dvafoto

Stop doing $200 shoots – APhotoEditor is on a roll

M. Scott Brauer — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 01:40:21 +0000

Rob Haggart at APhotoEditor.com has been on a roll lately: Ask Anything – Does a photographer need a rep and do they really get you work?, The Value Of A News Photograph, Ask Anything – Should You Tell Your Clients If You Are Pregnant Or Have A Life Threatening Illness?, the editorial staff’s perspective on Negotiating The Editorial Contract, Ask Anything – How Do You Get Started Photographing Fashion?, Photographers- How To Deal With Infringements, a survey of Commercial Photographer Income, Ad Agency Guide To Photography Usage Terms, Ask Anything – Should Photographers be Unionized?, Ask Anything With Amanda And Suzanne – How Not To Blow The Face To Face Meeting, Ask anything with Amanda and Suzanne – How Much Money Do Commercial Photographers Make?, and especially the most recent post, Stop Accepting $200 Assignments. All well worth a read, discussion in the comments usually is worth a look, too.

Moises Saman, unembedded in Afghanistan

Matt Lutton — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:27:42 +0000

The NYT Lens Blog posted today some of the only unembedded conflict photography from Iraq or Afghanistan that I can remember seeing in awhile (can you think of other examples? send them my way). Moises Saman was on assignment for the New York Times in the town of Marja in the aftermath of a recent offensive. It is strong work and provides something of a different view of the conflict there, though quite a few images do feature soldiers in the field. The perspective though, as the photographer is not working with them, is an interesting wrinkle and Saman explains how he got some of the images in the accompanying text.

This piece on Lens is a nice counterpoint to a piece published a few days ago with NYT Photographer Tyler Hicks who was embedded with a US unit which was conducting the operation/offensive in the same town days before Saman arrived. I think it is great that there are two angles on the same story by the same publication, especially from the perspective of being with and outside the military. I hope to see more, especially from the ‘outside’ perspective. I wonder how they played off of each other in the actual editions (online and print) of the paper. Again, anyone know?

Trying to enforce copyright on the iconic Che Guevara image

M. Scott Brauer — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 02:43:19 +0000

Image results searching for Che on bing.com

The Guardian has an interesting, if brief, backstory on a photographer’s heir trying to enforce copyright on the ubiquitous iconic image of Che Guevara seen on t-shirts, posters, and messenger bags the world over (above).

“For decades the Argentinian-born Guevara’s adopted spiritual home of Cuba did not recognise copyright. It was only following the collapse of the former Soviet Union that Cuba joined the World Trade Organisation and legalised copyright.” -Row rages over iconic image of Che Guevara in the Guardian

It’s now been 50 years since Cuban photographer Alberto Díaz “Korda” Gutiérrez, who died in 2001, made the image. Now Diaz’s daughter has been going after advertising companies in an attempt to recoup license fees for widespread usage of the image.

I always love knowing the stories surrounding iconic images…

(via Politics, Theory, and Photography)

Worth a read: Copyright Corner

M. Scott Brauer — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 00:17:29 +0000

The Copyright Corner

I haven’t gotten a chance to look through the site too much, but it looks like The Copyright Corner will be a useful resource. From the site:

As an artist or designer, you are passionate and serious about your work. You should be just as serious about learning about copyright, because copyright allows you to protect your work, or to share it with others, if that is your preference. This site, dedicated to the creative spirit, aims to be a source of accurate information, and a corner for debate and dialogue about copyright and other important intellectual property issues.

File this next to Stanford’s Copyright and Fair Use Information Center, Carolyn E. Wright’s Photo Attorney blog (and see her recent guest post at A Photo Editor on dealing with infringements), The Copyright Zone, and Matt Slaby’s Legal Left, Meet Creative Right column.

SW!PE Magazine

Matt Lutton — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 21:04:55 +0000

SW!PE Magazine is created by and features the work of former and active guards at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Favorite Jason Eskenazi is one of the founders of the project and gives word that The New York Times has published an article about the magazine’s first issue and opening exhibition. Check out the article for more background and a nice gallery of various works that are featured in the magazine. You can buy a copy of the first issue “Guards’ Matter”, which sold out at the opening, through their website.

“In September, the Robert Frank photography exhibit “The Americans” came to the museum and Mr. Eskenazi requested a transfer to its gallery. “Being inside that maze of photos was like a meditation,” he said, adding “but a torture knowing that I should not be here guarding art but making it. ” In November, he left to concentrate on his art.”

