"Is photojournalism dead? The debate has been raging for decades, and, ever since former Magnum Photos director Neil Burgess called time of death, it has taken the web by storm. But do young and emerging photographers really care? "
"Creating a Transmedia Symphony
I re-read the article in Wired on transmedia today, and found it as good a read as the first time. Coming to the last paragraph I read Jeff Gomez's comment about transmedia and the birth of a new Mozart, "We are going to see visionaries who understand the value of each media platform as if it's a separate musical instrument, who'll create symphonic narratives which leverage each of these multimedia platforms in a way that will create something we haven't encountered yet."
This rings true for me as an analogy of what many of us are trying to create. The question that popped up in my head was, however, "but hey, how do you create a "normal" symphony?". Lo and behold, a Google search later I found this wikihow on, yes, how to create a symphony. After reading it, the analogy rings truer still. So, to translate the creation of a "normal" symphony to the creation of a transmedia symphony, these would/could be the steps to take:"
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I was introduced to the work of Trent Parke (born in Australia in 1971, a member of Magnum since 2007) by a mutual friend, the photographer, Matt Stuart. He showed me two books by Parke, both self-published. The first was The Seventh Wave (2000), photographs of Australia's beaches, by Parke and his partner - now wife - Narelle Autio. A more intimate and egalitarian collaboration is hard to imagine. Without the list at the end explaining which pictures are by whom it would be impossible to tell them apart. Much of the action takes place in or under the waves. You don't look at this book. You open it and plunge in. Whoomp! Immediately, you're immersed, submerged. They're like pictures of being born, of people exploding into life beneath the sea, or bursting through the surface and into being. It's as if evolution has been speeded up and compressed so that the origins of life on the planet turn, in a split-second, to the creation of an individual human life. In the same breath it's mythic and candid - street photography from Atlantis! In one photograph we get a blurry echo of Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam from the Sistine Chapel. Here it's two hands almost touching underwater, one clutching a ball of burning light. In a related picture - included in the Minutes to Midnight series - we see the birth of the photographers' own son, erupting from the water, dragging the umbilical cord like a lifesaver."
"There was a time when photographers wishing to see their work in print, were at the mercy of the publishers' critical eye. A publisher's verdict could mark the end of the road for a book project, or be the spark to ignite a new career.
Online publishing has eliminated this scrutinizing selection process, removing any middle men in its path. The likes of Blurb, Lulu, AsukaBook and Apple among many others, have put an end to slaving over a book proposal, adhering to publisher's list of demands, and enduring a nail biting wait for a decision."
"In the third of a series of articles on photojournalism Adrian Evans, Director of Panos Pictures, suggests that photojournalists should cast off the past and look to new models of funding.
"Working in photojournalism it sometimes feels as though industry commentators are circling like vultures waiting to pick over the corpse of our industry.
"They misguidedly link the fortunes of photojournalists to that of newspapers and magazines, referring to an almost mythical past, a golden age when newspapers were the champions and supporters of photojournalism. Whether this era ever really existed is debatable. What is undeniably true is that newspapers ceased being the paymasters of photojournalists a long time ago. Quality photojournalism is expensive - researching the story, gaining access, spending time with your subjects, post production and editing - there are no short cuts. Newspapers and magazines spend a tiny proportion of their income on content and they certainly don't want to spend it on photography."
"Michael Kamber is an award winning photographer who currently works for the New York Times, here he outlines his view of the state of photojournalism today.
This is the first in a series of articles to be published this week, each one by a different author looking at the world of photojournalism from a number of angles."
"With so many photographers taking publishing into their own hands these days, there seem to be a lot of questions and more than a few misperceptions about photobook publishing floating around. "
"HD DSLRs are incredible-they give you a video camera with interchangeable lenses, depth of field control and stellar low-light performance-but they're not without drawbacks. Here's how to work around them.
The initial crop of HD DSLRs (Nikon D90, Canon 5D Mark II) were never intended to be used primarily for video. It wasn't until Canon introduced the 5D Mark II that HD DSLR video really took off, and that was without manual video and audio controls. Canon eventually provided manual control of video, but it wasn't until earlier this year that they released manual audio controls (to an extent) and 24p recording. Ever since, the 5D2 has found its way onto film and TV sets. The entire finale of Fox's House was shot with 5D2s. Canon's now brought HD video to the majority of its DSLR line,"
"In Biafra in 1968, a generation of children was starving to death. This was a year after oil-rich Biafra had seceded from Nigeria, and, in return, Nigeria had attacked and laid siege to Biafra. Foreign correspondents in the blockaded enclave spotted the first signs of famine that spring, and by early summer there were reports that thousands of the youngest Biafrans were dying each day. Hardly anybody in the rest of the world paid attention until a reporter from the Sun, the London tabloid, visited Biafra with a photographer and encountered the wasting children: eerie, withered little wraiths. The paper ran the pictures alongside harrowing reportage for days on end. Soon, the story got picked up by newspapers all over the world. More photographers made their way to Biafra, and television crews, too. The civil war in Nigeria was the first African war to be televised. Suddenly, Biafra's hunger was one of the defining stories of the age-the graphic suffering of innocents made an inescapable appeal to conscience-and the humanitarian-aid business as we know it today came into being. "