AshandHeat

Call for Entries

2009-10-11T14:53:00.001-04:00

Juror: David E. Little, Curator and Head of Photography and New Media at Minneapolis Institute Arts (MIA)
Entry Fee: $30 up to 5 images; $10 each additional (no limit on number that may be submitted)
Prizes: $300 for 1st; $200 for 2nd; $100 for 3rd
Notice of Acceptance: November 10, 2009
Exhibition Dates: January 2, 2010 - January 31, 2010 at the Mpls Photo Center
Reception: January 8, 2010, 6:00 - 9:00 pm at the Mpls Photo Center

http://www.MplsPhotoCenter.com/exhibits/callforentries

Mpls Photo Center, 2400 North Second St, Minneapolis, MN 55411, 612-643-3511, www.MplsPhotoCenter.com

Contact: Clare O'Neill, Clare@mplsphotocenter.com

Call for Entries

2009-10-11T14:49:00.003-04:00

http://www.reduxstudios.org/exhibitions/apply.html

Redux is the premier contemporary art venue in South Carolina offering opportunities for emerging and established artists to exhibit in historic downtown Charleston, SC. Exhibitions are not limited to any media, and all applicants will be considered for solo, group, and two person shows.

This years exhibitions and residencies:

The official deadline for all entries is postmarked November 16th2009
More info on residency program »
Artists will be notified of results by mail on or before December 15th2009
Please see below for answers to frequently asked questions

To apply for an exhibition you must submit the following:

• Application [PDF] click to download »
• $35 Application Fee (pay online below or mail a check with your application)
• portfolio of recent works (5 - 10) that can be in slide, cd, dvd, or video format. (both mac and pc formatted discs accepted - please send still images at a minimum of 1000 pixels wide at 72 dpi and in JPEG format)
• Inventory list including titles, dates completed, sizes, and mediums.
• Artist Statement
• Artistic Resume
• SASE for return of materials

Submit all materials to:

Redux Contemporary Art Center
136 St. Philip Street
Charleston, SC 29403

Call for Entries

2009-10-11T14:48:00.001-04:00

Magic Silver 2010 is a juried photography exhibition designed to encourage and reward those involved in photographic media, and to provide a format for exhibition.

Juror: Ken Merfeld

Awards: A total of $1000 will be awarded as determined by the juror.

Eligibility: Any artist 18 years or older working in traditional photography, experimental or non-traditional light sensitive processes, digital media, or video are encouraged to apply.

To enter: Visit www.murraystate.edu/artgallery and look under “prospectus” for complete information.

Deadline 10/30

Call for Entries

2009-10-11T14:45:00.002-04:00

http://desotorow.org/opportunities/entry.html

Check here for any call for entries to local gallery

Call for Entries

2009-10-11T14:43:00.000-04:00

ABOUT FLAK PHOTO

Flak Photo is a daily photography website that celebrates the art & culture of photography online. Produced by Andy Adams, the site highlights new series work, book projects and gallery exhibitions from an international community of contributors.

SUBMISSIONS

An online gallery and social media magazine, Flak Photo provides unique opportunities for artists and photography organizations to share their work with a community of photographers, galleries, publishers, curators and editors. To submit your work for consideration, email your photograph (sRGB JPG format, minimum 1000px wide) with title and caption details to photo@flakmag.com. Please include the following information with your submission:

Title
Place of capture, including city, state / province and country (if applicable)
Year
Is the image part of a series that's available online? What's the URL?
Your website URL

Naturally, photographers retain all copyright on submitted materials. Contributors are formally credited and Flak Photo's style is to link the credit to a contributor's website.

Irving Penn Dies at 92

2009-10-07T22:28:00.000-04:00

NEW YORK – Irving Penn, whose photographs revealed a taste for stark simplicity whether he was shooting celebrity portraits, fashion, still life or remote places of the world, died Wednesday at his Manhattan home. He was 92.

The death was announced by his photo assistant, Roger Krueger.

