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March 2008 
Strazzante, Ackerman win top honors at Southern Scott Strazzante of the Chicago Tribune and Jenn Ackerman, a graduate student at Ohio University, won top honors as 2008 Southern Photographer of the Year and 2008 Southern Student Photographer of the Year, respectively, this weekend. Strazzante also won Best of Show with his diptychs entitled "Echoes from the Past" pairing his coverage of a disappearing family farm shot earlier this decade and new homeowners on the same land shot in 2007. The winners were officially announced today by yours truly on the closing day of the Southern Short Course in News Photography in Charlotte, N.C. Even though Scott and Jenn weren't at the conference, we tried to bring them there through modern cellular technology. Jenn got a message on her voice mail with the gallery hollering "CONGRATULATIONS" while Scott got the real thing while driving on one of Chicago's freeways. His enthusiasm came right through the speaker phone held to the mic at the podium. Runners-up for the professional and student divisions are Ross Taylor of The Hartford Courant and Jarrett Baker, an undergraduate due to walk across the stage at the University of Florida this May. The remainder of the winners will be posted soon on the SSC Web site. Contest rules for the 2009 contest will be posted within the next month with a call for entries going out later this year.
Being Frank
Digital photography destroys memory, he believes, with its ability to erase. Art school is another problem, teaching students to be blind. Editors are worse -- they poke the artist's eyes out. Photography: one minute it's not art at all. Then perhaps it is. And then again it is not. That's Robert Frank. "There are too many images," he said. "Too many cameras now. We're all being watched. It gets sillier and sillier. As if all action is meaningful. Nothing is really all that special. It's just life. If all moments are recorded, then nothing is beautiful and maybe photography isn't an art anymore. Maybe it never was." On a related note: Steidl is releasing a new edition of Frank's masterpiece The Americans on the 40th anniversary of when the book was first published. You can preorder now.
Hitler... say cheese Hitler had his own personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffman, who denied he was a propagandist for Hitler, saying: "I only photographed things that I saw and nothing else."
The Photo Booth Behind the curtains, our love affair with the photo booth, first unveiled in Times Square in 1926, goes on.
You Were Always On My Mind Yoon S. Byun started a new photo column called On My Mind at The Boston Globe. I like it for its simplicity, its potential to be revealing and powerful and its stark honesty. I also love that Yoon is helping to put a face on the community he covers.
Verve Photographer and photo editor Geoffrey Hiller has created Verve to feature photos and interviews by the finest young image makers today. Verve is a reminder of the power of the still image. Verve will also point you to new photo agencies, publications and inspiring multimedia projects.
I'm Gonna Burn It Down I love Trent Nelson's take on contests. They are such a double-edged sword. You win: You feel validated. Your bosses and publications are happy. Your resume gets padded with a few extra lines. You lose: You take it personally. You feel like your best is not good enough. Your ego gets deflated. Or maybe that's just me. A few days ago, I heard about the kid in Scotland that said he was going to burn his bridges to publicly protest the contest because of the low blow the judges made -- and I've been trying to decide what to do with it -- how to feel about it. They decided not to award places in a category he entered because the said the entries were not good enough. I hate that. It's a contest. You judge it on the photos entered, it's a benchmark standard for the current year. So, in protest, he's going to the extreme. But I understand. It's like nature. How land actually needs to burn every once and a while in order to start anew, regenerate growth, preserve the integrity of the land for future generations. Like I said, I understand. There's a certain refreshment in starting over. Not relying on the past to get to the future. Staying in the present. Judging your worth buy what you do today. The zen of photojournalism, if you will. And as Trent's post reminded me: Invest your emotion into your work, not into contest wins. Contests are not science. The results are subjective and unpredictable. If you work hard and stay focused on your art, then recognition will come. Food for thought. So get a buffet plate.
His Photos Reflect our Community Concord Monitor editor Mike Pride wrote a fitting tribute and one hell of a send-off to Dan Habib. After nearly 20 years at the Monitor, the last 13 as photo editor, Dan Habib has left to pursue a career as a filmmaker. For us, it is as though a member of the family has moved out. For readers, it is a milestone, too.
R.I.P. According to the NYTimes obituary Griffiths, who is best know for his defining images of the Vietnam War, died this morning at his home in London, at the age of 72.
