SnapperTalk

David Campbell, professor of cultural and political geography at Durham University in the UK and associated with the Durham Centre for Advanced Photography Studies, writes one of the smartest analyses I’ve recently read on the future of the media and photography. His essay titled “Revolutions in the media economy” comes in four parts:

1. The Context of Crisis
2. The Changing Structure of Information
3. Photojournalism’s futures
4. Disturbing the University

If you’re mainly interested in the media you can probably skip part 4, but the rest is well worth a read if you want an idea of the issues currently facing journalism, some of the solutions, and particularly are wondering how the hell it’s all going to be paid for.

I’ve written previously about JR’s projects in the Kibera slum of Nairobi. I can’t quite put my finger on what exactly makes his work appealing, but I just think it’s pretty cool. There’s now a rather-nicely shot video clip of his work – make sure you watch it fullscreen and stick with it until after the 2min mark, it all makes sense then.

[via The Click]

Guardian photographer/videographer Dan Chung has set up a new website DSLR News Shooter aimed at those shooting news video on the new generation of DSLR cameras such as the Canon 5DmkII.

With the recent release of the Canon 7D and unconfirmed rumors that Nikon’s new flagship camera the D3s will feature full-frame 1080P video and 14fps stills shooting, the DSLR video race is starting to heat up.

Other good places to look for information and discussion of DSLR video issues are the Cinema5D forum, the DVInfo 5DmkII forum, the Planet5D blog, Canon 5D Tips, and filmmakers such as Phillip Bloom and Vincent Laforet.

What I’ve found with many of those sites though, is that most of the people there are using the cameras for what I’d categorise as a “slow” working environment i.e. documentaries, feature films, editorial work, etc.

Trying to shoot and edit video with DSLRs in a live news scenario is a heck of a lot different, so am hoping Dan’s new site will live up to its name and cater more to this field.

Canon today announced its latest high-end compact, the 10 megapixel Powershot G11, successor to the G10 which has been fairly popular with photojournalists as a carry-everywhere camera due to its rugged body and full manual controls.

10 megapixel… huh? Wasn’t the older G10 model 14.7 megapixels?

Yep, that’s right, and by all accounts it is good news. Seeing as the sensor size remains the same at 1/1.7-inch, this hopefully means Canon have taken a break from the neverending and rather ridiculous megapixel race for compact cameras, which brings us high-megapixel but high-noise images that are often unuseable over ISO400… and instead has decided to bring out a camera with fewer but larger pixels. This should result in much better overrall image quality, particularly at high ISOs… and DPReview is claiming 2-stop improvement in noise compared wth the G10.

I do find the omission of 720P video rather odd…. 640×480 doesn’t really cut the mustard these days.

Also of possible interest to PJs is the new Powershot S90 – which seems to share the same sensor as the G11 and have full manual control. I’ve had a few of the S-Series Powershots in the past and liked them a lot, being some of the few genuinely compact cameras that still have manual control.

That said, they now face some stiff competition via the likes of the Panasonic DMC-LX3 etc. DPReview has posted a hands-on article about the S90 including photos comparing the S90 against the LX3.

We’ll have to wait and see for the reviews to come in… but any break from the megapixel madness in order to improve on actual image quality seem like a good thing. Engadget has posted some hands-on pictures of the G11 here.

As someone who photographed the climax of the Second Liberian Civil War, siege of the capital Monrovia, and downfall into exile of then-president Charles Taylor who is now on trial for war crimes by the Special Court for Sierra Leone sitting at the Hague, I have always been utterly fascinated by Liberia and have watched its progress from bloody civil war to relative peace and economic progress.

I was therefore excited to learn that last year’s World Press Photo winner Tim Hetherington (see interview about his winning photo) has a new photo book coming out shortly which focuses on Tim’s extensive work covering recent Liberian history, entitled Long Story, Bit By Bit

Tim had a unique perspective on that conflict being one of the few journalists, along with James Brabazon (see interview), to cover it primarily from the (geographical) side of the LURD rebels, so I’m very much looking forward to seeing this new publication, which Tim tells me is already printed and will be launched in early June.

His website says the book launch will take place on June 3rd at the Umbrage Gallery in Dumbo, New York, an exhibtion of the work will be on show there from May through to June, and Tim will give a talk about the project in the gallery space on May 16th. The exhibition will then move to the Lincoln Reade Centre in New York to accompany the Human Rights Watch Film festival that runs from June 10th to 29th

If you want to learn more about the fascinating history of Liberia I also highly recommend you watch these two films:

Liberia – America’s Stepchild (PBS documentary on Liberia’s long history, produced before the fall of Charles Taylor)
Liberia – An Uncivil War (documentary by Jonathan Stack, James Brabazon, and Tim Hetherington on the Second Liberian Civil War and fall of Charles Taylor)

Also see this previous post I wrote about an exhibition of Tim’s work in Liberia and a selection of his photos from that exhibition here

…and if you want to see a selection of the photos I took during that conflict go to my photo galleries page and select one of the two galleries entitled “Liberian War”. There’s a brief one of 15 images, and a longer one of 70 images.

UPDATE: Glenna Gordon has an interesting new interview with Tim about the book, conducted while he was recently in Monrovia.

Long Story Bit by Bit – some links
Publishers page
Press Release [PDF, 216kb]
Amazon US pre-order
Amazon UK pre-order

An era almost over…. Richard Nicholson photographs London’s dwindling professional darkrooms.
A great photo-story idea.

[via The Online Photographer]

This one’s for my journo friends who sit in your office tapping your story away on that plastic Dell desktop, immersed in technology and the internet age, but secretly pining you were living decades earlier and click-clacking away on a manual typewriter.

You know who you are.

Now you can recreate at least some of that old-school journalist minimalism with the free Q10 full-screen text editor.

No menus, no user-interface, no icons, pretty much nothing at all to distract you from the actual process of writing. Just a blank screen and the romantic key sounds of a manual typewriter to fuel the inspiration for that latest government press release you’re rewriting…

There’s some very cool photos now out of the latest activities of photographic artist “JR” from his Women Project in the Kibera slum of Nairobi, Kenya.

To see more of them go to the 28millimetres website.

[via the Wooster Collective]

Wade Laube, a London-based contract photographer for The Sydney Morning Herald, has written an article on the paper’s website about how the process of filing pictures has developed through the years.
Longtime professionals won’t find much to surprise them there, but it’s a useful introduction for newcomers to the industry.
ZTerm, happy days…

It seems interactive panoramas are all the rage, or I’m just noticing them more. The New York Times yesterday posted this 360 degree panorama shot from the top of the 10-meter diving platform at the Olympics, with commentary from American diver Thomas Finchum. Technically speaking it’s quite impressive, but the empty stadium leaves it without the fascinating details of this one by Kari Kuukka that I wrote about yesterday.