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"Corentin Wauters: Gamma is one of the most famous photojournalism agencies. Some even call it legendary. How important has it been for photojournalism? Michiel Munneke: I think Gamma - but also others like Magnum, for instance - played an extremely important role from early years on, especially in documenting crucial news events around the world. It's important to realise that in those days you had magazines like Life and the Picture Post who very generously allocated tens of pages to events like the war in Vietnam, for example. Those publications and photographs made a huge impact on their readerships. I think it's fair to say that the founders of Gamma, like Raymond Depardon - although he moved to Magnum at the end of the '70s - and Gilles Corron, who died in 1970 in Cambodia, can be classified as legendary. They played a very important role in news documenting in those years. Raymond Depardon said that in 1966 you only had to travel far away and take three shots to get published in magazines Paris Match or Le Nouvel Observateur. How has the profession of photojournalism changed since Gamma was founded? If Depardon was saying that competition for space in publications like Paris Match or Le Nouvel Observateur is stronger, then he's absolutely right. Competition is far more severe. Circulations are going down, advertising revenues are shrinking, and consequently budgets for journalism and for photography are being cut. image Nowadays its very rare that publications send photographers for assignments overseas. Take a renowned magazine like Time. They still have photographers on staff but they very rarely get assignments to go overseas. It's a sign of the times. Gamma, but also other big photojournalism agencies like Sipa, were founded in Paris. The city had a big name as a centre for photojournalism. To what extent is that true today? I think for those years it was really true. But now, in the era of globalisation and digitisation, it doesnâ

"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

Press Releases 02/16/2006 THE ASSOCIATED PRESS STATEMENT OF NEWS VALUES AND PRINCIPLES For more than a century and a half, men and women of The Associated Press have had the privilege of bringing truth to the world. They have gone to great lengths, overcome great obstacles - and, too often, made great and horrific sacrifices - to ensure that the news was reported quickly, accurately and honestly. Our efforts have been rewarded with trust: More people in more places get their news from the AP than from any other source. In the 21st century, that news is transmitted in more ways than ever before - in print, on the air and on the Web, with words, images, graphics, sounds and video. But always and in all media, we insist on the highest standards of integrity and ethical behavior when we gather and deliver the news.

Press Freedom and Safety ©FIP A press freedom violation can be an assassin's bullet, aimed to kill an investigative journalist, and to intimidate and silence his colleagues. It can be the knock on the door from the police, bringing in a reporter to question her on her sources, or put her in jail with or without a proper trial. It can be a restrictive media law, which puts the power over editorial content into the hands of censors and press courts.

Stephen Mayes, Managing Director of VII Photo Agency, served as Jury Secretary for the World Press Photo Awards from 2004-2009. On May 3, 2009, he gave a lecture at the awards ceremony highlighting his personal observations and insights about the process of awarding the most prestigious prize in photojournalism. Introduction by Michiel Munneke, Managing Director of World Press Photo Foundation.

Bill Frakes is a Sports Illustrated Staff Photographer based in Florida. He has worked in more than 100 countries for a wide variety of editorial and advertising clients. His advertising clients include Nike, CocaCola, Champion, Isleworth, Stryker, IBM, Nikon, Kodak, and Reebok. Editorially his work has appeared in virtually every major general interest publication in the world. Bill won the coveted Newspaper Photographer of the Year award in the prestigious Pictures of the Year competition. He was a member of the Miami Herald staff that won the Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of Hurricane Andrew . He has also been honored by the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards for reporting on the disadvantaged and by the Overseas Press club for distinguished foreign reporting. He was awarded the Gold Medal by World Press Photo. He has received hundreds of national and international awards for his work. The total content of this entire site, all text, graphics, code and photographs are protected by copyright. Violation of copyright will be actively prosecuted. None of the images on this site are to construed as an endorsement by the individuals photographed or the holders of any of the marks pictured. It is simply Bill Frakes photographic portfolio.

Danish Photoshop Debate Leads To Disqualification By Donald R. Winslow © 2009 News Photographer magazine COPENHAGEN, DENMARK (April 13, 2009) - Ethical questions surrounding photojournalists' use of Photoshop in image processing is not a controversy confined to the American market. Currently the embroilment rages in Denmark, where at least one photojournalist has been disqualified from a contest because it's been determined that his image manipulation went too far. Jens Tønnesen, the Webmaster for the Danish Union of Press Photographers, attended the National Press Photographers Association's NewsVideo Workshop in Norman, OK, last week where he told News Photographer magazine about the heated Photoshop debate that's going on back in Copenhagen. "There's a big discussion of Photoshop in Denmark these days because a photographer got disqualified from the Danish version of 'Pictures of the Year,'" Tønnesen told News Photographer magazine. Tønnesen had written about the squabble on the Pressefotografforbundet Web site. "Since the story has now spread to non-Danish blogs, I have decided to do an English translation so that Americans and others can read it," Tønnesen said.

Movie World Photo Press Award Winner 2008 05/06/2009 Filmed only a week before leaving for Amsterdam to receive the 2008 World Photo Press Award, Leica joined photojournalist Anthony Suau as he used his camera on assignment in Spanish Harlem to document the Feed the Children Drive in his ongoing coverage and interest of the economic crisis. As he traveled to Wall Street to discuss this major achievement in photojournalism, Leica had the opportunity to hear about his recent travels, how he captured the award winning photo and the other images in the series on the economic and foreclosure crisis in the U.S.

AP Images, a division of The Associated Press, is one of the world's largest collections of historical and contemporary imagery. As an essential source of photographs and graphics for professional image buyers, AP Images strives to meet the needs of today's global customer through superior image quality, selection and service.

