Guns and Kids

A photo Essay by Philip Jones Griffths of magnum fame and author of Vietnam Inc.


Go here for essay

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Getty laying of staff at MediaVast

Getty Images has begun to slash the size of the staff at MediaVast, the competing photo agency it just acquired.

MediaVast employees say Getty reps have been meeting individually with staff members and asked some to leave the company immediately.
The meetings are scheduled to continue Friday.

One employee at the MediaVast office in New York described the mood there as "horrendous" as employees anticipated many more layoffs. The employee described devastated ex-staffers comforting each other outside the Radio Wave building on West 27th Street, where the office is located.

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A place to ethicaly sell your images

Recently, launched Mondolibrary.Net
It’s an image library serving the public interest and nonprofit community. Some of their clients are the World Health Organization, UNAIDS, UN-HABITAT and the Clinton Foundation. At mondolibrary they can download images for their various publications.

Mondolibrary says "We believe that messages must cause change. That’s why we want to provide our clients with images which help them create these powerful messages."

The photographer keeps copyright but images are on a royalty free type of license, and there is a sliding fee scale to place your images on. Further, images have to be used in an ethical way by the clients.

They have been communicating heavily with photographers at Lightstalkers on the discussion forums working out the best ways of selling the images, pricing and licensing to keep everything fair

Mondolibrary.Net

365 days of being held by military for being a Press Photographer

Bilal Hussein, an AP photographer was arrested on 12 April 2006 for being a security risk according to the U.S. Army, as have many journalists been taken in for questioning, however most have been released shortly after. this has not been the case though for Bilal who has no legal representation and no fair trial as that is the nature of the military system.

The full story can be read here: http://www.pdnonline.com/pdn/newswire/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003570668

Source: PDN

Why?

One of the main questions you have to ask your self is WHY do you want to do documentary photography, this mainly comes from the heart and what interests you, what moves you, and what you feel so strongly about you wanty ot stop it.

All of this will be covered later but for the moment watch this video from Witness.org by Peter Gabreil

Its quite moving, but there are also other points, a story can be easily denied, but pictures and video is much harder to deny. A further point is that the latest gear is also not needed.

What makes a Documentary Photographer?

“So, what dose a documentary tog carry in their bag” is a question I am asked most often by amateur photographers, they are surprised by the response, A-Z street map, pain killers, Pro Plus (caffeine Tablets) Imodium (anti shit’s tablets) spare batteries for camera and flash and two or three lenses.

But its not really what’s in the bag that makes you a good documentary photographer, it’s your knowledge of the area, the understanding of the issues, the research you need to do. It’s also about stamina can you sit around on a cold or really hot day waiting for the picture? How about if it turns out to be a no show can you come back and do it all again, that’s what being a documentary photographer is about, not what is in the bag.

This blog site is going to be a bit of a instructional guide on how to be covert and do research, how to do the grab shot, how to shoot through a window of a car or van, how to communicate with people and above all else, be ethical what you do. We will also look at the gear you need and all that tech stuff that amateurs are fascinated about a camera to me is like a hammer to a builder it’s a tool, nothing magical – in fact it’s a pain try carrying a 2lb lump around with you all day my camera weighs about 5lb without lens or flash and you will soon see what I mean.