Pictures of the Week: August 25-31

This was quite the week for wildfires. As I searched for photos for this week's gallery, there were dozens of images from wildfires raging across Idaho and other Western states as well as across Greece. At week's end, the fires raging across Greece had killed at least 64 people and had ravaged more than 770 square miles. Residents near Ketchum, Idaho, which is near the Sun Valley Resort, faced mandatory evacuations as the fire, known as the Castle Rock fire, burned some 72 square miles. Some of the resort's snow machines on its ski runs were turned into sprinklers, as they sprayed water to help fight the fire.

Firefighters stand at a small structure they're working to protect as billowing clouds of smoke roll before them Aug. 28 in Ketchum, Idaho.

Residents of the Greek village of Andritsena struggle to try to contain a blaze on the Peloponnese peninsula, Aug. 27.

Can you imagine placing yourself in the middle of scenes like the ones above, particularly the one in Greece, so you can photograph and document what's going on there? We tend to see photos like this and not think much about the photographer – we just look at the images, shake our heads and think of the destruction being caused by the fires. But put yourself in the photographer's shoes for a second and think about you being the one standing there composing the image, making sure your exposure is good, and triggering the camera's shutter while trying to be aware of your surroundings and trying to avoid becoming a victim. Think you could handle it?

Take a minute to look through all the photos in this week's Pictures of the Week, and remember to vote for the photo you think is the best.

- Gary 

Tags: Pictures of the Week

Princess Diana Remembered

It's a story that has captivated people for decades, and it's intensified now at the 10th anniversary of Princess Diana's death. From the moment she entered the public eye when Prince Charles began courting her in the early 80's, to the most lavish marriage ceremony most have ever witnessed, to the public breakup and divorce in 1996, and her tragic death a year later on Aug. 31, 1997, Princess Diana has riveted the public's attention.

  

We've put together a photo gallery remembering Princess Diana. It's a retrospective gallery of Diana's life, using photos that show her transformation from her teen years through her marriage and divorce and her fateful trip to France with Dodi Al Fayed. It also highlights some of the things she was known for – her compassion to the sick and injured, her love of her sons, and how the public was transfixed by her.

Take a moment to look through our Remembering Diana gallery in AOL Visions. And check out some of the other links there for additional coverage on AOL.

- Gary

Tags: Princess Diana

Platypus Workshop

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of attending a training seminar called the Platypus Workshop in Rockport, Maine. 

 

Platypus was started nine years ago by veteran Time magazine photographer Dirck Halstead. For more than a decade, Halstead has predicted the eventual eclipse of still photography by video journalism, and many believe that the newspaper industry is near the tipping point where the ability to produce video for the web will become essential to the continued survival of the daily paper.

 

According to a report from the Pew Research Center, the number of Americans getting their news with some regularity from the Internet grew from 1 in 50 in 1996 to 1 in 3 in 2006. While online news is booming, readership of printed newspapers is quickly declining. News organizations need to recapture their readership. Many believe that to do this they need to use the web’s ability to deliver dynamic web content while still providing content to the print editions that provide the bulk of their income. Video can do this.    

 

The quality of high-definition video cameras has reached a point where some photo editors are happy to take still grabs from the footage for their print editions while using the video itself to draw users to their Web site. Newspapers like the San Jose Mercury News, the Dallas Morning News, and the Detroit Free Press have been using stills from video, some on the front page. Almost half of the photographers working for the Dallas Morning News shoot their assignments entirely in video. Most job openings currently posted for newspaper photographers either encourage or require multimedia experience. This is what the Platypus Workshop is all about. 

 

Dirck designed the workshop to teach still photographers and editors the art of video journalism. We covered the technical details of working with video cameras and sound equipment, lighting and conducting interviews, how to shoot video segments that can be crafted into packages with a visual rhythm that helps maintain a pace and narrative that propel the story forward, and then how to bring it all together through editing. 

