Posts tagged photojournalism

The Stressful Careers of Photojournalists and Newspaper Reporters Using metrics such as career opportunity, compensation, deadlines, working in the public eye, and danger among others to generate an overall “stress score”, CareerCast has a top ten list of the most stressful jobs of 2013. Congratulations, photojournalists and newspaper reporters, you’ve cracked the list. Reiterating what we already know, CareerCast reports: Two careers in the media industry score highly on the stress scale: photojournalist and newspaper reporter. Professionals from each field can be thrown into the epicenter of dangerous situations, such as war, natural disasters and police chases. Both careers also have declining job opportunities as the 21st century media landscape evolves. Newspaper reporters in particular face a shrinking job market; the BLS estimates a 6% job decline in the industry by 2020. The growth of online media has transformed the newspaper reporter’s job immensely. The immediacy internet outlets provide can be a useful tool, but it can also be a huge trap. Striving for the fastest reports can lead to inaccuracy and heightened stress. Watchful public eyes are trained on reporters at all times, so an incorrect report can compromise a reporter’s reputation as quickly as they can send a tweet. The least stressful job for 2013? University professor. Image: Stressful Careers. Select to embiggen.

The Stressful Careers of Photojournalists and Newspaper Reporters

Using metrics such as career opportunity, compensation, deadlines, working in the public eye, and danger among others to generate an overall “stress score”, CareerCast has a top ten list of the most stressful jobs of 2013.

Congratulations, photojournalists and newspaper reporters, you’ve cracked the list.

Reiterating what we already know, CareerCast reports:

Two careers in the media industry score highly on the stress scale: photojournalist and newspaper reporter. Professionals from each field can be thrown into the epicenter of dangerous situations, such as war, natural disasters and police chases. Both careers also have declining job opportunities as the 21st century media landscape evolves. Newspaper reporters in particular face a shrinking job market; the BLS estimates a 6% job decline in the industry by 2020.

The growth of online media has transformed the newspaper reporter’s job immensely. The immediacy internet outlets provide can be a useful tool, but it can also be a huge trap. Striving for the fastest reports can lead to inaccuracy and heightened stress. Watchful public eyes are trained on reporters at all times, so an incorrect report can compromise a reporter’s reputation as quickly as they can send a tweet.

The least stressful job for 2013? University professor.

Image: Stressful Careers. Select to embiggen.

photojojo:

Still unsure of “phoneography” having a place in the professional sphere? On March 31, 2013, The New York Times used an Instagram shot for the front page cover story.

Granted, it was a professional photographer who took the photo, but it’s quite a statement nonetheless. Perhaps you really should sign up for those Photojojo University Phoneography 101 classes…

New York Times Uses Instagram Photo for Cover Story

Related: From the FJP archives, Photojournalism vs. Instagram.

UPDATE: Another interesting aspect about the New York Times’ use of this photo is that it isn’t from a recent shoot. Instead, it’s from last year. Nick Laham, the photographer, is based in Brooklyn. His personal site is here.

For Syria’s war is characterised most strongly by absence and collective abandonment. Other than the protagonists and victims the arena is almost empty. There is no foreign military intervention. There are no NGOs or aid workers distributing food and blankets. The media is similarly self-exiled: very few broadcasters or newspapers commit journalists regularly, if at all. A handful of freelance photographers work inside the country, but none of the big names. The middle-aged bravehearts of Bosnia and Afghanistan have grown old and too soft for the hardships of Syria, while the economics of journalism have not allowed their replacement generation to prosper. That McCullin, still a prizefighter despite his years, had hauled himself out to that lonely war zone was inspiring in itself, legitimising the work of the few freelancers already there and challenging the absentees.

Anthony Loyd, The Australian. Parting shots.

That’s right: a 77 year old photographer named Don McCullin recently went to Aleppo to take his last set of photos, 15 years after his last war assignment. See the above article for an account of his trip as told by the much younger journalist in charge of his safety.

There’s no telling which photos from Syria’s revolutionary war will become famous and come to represent the conflict, if any do at all. For a great collection of pictures by other photojournalists in the country, see these. For more of McCullin, who is something of a legend in his line of work, see this bio and a portion of his photography from Vietnam and Lebanon.