Another great example of artists (and workers, as they point out) taking matters in to their own hands and getting their work out there and in the form they want. Congrats to everyone involved in this project, I hope to see a copy of the magazine sometime soon.

And speaking of Eskenazi you should have a look at this gallery of his work and writing at globalpost.com if you haven’t already.

Shield Law-protected photographer outs himself and photo in College Photographer of the Year Contest

M. Scott Brauer — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 03:29:28 +0000

A photographer who, last April, invoked California State Shield Law protections revealed one photo and his own name by entering and winning an award in the College Photographer of the Year competition. Alex Welsh, whose work we mentioned previously when it won the Gold Medal in Documentary Photography, photographed a murder scene while working on the Hunters Point story which has been widely recognized this year. Police investigating the crime asked Welsh to hand over images of the crime scene, but Welsh refused to do so, citing protections against releasing journalists’ unpublished material and notes. A San Francisco Superior Court judge sided with the photographer, deciding that Shield Laws applied in this case, and kept the photographer’s name withheld from other media and court documents for the photographer’s safety. The photographer, it turns out, had already released his name and at least one of the images in question to the College Photographer of the Year competition. Now, police again are trying to get Welsh’s cooperation in their investigation. The San Francisco Weekly has more.

Stepan Rudik disqualified from World Press Photo

M. Scott Brauer — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 01:10:34 +0000

Please visit dvafoto for more.

“After careful consideration, we found it imperative to disqualify the photographer from the contest. The principle of World Press Photo is to promote high standards in photojournalism. Therefore, we must maintain the integrity of our organization even when the outcome is regrettable.” -Michiel Munneke, managing director of World Press Photo

Lens, PetaPixel, and BJP all have good coverage of the latest photo manipulation scandal in photojournalism: World Press Photo has disqualified Stepan Rudik, 3rd place Sports Features in the 2010 contest, for an ethics violation. Rudik removed an element of a picture (see the slideshow above) in violation of World Press Photo contest regulations against image alteration, specifically this rule: “The content of the image must not be altered. Only retouching which conforms to the currently accepted standards in the industry is allowed.” The object seems to stem from the removal of a person’s foot from the background of the picture, which Rudik defended to the BJP, saying, “the photograph I submitted to the contest is a crop, and the retouched detail is the foot of a man which appears on the original photograph, but who is not a subject of the image submitted to the contest.”

I’ve got to echo Asim Rafiqui: What a laughable extreme crop and toning job. Color and tilt correction in photoshop is one thing, moody vignetting in photoshop is another, but this is a whole new level of turning a crap photo into something entirely different. Wow. This, rather than the offending foot, is the bigger problem for the credibility of photojournalism.

Worth a Listen: Rob Hornstra on funding projects

Matt Lutton — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:13:36 +0000

We’ve mentioned photographer Rob Hornstra and his unorthodox and perhaps revolutionary ideas on funding his book projects before. He is currently working on a project about Sochi, Russia and the run-up to the next Winter Olympics, funding the trips via crowd-sourced donations (see link for more info). He discusses his ideas and methods about funding his own project on the New York Photo Festival’s website, and its a nice thing to hear. Inspiring.

Page from Rob Hornstra and Arnold van Bruggen's promo for The Sochi Project

There is also a small slideshow of posters he put up around Rome during an exhibition there, which is a cool thing to see and harkens to my old post Bringing Photos Back to the Street.

Worth a Look: Carolyn Drake in Central Asia

Matt Lutton — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 13:19:54 +0000

I’ve written before about Carolyn Drake and her work about water issues in Central Asia, but Pete Brook on his auxiliary blog Photography Prison just pointed me to a new narrated slideshow Drake has done for Orion Magazine. Have a look at “Return to the Center of the World: Following two storied rivers through Central Asia”

In America’s mass consciousness, Central Asia has transformed from being part of a powerful communist Cold War enemy into a place where the threat of Islamic extremism is imminent—all within the short span of my adult lifetime. Amid the clutter of preformed judgments that surface during the course of this work, it is always a comfort to return to the rivers. No matter how many different names they have been given, or empires have ruled them, or canals have been made from them, I can still see the rivers. Traveling along them offers the closest thing to truth that I can find.

dvafoto’s Deadline Calendar

M. Scott Brauer — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 05:54:12 +0000

Our monthly posting of dvafoto’s deadline calendar. The calendar can be accessed in a web browser, or with ical or xml applications. If you know of any upcoming deadlines not on the list, please send them to deadlines@dvafoto.com or use the submissions page.