 

As a photojournalist and an editor, I am always working to create and find the “decisive moment” – a single image that can convey the essence of the story or an emotion or a revelation that cannot adequately be communicated in words. One of the most difficult things for me to understand in the workshop was that in video, these moments fly by as quickly as any other. Even if you compose the most beautiful picture in video, it’s not going to linger on screen for more than a few seconds.  Individual shots lose some of their importance, but they are all essential for crafting the final story in the editing process.

 

Platypus Workshop attendees: (front) Charla Jones, Toronto Globe&Mail; Deborah Cannon, Austin American Statesman; Margaret Bowles, Freelance; Barbara Salisbury, Washington Times. (2nd row) Jeff Scheid, Las Vegas Review&Journal; Jayson Taylor, Toronto Globe&Mail; PF Bentley, Edit Instructor; Dirck Halstead, Director; Jeff Costello, AOL; Sarah Francis, Course Manager. (Top row) Ian Johnson, Course Manager; Richard Haddad,Western Newspapers; James Walker, NBC; Paul Lillagore, Freelance; John LaPinot, Palm Beach Post; Thomas Martinez

 

I had an amazing time at the workshop (that's me -- second from right in the second row in the above photo). It really didopen my eyes to a new technique of storytelling. I don’tknow that it will supplant my love of still photography for the time being, but I can’t wait to get out there and start producing some videos.

 

Check out some of the videos made by The Maine 2007 Platypus Class.  

 

Dirck Halstead runs a website about photojournalism in the digital age called The Digital Journalist. 

 

- Jeff Costello

Pictures of the Week: Aug. 18-24

The week seemed to be dominated by weather news, particularly all the coverage around Hurricane Dean as it tracked through the Caribbean and onto the Yucatan Peninsula. It was a Category 5 hurricane when it first made landfall on Tuesday, capable of catastrophic damage, but Dean didn't wreak the widespread devastation that initially was feared. However, relatively quiet by comparison, were the storms drenching the Upper Midwest, soaking counties in Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. Dean got most of the attention with blanket coverage, hourly check-ins with accompanying maps and storm path predictions.

But the rains that hit the Upper Midwest as well as flooding from the remnants of Tropical Storm Erin that swept Texas, Oklahoma and Missouri resulted in scenes like the one above, with more than 1,000 people being flooded out of their homes. The death toll from the storms over the past week rose to at least 26. That's more than was caused by Hurricane Dean, more than was caused by the bridge collapse in Minneapolis earlier in the month. It's odd, though, that it didn't get nearly as much media attention as either of those two stories.

Check out the Pictures of the Week gallery and don't forget to cast your vote for the image you think is most compelling. Which photo did you vote for and why?

- Gary

Tags: Pictures of the Week

NABJ Conference

I

I attended the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) convention in Las Vegas and enjoyed the seminars (after I got over the 110-degree temperature outside), panels and workshops offered inside the air-conditioned convention center. Although the photography offerings were geared more towards the print media, not online, I found a panel discussion on covering Africa very engaging. The panelists, all from different countries in Africa, gave an overview of the myths and misconceptions that many western journalists have when covering the continent. Comments like, "You will not die of a horrible, exotic disease if you go to Africa to cover a story," and "Africa is a continent, not a country" elicited a few giggles, but were apropos.  As a photo editor, the discussion prompted me to think about the barrage of violent, poverty-laden images being run every day and what I can do to make sure I am not unnecessarily enforcing a stereotype of an entire continent.

A Chadian woman and her children stand in the abandoned Aramgo village southwest of Goz Beida that was attacked April 22, 2007 in Chad. Around 200,000 Sudanese refugees have fled to neighboring Chad from Darfur, and more the 100,000 Chadian villagers have fled their villages to become IDP (Internally Displaced People).

 

A model shows one of the creations of South African designer Kluk CGDT during the fourth and last day of the Cape Town fashion week in Cape Town, South Africa. Now in its fifth year, the event has grown rapidly into one of the premiere new-world fashion weeks, providing an international platform for designers from across sub-Saharan Africa.

