Warning Labels

 

Warning: While you're out and about doing your holiday shopping, beware of the dangerous aspects of the products you're thinking about buying. For example, that benign-looking shirt you're about to purchase -- did you know that you are not supposed to iron it while wearing it?!? And did you know you're never supposed to use a hair dryer while sleeping? Oh, and watch that Slurpee -- it could cause brain freeze! Just a few important tips you may overlook if not for the warning labels pointing out that sort of thing.

 

AOL's Money & Finance suggested a fun story idea for us to illustrate about wacky warning labels found on everyday products. Monica and I took up the challenge of creating photos and photo illustrations for the story. To increase the visual interest, Monica & I decided to illustrate the warnings instead of just photograph the actual labels. You see some of those ideas above.

 

Check out our Warning Labels Photo Gallery and let us know what you think about warning labels.  What's the oddest warning label you've ever encountered?

 

- Dave

Photographing Baby

There are a few new moms on the photo staff here. Noreen's daughter, Isabella, was born in August 2006, and Jenna's son, Caden, was born in March 2006. We thought we would offer a few suggestions for getting good photos of your infant:

 

Time your photo sessions well.

Every baby has a window of time each day when they're most alert. Though Isabella tends to be a very smiley baby, she's most alert and affable somewhere between 8AM and 11AM daily. Be sure to have your camera ready during your baby's alert times to capture her smiley moments.

 

Capture the details.

Think about showing your baby's development by photographing details: her hand in your hand, the size of his little feet, or even the size of his first shoes.

 

Turn your flash off. Your baby will also thank you.

Get your baby in some natural light. Make sure your light source is behind you when you're taking the picture. Or experiment with having your light source come in from a side angle. You want to avoid the "deer in the headlights" look.

 

A little person with a big personality. In the moment.

Little personalities come out surprisingly quickly. Think about those details that make your baby unique. Then take a little bit of time (that virtual 5 minutes you can "spare") and think about how you want to capture them visually. Then wait for the moment. Remember that these things can't be rushed, and trying to pose a baby is an exercise in futility. It's always just a matter of time before the next mood manifests itself.  

 

Get Close. Then get closer.

Don't be afraid to try a few really close shots. Fill the entire frame with nothing but baby, and you instantly get rid of background distractions and clutter, resulting in a really nice portrait.

 

Don't forget to take a few snapshots of reality.

Some of my favorite photos show the happy chaos that reigns in a house with an infant. Although these  won't be the ones that make it onto the holiday card, they'll be priceless reminders of these short months when your child is very young. Does baby do a lot of crying? Snap a photo of that too. It won't be long before he grows out of it (I promise!) and you'll be able to look back and laugh.

 

Do you have any tricks or tips when it comes to photographing your baby? Have a favorite photo? Please share!

 

- Noreen & Jenna

Did You See That?

What gets lost in the antiseptic, sponsored, uber-stadium atmosphere of modern professional sports are the simple things, the naturalistic elements. Backgrounds are cluttered with signs, clean sight lines are hard to come by, and whatever happened to the sun, or rain, or some type of unique factor that differentiates THIS particular game from the one last week, or the one next week?

 

Not that this frame from photographer Mark J. Rebilas at US Presswire encompasses all of those themes -- it may just be a nice image that takes advantage of a momentary lighting quirk, nothing more -- but it sure makes for a great jumping off point to think about and discuss those themes.

 

To see the rest of the images from this week in sports, go to AOL Sports: Did You See That?, and for more NFL photos, go to NFL - Week In Photos - AOL Sports.

 

- Mike Heffner

Pictures of the Week: Nov. 18-24

The image of the dancers performing an ethnic dance caught my eye because it actually made me do a double-take to figure out what was going on in the photo. It appeared at first to me to be an art piece of silhouettes moving in a collection of fish bowls. It reminds me of my children's aquarium. Full of the same fish every day, but mesmerizing just the same.

 

Check out all of this week's pictures, and cast your vote for the best photo: Pictures of the Week.