Defending the Barricade On Feb. 1, 2006, Associated Press photographer Oded Balilty was in the West Bank settlement of Amona when a violent confrontation broke out between Jewish settlers and Israeli security forces. The troops were attempting to enforce a government order to tear down nine houses built on private Palestinian land after Israel's Supreme Court rejected a final appeal by the settlers. Balilty, camera ready, stood about 3 meters from the end of the barricade. Crowds lined up on a wall overlooking the holed-up settlers, while Israeli troops in riot gear advanced. "Nili, a young settler ... was standing 15 meters away, biting her fingernails, when she saw them coming and ran toward the barricade," Balilty said. Said Nili: "I felt a stranger pushing me to defend the barricade. It was God who gave me the courage." Moments after Balilty took the photograph that won him the Pulitzer Prize, Nili was beaten by club-wielding police.

World Press Photo 2008, interview with John Moore and Brent Stirton at the Oude Kerk Amsterdam, april 26 2008.

Twitter Literacy (I refuse to make up a Twittery name for it) Post-Oprah and apres-Ashton, Twittermania is definitely sliding down the backlash slope of the hype cycle. It's not just the predictable wave of naysaying after the predictable waves of sliced-breadism and bandwagon-chasing. We're beginning to see some data. Nielsen, the same people who do TV ratings, recently noted that more than 60% of new Twitter users fail to return the following month. To me, this represents a perfect example of a media literacy issue: Twitter is one of a growing breed of part-technological, part-social communication media that require some skills to use productively. Sure, Twitter is banal and trivial, full of self-promotion and outright spam. So is the Internet. The difference between seeing Twitter as a waste of time or as a powerful new community amplifier depends entirely on how you look at it - on knowing how to look at it. When I started requiring digital journalism students to learn how to use Twitter, I didn't have the list of journalistic uses for Twitter that I have compiled by now. So I logged onto the service and broadcast a request. "I have a classroom full of graduate students in journalism who don't know who to follow. Does anybody have a suggestion?" Within ten minutes, we had a list of journalists to follow, including one who was boarding Air Force One at that moment, joining the White House press corps accompanying the President to Africa.

Twitter Literacy (I refuse to make up a Twittery name for it) Post-Oprah and apres-Ashton, Twittermania is definitely sliding down the backlash slope of the hype cycle. It's not just the predictable wave of naysaying after the predictable waves of sliced-breadism and bandwagon-chasing. We're beginning to see some data. Nielsen, the same people who do TV ratings, recently noted that more than 60% of new Twitter users fail to return the following month. To me, this represents a perfect example of a media literacy issue: Twitter is one of a growing breed of part-technological, part-social communication media that require some skills to use productively. Sure, Twitter is banal and trivial, full of self-promotion and outright spam. So is the Internet. The difference between seeing Twitter as a waste of time or as a powerful new community amplifier depends entirely on how you look at it - on knowing how to look at it. When I started requiring digital journalism students to learn how to use Twitter, I didn't have the list of journalistic uses for Twitter that I have compiled by now. So I logged onto the service and broadcast a request. "I have a classroom full of graduate students in journalism who don't know who to follow. Does anybody have a suggestion?" Within ten minutes, we had a list of journalists to follow, including one who was boarding Air Force One at that moment, joining the White House press corps accompanying the President to Africa.

"Now this is going to be fun…. We're excited to announce our first batch of Wordpress + PhotoShelter plugins that allow you to: 1. Integrate your PhotoShelter photos and galleries into your Graph Paper Press themes for Wordpress 2. Allow your visitors to search your PhotoShelter photos from your site's sidebar 3. Pull in your PhotoShelter gallery updates into your site's sidebar If you are a photographer who uses PhotoShelter, these integration plugins will enable you to manage your portfolio, blog, and PhotoShelter photos and galleries all from one site. The combination of Wordpress, PhotoShelter and our themes and plugins will push your web presence into the future, allowing you to connect with clients, promote, sell and license your work all from one place."

In the vanguard of the Marines, the press corps had already stormed Somailia. Now we will see more of the famailiar pictures of grotesque human degradation, with foreign angels of mercy ministering to starving children, juxtaposed with images of trigger-happy teen-age looters. Such pictures prompted President Bush's military adventure-now they will justify it. The camera can't lie, we are told. But anyone who has watched a Western film crew in an African famine will know just how much effort it takes to compose the "right" image. Photogenic starving children are hard to find, even in Somalia. Somali doctors and nurses have expressed shock at the conduct of film crews in hospitals. They rush through crowded corridors, leaping over stretchers, dashing to film the agony before it passes. They hold bedside vigils to record the moment of death. When the Italian actress Sophia Loren visited Somalia, the paparazzi trampled on children as they scrambled to film her feeding a little girl-three times. This is disaster pornography.

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.

international news photography awards

SEPIA (Safeguarding European Photographic Images for Access) is a EU-funded project focusing on preservation of photographic materials. On this website you will find information about : * SEPIA publications: SEPIA reports, articles and recommendations * research: 'scanning equipment and handling procedures', 'preservation aspects of digitisation', 'ethics of digitisation' and 'descriptive models for photographic materials' * news and events: containing announcements and press releases about the latest SEPIA news and a calendar of events. * Links & Literature contains reports, articles and references to relevant resources * 'To Have and To Hold' offers some guidance in finding information about the long-term preservation of all kind of photographic materials. It contains an introduction to the history of photography, historical photographic processes, digitisation and preservation of photographic materials and list of relevant resources selected by SEPIA experts * Six SEPIA partners have made a representative selection from their collections around the theme 'Constructing Europe'. Each presentation shows how an aspect of modern society evolved in a particular country. Although developments were different in the various countries, the exhibition taken as a whole provides a sense of an emerging modern Europe. * training: about SEPIA workshops, seminars and the national SEPIA training events * orginal proposals for SEPIA I and SEPIA II