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Welcome to OPF! We established OPF May 2006 as an open forum for professional and enthusiast photographers worldwide. You will find the latest discussions on technology, creativity, function and other issues related to photography. Furthermore, these threads are moderated and reviewed by expert photographers. We are a true community of photographers with real names and common interests and experience. OPF is a community of thinkers and doers, dedicated to the working Professional and the creative mind.

Photographies seeks to construct a new agenda for theorising photography as a heterogeneous medium that is changing in an ever more dynamic relation to all aspects of contemporary culture. Photographies aims to further develop the history and theory of photography, considering new frameworks for thinking and addressing questions arising from the present context of technological, economic, political and cultural change. Photographies will investigate the contemporary condition and currency of the photographic within local and global contexts. The editors seek research papers and innovative visual essays, shorter papers engaging new debates, review essays evaluating publications, cultural events, key developments, exhibitions and conferences. Photographies aims to: - establish a sustained and dynamic forum for the development of the history and theory of photography, - consider new frameworks for thinking and addressing questions arising from digital technologies and economic, political and cultural change, - examine contemporary uses and currencies of the photographic within local and global contexts, - identify, develop and discuss emergent critical debates and practices, - publish work in the humanities and social sciences which has a bearing upon our understanding of photography thereby locating debate within a wider community.

Aims & Scope Third Text is an international scholarly journal dedicated to providing critical perspectives on art and visual culture. The journal examines the theoretical and historical ground by which the West legitimises its position as the ultimate arbiter of what is significant within this field. Established in 1987, the journal provides a forum for the discussion and (re)appraisal of theory and practice of art, art history and criticism, and the work of artists hitherto marginalised through racial, gender, religious and cultural differences. Dealing with diversity of art practices - visual arts, sculpture, installation, performance, photography, video and film - Third Text addresses the complex cultural realities that emerge when different worldviews meet, and the challenge this poses to Eurocentrism and ethnocentric aesthetic criteria. The journal aims to develop new discourses and radical interdisciplinary scholarships that go beyond the confines of eurocentricity.

Aims & Scope Visual Studies is a major international peer-reviewed journal published on behalf of the International Visual Sociology Association. The journal publishes visually-oriented articles across a range of disciplines, and represents a long-standing commitment to empirical visual research, studies of visual and material culture, the development of visual research methods and the exploration of visual means of communication about social and cultural worlds. Visual Studies is a key resource for all disciplines that engage with images, society and culture, and sets the standard for the scholarly use of visual material. The multidisciplinary character of the journal is reflected in its attention to visually-based research in sociology, anthropology, cultural and media studies, documentary film and photography, information technology, education, communication studies as well as other fields concerned with image-based study. The aims of Visual Studies are to: * Provide an international forum for the development of visual research. * Promote acceptance and understanding of a wide range of methods, approaches and paradigms that constitute image-based research. * Reduce the disparity in emphasis between visual and written studies in the social sciences. * Promote an interest in developing visual research methodology in all its various forms. * Encourage research that employs a mixture of visual methods and analytical approaches within one study. * Critically reflect and contribute to the dialogue surrounding 'the visual' across the social sciences and humanities. * Provide an arena for in-depth exploration of various approaches, particular methods, themes and visual phenomena. Most articles published in the journal are accompanied by appropriate visual material, and the journal encourages visually-led submissions.

Attitude Counts Guidelines for Assistants By Pamela Kruzic The following is a compilation of responses that the author received after posting an inquiry on the ASMP members-only forum at [www.asmp.org] combined with her own experience as an assistant. Information providers: David Budd, Alan Farkas, George Fulton, Ira Mark Gostin, Tom Hussey, Jeffrey Jacobs, Deborah Gray Mitchell, Harrison Northcutt, Michael Sharp. Edited by: Ira Mark Gostin and Michael Sharp. Special thanks to Jerrianne Lowther and Roy Buckner.

Setting the Standard Setting the standard: A commitment to front-line journalism; an obligation to front-line journalism. A September 2000 Freedom Forum European Center report and transcript on safety standards for journalists working in dangerous zones.

Overview The Exhibitions Program at the Center for Documentary Studies presents images, documents, sound, and written experiences in four galleries, bringing to light telling details and resonant moments in everyday life that might otherwise go unnoticed. CDS exhibitions connect people to those moments, and to a larger story. Serving as a community forum for documentary work, the galleries make the documentary arts accessible to a general audience and present experiences that inform, heighten our historical and cultural awareness, create discourse, foster understanding, and confront traditional views of "others."