 

-Lee

How to Take a Great Thanksgiving Family Portrait

Thanksgiving is a wonderful time for family gatherings, feasts and appreciation. Thanksgiving also is a great day for a new family portrait at home while the whole family is visiting.

 

To get a great shot at home you need to to think ahead:

The Lighting:  Choose a room with the best light and plan to take the photo at a wall where the most light falls. Try to take the photo early in the afternoon, usually around 2PM, when the November light is brightest. Pull back your curtains and turn on all your lights in the house. make sure your camera's flash is on. If it's a point-and-shoot, make sure the setting is on red-eye control. If the camera is a professional SLR style, think about bouncing your light off the ceiling.

 

The Clothes:  Choose wardrobes of neutral or medium grade solids if you can -- nothing too white or black. Long sleeves work best for portraits so the attention is focused on faces. Neutral solids also help to not date a picture to a particular time period.

 

The Mood:  Kids may move around a lot, but moms are usual the most difficult because they stress over themselves and everyone else. Try to calm the mood down by playing music and having wonderful fragrances in the background.

 

If you or your family tends to act up, smile a forced smile, are shy, or have photo anxiety, there is a particular game I recommend. I shot for many years as a family portrait photographer in a studio and created the following game to help families relax and put their best selves, and smiles, forward. Because one thing is for sure, if a parent tells a child to smile -- the child inevitably gives off a stressed, fake-looking smile. It's better to get laughs than to tell someone to smile.

The Photo Joke Game:  The game starts with the photographer. The photographer explains the rules and is the first to tell a joke. Then after the joke, when everyone laughs, photos are shot. Then the photographer names the next person to tell a joke.  The jokes are passed around and photographs are taken after each punch line. Here are the rules:

 

1) Everyone must look at the camera at all times.

2) After each joke, everyone must laugh -- no matter how horrible the joke was.

3) After you tell your joke, you choose who is to tell the next joke.

 

For young kids, you may want to prep them the morning of by telling them an easy to remember joke. Then have the child repeat the joke back to you - in which you will laugh like you never laughed before. Then if there are other family members, tell the child to repeat the joke around, each time you laugh like it's the funniest thing you've ever heard. Then later in the day, when everyone gathers for the photos and the game is explained, the young child has a joke they know by heart and know will be a sure- fire hit. Your young child will be excited to laugh for the camera -- inhibitions out the window.

Remember to stretch your photo time and take lots of pictures.  When your kids are bouncing around, take ten shots instead of three -- the more you shoot, the more likely you will get one great shot. Remember, it's cheaper to take lots of pictures than it is to set up a faux Thanksgiving with all of the family and try again.

 

Good luck, and remember to laugh!

 

- Cassandra

Pictures of the Week: Nov.11-17

This week's photo of New York's annual Veterans Day parade along Fifth Avenue stood out because of its timeless quality. I was struck by the red, white and blue of the American flag that provides the only real color to this image. I was struck by the way it made the soldier stand out. 

 

It's a classic image. It is an image that could have just as easily come out of the 1940's as today. The solemn soldier, our proud flag, a parade.

 

It captures the essence of Veterans Day, and its simplicity serves to honor those who serve in order to protect our country.

 

Check out all of this week's pictures, and cast your vote for the best photo: Pictures of the Week.

 

-Lee

Marie Claire Magazine's Photo Illustration - Right Or Wrong?

ABC News anchor Elizabeth Vargas recently did a Q&A with Marie Claire magazine to talk about being a mom, sans her new baby. However, in Marie Claire's December issue, Vargas is pictured not only with a baby, but wearing a shiny gold blouse opened wide to reveal both cleavage and a full breast-feeding event while sitting at a news anchor set desk. Whoa! It's bogus but looks as real as day.

The Drudge Report, quoted a "source close to the anchor" saying that "Vargas is disappointed but has a sense of humor about the whole thing."  However, it may help to know that this "fake" image is actually a photo illustration and is listed as one. Also, this "fake" photo should not  be confused with unethical and illegal doctoring of news images. You might remember the manipulated war photography by Adnan Hajj, a freelancer working for Reuters, that went out on the wires as a news event; that definitely was wrong. Photo illustrations occupy a different realm, are not passed on as news, and are protected by title and contract.