MediaStorm, Reuters and Iraq
Reuters and MediaStorm collaborated to create Bearing Witness: Five Years of the Iraq War. The site features profiles of three Reuter's journalists who have more than 23 years combined experience reporting and photographing in Iraq.Reuters video, photography, info-graphics and journalists are showcased in this 5 chapter interactive application created from more than 20 hours of video footage and images selected from 3,600 of the best of Reuters photographs -- some published here for the first time. Additional chapters include a timeline of the Iraq War made up of 223 still images and 15 videos, and five maps drawn from dozens of pages of data.
Beyond Celebrity This quote completely jumpstarted my day: You know I developed a style a long time ago and I've had agents say to me "you know, you need to reinvent yourself" and you know, I've got to be honest at this stage in my life I don't fucking feel like reinventing myself. I feel like I've spent 40 years trying to figure out who Greg Gorman is and that's who I am and that's the pictures that I take an that's what I do for a living. Fine Art TV has a great interview with portrait photographer extraordinaire Greg Gorman who talks about how he got started shooting headshots for $35 each to working with the likes of Dustin Hoffman and Leonardo Decaprio. Now he is one of the most sought after celebrity photographers out there. And as he says "success in life, period, is being becoming one with yourself... to feel like what you're doing and who you are as a person is all gratifying and all comes together as one."
The Portfolio of...
Polaroid Mosaic I really want this Patrick Winfield Polaroid composite on my wall. It makes me smile.
The Portfolio of...
Update on Multimediashooter Richard Koci Hernandez sent out this note: 10 Things I Learned From Being Hacked 1. A bottle of Jack Daniels doesn't bring your site back to life. 2. Don't take it personally. Boy, did I take it personally. "Why me?" "What did I do to deserve this? I was only trying to share with others." And so on. 3. It's usually some dumb-ass kids in Canada, with nothing better to do on a Saturday [More on this later] 4. It sucks. 5. Don't be so dramatic. Yeah RIP was a bit strong. 6. It's good to surround yourself with people smarter than you. Like the kind of people who can resurrect a site. They can and we will! Just give me some time. 7. Be nice. Most hosting companies do back up the server. My hosting company didn't have the best customer service to deal with this problem. They basically said I should've backed it up and it's a pain in their arse to get me a back up. So I was very nice to the customer support person--who was clearly somewhere in the Baltic States, I promised a new pair of Levi's and now, I have a 'back-up' on the way. 8. Back up. Even without my hosting, I do have a back-up! This is where #6 came in handy. A very smart friend of mine, who I added as an ADMIN to my site, was smart enough to install a Wordpress plug-in http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup/ that automatically backs-up the database and then emails a copy. My friend had been doing this without me knowing, THANK GOD. He's been on vacation, just got back and said, "Dude, why so dramatic--see #5--I have your database right here!" And he emailed me the 9. Revenge can be sweet. This is where Mr. T and Mrs. V [keeping their names private for security reasons ha ha] come into play. No matter how hard a hacker tries, especially a couple of dumb ones, there's always someone smarter than you, not me of course, but Mrs. V. We know who you are. We have your real 10. It still sucks. But I learned how to protect my blog a little better, or at least have a back up if any other bored children decide to play around on the internet.
You are too many to thank one by one, so instead of answering your emails, I'll answer by saying, "I gonna pick myself off the floor, put some locks on the doors and fire up the blog machine!" Be patient. Even with the back-ups things are a little messed up. You might see some posts without images or proper links, the rss feed might take a while to 're-start' and little things like that. Also, the forums had to go. Why? Because that's how the slackers got in. Also, it's not a big loss because you folks aren't big on forums anyway. This always surprised me. Also, many who emailed said you were lurkers, stop being a I really didn't know how much the site meant to people. It's one of the reasons I'm going to buy a case of Red Bull and spend the next week rebuilding. This has been a humbling experience. All I ever wanted to do was share and help if I could. I'm glad the blog did that for some of you. Everyone asked, "what can I do to help?" Here's the answer. If you are serious, then we'll need a nice injection of content. How about writing something for the blog. It can be anything you are passionate about. I'd love it to be about your experiences with a recent mulitmedia project. Was it hard to produce? Fun? How long did it take? How many people saw it? Something, anything will do. Then just email me the copy with a few images and I'll post it. Finally, I'm humbled. I learned tons. But I'm still pissed. We know who did it, they were sloppy. Very sloppy. We even have proof, because, as children do, they bragged about it. I'm trying to be forgiving and not call their parents (yes, we have their numbers). I am rebuilding..... tnxs for the love. -r
Multimediashooter Hacked It sucks that an icredible resource like multimediashooter was hacked... There's a good article up at PDNPulse, that explains what happened. And the site's founder, and multimedia guru, Richard Koci Hernandez left a note on the homepage for everyone, including the hacker: I write this with a heavy heart: I am sorry to report that this website is down for the count. The site was recently hacked several times this weekend and severe damage was done. I do not have the time or resources at this time to continue. I wish you all the best. I only wish this hadn’t happened. [To the 'hacker' I hope it makes you happy to destroy something that people put their heart and soul into...just to have you destroy it for no reason. You win. There is a special place in hell for you.]