"He never stopped working," said Peter MacGill, a longtime friend whose Pace-MacGill Galleries in Manhattan represented Penn's work. "He would go back to similar subjects and never see them the same way twice."

Penn, who constantly explored the photographic medium and its boundaries, typically preferred to isolate his subjects — from fashion models to Aborigine tribesmen — from their natural settings to photograph them in a studio against a stark background. He believed the studio could most closely capture their true natures.

Between 1964 and 1971, he completed seven such projects, his subjects ranging from New Guinea mud men to San Francisco hippies.

Follow the link for the rest of the article. --- http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091007/ap_on_en_ot/us_obit_irving_penn

2009-10-01T10:49:00.001-04:00

MoMA’s "New Photography 2009" Showcases

Artists That Push The Boundaries of Photography

New Photography 2009 opens at the Museum of Modern Art today. This year, the annual exhibition, which began in 1985, features six young artists who “question what it means to make a photograph in the twenty-first century.” New Photography has in the past served simply as a showcase for lesser known artists rather than as a thematic show attached to a strong curatorial statement. While this year’s exhibition is still a showcase for individual artists with diverse image-making processes, Eva Respini, a MoMA associate curator and the show’s organizer, pointed out that there are shared concerns connecting the work. Speaking to PDN during a walk-through of the show, Respini noted that each of the artists expand “the horizons and language” of photography, and create images in either a studio or darkroom—not by going out into the real world. Most of the artists “accumulate things to make something else,” Respini related. Their processes reference traditional photographic techniques and the role of photographs in society. In her introductory wall text, Respini writes that “most of the artists actively work in other disciplines, and their photographs relate to drawing, sculpture, video, and installation.” Though the show is called “New Photography,” it seems sure to inspire some debate as to how far photography can be pushed before it becomes another medium. Walead Beshty creates massive, colorful photograms by repeatedly exposing a sheet of photographic paper in a chemical darkroom. Carter Mull photographs the Los Angeles Times and then utilizes “digital and analog techniques” to manipulate the original image and create subsequent, connected images. Sara VanDerBeek gathers together and arranges current and historical pictures and rephotographs them, exploring “the symbolism of individual images and the physical and cultural connections between them.” Leslie Hewitt, whose process is the most directly akin to traditional photographic practice, assembles objects to create still-lifes that resemble found scenes. Hewitt then orients the images upside down, questioning the representational value of photographs. Daniel Gordon creates pseudo-portraits by assembling cut paper and images into figures, which he then photographs and further manipulates. Sterling Ruby creates his images by digitally manipulating his own photographs as well as found images. Although the show does not attempt to sum up all the various ways artists are pushing the boundaries of photographic practice, it does highlight the various new tools that photography— especially in the transition from analog to digital—has made available to visual artists.

Photographer Ronis dies aged 99

2009-09-20T13:27:00.001-04:00

Ronis gave up a musical career to start photography

Photographer Willy Ronis, best known for capturing

the essence of Paris in black and white scenes of

everyday life, has died aged 99.

He passed away at a hospital in the French capital,

where he had been admitted days earlier.

President of the Eyedea photo agency. Stephane Ledoux said:

"We have lost the last of the great men."

Ronis' award-winning career began in the 1930s and he took

his last picture in 2001.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy praised Ronis as the "chronicler of

postwar social aspirations and the poet of a simple and joyous life."

Ronis, along with friend Robert Doisneau and photojournalist Henri

Cartier-Bresson, were among France's great photographers who

emerged after World War II.

Online Photo Infringement Costs $10 Billion? Really?

2009-09-18T15:38:00.000-04:00

The professional photography industry has no reliable numbers about the potential fees lost every year because of online infringement.

But one image licensing company has taken a guess: $10 billion a year. That estimate deserves a skeptical eye.

Vivozoom, a microstock site run by two former Getty Images executives, is trumpeting the $10 billion figure in the headline of a press release today.