Innocence Assassinated: Living in Mexico’s Drug War fjp-latinamerica: REPORTAGE, the photojournalism branch of Getty Images, is featuring  an astounding slideshow on Mexican violence through the lens of New York-based Katie Orlinsky, one of its most talented photographers.  For Innocence Assassinated, in order to depict how locals deal with the rampaging narco-fueled bloodshed that overwhelms their communities day after day, Katie went on a breath-taking journey through the some of the most violent regions of Mexico, such as Ciudad Juárez, the Tamaulipas borderlands, the shores of Guerrero (including Acapulco), and the P’urhépecha plateau in central Michoacán. The resulting product is pretty impressive. So, go ahead and make sure you turn on the captions.  Image: A destroyed sign at the entrance of Ciudad Mier in Tamaulipas, México. Cover of Innocence Assassinated [PDF], via Reportage by GettyImages.

Innocence Assassinated: Living in Mexico’s Drug War

fjp-latinamerica:

REPORTAGE, the photojournalism branch of Getty Images, is featuring  an astounding slideshow on Mexican violence through the lens of New York-based Katie Orlinsky, one of its most talented photographers. 

For Innocence Assassinated, in order to depict how locals deal with the rampaging narco-fueled bloodshed that overwhelms their communities day after day, Katie went on a breath-taking journey through the some of the most violent regions of Mexico, such as Ciudad Juárez, the Tamaulipas borderlands, the shores of Guerrero (including Acapulco), and the P’urhépecha plateau in central Michoacán. The resulting product is pretty impressive.

So, go ahead and make sure you turn on the captions. 

Image: A destroyed sign at the entrance of Ciudad Mier in Tamaulipas, México. Cover of Innocence Assassinated [PDF], via Reportage by GettyImages.

After Picasso, the $2.19 Million Dollar Camera The AP and Atlantic Wire report that a camera belonging to TIME Magazine photographer David Douglas Duncan has sold for, well, millions. He took it with him to Vietnam during the US war there and later when he met Pablo Picasso and his family in the artist’s studio in France.

After Picasso, the $2.19 Million Dollar Camera

The AP and Atlantic Wire report that a camera belonging to TIME Magazine photographer David Douglas Duncan has sold for, well, millions. He took it with him to Vietnam during the US war there and later when he met Pablo Picasso and his family in the artist’s studio in France.

Dronestagram: The Drone’s Eye View At the FJP, we’re always fascinated by projects that colonize the new booming platforms and go totally native; adapting the story to survive in a new environment.  Dronestagram posts a satellite view to Instagram showing the location of drone strikes before the attack. By focusing on getting the drone story working well on Instagram, the story automatically gets to mobiles, Facebook, twitter and tumblr easily and elegantly. The inventor and publisher, James Bridle, writes he’s “making these locations just a little bit more visible, a little closer. A little more real.” James Bridle’s CV extends way beyond journalism; as well as his column for the UK-based Observer newspaper, he’s presented at TED and SXSW, and his Iraq War Historiography, a twelve volume encyclopedia of changes to politically contentious wikipedia pages about the second gulf war, has been exhibited in galleries in the US, Europe and Asia. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism provides Bridle with details of the strikes across Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. He then researches across “original media reports, wikipedia, local government and media sites” to get the best location and satellite view. This isn’t the first time creative technologists have tried to tell the drone story in creative ways on digital platforms; back in August we posted about Apple rejecting an iPhone application that showed an alert each time a drone strike was reported. But this one has actually reached the public, and is already growing its audience. There’s more on the project The Verge, and you can follow Dronestagram on twitter, tumblr or Instagram, of course.

Dronestagram: The Drone’s Eye View

At the FJP, we’re always fascinated by projects that colonize the new booming platforms and go totally native; adapting the story to survive in a new environment. 

Dronestagram posts a satellite view to Instagram showing the location of drone strikes before the attack. By focusing on getting the drone story working well on Instagram, the story automatically gets to mobiles, Facebook, twitter and tumblr easily and elegantly.

The inventor and publisher, James Bridle, writes he’s “making these locations just a little bit more visible, a little closer. A little more real.”