 

I also attended sessions with presidential candidates Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton as AOL's Black Voices partnered with NABJ to host video of their discussions. The NABJ Convention committee invited all the presidential candidates to appear, democrats and republicans, but Clinton and Obama were the only ones to accept. While their talks included repeats of speeches and comments made previously by the candidates, there were a few humorous and, seemingly, less prepared moments. To keep up with what's going on with all the candidates and for additional election coverage, go to 2008 Election Coverage on AOL News.

- Rachel

Pictures of the Week: Aug. 11-17

This was a tough week to edit Pictures of the Week. There were just too many compelling photographs. Usually we wind up with about a dozen images, give or take one or two. This week I think we've set some sort of record: 17 photos in the gallery in all. Each one of them is a compelling visual.

From the whimsical images of the kite surfer or the county fair ride or the beluga whale swimming with her newborn calf to the tragically compelling and heart-wrenching photos of the victim in the Peruvian earthquake, the emotional embrace of relatives of Utah miners, and the photo of the U.S. Marines during an interment ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, this week's gallery is chock full of images that will give you pause. Each picture has an interesting story behind it.

Check out the Pictures of the Week gallery and leave your comments here. And when you go to the gallery, don't forget to cast your vote for the image you think is most compelling.

- Gary

Tags: Pictures of the Week

Still kissing ... and kissing (after 62 years )

 

Organizers called it a "smoochfest." Today at 1pm, any and all kissers were invited to Times Square to commemorate the anniversary of V-J Day and kiss a partner just like the famous photograph taken by Life photojournalist Alfred Eisenstaedt, who shot the iconic photo in Times Square on Aug. 14, 1945. A special invitation was extended to couples whose kisses bridge boundaries -- be they religious, political, racial or national -- as well as to veterans in honor of the U.S. Armed Forces and in celebration of the universal ideals of peace, love and hope. 

 

 

For one couple -- U.S. Army Capt. Ben Summers and Elizabeth Booher, pictured above at right -- the kiss sealed a marriage proposal.

 

What were the identities of the mysterious kissing couple in the original photo from 1945? Read our previous "A kiss is just a kiss" post on the topic. What's your guess? 

 

~ Dave  

Pictures of the Week: Aug. 4-10

 

Viewing the photograph of the lift-off of the space shuttle Endeavour, you get a real sense of the enormous amount of power it takes to launch one of these vehicles into space as it reaches speeds of up to 15,000 miles per hour.

 

By successfully transporting Barbara Morgan, a teacher-turned-astronaut, into space, this shuttle launch completes the mission to send the first teacher into space that was tragically cut short 21 years ago when the shuttle Challenger blew up shortly after launch.

 

It also provides a much needed success to NASA following a less than stellar year.

 

Check out all the Pictures of the Week, and please take a moment to sign up for an alert so that you won't miss next week's set of images: Get weekly alerts.

 

- Lee Van Grack

Tags: Pictures of the Week

Covering the Bridge Collapse

AOL photo editors Chris, Miriam and I were settling into the routine of the night photo desk shift on a quiet summer evening last week. We were doing our standard thing – handling routine daily news, sports and entertainment photo coverage by completing photo requests as we received them from programmers and communicating mostly through IMs. 

 

Just after 7:30 PM EDT, Chris IM'd me: “Guy, FOX NEWS, bridge collapse in Minnesota. This is BIG.”

 

I switched to FOX at my desk in New York; Chris was in Dulles, Va. The New York FOX affiliate still had on a Seinfeld rerun. I flipped over to CNN, knowing it would only be a matter of minutes until they were onto the story. 

 

The three of us talked briefly, "Chris, you handle the collapse, while we clear the decks of sports, entertainment and other news requests.” Experience from covering large stories tells you, "do not drop everything, just get everything done." Sports still needs sports photos, etc. 

