livebooks blog

• The New York Times launched its photography blog, Lens, this week. Not surprisingly, it aims to highlight the paper’s own top photography from the present, as well as its archive dating back to the early 20th century, but Lens also gives props to great photos from other newspapers, magazines, and agencies. With its beautiful full-screen interface and insider interviews with photo legends, like this with David Burnett about his images of Bob Marley, it’s no surprise the photo blogosphere is buzzing.

• Todd Walker of Gallery Hopper blog pointed us to a scanned copy of a NYPD internal memo which tells its officers that street photography is indeed legal. In the memo, it says, “photography and/or videotaping is rarely unlawful.” Given the recent outpouring of complaints regarding street photography, we’re glad the NYPD is taking steps to rectify the situation.

• American Photography 25 announced its winners earlier this week. A slideshow of the selected images is available online for a limited time. The 351 photographs selected from over 10,000 submissions will be included in a hardcover book to be released in November this year.

• American Apparel settled a year-long lawsuit with Woody Allen on Monday, agreeing to pay the director $5 million for using an image of him from Annie Hall, without his consent, for one of their billboards. Dov Charney, CEO of American Apparel, posted a thousand-word statement on the company blog in response to the settlement, explaining that it was the insurance company’s idea to make the settlement, not his.

• How much Photoshopping is too much? Judges of a Danish photo contest seemed to think that they have the answer. Last month, Danish photojournalist Klavs Bo Christensen was disqualified from the Danish equivalent of Pictures of the Year contest because the photographs that he submitted “went too far” in digital manipulation. The incident, not surprisingly, sparked a lot of discussions in Denmark and eventually among the English-speaking blogosphere. According to NPPA, Jens Tønnesen, the webmaster for the Danish Union of Press Photographers, decided to explain the story to people outside of Demark, and did an English translation of an article he posted on the Pressefotografforbundet website, where you can see the three images in question placed side by side with their RAW files. Check out interesting comments about this story at PDN Pulse and The Online Photographer.

• Robert Adams, who is known for his landscape photography of the American West, has won the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography and received a $60,000 prize at an official ceremony in San Francisco on April 15, 2009. The Foundations’s citation describes Adams as “one of the most important and influential photographers of the last forty years.” An exhibition of Adam’s work will open at the Hasselblad Center, Göteborg Art Museum in November, 2009. Ansel Adams, Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, and William Eggleston are some of the previous award winners.

• Paul Melcher, named one of the “50 most influential individuals in American photography” by American Photo, explained in a post on the Black Star Rising blog why the Chris Usher v. Corbis case is important to all photographers. While Usher won the case, he was only compensated for “a lousy $7 per image” for the 12,640 images that Corbis has permanently misplaced. Melcher argues, with great reasoning, that what this ruling means is that agencies or publishers will no longer have to worry about losing photographers images because “it will be cheaper for them to trash them than to return them to you.”

The image that started it all. Alan's first photo that got picked up by BAGnewsNotes and started his ongoing discussion with commenters on the blog. ©Alan Chin

One of the most important features of the blog format is this ability to have a comment thread, this feedback with the readers. As a photographer I’d never had that before. When you publish something, you know people write letters to the editor and maybe weeks or months later you might get a few letters. But that’s very rare and remote. Now it can be instantaneous. We forget very easily what the average person who’s not a journalist, when they pick up a paper or they go online, how they approach the imagery. This is what Michael’s site is all about to begin with, but it’s especially important with the original photojournalism work we’re doing.

It’s been educational for me that this is what “normal” people think about when they look at pictures, which is not the way we as professionals look at pictures. We’re really jaded. And we have a huge opportunity educate our audience; they can be really surprised. If I put up a little diary entry, for example, of how I work in Iraq, or being on the campaign trail, readers are amazed. For photojournalists, we think, of course, you have to get a fixer, you have to get a flak jacket, we don’t think twice. But the average person, they’re not thinking about that at all. They only see the results of our labor, they never really understand how we go about doing it. And when you give even the most basic of explanations, then that whole conversation starts. We have found specifically on this blog a tension and dynamic between photo people and political junkies, because it is a political blog. It’s telling how people who are really politically savvy can be very naive photographically, and vice-versa.

