War photography is a genre that transcends mere visual documentation. It is a testament to the human spirit, a mirror to society, and a call for change. The photographs created are ones that must be shown to the public. We tend to hear sound bites from politicians talking about going to war and the devastation it will bring.
Coming to The Photographers’ Gallery in October: the first UK retrospective of one of the world’s most innovative and influential artists and street photographers. If you are interested in documentary or street photography, Daido Moriyama's work is definitely something you should familiarize yourself with.
I get questions like these daily, mostly from inexperienced or new photojournalists who want to get into documentary photography. I often repeat the same answers, so I figured it might be useful to put it all into a single article. So, here are the bare basics of high-risk documentary photography.
In today's age, billions of photographs are uploaded to the internet. We're accustomed to it. It's the norm. However, like anything on this planet, it started somewhere and some time. Photography was invented in 1822, 39 years before the opening shots of the American Civil War. Digital photography made its appearance 48 years ago.
I'm a sucker for panoramic cameras. Over the last decade, I've shot on my share, having spent more than I should have on a collection of various bodies. They've followed me to space shuttle launches, riots, out the back of aircraft, and to the White House.
Brian McCarty, a self-proclaimed toy geek and an incredible photographer, tells the stories many people don’t want to hear in a way familiar to the world. He depicts children’s accounts of conflict and loss through toys as an advocation against the horrors of war.
When an exhibition of works is announced by a photographer as influential as Diane Arbus, you would be forgiven for assuming that the work was on show in a major venue in New York or London, but you would be wrong.
I’ve been covering the Coney Island Polar Bear Plunge like clockwork for well over a decade now, and I think it’s fair to say that I’ve picked up a few useful habits along the way. For those unfamiliar with the event, imagine several hundred folks in various stages of near-nudity packed into a corner of the beach.
The popularity of toy cameras has waxed and waned over the decades. The novelty factor for plastic cameras like the Diana and the Holga is often in friction with the dependability and overall image quality, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
My career as an elitist prime glass snob has come to an end after real-world professional work using an unexpected lens choice showed me the error of my ways.
Imagine being tasked with photographing press events featuring some of the most famous people in the world, on a regular basis. Are you confident that you can come away with photographs as strong or better than those of your peers? Can you find the small, personal moments taking place in the chaos to create images that are unique?
One of the most exciting topics for me to cover during my time as a professional newspaper journalist was fires and firefighting, and the potential for great images is there for anyone who approaches the matter with a little preparation and knowledge.
A few years back, I managed to find a beater of a Hasselblad XPan for a song. I've tried to find a shooting style that would help me stand out from the crowd, and the panoramic format appealed to me. I didn't realize it at the time, but this purchase sent me down a rather obsessive path, trying to find the best panoramic cameras for news and editorial work.
Buffalo, New York. Uvalde, Texas. Tulsa, Oklahoma. A month ago, none of these towns would have been in the news for anything remarkable, but now, they have all shared headlines for the same reason: each has had a mass shooting, all within the last month. And each time, we never actually see what the carnage looks like. Is now the time to change that practice?
There's no doubt that images have the power to shape history. That's even more true for war photos such as photojournalist Nick Ut's "Napalm Girl" photo or Eddie Adams' "Saigon Execution" photo, two images that really helped shape American views of the Vietnam conflict. In 2022, it's modern-day 360 images that will have the power to truly show the devastation of Ukraine.
Mark Thompson is a Getty Images photographer with over 25 years of experience covering F1 races, including Red Bull Racing. I spoke with him to gain insight into what it is like to cover this competition.
Today, Nikon introduced a new lens that should have wildlife enthusiasts very excited.
I am not a wildlife photographer. But I really enjoy doing it. Kind of like I can’t sing to save my life. But that doesn’t stop me from testing the limits of my dog’s love for me by belting out the opening lines of “I Will Always Love You” each time I step into the shower.
A street photographer’s task is to observe the mundane human interactions that take place throughout the day and turn them into something worthy of being preserved and shared through photography. This is not an easy task.
In a few days, Activision will launch the 18th installment of Call of Duty, returning players to the Second World War. To market the game’s new photography mode, two conflict photographers were immersed inside the virtual world and tasked with photographing it. The resulting commercial portrays mankind’s most brutal act of self-destruction as little more than a game of football.
A great deal of ink is spilled on these interwebs talking about the latest in photography gear and what you should or should not buy. But photography means more than just technology.
Danish Siddiqui was no stranger to dangerous situations, having captured images of the Rohingya refugees fleeing Myanmar that garnered a team Pulitzer Prize in 2018. He put himself in harm's way during the tensions between the Hindu majority and Muslim minority in Delhi and again during the pandemic.
We usually see a photograph as a solitary work, a passing moment in time captured to be examined on its own. However, creating a coherent story through a body of work can lift your photography up to a new level.
Photojournalism is ostensibly about capturing the world as we see it, as close to reality as we saw it. That reality often includes color, and the question is: does black and white photography have a place in modern photojournalism?