Welcome to Photo.net: A Community of Photographers

Declaration of Principles Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone is news reporting for the new millennium - a nexus of backpack journalism, narrative story-telling techniques, and the Internet, designed to reach a global audience hungry for information. Our Mission and Goals To cover every armed conflict* in the world within one year, and in doing so to provide a clear idea of the combatants, victims, causes, and costs of each of these struggles - and their global impact. With honest, thoughtful reporting we'll strive to establish Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone as a forum for information and involvement. Users will not only learn about the scope of world conflict, but will find ways to be part of the solutions- through dialogue, debate, and avenues for action. How We'll Do It We will be aggressive in pursuing the stories that are not getting mainstream coverage and we will put a human face on them. We will not chase headlines nor adhere to pack journalism but vigorously pursue the stories in front of and behind the conflict, the small stories that when strung together illustrate a more complete picture. Veteran war correspondent Kevin Sites will travel solo to these conflict zones, aided by a U.S.-based "mission control" team: Producer Robert Padavick (NBC News, CNN) and Researcher Lisa Liu (Radio Free Asia, International Medical Corps). Using the latest technology, including high-definition digital cameras and satellite modems, Kevin will deliver stories via a five-fingered multimedia platform of text, photography, video, audio, and interactive chat - all available on one website (http://hotzone.yahoo.com).

Given the emergence of the digital, few appear to be exploring whether more effective and expansive media strategies can now emerge. This site is a forum on possibility, launched in conjunction with the publication of Fred Ritchin's book After Photography in fall of 2008.

Research paper from 2008 plotting the evolution of Flickr and examining it's emerging role as a community forum for disaster-related grassroots activity.

The photograph, framed without margins and behind Plexiglas, is just under four and a half feet high by nearly nine and a half feet wide. Its title is A Lunch at the Belvedere, and it depicts an actual event that took place at the Hotel Belvedere in Davos, Switzerland, during the World Economic Forum of 2004. The lunch was hosted by Pervez Musharraf, president of Pakistan, whose guest of honor was the famous American financier-philanthropist George Soros. The diners, eleven men, sit facing the viewer--though none looks toward the camera--on the far side of a long table that runs the full width of the picture. (To take this in the viewer must begin his or her engagement with the work by standing ten or twelve feet back from it.) One has the impression that the lunch has not properly begun. For the most part the men are talking quietly with one another, and to the left a chic young woman, possibly a waitress, bends over the table as if serving or taking an order. The image is by far most arresting toward its center, where the elegant, dark-haired and mustached Musharraf is shown talking earnestly to Soros, while a third man, to Soros's left, listens in. And what is arresting is precisely the extraordinary accuracy, as it seems to one, of the depiction of an entire range of small-scale, unemphatic, but nevertheless intensely photogenic gestures, expressions, postures, and pieces of behavior: for example, the small-scale gesture--scarcely more than a tensing of the wrist--of Musharraf's partly open left hand as he makes his point; the downward cast of Soros's head and his inscrutable, almost sullen-seeming facial expression as he plays with something on the tablecloth with his left hand; and the diffident demeanor of the third man who sits with both elbows on the table and his hands clasped.

"What is Citizen Journalism? The idea behind citizen journalism is that people without professional journalism training can use the tools of modern technology and the global distribution of the Internet to create, augment or fact-check media on their own or in collaboration with others. For example, you might write about a city council meeting on your blog or in an online forum. Or you could fact-check a newspaper article from the mainstream media and point out factual errors or bias on your blog. Or you might snap a digital photo of a newsworthy event happening in your town and post it online. Or you might videotape a similar event and post it on a site such as YouTube. "

"On the Internet, everybody is a millenarian. Internet journalism, according to those who produce manifestos on its behalf, represents a world-historical development-not so much because of the expressive power of the new medium as because of its accessibility to producers and consumers. That permits it to break the long-standing choke hold on public information and discussion that the traditional media-usually known, when this argument is made, as "gatekeepers" or "the priesthood"-have supposedly been able to maintain up to now. "Millions of Americans who were once in awe of the punditocracy now realize that anyone can do this stuff-and that many unknowns can do it better than the lords of the profession," Glenn Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor who operates one of the leading blogs, Instapundit, writes, typically, in his new book, "An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government and Other Goliaths." The rhetoric about Internet journalism produced by Reynolds and many others is plausible only because it conflates several distinct categories of material that are widely available online and didn't use to be. One is pure opinion, especially political opinion, which the Internet has made infinitely easy to purvey. Another is information originally published in other media-everything from Chilean newspaper stories and entries in German encyclopedias to papers presented at Micronesian conferences on accounting methods-which one can find instantly on search and aggregation sites. Lately, grand journalistic claims have been made on behalf of material produced specifically for Web sites by people who don't have jobs with news organizations. According to a study published last month by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, there are twelve million bloggers in the United States, and thirty-four per cent of them consider blogging to be a form of journalism. That would add

Photographs of a man accused of the attempted murder of a photographer in Mozambique, Africa, have been released.Photographer Kypros Kyprianou (pictured), who grew up in England, claims 'bandits' tried to kill him in a remote African villagePicture credit: Copyright Kypros Kyprianou

Thurman, N. (2008) Published in New Media & Society 10(1)

Is The Amateur Really A Threat to the Pro? Consider the photographer who has an unlimited amount of time to accomplish an image. Or, the student, who has a week or two to complete an assignment on, say, lighting a bowl of fruit. Or, the hobbyist photographer, who stumbles upon a great image. Are these photographers a threat to the photographer who works on assignment?