Continue reading "Online Photo Infringement Costs $10 Billion? Really?" »

Report: 35,885 Journalism Jobs Lost in Last 12 Months

2009-09-18T15:37:00.001-04:00

A new report confirms what everyone working in media could probably guess already: Journalism job losses are accelerating at a faster rate than job losses in the overall U.S. economy.

Since the financial crisis started (September 15, 2008 to September 15, 2009), 35,885 jobs in the journalism industry have been cut in the U.S.

The data comes from UNITY: Journalists of Color, which tracks SEC filings and self-reported data from 1,101 print and broadcast media outlets. UNITY counts jobs lost through layoffs, buyouts and attrition.

We already know many of the jobs lost were photographers, based on reports of photo staffs being slashed at newspapers like the Philadelphia Inquirer, The Baltimore Sun and the Los Angeles Times. According to the UNITY report, the Los Angeles Times leads U.S. newspapers in the total number of jobs cut since January 1, 2008: 1,200!

There is some glimmer of good news, though. After a painful December—in which 7,398 journalism jobs were lost—the bleeding has slowed, as you can see on the chart above.

For more, here's a UNITY press release, or you can read the full report in PDF format. Editor & Publisher has more coverage.

Want to work on a film?!!

2009-09-18T11:22:00.001-04:00

Props Assistants Needed for Local Robert Redford Feature Film Shoot

Interested students, contact Sue Hinkin, Dean of Career Services, for more information.
shinkin@scad.edu

Creative Photo Manipulations

2009-09-15T11:37:00.002-04:00

Zhang Peng was born in 1981. He lives and works in Beijing. Zhang Peng’s photography takes young, vulnerable women and girls as its central theme. There is a profound sense of sorrow and empathy that is evoked in his haunting images of doll-like girls sitting timidly on richly-colored settees and in bloody bathtubs. Their indescribable expressions of hurt and vulnerability leave the viewer unsettled, disconcerted and heavy hearted.

Zhang Peng's work looks gorgeous! This is going to be a super exhibition. It will feature new photography, paintings and watercolors. At 27, Zhang Peng is considered to be one of China's most talented, interesting and promising young artists. It is still early in his career, yet he has already received attention from important collectors and media throughout the world. Images of his work have appeared in Newsweek, The New York Times online and have graced the covers of numerous art magazines.

http://2fotoz.blogspot.com/2009/09/creative-and-horror-photo-manipulations.html

How to Back Up all your stuff for FREE

2009-09-14T11:21:00.002-04:00

People don't neglect backing up their computers because it's hard—it isn't, at all. No, people file into the inevitable death march of data loss for one reason: Backing up usually costs money. But it doesn't have to.

When your concerned friends and family insist that you have to back your data up (as anyone who's seen my atrociously beaten-down laptop in the last few months has done to me) they're effectively telling you two things: That backing up your data will save you a massive headache in the future, because more likely the not, your hard drive will fail; and, less bluntly, that you need to buy a hard drive. And who wants to do that? It's hard to lay out the cash for a backup hard drive, since the payoff is uncertain, and (hopefully) far away. It's a good investment—not an easy one.

http://gizmodo.com/5357993/how-to-back-up-all-your-stuff-for-free

Hiroshima: The Lost Photographs

2009-08-24T12:14:00.001-04:00

Hiroshima: The Lost Photographs

Hiroshima: The United States Strategic Bombing Survey Archive, 1945, International Center of Photography, Purchase, with funds provided by the ICP Acquisitions Committee, 2006

This essay was originally published on Design Observer in November, 2008. It is republished here to commemorate the 64th anniversary of Hiroshima, and with a new slideshow of 100 photographs courtesy of the International Center of Photography.