If there is one type of news story that is a recurring theme in journalism it is the protest. Think "Tank Man", "The Burning Monk", or "Taking a Stand in Baton Rouge" (with Ieshia Evans). They stick in the memory, their iconographic status forming a peg from which we hang related memories. So why then are we more interested in riots as opposed to protests?
Putting together a cohesive set of images that illustrate a grand narrative is not an easy process, especially for those of us who taken up photography and end up just shooting single shots for a portfolio and/or to sell prints. This video has some great tips for those who want to break out of that mold and start something a bit more substantial.
Rather than awarding $40,000 to a single photographer, this year’s W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography is doing something different: it will award five photographers each with $10,000.
In my opinion, it is important for creatives to experience and examine the work and art that has come before us. Everyone has work or photographers they aspire to, but who inspired them? The process and experience of unraveling this trail can lead to rapid artistic growth in my opinion, and the best part is coming across a photographer you never knew existed.
When I first wrote about using mirrorless cameras for journalism in 2014, the Sony Alpha series had just been launched a few months before in 2013. Panasonic was just hitting its stride with the GH series of cameras and Fuji had just really started kicking off its X-Series cameras. Things have certainly changed.
As the discourse around Black Lives Matter and police reform grows ever coarser, racism is revealing itself through protests in all small corners of the country. And that means communities unfamiliar with the role of photojournalists are encountering firsthand the consequences of exercising free speech to spew hate in public spaces.
It has almost become a truism: social media creates mediocrity. In an effort to gain a share of the social media pie, artists are rewarded for blending in, not standing out.
One of the unique aspects of the Black Lives Matter movement in the last year has been how it has spread to even the smallest of communities. It’s made covering the protests as a minority photographer a wholly different and vastly more frightening experience.
President Trump was out golfing when news broke of President-Elect Biden's projected win of the presidency, thereby ending Trump's time in office at one term. Capturing Trump during this moment was not easy, however, and took significant effort and extreme equipment to accomplish.
Photojournalists usually pack a pretty standard kit in the field. A full frame camera is usually a must, along with the requisite 24-70mm and 70-200mm lenses that can cover 90 percent of situations a photographer might encounter. For some of that other 10 percent, a really good idea might be to pack a 360 camera in the bag as well.
The Way I See It is marketed as a look behind the curtain of two of the most iconic U.S. Presidencies in the last century, courtesy of White House Photographer Pete Souza. It's quite a bit more than that.
Photographer Sana Ullah got the idea for her “Places You’ll Pray” photo project while shopping with her sister, who ducked into a fitting room once to pray as part of her Muslim faith, and so, it’s fitting that the first photo she took for the series several years ago was in a shopping mall.
Photojournalism has been central to politics for the last century or so, and while that's sometimes a force for good or a mere recording of events, sometimes it ends up being used for a different purpose altogether.
Photo ops don't always go they way they're supposed to, especially if the photograph is taken in dangerous times. In fact, some of the most famous photographs in history are the product of a re-shoot. Sometimes though, the re-shoot still puts lives at risk.
I'm not one to write political articles, and I promise you this one isn't meant to be pro-Trump or anti-Trump. However, as photographers, we've been told that a photo is worth a thousand words. What if the words these photos replace tell a very different story?
Marc Silber, of Advancing Your Photography, sits down with three renowned photojournalists to talk about the stories behind some of their incredible images and how they approach their craft.
Pete Souza needs little introduction. As the Chief Official White House Photographer for President Obama and an Official White House Photographer for President Reagan, Souza had the crucial duty of documenting innumerably many historical moments, a job he did with an empathetic touch that has made his work the model for many aspiring photographers.
The Royal Saudi Air Force has released incredible footage of a photographer positioned at the edge of the cargo door of a plane, photographing fighter planes flying directly behind and giving them direction as he takes photos.
The various versions of Tank Man are among the most iconic photographs of the 20th century, having a lasting impact on history to the point that the Chinese State banned the use of the word “Leica” on social media last year. In this short video, Magnum photographer Stuart Franklin discusses how his image came about, and the consequences of its publication.
The Black Lives Matter movement is arguably one of the most significant political and social movements in US history. The photographers in this video sit down to share their thoughts on why photographing the BLM movement is important to them, personally, as well as for posterity.
Magnum photographer Alec Soth has issued an apology after the New York Times commissioned and published a series of images that closely resembled a long-term research project by photographer Tonika Johnson.
Esteban Toro’s new episodic short-format travel film, "Aperture: A World of Stories," is a beautiful watch. On top of the eye-candy, Toro’s film also provides some very valuable insights into and tips for filming internationally.
Magnum Photos is continuing its investigation into David Alan Harvey’s body of work, “THAILAND. Bangkok Prostitutes,” but has stated that the subjects featured in the photographs were adult dancers and bar workers.
A girl, perhaps barely in her teens, stands alone in a dimly lit room, her hair obscuring her face. She’s naked from the waist up, the front of her torso is visible, and she wears little more than socks from the waist down. The caption labels her a child prostitute and lists her hometown. Until this week, this photo was available to purchase from Getty Images.
The JPEG file format is one of the most ubiquitous formats on the web, but the actual technology that powers the compression is old. A new method, based on machine learning, might change what photography really looks like.