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PhotoPlus Seminar: Making a Good Impression on Clients\n\nIf there was a unifying theme to Mary Virginia Swanon's "First Impressions: Selling Yourself in 20 Minutes" seminar today, it was Do Your Homework. Before you approach a photo buyer, photo editor, or gallery owner, Google him or her. Study the publication or ad agency they work for to figure out what photography they're looking for, and make sure your work is a good match (because clients are never impressed by photographers who waste their time).

"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

"Increasingly music is finding its way into online multimedia journalism, and with good reason. A well chosen soundtrack can pull your viewers deep into your story, keep them hooked and make an emotional point. Music is, and let's be honest about this, a way of manipulating how your audience feel. There are those purists who are against that, who argue the story should be strong enough not to need to tell your viewer how to feel. Whichever camp you lie in, one thing is for sure: if you use music in any piece of online video journalism or digital story it must be legal. There is no excuse for getting your client or your newsroom shouldered with an expensive bill just because that bit of Arcade Fire fitted perfectly with the film. The good news is there are plenty of resources out there for free, or cheap, music. Most, but not all, operate under the Creative Commons Licence, which lets you use music on certain conditions."

Terms & Conditions for your business paperwork Good paperwork is of the utmost importance in your business. It helps prevent misunderstandings, protects your legal and financial interests, and conveys a crisp, businesslike impression to your clients. Every few years, ASMP publishes a new edition of its manual Professional Business Practices in Photography. The sample business forms in that book represent the best business practices in our ever-changing industry. The medium of print, however, is entirely static and cannot convey the vast range of options that good paperwork must encompass. The Web, in contrast, provides a malleable medium in which the text can be varied to reflect the choices made by users. Hence this module.

"William Klein and the Radioactive Fifties,"

A New Website for a Changing World SocialDocumentary.net is a new website that features documentary photography from around the world-images and words that explore the human condition. Easily Create Documentary Websites About Critical Issues Facing Our World Today Professional and amateur photographers, journalists, NGOs, students-anyone with a story to tell and a collection of good photographs-can easily and affordably begin creating websites on SocialDocumentary.net. Global warming, international justice, post-conflict reconstruction, HIV/AIDS, or life in Afghanistan or suburban America are just a few of the themes that you can find on SocialDocumentary.net. The goal of this website is to make our lives richer and more informed about issues affecting us and our world today. Powerful photographs can also lead to meaningful change in the lives of ordinary people. SocialDocumentary. net provides tools for photographer to inform viewers how to take action-either by supporting NGOs doing work on the issues, or by engaging in direct political action. Not all documentary photographers are concerned with action. Many photographers featured on SocialDocumentary.net are concerned with subtleties of the human experience and exploring personal themes. Photographs on SocialDocumentary.net-whether of struggling farmers in Africa or of suburban teenagers in Philadelphia-offer a fresh way to look at the world and a greater understanding of humanity. The secondary goal is to create an online image bank of quality photographs documenting all aspects of the world created by an international collection of photographers. This will enable students, college professors, journalists, and anyone else to easily see any part of the world in quality digital imagery and gain valuable information about the subjects they are viewing. We encourage all photographers, everywhere, to use this site as a tool in their own image-making and documentary exploration. We also encourage n

Blackboard Collaborate software solutions offer a social, interactive learning experience with virtual classrooms, online conferencing, instant messaging and more collaboration tools.

Blackboard Collaborate software solutions offer a social, interactive learning experience with virtual classrooms, online conferencing, instant messaging and more collaboration tools.

One surefire way to irritate blind people is to think that you can put a blindfold on for an hour or two and understand what it is to be blind. It sounds like a good idea until you really start to think about it. I should know. I once set out to make a radio documentary for the BBC about the contrasting ways in which the visually impaired and the sighted experience the countryside.

This a guest post by Ken Jarecke, a world-renowned photojournalist and founding member of Contact Press Images, an illustrious photo agency based in New York. Please also visit and read his blog, Mostly True. The past few years it's been hard for me to pick up a camera. We all know that the industry, at least the editorial side of it, has been at an all time low. Sure, I've worked to put a good face on it, like in this piece on the New York Times Lens blog, but more often than not, my desire to make wonderful images has been absent. My heart has just not been there.