"One rainy night eight years ago, in Watertown, Massachusetts, a man was taking his dog for a walk. On the curb, in front of a neighbor’s house, he spotted a pile of trash: old mattresses, cardboard boxes, a few broken lamps. Amidst the garbage he caught sight of a battered suitcase. He bent down, turned the case on its side and popped the clasps.
He was surprised to discover that the suitcase was full of black-and-white photographs. He was even more astonished by their subject matter: devastated buildings, twisted girders, broken bridges — snapshots from an annihilated city. He quickly closed the case and made his way back home."

http://observatory.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=7517

2009-08-24T12:12:00.001-04:00

Todd Hido - "Two Way Street"

Re-post from Conscientious

2009-08-24T12:09:00.000-04:00

Previously announced and now on its way to book shops: Hellen van Meene's new bookTout va disparaitre (note: Amazon has the title and cover wrong). The book contains new photography, taken over the past few years in The Netherlands, Russia, and the US.

Early this year, Hellen emailed me and asked me whether I would be willing to write an essay, to be included in the book. Given that I have been a long-time fan of Hellen's work I was more than happy to do that. The essay summarizes a lot of my thinking on portraiture in general, and I am talking about how to approach Hellen's portraits - what they might say, what they have to offer, and what we might have to do to be able to experience them.
The new photographs in this book (click on the images in this post to see larger version) continue Hellen's earlier approach - you can read about the thinking and motivation behind her work here - while expanding it in different directions. For the first time, Hellen used a panoramic camera, and she also added photographs of empty spaces to the mix.
Tout va disparaitre reproduces the photographs at roughly the size of Hellen's smaller exhibition prints - so when looking through the book you basically see the photographs the way Hellen intends them to work.

All images are © Hellen van Meene 2009; they're reproduced courtesy Schirmer/Mosel

Seeking Artists for Home Gallery Show

2009-08-24T11:50:00.002-04:00

Pink Forest Productions in Brooklyn NY is currently seeking artist submissions for a home gallery show on Spet 19th in Brooklyn. The theme of the show is 'home.' Open to all work, including video, photography, paintings, installations, etc. If you would like to be considered, please email images of links to your work to -- lisa@pinkforestfilms.com

New info on Famous War Image

2009-08-18T11:04:00.000-04:00

After nearly three-quarters of a century Robert Capa’s “Falling Soldier” picture from the Spanish Civil War remains one of the most famous images of combat ever. It is also one of the most debated, with a long string of critics claiming that the photo, of a soldier seemingly at the moment of death, was faked. Now, a new book by a Spanish researcher asserts that the picture could not have been made where, when or how Capa’s admirers and heirs have claimed.

In “Shadows of Photography,” José Manuel Susperregui, a communications professor at the Universidad del País Vasco, concludes that Capa’s picture was taken not at Cerro Muriano, just north of Córdoba, but near another town, about 35 miles away. Since that location was far from the battle lines when Capa was there, Mr. Susperregui said, it means that “the ‘Falling Soldier’ photo is staged, as are all the others in the series taken on that front.”

Experts at the International Center of Photography in Manhattan, where Capa’s archive is stored, said they found some aspects of Mr. Susperregui’s investigation intriguing or even convincing. But they continue to believe that the image seen in “Falling Soldier” is genuine, and caution against jumping to conclusions. “Part of what is difficult about this is that people are saying, ‘Well if it’s not here, but there, then, good God, it’s fabricated,’ ” Willis E. Hartshorn, the center’s director, said in an interview. “That’s a leap that I think needs a lot more research and a lot more study.”

Follow Link to continue reading article

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/arts/design/18capa.html

British Photographer Rankin

2009-08-18T10:57:00.000-04:00

British photographer Rankin has photographed hundreds of celebrities and public figures and in the process has become one of the biggest names in the profession. Now he has decided to turn his lens on ordinary people - everyone from refugees in the Democratic Republic of Congo to members of the public near his studio.

