When the line blurs between sport photography and photojournalism

It is an often debated question, when should a photographer put down their camera and help. We have all seen pictures where it is assumed the photographer has chosen to continue photographing rather than doing the human thing and helping, what should we as photographers do?

Like Hillsborough before it, the Boston Marathon bombing has highlighted how sports stories can quickly turn into breaking news events. When this happens, photographers have to decide whether to help or keep on shooting The Photography Blog at The Guardian asks, read what they think here

 

Don’t shoot? … the second explosion at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Click on image to enlarge. Photograph: John Tlumacki/Boston Globe/AP

Perhaps one of the most iconic images that brings this question to mind was taken by Nick Ut during the Vietnam war

This picture Kim Phuc running away from her bombed village when she was just nine is now instantly recognisable and seen as a defining image of the Vietnam war

This article about Nick Ut in The Daily Mail tells some of his story about being a photographer in the Vietnam War

It is one of the most recognisable pictures ever taken and an image that not only defined a war, but defined the career of the man who took it.

Kim Phuc was just nine years old when she ran naked towards Associated Press photographer and Pulitzer prize winner Huynh Cong ‘Nick’ Ut screaming ‘Too hot! Too hot!’ as she headed away from her bombed Vietnamese village.

She will always be remembered for the blobs of sticky napalm that melted through her clothes and left her with layers of skin like jellied lava. Her story has been told many times over the last 40 years since the shot was taken.

But now, to mark four decades since Ut took the picture he has released more moving images that he took during the Vietnam war that chart the horrors of that fateful day in 1972.

The following picture is of the attack that preceded the event that led to his memorable image

Huynh Cong ‘Nick’ Ut took this picture just moments before capturing his iconic image. It shows bombs with a mixture of napalm and white phosphorus jelly and reveals that he moved closer to the village following the blasts

When compared with the first image it becomes apparent that Ut actually started heading towards the village following the napalm attack. The sign to the right of the picture appears larger while what looks like a speaker to the left of the road is no longer in shot.

As he headed towards the town and took the photo, which Kim Phuc has now found peace with after first wanting to escape the image, he would have been unaware the effect his picture would have on the outside world.

It communicated the horrors of the Vietnam War in a way words could never describe, helping to end one of the most divisive wars in American history.

He drove Phuc to a small hospital. There, he was told the child was too far gone to help. But he flashed his American press badge, demanded that doctors treat the girl and left assured that she would not be forgotten. 

‘I cried when I saw her running,’ said Ut, whose older brother was killed on assignment with the AP in the southern Mekong Delta. ‘If I don’t help her – if something happened and she died – I think I’d kill myself after that.’

Read the full story and see more of Ut’s pictures from that war here

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2154400/Napalm-Girl-photographer-Nick-Ut-releases-work-Vietnam-war.html#ixzz2TwdINL00

Native Americans: Portraits From a Century Ago

From the pages of the Atlantic we find these touching images

In the early 1900s, Seattle-based photographer Edward S. Curtis embarked on a project of epic scale, to travel the western United States and document the lives of Native Americans still untouched by Western society. Curtis secured funding from J.P. Morgan, and visited more than 80 tribes over the next 20 years, taking more than 40,000 photographs, 10,000 wax cylinder recordings, and huge volumes of notes and sketches. The end result was a 20-volume set of books illustrated with nearly 2,000 photographs, titled “The North American Indian.” In the hundred-plus years since the first volume was published, Curtis’s depictions have been both praised and criticized. The sheer documentary value of such a huge and thorough project has been celebrated, while critics of the photography have objected to a perpetuation of the myth of the “noble savage” in stage-managed portraits. Step back now, into the early 20th century, and let Edward Curtis show you just a few of the thousands of faces he viewed through his lens.

Left: Koskimo person, Kwakiutl, wearing a full-body fur garment, oversized gloves and mask of Hami (“dangerous thing”) during the Numhlim ceremony. ca. 1914. Right: Hamasilahl, Kwakiutl, ceremonial dancer during the Winter Dance ceremony.(Library of Congress/Edward S. Curtis)

Left: Ben Long Ear, ca. 1905. Right: Hastobiga, Navajo Medicine Man, ca. 1904. (Library of Congress/Edward S. Curtis)

Left: Bird Rattle, Piegan, ca. 1910. Right: Nesjaja Hatali, medicine man, Navajo, ca. 1904. (Library of Congress/Edward S. Curtis)

Portrait of a Native American named Big Head, ca. 1905. (Library of Congress/Edward S. Curtis)

See all of the images here

30 abandoned structures that evoke more than just decay

HOLLAND ISLAND, CHESAPEAKE BAY Via: baldeaglebluff

 THE MAUNSELL SEA FORTS, ENGLAND Via: fivelightsdown.squarespace.com

SUNKEN YACHT, ANTARCTICA Via: ruschili.35photo.ru

ABANDONED MILL FROM 1866 IN SORRENTO, ITALY Source: logicalrealist / via: i.imgur.com

See the rest of these 30 images here on My Science Academy, and thanks to The Recommender for doing what his name says

 