 

Within less than 10 minutes, Chris had the following image sent over to the news programmers. Note the brief caption. Just the bare facts:

 

Collapse in Minnesota.

 

By 8:15 PM, a mere 30 minutes or so after the first ALERT went out, Chris had sent out about eight images for a photo gallery. They were all grainy video grabs, but they served the purpose of Internet news (immediacy). This was all done all without a single photo request from the programmers.

 

This video frame grab taken from KMSP television shows a burning tractor trailor at the scene of a freeway bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Aug. 1. The entire span of the 35W bridge collapsed about 6:05 p.m. where the freeway crosses the river near University Avenue.

 

By 8:30, the first photos from the St. Paul Pioneer Press starting rolling in on the Associated Press photo wire. This is about how the timing always seems to work: about 45 minutes after an event, we'll start seeing still photos.

 

Rescue workers gather on the Interstate 35W bridge, which stretches between Minneapolis and St. Paul,  after it collapsed Aug. 1 into the Mississippi River during evening rushhour.

 

During that initial time, Chris was alone on the story, as Miriam and I cleared out all the other requests.

 

About an hour to 90 minutes into the story, the real barrage of photos hit. Every source started filing a multitude of photos. No pictures for the first 45 minutes, save for frame-grabs from TV newscasts, and then just a trickle of photos that turned into a deluge from each source from 45 minutes until an hour and a half after the story broke. Each source dumped about 40 pictures at once. Three hours after the collapse, we had hundreds of images to choose from. Keeping one editor as point person, we were able to update the gallery in a cohesive logical manner, avoiding redundancy. Chris also added a couple of historic images, allowing users to compare the bridge both before and after the collapse, which helped users grasp the full tragedy of the situation.  

 

We replaced early TV video frame-grabs with stronger still photos. Miriam and I looked at all of Chris’s photo selections, and we then scoured the feeds for better and different images.

 

Emergency workers carry the body of a victim from the scene of the I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis, Minn., Aug. 1.

 

By the time our shifts had ended, we had updated AOL's Welcome Screen several times, cut News main page photos and sent over maybe 20 photo gallery adds.

 

On a routine day, News and Sports programmers decide which stories they choose to build out. They then request images to support a gallery if possible. The key point is we're all working in the past. The story is already written and the photos are already taken. The photo editor then searches our varied sources for the best representation of images. Programmers pick the stories, photo editors pick the best images to help communicate the story to the public.

 

But breaking news, like the bridge collapse, is a totally different animal. You must follow the story closely. That often means watching several television stations simultaneously and quickly toggling between our varied sources as the story unfolds real-time.

 

A portion of the I-35W bridge over the Mississippi River collapsed during the evening rush hour in Minneapolis, Minn., Aug.1.

Within minutes of learning about the collapse, we were able to get a photo gallery up on AOL. Pulling images from every source we had available, we continued to build a detailed photographic experience for our users to help better understand the magnitude of the bridge collapse. 

 

Flipping through the gallery one last time before going home for the night, the reality of this event really hit home. We were moved by such powerful images and hoped that the numbers of dead and injured would remain low. 

 

The following day as we arrived for our shifts, we opened up an email that noted that more than 8 million times, people clicked their mouse through one of the photos we posted documenting the collapse. It's times like that when we really feel like we provide a great service informing the public of events as they unfolded.  A thank-you email from our director really made us feel great. She said, "Great work guys, and to quote my daughter as she flipped through the TV stations last night, 'the only place updating photos and info is AOL. TV is lame.' "
 
We couldn't agree more.

 

- Chris, Guy and Miriam

Pictures of the Week: July 28-Aug. 3

 

The photo of the U.S. soldier from Bronco Troop, 1st squadron, 14th Cavalry, shaving before going on a patrol in search of Iraqi insurgents has a timeless quality to it. It's a scene that has been played out in every war prior -- a soldier performing an everyday routine that seems so normal, so mundane, and in such stark contrast to the hostile surroundings.

