NewsTechZilla » photography

Know Your Rights As A Photographer

Trace Sharp — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 17:04:05 +0000

Chad McClarnon has a story about a photographer from New York City that was arrested for taking a photograph of a train.

I want to spotlight his post because he has a comprehensive listing of links that photographers’ rights as well as knowing what you can and can’t do when taking pictures including privacy laws.

McClarnon’s blog is here.

Photo by Trace Sharp

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Are You Archiving Your Work?

Trace Sharp — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 19:07:26 +0000

Beth at Design Drama did.

Anyway, in a box in the back of my closet, I found a box with stuff from college. Inside, I found slides and photo negatives of stuff I’d done in Drawing I & II and Design I & II. Somehow, back then I had a wise professor that had the foresight to have us take our artwork to have it photographed for posterity. I gasped when I found this stuff. Immediately I began scanning the photos to put them in my archives of work.

I’ve lost many a blog entry from now defunct web projects, columns and photographs not archiving.

I had to learn the hard way.

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Hudson River Crash Coverage

Trace Sharp — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 11:53:51 +0000

Kottke followed citizen journalists covering yesterday’s airplane crash in the Hudson River and the Flickr stream shows photos taken from professional photographers to people on the scene.

It goes without saying that you always need your camera handy.

Yahoo and Reuters are launching a new service which could turn the millions of people with digital cameras and camera phones into photojournalists. Amateur photographers will be able to submit their digital news photos and videos to the service.

These may then be placed throughout Reuters.com and Yahoo News. Reuters also plans to distribute some of the submissions to print, online and broadcast media outlets which subscribe to its news service. Reuters aims to develop a service devoted entirely to user-submitted photographs and video.

The project is inline with the growth of ‘citizen journalism’, with bloggers setting up local news sites.

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Photography And Citizen Journalism

Trace Sharp — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 13:03:14 +0000

Jack Lail writes of some of the animosity that sometimes happens in the blogosphere over trends in news media. Lail, however, writes about more than that. He discusses folks finding their way.

He writes about Glenn Reynolds and Craig Newmark:

It is ludicrous to suggest — as people nonetheless have — that either Craig Newmark or Reynolds are out to destroy newspapers. Both are extremely good readers of newspapers either in print or online, and have demonstrated over years a high regard and respect for the practice of journalism wherever they find it.

Both are guilty of being adept and enterprising and lucky in utilizing a new technology in the American spirit of exploring a new frontier.

The companies that popularized digital cameras and later the companies that popularized cameras on cell phones, for example, are never made out as villainous as both Reynolds and Newmark have been despite the hallowed spot of the Brownie in camera history.

Which brings up another point. Do any of you peruse photobucket or Flickr regularly? There is some great work out there and the digital camera has changed the way the masses see through the lense. One of the reasons, in my opinion, is that photography is cheaper to use now.

When I started out in news, I used a 35 mm and had, at best, roughly two dozen shots to get the picture right. We would develop the film in an old storage room and, at its best, it was hit and miss. In small markets, there are no photographers on staff and the journalists had to do it themselves.

I did all right but not great. When digital was introduced, I had a wary relationship with this new concept. I admit it.

Then it hit me, with a memory card I had plenty of opportunities to get the shot I wanted. Not only did I get to get my “art” on, but it saved hours (sometimes a whole day) developing film.

This is also important for non-journalists. There are photographers out there, just average joes, who are taking fantastic pictures. The difference is that new outlets for photojournalism are still relevant. Go to Boston.com and you will see, the average photographer is not going to be in a war zone, at the inauguration in two weeks or at a protest. Professional photographers are needed to show us the world.

However, citizens journalists are in places that are just as much of value. Don’t believe it, then check out this.

There is a great deal of beautiful and important photography covering news in local communities out there.

And much of it is done with a passionate eye.

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Visuals First

Trace Sharp — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 15:49:54 +0000

From a blog new to me called A Little News.

The traditional model for news gathering has always been words first and then visuals supporting and it has worked for decades, a century really. Even the vaunted New York Times which was traditionally known as the “Gray Lady” for her dependence on the written word has made massive strides in getting more visual. Newspapers are going to have to turn to their photography departments to take a lead role in news gathering and not merely look at them as service departments. The reason being is that the web is a highly visual place. Photographs, and even video on some occasions, need to lead the Internet coverage. The one thing that many newspapers have missed either partially or entirely is the importance of being, not simply visual, but visually dominant. Any readership survey will tell you that people are reading less and spend far less time on any site or with any newspaper than they did even a decade ago.

I’ve never thought about it quite like that but the author is absolutely correct.

I’m subscribing to this one. They practice what they preach. The photos are fantastic.

Another good example of investigative journalism that has proven to be amazing is Boston.com which I also highly recommend.Similar Posts:

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