Click on the link to here the audio interview

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/arts/2009/08/090812_rankin.shtml

Online Exhibition of Bruce Weber

2009-08-12T15:25:00.000-04:00

GONE FISHING - A LITTLE JOURNEY IN MY BACK YARD is the first online exhibition of the films and photographs of acclaimed filmmaker and photographer Bruce Weber. The exhibition features clips from Bruce's award-winning documentaries and shorts as well as the full-length Pet Shop Boys music video BEING BORING, and YOU FEEL ME, a documentary short film. On August 20, 2009 SundanceChannel.com will host the World Premiere of Weber's latest short film, LIBERTY CITY IS LIKE PARIS TO ME accompanied by a series of photographs chosen by Weber from his forays around Liberty City, Florida.

Follow the link for the rest of the article, online gallery and films -- http://www.sundancechannel.com/bruce-weber/

Life is not easy - From the blog - The Business of Photography

2009-08-12T12:38:00.001-04:00

I encourage you all to ready this next post and actual think about it, this is a difficult business.

Leslie writes a regular column in Picture magazine and is very active in many creative/creative-business groups and forums, both online and in the real world, including AIGA, Adlist/Adland, APAnet, APA, ASMP, and Editorial Photographers (EP).

Leslie Burns-Dell’Acqua lives in San Diego, California with her architect husband and two very spoiled cats. For more information please visit her website here and her blog here.

+ + + + + + +

Life is pain Princess, and anyone who says otherwise is trying to sell something.
is a quote from the Dread Pirate Roberts in The Princess Bride. The Dalai Lama would point out that life is suffering and that suffering is universal. A photographer, however, might say, “I just got a $20k project. It should have been $25K but the client beat me down” or “It’s not fair that I have to pay Workers’ Comp on my assistant!”

The difference between the first two quotes and the last are important. Everyone has crap they have to deal with. Everyone. That’s what the first two show–we’re all in this thing called life and there is a lot of crap in it–we all have pain and suffering. Unfortunately, far too often photographers somehow manage to make it about them–like their suffering is special somehow–and forget about the piles of crap their clients have to deal with. And this is not good for the photographers’ businesses.

Pittsburgh-based photographer (and ASMP VP) Richard Kelly recently offered up this:
I have one client who often says, “if you want to hear a photographer complain just give them an assignment.”

Ouch! Clients notice the whining, and they don’t like it. You need to remember that while you are rendering a valuable service to your clients, they usually (rightly or wrongly) see it as “I’m paying you for that service so I should get what I want and what I don’t want is a bunch of bitching about the assignment I’ve given you.”

Now, I’m not saying you should keep it all inside, but rather that you should never let it out in front of clients…any clients. That’s important–it’s not just the client who is driving you crazy that you shouldn’t complain to, you shouldn’t complain about that difficult client to any OTHER client. These days especially, you just never know who knows who, even internationally, so when you talk to Betty from Agency Z about that jerk Bob from Magazine X, they just might know each other somehow. Even if they don’t, it just makes you look bad.

It’s unprofessional to talk smack about clients to other clients. I remember going to a hair stylist once who complained the whole time about his other clients–some of whom he had clearly been working with for years. I couldn’t trust what he was saying to me because I knew he had to have lied to those clients. I never went back.

Richard also wrote in the same email:
Another client, with whom I sometimes speak to photo schools, is fond of saying, “I hire photographers to solve problems, not to hear about them.”

Exactly! Photographers are creative problem solvers. Clients come to you to make their image problems go away. The idea is to reduce their total “work crap” burden by making great work for them that’ll get their boss of their back, etc. When you, instead, spend your time on the shoot talking about how you can’t find a decent assistant or how it’s a pain to pay self-employment tax, all they are thinking is “I spend 10 hours a day, on a good day, in a cubicle farm and you get to work for yourself doing what you love–why the HELL are you complaining?!” By the time clients leave a shoot where the photographer complains, they are so full of resentment it’s no wonder they take out their frustrations by passive-aggressively “losing” your invoice.

Now, I’m not saying that clients are all perfect humans or even that their actions are justified. Nope, I’m just saying that this is the reality in our business. And if you are going to work with these people and get them to hire you more than once, you need to keep these things in mind as you interact with them.