 

The fact that this everyday routine is being performed in the middle of a war zone serves to remind me that although we may start our mornings with similar rituals, the way we spend the remainder of the day may be quite different.

 

Check out all the Pictures of the Week, and please take a moment to sign up for an alert so that you won't miss next week's set of images: Get weekly alerts

 

- Lee Van Grack

Tags: Pictures of the Week

Sony Recalls Cyber-Shot Cameras

Sony has issued a recall of some of its Cyber-shot cameras, noting that peeling or warping of the metal coating on the bottom of the camera could result in users getting scratched or cut. A Sony spokesperson said the problem would potentially affect about 350,000 cameras.

 

The recall affects only DSC-T5 model Cyber-shot digital still cameras with serial numbers between 3500001 and 3574100. Sony is offering free service and replacement of the bottom case on the affected cameras and they will cover all costs associated with shipping.

 

Here's a photo of the Cyber-shot model and the affected area:

 

 

For more details check out the Sony Web site.

Tags: Sony, Cyber-shot, Camera Recall

Teen Photographer Sues Pornographers

Here's an interesting item related to photos on the Internet and copyright law. To quote from a PRNewswire story: "Teenaged photographer Lara Jade Coton never expected one of her photos to turn up on the cover of a pornographic movie. She certainly never expected to see a picture of herself on such a movie. But that is exactly what Lara Jade found when she discovered that an innocent self-portrait, taken when she was only 14 years old, was obtained off the Internet and used without permission as the DVD cover and face art for [a] sexually explicit movie."

 

Lara Jade, who is now 18 years old, said she was "absolutely horrified" when she found out what the movie company had done. And she filed a lawsuit in Tampa, Fla., claiming copyright infringement, as well as a number of other charges, and is pursuing punitive damages as well. 

 

Lara Jade Coton

 

As the PRNewswire story points out quite appropriately, "The case demonstrates a dilemma facing artists today and reveals yet another danger of the Internet for teens and children. While the Internet offers creative people a worldwide outlet for their work, it's also common for artists to find that their work has been borrowed innocently or just plain stolen by others."

 

Exactly right. You bloggers and others out there who think that anything on the Web is free for your use, take note. The instant someone creates a photograph, that image is copyrighted and cannot be reused without the copyright owner's permission.

 

Lara's photography looks quite promising. You can see her images at http://www.larajade.com. And if you like her photography, she even has an area on her Web site where you can legitimately purchase prints of her photos as well as an area where you can request to license her images for other uses.

 

- Gary

Tags: Lara Jade Coton

Kimora Lee Simmons: Life in the Fab Lane!

How do you create a package around someone who, according to her most ardent fans, is larger than life and the epitome of style? Fabulously, of course!!! 

Black Voices has been looking for a project just like this: Someone with a profile high enough not only in the African-American community, but who also resonates across race and gender lines. Kimora Lee Simmons fits the bill.

Kimora Lee Simmons

The Style Network noticed our coverage of Kimora and intense audience response, and reached out to us to be the exclusive site to premiere the entire episode of Kimora’s new series “Life in the Fab Lane” prior to release on their network. Although that was a major coup, Black Voices wasn’t satisfied; Kimora is way too “fab” to be limited to having just the episode on the page. The Black Voices’ photo and programming team created two galleries to complete the “fabulosity” of the package: “Six Degrees of Kimora.” In addition to the complete episode video, the programming also includes a 36-image gallery showing how one of the most highly visible and controversial celebs is connected to Kimora Lee by six people. Also be sure to check out the other gallery, “The House That Hip Hop Built” (a nine-image gallery of Kimora’s current palatial $23 million estate located in Saddle River, N.J). 

All of that hard work has come together to make a … dare I say it again … FABULOUS package.  Enjoy "Life in the Fab Lane!"

- Monica

Tags: Kimora Lee Simmons