 

Yeah, yeah -- but I wanted to know more. I wanted to know if Vargas signed a contract with the magazine that might have allowed all this. When I pressed a spokesperson for the magazine if a sentence in this blog saying that Vargas herself signed a contract would be a true and correct statement, the representative said only: "We do not discuss our contractual agreements."  When asked if the sentence should be changed in this blog saying a group representing Vargas signed a contract, the spokesperson avoided the question by saying, "Again, I'm sorry, but we just can't get into our contractual agreements." 

 

So I came up dry. I can't find out if anyone signed. A pretty basic question goes unanswered. In addition, the Hearst spokesperson also sent me the same statement they sent to the Drudge Report. 

 

Now, in industry terms a photo illustration is photo-realistic art or art made from photography that carries an editorial message. Personally, I think if the story was about how moms juggle their careers and their children, it would have been okay to do an illustration, but the Q&A is about the one and only Vargas juggling being a career mom. The premise for me shifts in these two ideas from being a general feature to a personality feature about a concrete person. For a photo illustration to have integrity it must do three things:

1) A byline that carries the term, "photo illustration" must be printed if the piece ties to news, actual events or people.  We have a Check!

2) If a model is needed, the photographer must have permission from the model to manipulate that model's self image.  We have an unknown.

3) It must show a concept in a way that is noticeably unreal or the image should not have any attachments to news, actual events or people.  We have no check!

The photo illustration was about a real person and was realistic looking. Any John Doe looking at it alone would have no clue that it was faked. The byline is the only protection in this case.  Also, I'm willing to guess that the average reader would either miss the byline because it's on the opposite page, or that they wouldn't know what "photo illustration" means. I wouldn't be so harsh about this if Marie Claire magazine had written something like "not an actual photo" on the image at the bottom right corner, like they do in advertisements where a product is represented in a way it wouldn't normally appear.

 

What do you think? Did this photo illustration by Eric Cahan put ethics aside to try to add shock? Let us hear what you have to say about it.

 

- Cassandra Shie

Photo Tips: Color Correction

This tutorial is based on information I received from the guys at the Associated Press. The AP processes over 800 photos a day using these guidelines.

 

There is a simple four-step process to getting the perfect color correction, every time, with your photos. In order for this process to work make sure you have accurately adjusted your monitor based on the adobe gamma correction application which comes with Photoshop.

 

I will demonstrate the process in Photoshop 5.5, but any version of Photoshop will work (there might be slight differences in the location of the tools.)

 

The four-step process is:

 

1. Noise

2. Levels

3. Curves

4. Hue/Saturation

 

To begin, we need an image. Lets take the image below and work on it:

 

 

Step 1:  Noise

 

Our first step is to adjust the noise. Noise is anything from artifacts from the digital camera processing to grain in film. (Artifacts are areas where the digital camera cannot get the data from the scene and it substitutes in blobs of color to fill the missing areas.) We will correct noise in LAB color mode.

 

Changing to LAB mode from RGB will not do anything to the photo. To change mode go to Image > Mode > Lab Color.

 

So what is LAB? 

LAB color isdesigned to be device independent, i.e. creating consistent color whatever the device (such as monitor, printer, computer, or scanner) used to create or output the image.

And LAB is broken down like this:

LAB color consists of a luminance or lightness component (L) and two chromatic components: the (A) component (from green to red) and the (B) component (from blue to yellow). L is the actual layer where the image resides. This layer (L) you do not want to touch since it manipulates the actual image itself. The A and B layers are the layers we want to manipulate since this will only effect an area above the photo and not the image itself. So we will not lose image quality. Like all the steps we will go through, you will not degrade the image at any point.

LAB Setup:

So let's look at the LAB setup. Open the channel toolbar, and you will see the image to the right. You can see the original image on the LAB layer, the grayscale version in the lightness layer, and the two color screens in the A and B layers. We will now adjust the A and B layers. 