James Bridle’s CV extends way beyond journalism; as well as his column for the UK-based Observer newspaper, he’s presented at TED and SXSW, and his Iraq War Historiography, a twelve volume encyclopedia of changes to politically contentious wikipedia pages about the second gulf war, has been exhibited in galleries in the US, Europe and Asia.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism provides Bridle with details of the strikes across Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. He then researches across “original media reports, wikipedia, local government and media sites” to get the best location and satellite view.

This isn’t the first time creative technologists have tried to tell the drone story in creative ways on digital platforms; back in August we posted about Apple rejecting an iPhone application that showed an alert each time a drone strike was reported. But this one has actually reached the public, and is already growing its audience.

There’s more on the project The Verge, and you can follow Dronestagram on twitter, tumblr or Instagram, of course.

Student Photojournalists: Here’s a Scholarship Opportunity

A reader recently asked us about scholarship opportunities for high school journalists, which I generally find harder to come by than college/grad level opportunities. That said, here’s a neat one, but note: the deadline is November 15, 2012. You have 6 days.

The James Alan Cox Foundation for Student Journalists:

Mission Statement: Founded in memory of James Alan Cox, a television photojournalist, The James Alan Cox Foundation for Student Photojournalists aims to provide financial support to student photographers of high school and college age. Through a variety of funding, including equipment purchases and scholarships for college and technical school classes, the foundation’s mission is to expand education and development opportunities for student photographers demonstrating interest, talent and financial need.

The Awards:

  • 5 high school students get 5 digital cameras.
  • 5 college or technical school students get 5 scholarships for $2,500 each.
Hurricane Sandy After Landfall The Atlantic has compiled a series of beautifully striking photos of the aftermath of Sandy, which you can view here.  Image: Seawater pours into the Ground Zero construction site in New York, on October 29, 2012 (AP/John Minchillo)

Hurricane Sandy After Landfall

The Atlantic has compiled a series of beautifully striking photos of the aftermath of Sandy, which you can view here. 

Image: Seawater pours into the Ground Zero construction site in New York, on October 29, 2012 (AP/John Minchillo)

Photographing a Revolution with an iPhone Pretty self explanatory, but very good work: all of these photos were taken by photojournalist Benjamin Lowy last summer, before the rebels killed Gaddafi and long before the recent attacks on the US Embassy. See the rest here. From Mother Jones: Why didn’t he work with fancier gear? “Small mobile phone cameras are innocuous and enable a far greater intimacy with a subject,” Lowy says, noting that Libyans themselves have also done much to document their surroundings, thanks to the ubiquitous technology.

Photographing a Revolution with an iPhone

Pretty self explanatory, but very good work: all of these photos were taken by photojournalist Benjamin Lowy last summer, before the rebels killed Gaddafi and long before the recent attacks on the US Embassy. See the rest here.

From Mother Jones:

Why didn’t he work with fancier gear? “Small mobile phone cameras are innocuous and enable a far greater intimacy with a subject,” Lowy says, noting that Libyans themselves have also done much to document their surroundings, thanks to the ubiquitous technology.

Photojournalism: Tim Hetherington Grant Application Opens

World Press Photo and Human Rights Watch are now accepting applications for the second Tim Hetherington Grant.

Created to celebrate the legacy of photojournalist and filmmaker Tim Hetherington, the “annual grant, worth €20,000, will be awarded to a photographer to complete an existing project on a human rights theme. The judges will look for the qualities that defined Tim’s career when reviewing the applications: work that operates on multiple platforms and in a variety of formats; that crosses boundaries between breaking news and longer-term investigation; and that demonstrates a consistent moral commitment to the lives and stories of the photographic subjects.”

Last year, Stephen Ferry used the grant for Violentology: A Manual of the Colombian Conflict.

Applications are due November 15 and can be found here.

fjp-latinamerica: ESfotoperiodismo’s 2012 catalog is hot off the press The official 2012 catalog of ESfotoperiodismo has finally been uploaded to their website, totaling 106 pages of breath-taking Central American photojournalism. Check it out! Background: ESfotoperiodismo is a photojournalism festival that takes place every year in El Salvador’s capital city, supported by the Latitudes Foundation, the FIDES, and El Salvador’s Ministries of Culture and Foreign Affairs. The festival usually features the work of photojournalists from fellow Central American countries, such as Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.  Image: A Salvadoran wanders thourgh the streets of San Salvador, by Juan Carlos. Via ESfotoperiodismo.com

fjp-latinamerica:

ESfotoperiodismo’s 2012 catalog is hot off the press

The official 2012 catalog of ESfotoperiodismo has finally been uploaded to their website, totaling 106 pages of breath-taking Central American photojournalism. Check it out!