Besides, when you choose to be pleasant, your business will improve. I speak from personal experience. I used to be one of the darkest people you’d ever know–I could find the downside of the best situation. Then one day I decided to stop being that way, and my business improved. And even if it hadn’t, it’s enough that I have been happier in my work every day anyway.

Self Promotion

2009-08-11T14:33:00.000-04:00

This was found on the blog -- The Business of Photography

Self promotion is an invaluable tool for photographers. It’s not something you can blow off, it’s a must. It has to be a major part of your marketing campaign. In addition to self promoting consistently you need to make sure that all of your touch points coincide with your look your feel your brand. You must use dynamic eye catching images. Creatives are busy, they don’t have time to spend analyzing photographers so you have to force them to stop and take a second to look at your work.

I’m going to point you over to Heather Morton’s blog for a deeper look into promoting your work to AB’s.

By the way, if your not reading Heather’s blog you need to be. She’s a cool AB who’s interested in helping photographers learn about the relationship between them and their buyers.

Layment for a Dying Field: Photojournalism

2009-08-11T14:21:00.001-04:00

PARIS — When photojournalists and their admirers gather in southern France at the end of August for Visa pour l’Image, the annual celebration of their craft, many practitioners may well be wondering how much longer they can scrape by.

Newspapers and magazines are cutting back sharply on picture budgets or going out of business altogether, and television stations have cut back on news coverage in favor of less-costly fare. Pictures and video snapped by amateurs on cellphones are posted to Web sites minutes after events have occurred. Photographers trying to make a living from shooting the news call it a crisis.

In the latest sign of distress, the company that owns the photo agency Gamma sought protection from creditors on July 28 after a loss of €3 million, or $4.2 million, in the first half of the year as sales fell by nearly a third.

Gamma was founded in 1966 by the photographers Raymond Depardon and Gilles Caron. With Sygma, Sipa and, earlier, Magnum, it was one of the independent agencies that helped make Paris a world capital for photojournalism, attracting some of the best photographers the field has produced.

A Paris commercial court gave Gamma’s owner, Eyedea Presse, six months to reorganize itself. The company employs 56 people in its Paris headquarters, 14 of them photographers.

Olivia Riant, a spokeswoman for Eyedea, said there would “inevitably” be job cuts to make the agency viable.

“The business model is not working today,” she said. “So without some changes, it won’t work tomorrow.”

“The problem is that news photography is finished,” Ms. Riant said. “Gamma wants to go back to magazines and newsmagazines. We will stop covering daily news events to more deeply cover issues.”

Gamma’s history shows how the market has changed. The agency was acquired in 1999 by Hachette Filipacchi Médias, a unit of Lagardère S.C.A., which bundled it with others to provide photos for its magazine empire. But the business did not prosper, and it was sold in 2007 to Green Recovery, an investment fund that buys and overhauls distressed companies.

Gamma’s rivals have fared little better: Sygma was acquired by Corbis in 1999, and Sipa by Sud Communication in 2001.

Photojournalism, often said to have begun with the American Civil War photographer Mathew Brady, experienced a golden age lasting from before World War II through the 1970s. Magazines like Time, Life and Paris Match — and virtually all of the world’s major newspapers — had the budgets to put legions of shooters on the ground in competition for the best pictures.

Today, from the point of view of the news image buyer in a magazine or newspaper, it comes down to a calculation for the photo editor: At a time of shrinking advertising revenue and layoffs, can I afford to send a photographer at a cost of $250 a day or more plus expenses? If not, I may be able to illustrate the story adequately with a “live” photo from one of the newswires or with an archival photo, both options available for a fixed monthly subscription.

“This is not a new trend; it’s the continuation of an old one,” said John G. Morris, a former photo editor whose résumé includes years at The New York Times (which publishes the International Herald Tribune), Life magazine and The Washington Post. “I’m 92 years old, and I’ve survived a lot of crises in photojournalism,” he said. “I find the present situation depressing, but I’m crazy enough to be hopeful. There have never been more images out there, and we need more help in sorting out all the information.”

