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PhotoPlus Seminar: Boosting Your Web Site's Search Engine Rankings\n\nBlake Discher says the second thing he does when he gets up in the morning is a Google search on "Detroit photographer" to make sure his site comes up first in the search results. If it doesn't, he tweaks the site to re-establish his king-of-the-hill status. His seminar, "Is Your Web Site Doing All It Can to Make You Money?" was all about how to put your own site at the top of search engine rankings. The technical term for it, by the way, is Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

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).

Online Exhibition: "Portraiture Now: Feature Photography" The National Portrait Gallery recently opened an exhibition that explores the work of six photographers-Katy Grannan, Jocelyn Lee, Ryan McGinley, Steve Pyke, Martin Schoeller, and Alec Soth-who, through their editorial assignment work, "each bring their distinctive 'take' on contemporary portraiture to a broad audience." "Their work," reads the curatorial statement, "builds upon a longstanding tradition of photographic portraiture for the popular press and highlights creative possibilities for twenty-first-century portrayal." For those who won't find themselves in Washinton, D.C. anytime soon, an online exhibition was created and can be found here; however, according to the site, there are additional portraits in the gallery that do not appear in the Web exhibition.

VII Photo Panel: Why Photography Still Matters Long, long ago, when picture magazines arrived in millions of homes once a week, and people still read newspapers, a news photo could have an immediate impact on public opinion. Images of fire hoses turned on men and women wanting to exercise their right to vote mobilized thousands of voter registration volunteers. An image of a naked girl running down a road to flee a napalm bombing curdled public opinion about an already unpopular war. But in today's fractured media, with so few publications showing serious photography, can a photo really make a difference? The answer, according to participants in the panel discussion held last night at the VII Photo agency office, is yes. Each panelist-a Congressional aide, a human rights activist and a photojournalist-gave examples of the surprising and sometimes unexpected ways that photos of human rights issues have moved individuals to take action.

VII Photo Panel: Why Photography Still Matters Long, long ago, when picture magazines arrived in millions of homes once a week, and people still read newspapers, a news photo could have an immediate impact on public opinion. Images of fire hoses turned on men and women wanting to exercise their right to vote mobilized thousands of voter registration volunteers. An image of a naked girl running down a road to flee a napalm bombing curdled public opinion about an already unpopular war. But in today's fractured media, with so few publications showing serious photography, can a photo really make a difference? The answer, according to participants in the panel discussion held last night at the VII Photo agency office, is yes. Each panelist-a Congressional aide, a human rights activist and a photojournalist-gave examples of the surprising and sometimes unexpected ways that photos of human rights issues have moved individuals to take action.

PhotoPlus Event: Elliott Erwitt and Alec Soth\n\nElliott Erwitt and Alec Soth, two great photographers widely separated by their vision, style, and generations--but sharing a sense of irony, self-effacing wit, and a photo agency (Magnum)-took the stage at New York's Javits Center last night to talk to a packed audience about their work and careers.\n\nPrompted by the moderator Harald Johnson and a projection of some of his most iconic images, Erwitt spoke first, offering a brief, matter-of-fact accounting of his career and work, which he peppered with one-liners.\n\nErwitt is a keen observer of people and dogs, and the absurd things they do. He also has a sharp comic sense of visual timing and juxtaposition. All of that was on display in his slideshow. Describing one image of a dog in jumping straight upwards, Erwitt said, "People ask, Why is he jumping?' It's because I barked. I bark at dogs, they jump."

Here's a nice service for anyone who wants to learn more about copyright law and how it applies to images. The Picture Archive Council of America has posted a free online video seminar by attorney Nancy Wolff. Watch it here. PACA is also making this presentation available on DVD. It is available by contacting the PACA Executive Director at 23046 Avenida de la Carlota, Suite 600, Laguna Hills, CA 92653, or by email: execdirector@pacaoffice.org. The video is part of the Jane Kinne Copyright Education Program, named in memory of the stock agency pioneer who died last year.

right wing critics of newsweek wanted more retouching

New York Times Magazine Withdraws Altered Photo Essay UPDATE, 5:57 p.m. ET: The New York Times has published a new editors' note about the altered photo essay that was published in Sunday's Times Magazine. The newspaper says "most of the images did not wholly reflect the reality they purported to show." The note does not address which photos were altered, or whether the photographer misrepresented them to the editors. PDN has tried to reach Edgar Martins, the photographer, but has not heard from him. Here's the Times' note: "A picture essay in The Times Magazine on Sunday and an expanded slide show on NYTimes.com entitled 'Ruins of the Second Gilded Age' showed large housing construction projects across the United States that came to a halt, often half-finished, when the housing market collapsed. The introduction said that the photographer, a freelancer based in Bedford, England, 'creates his images with long exposures but without digital manipulation.' "A reader, however, discovered on close examination that one of the pictures was digitally altered, apparently for aesthetic reasons. Editors later confronted the photographer and determined that most of the images did not wholly reflect the reality they purported to show. Had the editors known that the photographs had been digitally manipulated, they would not have published the picture essay, which has been removed from NYTimes.com."

Photographic truth and Photoshop April 17th, 2009 Photography's anxiety about truth, manipulation and reality has been on show recently. In different ways and from different contexts, people have been asking: "how much Photoshop is too much"? From the realm of fashion, French Elle is being celebrated for running a cover story in which the models photographs have not been 'Photoshopped' (thereby confirming, as I've noted previously, that digital manipulation is the norm in this visual domain). From the world of photojournalism, blogs like 1854, PDNPulse and the Online Photographer (with a follow-up here) have been buzzing with the story of the Danish photographer Klavs Bo Christensen who was excluded from that country's Picture of the Year competition for excessive colour manipulation of his Haiti story. Along with two others, Christensen was asked to submit his RAW files to the competition judges who felt that the colour in his photographs had been excessively saturated (their debate can be heard here), and removed his images from the competition as a result. Christensen was subsequently happy to have his files put on the web for comparison and discussion, thereby performing an important service to the photographic community.

Update May 10: Here's a link to the official White House report on the flyover. We've also swapped in a high-res version of the Air Force One-Statue of Liberty photo. Original post below. -------- Here's the photo that caused so...