The Man the A-List Calls What is it about Mario Testino? By a combination of charm, luck, hard work and patronage, he is now unassailable as the fashion industry's favourite snapper, the photographer du choix of every label, every magazine (though he's on contract to Vogue and Vanity Fair), every stylist and every model. He has managed to transcend the constraints of the frock shoot to become a sought-after portrait photographer, specifically requested by Madonna, Gwyneth, Angelina – and he was once, famously, called in by Diana for perhaps her warmest-ever sequence of images. Many admirers have testified to the "nonchalance" of Testino's photo-shoots, the relaxed, almost intimate, feel to the pictures, as though the overly-papped film and pop stars have discovered a friend, rather than a cold-eyed voyeur, behind the lens.
A Woman's Eye on Afghanistan Born in Kabul, the 23-year-old is one of the few female photojournalists in Afghanistan. And even six years after she picked up her first camera, Ms. Wahidy says she still hears the grunts of disapproval or feels the sticks that are thrown at her, the sentiment that comes with being a female photojournalist in a male-dominated profession, and in a country where women are not seen as equals.
Education of a Photographer From Charles Traub's "The Education of a Photographer": Do something old in a new way. Do something new in an old way. Do something new in a new way. Whatever works, works. Do it sharp -- if you can't, call it art. Do fifty of them -- you definitely will get a show. Do it big -- if you can't do it big, do it red. If you don't know what to do, look up, or down -- but continue looking. Do celebrities -- if you do a lot of them you'll get a book. Edit it yourself. Design it yourself. Publish it yourself. Read Darwin, Marx, Freud, Einstein, Benjamin, McLuhan, and Barthes. Construct your images from the edges inward. If it's the "real world," do it in color. If it can be done digitally, do it. Be self-centered, self-involved, and generally entitled and always pushing -- and damned to hell for doing it. Don't do it about yourself, your friend, or your family. Don't dare photograph yourself nude. Don't look at old family albums. Don't hand color it. Don't write on it. Don't use alternative processes -- if it ain't straight, do it in the computer. Don't gild the lily -- a.k.a, less is more. Don't photograph indigent people -- especially in foreign lands. Don't whine, just produce.
I Fell in Love With a Female Assassin They met on a train and fell in love. Then photojournalist Jason P Howe discovered that his girlfriend Marylin was leading a secret double life - as an assassin for right-wing death squads in Colombia's brutal civil war. With their story set to become a major Hollywood film, he recalls an extraordinary, doomed romance. Watching her take the pistol from her belt, unbutton her jeans and slip into bed I somehow couldn't quite equate the woman in my arms with the bodies I had seen in the local morgue, their heads shattered by gunshots at close range, murders she confessed to having committed. High on a combination of the heady tropical climate, local rum, grade A cocaine and in the arms of nubile 22-year-old, fantasy and reality became blurred. It felt like I was living in a Quentin Tarantino movie."
The Portfolio of...
Say NO to Video Why not stop wasting money on video gear, new laptops to support your purchase of FCP, shotgun mics and expensive delivery systems like Maven or Brightcove, hours and hours of training (if you're lucky), plus hours and hours editing on FCP.... The viewer doesn't know or care if the image moves like video or is a well paced audio slide show, they want a good story. Period. -- koci Can I get an Amen?
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