First let's select the A layer. Once you select it, the other layers will deselect and you will see the A channel in your image area. If you zoom in on the image you can visibly see the noise we are going to correct.

To get rid of the noise we will start by selecting Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Now adjust the blur so the image becomes just barely smooth all over. You usually will never exceed a radius of 1.0 but this varies for each photo. Then hit OK.

Repeat this for the B layer and you have successfully completed removing the noise from the image. You will notice when you select the LAB layer again that the image has not changed at all, this is because we only changed the color screens above the image.

Once we have gotten rid of the noise, we can take the image back to RGB mode. Once again remember we have not lost any image quality by switching image modes. We are ready to start the color adjustment now.

Step 2: Levels

First we go into Image>Adjust>Levels. Now let's go through what we see here. In the main RGB Channel we see the histogram below. All we are going to do is remove the non-data from the image. We will do this process in each color channel.

To remove the non-data we will slide the arrows so they come to the beginning of the histogram on each side. In this particular channel we only need to slide the right arrow over to the start of the color data.

You should repeat this step for each color channel R, G, and B as well as the main RGB channel we just did. Each channel will be different so make sure you bring each arrow to the start of the histogram on each side. Do not adjust the middle arrow.

The left arrow adjusts the shadows or blacks, the right arrow adjusts the highlights or whites, and the middle arrow controls mid-tones. Now we have completed the color information adjustments. Make sure to hit OK after completing those steps.

Step 3: Curves

Step three is curves. This step is really dependent on the gamma of your monitor. So if you did not adjust it you will need to do so for this step. This is a very arbitrary step and not an exact science, but is based on the photographer's vision of the subject at the time he/she shot the image.

Lets now go to Image>Adjust>Curves. All we want to do here is slightly increase the lightness of the photo.

Add a point in the middle of the curve and slowly pull it out. Make sure you do not move the end points of the curve in any instance.

As the picture gets lighter keep in mind the lighting in the original setting. You want to pull the lightness out just enough without over-doing it. Once you get the light quality right you are done with curves.

Curves will always be a slight adjustment to help fine tune the overall light quality. Make sure to hit OK when you are done.

So now our image is perfect right? Well, not yet. We need to do the fine color adjustments and get rid of the colors you may not even detect in the photo. The last step is the most tedious, but the most important. We are now ready to adjust the hue and saturation of the photo. If you ever think your photos have color shifts, then this is where we fix that problem.

Step 4: Hue/Saturation

So lets go to Image>Adjust>Hue/Saturation

The first thing we are going to do is over-saturate the image in the master layer. So slide the saturation arrow to the right and watch the image.

You will notice there are very hot color spots in the image. We need to identify these colors and go in and fix them. So look at the example of the saturated photo. You can see there is a great deal of red, yellow, blue, green, and cyan in the photo that sticks out.

Now lets put the saturation level back to 0 and fix the colors that need adjusting. You will notice if you click where it says "Master" in the hue/saturation toolbar you will find the following colors listed: Reds, Yellows, Greens, Cyans, Blues, and Magentas. These are all the colors of the spectrum and the colors that can be in any photo. So even though you are in RGB mode you can adjust the CMYK color fields.

Let's select the red layer. We now need to identify and reduce the red. In the hue/saturation toolbar slide the red saturation level up slightly so you can recognize the reds -- say to about 20 or so. (The amount is arbitrary, you want it enough to see the color shifts, but not too much to blow the color out of proportion.) This will show the strong red areas in the subjects face of the photo.

Now you want to slide the hue arrow either direction to balance the color shift of the red. What you are doing is swapping the red color for another red that is a lighter or darker hue depending on the direction you slide the arrow. In the case of this photo I will slide the hue to about 8. This removes the red from the subjects face and gives him a more natural skin tone.

You need to repeat this process for each color you find to be over-saturated in the photo. It won't hurt if you adjust colors that aren't over-saturated, but you don't need to. Once you complete this step for the colors you want to adjust hit OK.

If you completed each of these steps you have successfully adjusted your color image to perfection.