"humanitarian agencies are almost never held to account for doing wrong, even as they do not hesitate to take credit when they do good. What's more, I wrote, the humanitarian claim of political neutrality is a fiction: humanitarian action always has a political consequence, and one cannot deny responsibility for it. My focus was on humanitarian responses to armed conflict (rather than, say, natural disasters, or peace-time economic development) and on how, time and again, aid serves to cater conflicts, or to transform a crisis into the status quo. "

good source of news on central asia and caucasus

Digital Photography Resources Some years ago, professional-caliber digital cameras began to match, and then to exceed, the capabilities of standard film for many commercial applications. Today, digital photography has taken a firm hold on the market. Both technical and business problems remain to be solved, however, and this page offers some resources to help you find good solutions. There still are, and may always be, certain market niches where silver-halide film reigns supreme. But for most photographers, as for most publishers and advertisers, the technical challenge is no longer to make digital photography work, but rather to get the most productivity and pizzazz from the medium. The business challenge is to forge a new, industry-wide consensus on cost recovery and financial best practices.

An ASMP white paper by Richard Weisgrau Publishers control the day rate that they pay to photographers. In 25 years they have failed to increase the day rate to a level that would allow photographers to maintain the standard of living of 1973. In spite of this failure, many publishers seek more and more rights from photographers for the same low and continuously eroding fees. The situation is out of control. Photographers feel that they cannot control the day rate. They perceive that they have little individual clout in a negotiation with a major magazine. They cannot collectively bargain, since they are independent contractors and not entitled to the collective bargaining power of a union. The simple fact is that the publisher has all the advantages, EXCEPT FOR ONE. If the situation does not improve, good and reliable photographers will eventually be forced to refuse editorial assignments, since these will not support the photographers' costs and commitments to their businesses.

Taking Stock By Angela Wolff Back in the 80s and 90s, "stock" was the name of the game. The economy was good, the market was hungry, and agencies hustled to get their photographers the biggest clients at the best rates. But then came agency consolidation. New contracts were issued, and many photographers felt their "agents" had become vendors, chipping away at prices, demanding higher sales percentages, and leaving their photographers to fend for themselves. Some photographers have become frustrated and have left the stock game altogether. Others have simply decided to take matters into their own hands. Many are collecting fees from images still represented by the big agencies, while cultivating profitable stock models of their own. They have found ways - by creating their own e-commerce sites, by capitalizing on niche specialties, by maintaining hands-on relationships with buyers, or by turning low-profit deals into moneymakers - to make the most of the current stock market. The photographers we talked to all said that, when licensing their own images, they garnered higher fees than agencies would have. Not just higher than the percentage split they'd usually see on their commission statements, but fees higher than what agencies typically charge their clients in the first place. The reason: As the big agencies gobbled up more and more small agencies and subsequently cut their image libraries, they not only offered lower revenues to their photographers, they also gave their clients fewer options and fewer services.

THEORY - "The Treacherous Medium: Why Photography Critics Hate Photographs " The Treacherous Medium: Why photography critics hate photographs Boston Review, by Susie Linfield In 1846, Charles Baudelaire wrote a little essay called "What is the Good of Criticism?" This is a question that virtually every critic asks herself at some point, and that some have answered with hopelessness, despair, even self-loathing. Baudelaire didn't think that criticism would save the world, but he didn't think it was a worthless pursuit, either. For Baudelaire, criticism was the synthesis of thought and feeling: in criticism, Baudelaire wrote, "passion … raises reason to new heights." A few years later, he would explain that through criticism he sought "to transform my pleasure into knowledge"-a pithy, excellent description of critical practice. Baudelaire's American contemporary Margaret Fuller held a similar view; as she put it, the critic teaches us "to love wisely what we before loved well."

William Eggleston: The Tender-Cruel Camera by Thomas Weski 'I don't particularly like what's around me.' I said that could be a good reason to take pictures. He said: 'You know, that's not a bad idea.' Around the middle of the sixties, in the middle of the night, William Eggleston was standing in one of the first industrial photofinishing laboraties, watching hundreds of color photos being churned out of the developing machines on endless reels of paper. Countless such visits were to sharpen Eggleston's awareness of the world of images and its amateurish, unpretentious treatment by the masses of people who had their color snaps developed and printed in this laboratory overnight. For Eggleston, this confrontation with visual mediocrity was an altogether exciting and unforgettable experience and was to become an important basis for his later work.

Jun 2001 [Freelance] Advice for photographers covering demonstrations Before covering any demonstration, time spent on preparation usually pays off in keeping safe and getting good pictures.

ten good tips for making better pictures

Photography equipment is important to good pictures. Get tips for using a camera and flash in this free video clip about professional photography lighting and equipment.