Eyedea Presse said its problems were compounded by a provision of French labor law that requires agencies take on photographers full-time after using a certain amount of their work, a serious competitive disadvantage when the competition overseas employs a much greater percentage of freelancers.

We held out as long as we could, but this business model just isn’t viable anymore,” Stéphane Ledoux, the Eyedea chief executive, said after the court hearing. “They’ve killed French photojournalism by requiring the agencies to make salaried employees of the freelancers.”

French photographers acknowledge the problem, but they say agency managers exaggerate it to justify job cuts.

The major newswires — The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters, along with regional powerhouses like Kyodo in Japan and Xinhua in China — dominate news photography. But the business of marketing and selling digitized pictures is led by two global companies: Getty Images, founded in 1995, and Corbis, founded in 1989 by the Microsoft chairman Bill Gates. The stock photo companies rose to prominence by buying up hundreds of image archives and making them available for sale online. While they do continue to sponsor photojournalism — Getty Images employs 130 photographers around the world — the companies are, in effect, services for managing digital property rights.

If Eyedea Presse were to be liquidated, its archives of nearly 33 million images, including those from Gamma, Rapho and Keystone, would be a valuable addition to any of the major players.

At Getty, 70 percent of revenue is generated by the sale of stock images, its chief executive, Jonathan Klein, said by telephone. With the addition of resources it calls on through a partnership with Agence France-Presse, Mr. Klein said the agency was gaining market share at the expense of the newswires.

“Photojournalism means the photographers can tell the story themselves in pictures, and there were places where they could publish those photos,” Mr. Klein said. “In the print world, many, if not most, of those places have since disappeared.”

Still, he said, there are reasons to be optimistic, because “thanks to the Web, there are now billions of pages for photographers to show their work,” he added. “That’s led to more photos being used, but at a lower price point.”

Jean-François Leroy, organizer of the Visa pour l’Image photojournalism festival, which runs in Perpignan for two weeks beginning Aug. 29, pointed to a declining emphasis in the media on serious subjects — what he called the “disease of the press” — as another problem.

“Photographers are producing plenty of great stuff, but now the media seem interested only in celebrities,” he said. When Michael Jackson died, it wasn’t part of the news, it was the news. How many photographs of his funeral did we really need?”

Mr. Leroy said he would advise budding photojournalists to think very carefully about their commitment to the calling. Twenty years ago, a photojournalist made enough money to live on, he said. “I’m not pretending you would get rich, but you were able to live decently,” he said. “That is not the case now.”

Lorenzo Virgili, a veteran photographer in Paris, said the average salary of a freelance photographer was about €1,700 a month, and that unpaid postproduction work on the computer was taking up ever more time.

Some photographers have taken to working for nongovernmental organizations, large institutions or companies to continue doing what they love, Mr. Virgili said. But that arrangement is ultimately unsatisfactory, he said, because “as a journalist you have a professional ethic, and by working for them you risk compromising your neutrality, you lose your independence.”

Ten years ago, Dirck Halstead, who spent 29 years as a White House photographer for Time magazine, wrote in Digital Journalist: “When I speak of photojournalism as being dead, I am talking only about the concept of capturing a single image on a nitrate film plane, for publication in mass media.” Visual storytelling has itself been around since the Stone Age, he noted, and “will only be enhanced” by the changes now taking place.

Revisiting that column last month, Mr. Halstead wrote that, if anything, conditions today were worse than he had predicted. To be a photojournalist today, he wrote, “You have to be crazy.”

“Those people who will do anything to come back with a story will be out there shooting for a long time,” he concluded.

Natchway

2008-10-04T08:18:00.001-04:00

2008-10-03T08:02:00.000-04:00

new

2007-03-12T17:07:00.000-04:00

Which is better, in your opinion?

1st entry

2007-03-11T14:41:00.000-04:00

This is my first enty.
I made this for class to go along with my website.
Feel free to post and thoughts about the work posted here.

Thank you