This technique guarantees proper color adjustment even if you do not have a calibrated monitor. Also if you wish to do any dodging or burning, make sure to use LAB mode and do the dodging and burning in the A and B channels.

All of the steps above help to retain all the information of the original scan or digital image. Once you are finished you can change to CMYK mode if the image is for print. Hopefully your photo looks like the one on the right.

Send us some of the images you worked on for this tutorial.

- Mitch Hazam

Wacky Requests

Did you see last week’s photos of the election returns? If you're not a political junkie, maybe you clicked on the new pictures of Britney Spears instead. Or how about the latest Hubble Telescope photos? These are just a few of the thousands of images that appeared on AOL this week. But before these pictures were live for the world to see, each started as a request from a programmer to one of our photo editors. Great care and attention goes into choosing the best photo to illustrate whatever we're writing about - from the war in Iraq, to music reviews, to fun activities to do when you're visiting Millsboro, Delaware.

 

Sometimes, however, the subject at hand doesn't easily lend itself to visual representation. How does one go about building a photo gallery of creatures that don't exist? It's a challenge. And sometimes the articles themselves are offbeat or creative to say the least, making us rack our brains and stretch our imaginations. So here, for your enjoyment, are some of the wackier photo requests that have come across our desks recently:

 

* A sexy squirrel

* A photo of Lindsay Lohan looking constipated

* A color vintage photo of an African American couple in bed and getting ready to make 

  love from anytime in the 1800's. 

* A Gallery of mythological characters that never existed

* A gallery of detached retinas

* A sexy woman eating a turkey leg

* A flatulent cow

 

 

Now let us know what you think. Have you ever seen a photo on the service that made you scratch your head or just laugh out loud? Chances are that one of us was laughing along with you.

 

- Jenna

Pictures of the Week: Nov. 4-10

This week's photograph of two Palestinians running to avoid being shot after hurling stones at Israeli soldiers caught my eye because it's not a typical image that I see from the Middle East. Oh, sure it's yet another image of violence from an area that seems to produce an endless stream of such images, but something about this image is different.

 

 

Its freshness, its point of view, made me pause and take a long look at the moment that the photographer captured.

 

We are all too familiar with the barrage of photos depicting violence from this area of the world, which in some ways has made us grow immune to what we see. Many of these images truly are dramatic. But the seemingly endless years of daily violence has made many of these images blur together, or worse, become cliches.

 

Not only does the image make me stop and look at the event, but it amazes me that the photographer was able to compose the image in such a way that the Palestinians appear to be framed by both their surroundings and the Israeli soldiers. It's this ingredient that makes this image stand out.

 

Check out all of this week's pictures, and cast your vote for the best photo: Pictures of the Week: Nov. 4-10.

 

Let us know what you think about the week's selection.

 

-Lee

 

 

 

Photo Tips

We are starting a regular feature, Photo Tips, where you'll get to see some neat tricks and ideas that we hope will help you transform your images. Over the weeks (and months and years, we hope) we'll offer simple tutorials like the one below as well as advanced tutorials like the one we will be posting next week on color correction. So stay tuned!

 

The primary software program we use is Adobe's Photoshop, so most of the tips we'll offer will reference that software.

 

Photoshop Pet Sketch Tip:

 

Don't throw away those out of focus, badly exposed pet pictures! Here are a few Photoshop tips to turn them into snazzy sketches of your pet.

 

Let's start with something you may have experienced: a dark, fuzzy photo of your pet, for example, like the picture of this cat:

 

 

Step One: Create a duplicate layer.

 

In Photoshop, it's often best to work in layers as it keeps your original image intact.

 

To do this, go to "layers" in the top menu or the layers tab in the pop-up and choose "duplicate layer." Or use a short cut: On a PC, use "Ctrl J" or on a Mac, "Apple J"

 

Name the new layer, e.g. cat2.  

 

 

 

Step 2: Adjust Levels

 

Make sure you work on the duplicate layer.

