livebooks blog

• After Tom Gralish helped pinpoint the photo that was used as the starting point for the famous Obama HOPE poster (by Mannie Garcia for the AP), the AP on Wednesday “reached out” to the lawyer of Shepard Fairey, who created the poster and is now much richer and famouser. Carolyn E. Wright, the author of the Photographer’s Legal Guide and the writer of the Photo Attorney blog, wrote a long post Thursday analyzing the AP’s case and concluding that she, at least, would take the case. via: Online Photographer. John Harrington has several good posts on it too: here, here, and here.

• Everyone is atwitter over Paolo Pellegrin’s photo essay for the New York Times, Great Performers. And they should be. It’s stunning and unveils just how staged most celebrity photos are with its dedication to a photojournalistic truth. It also reminded me instantly of Paolo’s Iraqi Diaspora project, which I saw at Visa pour l’Image this year, and which had everyone in Perpignan atwitter to see a photographer so skilled in black and white also blow us away with color.

• Greg Gibson has a great post on his blog explaining in detail how McLatchy-Tribune News Services photographer Chuck Kennedy convinced the White House to let him set up a remote camera at the foot of the podium during Obama’s swearing in. Probably the most impressive part is seeing just how many front pages ran the image…a great lesson for photographers about always trying to do something new, even when it seems like it’s all been done before.

Citizen journalist Janis Krums tweeted this photo minutes after a plane crashed into the Hudson River in January.

I came upon this story and this one the week the plane crashed into the Hudson River. The pictures are solid. As a professional photographer, I might have done a bit better, but I wasn’t there. Which got me thinking about what I would have done if I was. Typically, I would have used my upscale point-and-shoot camera, and then contacted whomever I could get a hold of at the whatever paper or magazine to transmit the image and get a quick sale. A sale that would probably yield anywhere in the range of a $100 to $1,000 — if I got the sale at all.

The competition would be a phalanx of mobile phone shooters all calling the tip lines of all the same publications as me. The photo editor would choose the first “solid” image to come across his or her computer screen in mad dash to scoop all the other publications and blogs.

Now think about a different set of priorities applied to the same scenario. I shoot a quality image, better than the mobile phone shooters, and upload it up to my photography branded twitter stream or blog. The fact that I call myself a photographer in these two internet mediums will already give me a splash of credibility. The subject matter of the photos will guarantee swift dissemination and trackbacks to my site. The trade off for the exposure to my web site is worth more than the money.

Lastly, think long and hard about being a gear snob. A photographer is defined by his or her ability, not by the gear he or she owns. Ultimately I think I would shoot my first few images with my iPhone and send them to the email account that automatically publishes posts to my blog, or I would send them to my Twitter account. Then I would shoot other images with my point and shoot. I’d start calling editors and point them to my blog or Twitter account.

The resolution required for a reasonable reproduction on the internet requires little more than an iPhone camera. It’s not ideal, and it certainly goes against the quality instinct of every shooter out there, but that’s not the point anymore. The world has changed and in these journalistic situations expediency is king. As skilled photographers that might find ourselves in the right place at the right time, understanding and adapting to the new world rather than complaining about it is the best way to get more notoriety.