I would be lying if I said I didn’t read the comments on my images. Photographers are like children in that sense. We crave praise and hate criticism. And we’re insecure about ourselves. I mean, if some total stranger says, wonderful picture, you feel good, even though you have no idea who this person is and why they say that. And also if some other stranger says it’s terrible, you feel bad, even though they might be blind for all you know. So I read all the comments on BAGnewsNotes, and I will on RESOLVE too!

But most of the comments on BAGnewsNotes are more of a political nature, using the photographs to inform the debate. At least I don’t have to worry too much about my “photographic” pride, especially at something like the DNC, which we’ve all seen so many times. How do you take pictures at a convention that aren’t boring? I think I spent most of my time just trying to make good pictures. I read the comments, but that doesn’t change what you do the next day because you know you just have to go out there and try to make interesting pictures.

An image from Alan's coverage of the Sichuan Earthquake last year. Photo by Alan Chin for Newsweek

Making images for BAGnewsNotes is a unique way of working with an editor. Although it’s Michael’s site, we’re both pioneering a new format, so I have more of a stake. It’s more of a cooperative situation rather than me working for a boss.

Traditional media can be very hierarchical. I’ve had a lot of assignments when I felt like the editors were my bosses and I couldn’t offend them or differ from their conception of the story too much. Of course, when you trust them and they trust you, then you can really speak freely and there’s a give and take. That’s how I’ve felt with Michael. He’s comfortable criticizing what I’m doing, and I feel the same way talking to him. So we have more ability to do that than might be typical in our industry.

I do have to point out, though, that sometimes there are great people, with imagination and vision, like Jamie Wellford, international photo editor at Newsweek, with whom I also have that relationship, because fundamentally it’s just good people that really matters.

Also I know that we can screw up more more, because we’re still at the beginning of this. If we make mistakes, it’s not so horrible because we are trying to break new ground. It’s not going to be perfect; it’s just the two of us. We can’t be perfect in everything we do. And that’s OK in a way that it wouldn’t be for Time or Newsweek.

I also believe that the work I’ve been doing with Michael is indicative of changes in traditional media, where photographers are being seen more as reporters and analysts. Last year I was in China and I covered the Sichuan earthquake. Because I ended up being on the phone a lot with editors and reporters, they started giving me credit on print stories, in part because they have to be more accountable about giving credit than they used to be.

Increasingly, whoever is out there, if you can verbally report on a situation or figure out what’s going on, that’s going to go into the mix, because things happen so fast now. It’s not like the editors and reporters have the luxury they once had to wait until the end of the week to figure everything out. They have to have the story together very quickly. Even weekly magazines don’t have the long deadlines that they used to.

As a photographer, you’re out there seeing things. And the desk views your pictures relatively quickly, which is another source of information for them. In fact, not only are we becoming reporters, we’re also becoming our own technicians. A lot of photographers I know record audio to do multimedia as well as take still photos. We’re becoming this one-person multimedia insanity. You can’t possibly be at your very best trying to do three or four tasks at once. But I think in some ways it’s good, if it means photographers are being taken more seriously as observers and reporters.

On the other hand, nobody is paying us more for our increased responsibilities, and that’s true not only for photographers but for everyone in this era of bankrupt news organizations and newspapers closing down. And ultimately that is the bottom line: if there’s not enough money to pay us or our expenses, then the coverage simply won’t exist, whether in traditional or new media. Enthusiasm, volunteerism, and the sheer love of our craft can only take us so far. It is my hope that we figure this out sooner rather than later; it’s all over, otherwise.