 

Go to the "Image" tab on the top and choose "Adjustments" in the drop down menu.  Then select "Levels."  A shortcut: on a PC use "Ctrl L" or on a Mac, use "Apple L"

 

Play with the controls until it looks the way you want it to. The more the contrast, the better will be the results. Here are the levels we used for our tones:

 

 

and the image now looks like this:

 

 

Step 3: Sharpening

 

Now add some sharpening. 

Go to the Filter tab at the top.

Select "Unsharp Mask" (This also helps with the contrast.)

Here are the settings I used:

 

 

Step 4: Artistic Filter

 

Experiment with the Artistic Filter: You can create any number of creative effects -- below are details of the effects I created. 

 

Make sure you are still in the the duplicate layer.

Go to the "Filter" tab on top. 

Select " Artisitc"

Then from the drop down menu select " Colored Pencil" - it opens up the window below.  You can see the settings we chose for the colored pencil effect:  3, 15, 38.

 

 

Play with the pencil width, stroke pressure and paper brightness until you achieve the effect desired.

 

And TA DA! 

 

 

Note: When you have in the "Artistic Filter" dialog box , play with different filter and see the effects.  In the image below we used the "plastic wrap" effect instead of the "colored pencil."

 

 

Step 5: Save the image

 

Save the new image by selecting: File > Save As -- and then rename the file.

 

 

Enjoy and as always, have some FotoFun.

 

And don't forget to send us your creations...submit links in the comments section below.

 

- Kathy

 

Some other fun Pet Photo sites for you to check out:

 

http://www.photojojo.com/content/websites/pet-photography/

http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/how-to-photograph-pets/

http://www.nyip.com/tips/topic_pets1199.html

http://www.cuteoverload.com/

 

Pictures of the Week: Oct. 28 - Nov. 3

This week's most amazing image is of us. Earth, I mean. Captured seemingly by accident by the Cassini spacecraft while photographing Saturn's rings. It's visible as that faint pinprick of light to the upper left of Saturn's rings. 

Even more amazing is the fact that this is only the second time that the Earth has been photographed from deep space. It's astonishing that our planet is even visible from such a great distance. For more details and the story behind this image, visit the NASA site. To see more stunning images from space, take a look at our Hubble gallery.

Check out all of this week's pictures, and cast your vote for the best photo: Pictures of the Week: Oct. 28 - Nov. 3. Let us know what you think about the week's selection.

- Lee

Tags: Pictures of the Week, Saturn, Iran, rocket, protest, Latin Grammys

PhotoPlus Expo: Photography and Design Conference, NYC

If you happen to be in the New York City this weekend, I recommend checking out PhotoPlus Expo at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center.  The annual all-things-photo conference running November 2 - 4 features 278 vendors from design / photography products to imaging services and everything in between in addition to three days of seminars by industry leaders. 

 

Larger vendors such as Adobe, Apple, Canon and Nikon are pulling out all the stops with hourly demonstrations by top industry professionals.  Yesterday I stopped at the Adobe booth to watch Seth Resnick demonstrate his digital asset management and workflow with Adobe Photoshop tools including Lightroom beta.  I also got to play with the new toys being introduced by all the top camera brands and watch billboard size prints being printed on the spot. 

 

On Thursday, I attended the keynote address with Tom Wujec who talked about what, he believes, the photography studio of 2020 will look like.  His presentation featured several technologies that got a lot of audience reaction including 10-gigapixel cameras that produce 100-gigabyte images, 3D lenses that allow the photographer to specify the focus point after shooting and organically grown lenses.  Wujec announced of Project 2020, a partnership with PDN to turn his vision into reality.  Look for more information on the project and how to get engaged by offering feedback on PDNOnline.com

 

Other seminars focus on lighting, niche photography, digital workflow, marketing and business practices for photographers. 

 

Other PhotoPlus Expo Blogs:

NYC PhotoShop Blog

http://pdnedu.blogs.com/

http://www.photoshopsupport.com/photoshop-blog/06/07/archive1.html

http://www.flickr.com/groups/newyorkers/discuss/72157594165853562/

 

Drop us a note if you make it to PhotoPlus and tell us what impressed you the most.