Background: ESfotoperiodismo is a photojournalism festival that takes place every year in El Salvador’s capital city, supported by the Latitudes Foundation, the FIDES, and El Salvador’s Ministries of Culture and Foreign Affairs. The festival usually features the work of photojournalists from fellow Central American countries, such as Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. 

Image: A Salvadoran wanders thourgh the streets of San Salvador, by Juan Carlos. Via ESfotoperiodismo.com

LightBox: Hipstamatic plans launch of Foundation for Photojournalism

Synthetic, maker of the popular Hipstamatic application for iPhone, is expected to launch, later this year, a pack of digital lenses and films dedicated to photojournalists to raise funds for its newly created Hipstamatic Foundation for Photojournalism.

The Foundation will help educate…

Ah, the age of technology and philanthropy continues!

Years later, when I put together a book about those events in Liberia, I included a photograph of one of the people who had been killed outside of the beer factory. I thought it was an important picture but didn’t dwell on what it might mean for the mother of that boy to come across it printed in a book. My thoughts about this resurfaced recently as I put together a new book about a group of American soldiers I spent a lot of time with in Afghanistan. They reminded me a lot of the young Liberian rebel fighters, and yet, when I came to selecting a picture of one of their dead in the battlefield, I hesitated and wondered if printing a graphic image was appropriate. It was an image I had made of a young man shot in the head after the American lines had been overrun—not dissimilar from the one in Liberia. My hesitation troubled me. Was I sensitive this time because the soldier wasn’t a nameless African? Perhaps I had changed and realized that there should be limits on what is released into the public? I certainly wouldn’t have been in that questioning position if I’d never taken the photograph in the first place… but I did, and perhaps these things are worth thinking about and confronting after all.

Tim Hetherington, from a chapter in Photographs Not Taken, a new book of essays by more than 60 photographers about times when they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, take a picture. Hetherington died from wounds suffered while covering the Libyan civil war in 2011. Via Time Lightbox.

If you’re in New York City there’s a panel discussion with the book’s editor and a few of its contributors at PS1 Sunday April 22 from 2-4pm.

Massoud Hossaini won the Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News Photography for this photograph that appeared in newspapers around the world last December. The image is from the aftermath of a suicide attack at shrine in Kabul attended by Shiites taking part in a religious ceremony. Via the New York Times Lens Blog, which spoke to Hossaini in December after publishing the photo: “Women were asking me, ‘Help, help, help,’” Mr. Hossaini said. “I couldn’t. I was recording and I was taking pictures.” One of the women who was holding a baby, called out for help — her other child had died. Another man lifted the child from the ground. But blood was pouring from its head. The man placed the child back on the ground and walked away. As Mr. Hossaini photographed, he realized he was weeping. When he looked down, he realized how badly his own hand was bleeding. He wrapped it with the cleanest piece of material he could find. Hossaini works for Agence France-Presse. It is the organization’s first Pulitzer.

Massoud Hossaini won the Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News Photography for this photograph that appeared in newspapers around the world last December.

The image is from the aftermath of a suicide attack at shrine in Kabul attended by Shiites taking part in a religious ceremony.

Via the New York Times Lens Blog, which spoke to Hossaini in December after publishing the photo:

“Women were asking me, ‘Help, help, help,’” Mr. Hossaini said. “I couldn’t. I was recording and I was taking pictures.” One of the women who was holding a baby, called out for help — her other child had died. Another man lifted the child from the ground. But blood was pouring from its head. The man placed the child back on the ground and walked away.

As Mr. Hossaini photographed, he realized he was weeping. When he looked down, he realized how badly his own hand was bleeding. He wrapped it with the cleanest piece of material he could find.

Hossaini works for Agence France-Presse. It is the organization’s first Pulitzer.