Amateur photographers under attack

Cartier-Bresson must be spinning in his grave. Media-fuelled public paranoia about potential paedophiles is destroying the ability of innocent photographers documenting everyday life in this country. Licence to take photographs? How fascist is that sort of inquisition? We need to defend our freedoms more carefully, to the point of seeming awkward. The state is there to serve us, not to control us.

That was a comment from the BBC news magazine,a little over the top perhaps following an article about

Misplaced fears about terror, privacy and child protection are preventing amateur photographers from enjoying their hobby, say campaigners.

It seems that those of us like mysely who enjoy wandering around taking pictures are now being accused of being potential terrorists or worse.

As the article points out,

Photographers have every right to take photos in a public place, he says, and it's crazy for officials to challenge them when there are so many security cameras around and so many people now have cameras on phones. But it's usually inexperienced officers responsible.

Sun and Mirror have exclusive photos

Exclusive photographs on the front of the tabloids this moring.

The Mirror has exclusive pictures of the room when it is alleged that Shannon Matthews was held

For 24 nail-biting days, this dingy bedroom with its threadbare carpets and dirty walls was the most hunted hideaway in Britain

The Sun has exclusive photographs of the accomodation where British troops stay prior to being sent to battle zones

Our pictures show a broken pipe spewing out sewage, mouldy accommodation huts and broken windows taped up with plastic at RAF Brize Norton – where airborne troops stay before flying to the war zone.
The appalled gunner who gave us the photos said: “Imagine this as the last place in England you see before you die for your country.”

American military to free AP photographer

Good news that the American military are finally to release the AP photographer whom they have held for 2 years.

Bilal Hussein will be freed Wednesday now that Iraqi judicial committees have granted him amnesty for all allegations against him.He was detained for having alleged links with groups of insurgents.

During that time he maintained his innocence and an internal AP enquiry failed to find any links.He was never put on trial despite the allegations being that he possessed bomb making equipment and conspired to photograph attacks on US forces.

Congratulations to Adrees Latif

Hats off to Adrees Latif,the photographer who won the Pulitzer Prize for his photograph of video journalist Kenji Nagai being shot during the demonstrations in Burma last year.

He has put together a brilliant slide show which is well worth a look

George Rodger

"Good photography is based on truth an integrity."

That's the motto that greets visitors to the exhibition of the photographs of George Rodger at the Imperial War Museum North at Salford Quays.

George made his name working initially for life magazine,photographing wartime scenes in the UK.

The exhibition shows aspects of his work.How the US watches the war features photos of American journalists in 1940.One stands out-RIP-Here lies three Pressman who died waiting.A reporter sits slumped behind sand bags at Dover,wearing a tin hat and glasses,his colleague peers over.Another photo shows a reporter flat out on a bench,a copy of Evelyn Waugh's Decline and Fall covering his face.

He documented the blitz,one photograph shows Londoners making their way to a shelter as German planes approach,a pensioner waves his stick at the approaching planes,there are worried looks on his companions as they look anxiously at the sky.A small boy carries his younger sister.

George took off for 2 years travelling from Africa thru the Middle East,Burma and China.He captures the fall of Rangoon in May 1942.

He is with American forces as they invade Italy,two haunting images from this period,a heavily pregnant women is queuing for water in Naples and in the second coffins are laid out,in the background Mount Vesuvius.

Then he follows the allies thru Normandy, Henri Cartier-Bresson captures him perched on a tank as Paris is liberated.

And he is there as Belsen is liberated,it is his duty to take pictures to show the world what really happened.

After the war he founded the Magnum along with Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson and David 'Chim' Seymour.His work mainly covered Africa.He died in 1995