 

- Lauren

Weekend Assignment: Nature

Our weekend assignment is to go out and shoot nature.  You can shoot details, wide shots - anything that catches your eye. It can be in a park, during a hike, in your backyard.

We have included an entry from our Photo Editor, Jim, for your inspiration.  Jim, when not at AOL, spends time shooting nature and maintaining his Hiking Journal, which grew into a successful small business, Blue Bison Studio.  So his blog entry should also give you some ideas about how you can make money from your lovely images. 

Jim's blog:

About 4 1/2 years ago my wife, Karen, and I started walking every morning before work to get more exercise into our daily lives. Soon after that, we also began to take short hikes on the weekends in the many parks in our area. Since we both enjoy photography and nature, we began taking photos during our hikes and started an online journal at www.bluebisonstudio.com/hiking to document and share our hiking experiences with our friends. Here are a few samples:

So far we have more than 280 hikes documented.

 

At the end of the first year, we used images from our hikes in a desk calendar to use as Christmas gifts for friends and family. We were encouraged to produce the calendar for sale. 

 

The following year, we registered the name Blue Bison Studio, LLC (www.bluebisonstudio.com) and produced our first calendar for sale. A year later we also started selling greeting cards made from our photographs and a small business was born.

 

The hiking is fun, it gets us outside and we enjoy our time together.  Also, the creative part of producing the journal, calendar and cards is very satisfying.

 

We have had two photo shows at the Historic GreatFalls Tavern in the C&O Canal National Historical Park in Potomac, Md. The proceeds from the sale of the photographs were donated to The Friends of the Great Falls Tavern's C&O Canal Boat Fund.

 

 

 

We also are scheduled to do another show as part of the City of Gaithersburg's Art in Public Places project in 2007.

 

We would love to see some of your nature photos - share links in the comments section below.   

 

- Jim

National Press Photographers Association - Flying Short Course

I caught up with the 2007 National Press Photographers Association’s (NPPA) Flying Short Course in Philadelphia -- the first stop of a three-city, three-day cross country professional photo seminar. Some incredible work was showcased by seasoned photojournalists as well as younger professionals.

 

Josh Meltzer, a Roanoke Times photographer and 2006 Photojournalist of the Year, presented his multimedia work, highlighting the power of audio in web based journalism.  His coverage of Somali immigrants settling in Roanoke can be viewed at: The Roanoke Times Photos and Multimedia. Or you can link to it directly here: Somali Bantu refugees.  

 

Pulitzer Prize winner, April Saul’s images spanning 20 years revealed her profound involvement with her subjects. She presented an essay on an immigrant Cambodian woman living in Pennsylvania with a foster family, a group-home where a woman took in disabled children and tended to them as her own. Saul is currently working on a project documenting the mourning process of families and communities who have experienced the shooting death of a child under the age of 17.  Take a look at an amazing set of pictures at philly.com's "Chronicling the Tragedy."

Associated Press photojournalist David Guttenfelder, winner of the 2006 NPPA Best Of Photojournalism for larger markets, showed his portfolio of foreign disasters and war. His understated elegy dismissing “normal life,” underscored the toll covering hard news can take on a journalist.

    

A man in Delhi, India celebrates Holi, the Hindu festival of colors. The festival, originally held to celebrate the fertility of the land, is also associated with the immortal love of Hindu God Krishna and Radha. 

 

John Morris, 89, often cited as the world's most influential photo editor whose career stops included LIFE magazine, The New York Times, Ladies Home Journal, The Washington Post and as the first Executive Director of Magnum Photos, spoke about how photojournalism was more than just a job – it’s a life style, a commitment. Check out his book on the subject: Get the Picture.

 

Yet,despite the diversity in presentation and generation, the common thread through the presentations was that regardless of technology and gear, salaries and location, the skill and commitment required for storytelling remains unchanged.

 

More than anything, the weekend encouraged me and the troop of students and unemployed photographers in attendance, to simply go out and do — a concept often forgotten by young shooters who are searching for the get-famous-quick trapdoor.

 

To read a story about the seminars, go to: 2006 NPPA Flying Short Course. 

 

- Rachel

      

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