One of the themes that emerged at the “
La Fotografia In Italia” photojournalism conference in Milan last weekend was that the majority of feature stories photojournalists produce deal with tragedies. Some of the editors expressed the opinion that they were tired of seeing so much tragedy and were looking for something more positive and uplifting. A few photographers responded that they are just producing what the market asks for. Someone said that photojournalism is there to reveal the ugliness of our world and documenting various aspects of tragedies is right and proper. Read the whole story by
Enzo dal Verme on his blog and my comments here.
In an effort to recognize and support emerging photographers, the Editorial Photographers trade association [EP] has announced its Third Annual EP Education Grants student photo competition. For details go to:
http://www.editorialphoto.com/epedu/ The Grand Prize winner will be chosen from among the finalists by internationally-acclaimed Magnum photographer Elliott Erwitt. More than $5000 in prizes will be presented to the Grand Prize winner, and more than $2000 each for the other five finalists!
Corbis Images has announced a new worldwide distribution agreement with London based
Demotix , the multi-award winning source of “Street Journalism.” Later this month, Corbis Images will begin offering an edited selection of breaking news photography from Demotix through
corbisimages.com.
iStockphoto has added a new collection of “editorial use only” stock
images to www.istockphoto.com. These images are intended for use by news
outlets, publishers, magazines, bloggers and presenters as a
descriptive visual reference to a product, place, event or concept.
Most print publications have recognized for some time that the
handwriting is on the wall and the old business model for newspapers in
particular where 80% of the cost of producing a newspaper was covered by
advertising and 20% by subscriptions is no longer viable. To a large
extent magazine publishers have the same problem.
Emily Chow, a photojournalism student at Northwestern University's Medill School, posted a story on Black Star Rising (
see here) which basically takes the position that photography students should ignore what experienced professional photographers are telling them and forge ahead with determination to launch careers in photography. I had to respond. Be sure to read her story first.
Photographers trying to license rights to their pictures are constantly
looking for ways to make contact with potential customers. Any given
image is potentially marketable to buyers worldwide. Individual
photographers are unlikely to ever meet most of these potential
customers. Thus, photographers tend to employ a variety of middlemen
operations to assist them in finding customers. One such operation is
Photographers Direct (PD) which has helped more than 15,862
photographers (about 5,000 currently active) make contact with over
20,280 unique buyers worldwide.
An exhibit of the work of several young photographers who are
participating in the Young Photographer Alliance mentoring program is
opening at the Calumet Gallery, 22 West 22nd St, New York City from
January 14-28. The gallery will be open from 8:30 to 5:30 Monday thru
Friday and 9:00 to 5:30 on Saturdays, closed Sundays.
Should all Web usages be of equal value just because all the customer needs is approximately a 600 x 800 pixel file?