Related articles

http://oxfordschoolofphotography.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/urbex-talkurbex/

http://oxfordschoolofphotography.wordpress.com/2012/01/30/urbex-urban-explorers-with-cameras/

http://oxfordschoolofphotography.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/the-ruins-of-detroit-by-yves-marchand-romain-meffre/

 

• Abandoned But Not Forgotten (debra-r-borys.com)
• The Last House on Holland Island (sometimes-interesting.com)
• After Chernobyl: Pictures of Pripyat by Timm Suess (likephotograph.wordpress.com)
• The beauty of decay (mlohanrahan.wordpress.com)

Migrant Mother – Dorothea Lange the story of a picture

Probably one of the most famous images of depression era America, this image by Dorothea Lange sticks in the memory of everyone who has ever seen it. This is the story of that picture.

The image of a worn, weather-beaten woman, a look of desperation on her face, two children leaning on her shoulders, an infant in her lap; has become a photographic icon of the Great Depression in America. The photo was taken in March 1936 at a camp for seasonal agricultural workers 175 miles north of Los Angeles by Dorothea Lange. Lange was working for the Farm Security Administration as part of a team of photographers documenting the impact of federal programs in improving rural conditions.

Lange had just completed a month-long photographic assignment and was driving back home in a wind-driven rain when she came upon a sign for the camp. Something beckoned her to postpone her journey home and enter the camp. She was immediately drawn to the woman and took a series of six shots – the only photos she took that day. The woman was the mother of seven children and on the brink of starvation…...read the rest of this story here

Florence Owens, the woman in the picture also has a story, here is that story Written by  Roger Spraque grandson:

She came to California some 15 years before, to a land of promise – a promise which, for her, had not been kept. In 1922 she had come, with her husband Cleo Owens and her three children. Her name was Florence and she was just 21 years old.

Her first house was in Shafter, California. Though it was small and poor, it was as much as she had in Oklahoma. But this place and these times held a promise of something more for her and her family. To own her own home, to raise her kids and give them more than she had, to live the American dream.

There was work in the mills and factories of California for Cleo. He was a frail man, light of build and weak of breath ever since a childhood fever scarred his lungs, making them a target for any germ that happened along, His only excesses were a tendency to overwork himself to provide for his family, and his deep, deep love for Florence.

Cleo had married Florence over the objections of his own family, who all felt that Florence was too headstrong. They all predicted that the marriage would fail, a “bad sin in 1917. A woman was there to raise the kids and do as she was told by her husband. Florence, in contrast, was only 17 when she informed Cleo’s family that they would never rule her or her kids. She loved Cleo, but she was who she was, and that was that! (Cleo’s people knew that Florence was a full blood Cherokee Indian, but they probably did not know that she was the granddaughter of the Indian renegade outlaw Ned Christy, who had died in a shoot out with a whole posse rather then be subdued by any man.)

In 1924 Florence and Cleo moved to Porterville, some 50 miles north of Shatter, where he and his brothers had found good work at good wages in the sawmill. But in 1927 the mill burned so they moved 125 miles further north to Merced Falls. There was no “Falls”, but there was a sawmill, a strong river to carry logs down from the hills, and the prettiest little town they’d ever seen…..MORE

 

Lost camera reunited with owner after six years drifting in the ocean

A photographer has been reunited with her Canon PowerShot camera, six years after losing it in the ocean off Hawaii. The camera, which was in a waterproof housing, drifted for thousands of miles to the coast of Taiwan, where it was picked up by an employee of China Airlines. The airline identified its owner, Lindsay Scallion of Georgia, USA from photos on the memory card.

This is what a consumer-grade waterproof housing looks like after six years at sea. Lindsay Scallan’s Canon PowerShot camera drifted thousands of miles from Hawaii to Taiwan. READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

Did North Korea photoshop its hovercraft?

The many uses of Photoshop are obvious but world domination is not common however as The Guardian reports here those naughty NK’s have been at it again

It appears North Korea has doctored pictures of its military to make it look more impressive than it is – and not for the first time, read the full article with diagrams and explanations here

This picture released by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency on March 26, 2013 and taken on March 25, 2013 shows the landing and anti-landing drills of KPA Large Combined Units 324 and 287 and KPA Navy Combined Unit 597 at an undisclosed location on North Korea’s east coast.   Rather thrilling it is too!

Photos: The Dust Bowl 1930′s USA

The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to prairie lands in the 1930s. The phenomenon was caused by severe drought combined with farming methods that did not include crop rotation or other techniques such as soil terracing and wind-breaking trees to prevent wind erosion.

During the drought of the 1930s, without natural anchors to keep the soil in place, it dried, turned to dust, and blew away with the prevailing winds. At times, the clouds blackened the sky, reaching all the way to East Coast cities such as New York and Washington, D.C….more

In this March 25, 1935 file photo, children cover their faces during a swirling dust storm while pumping water in Springfield, Colo. The Dust Bowl was manmade, born of bad farming techniques across millions of acres in parts of Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado and Kansas. Now, even as bad as the drought is in some of those same states, soil conservation practices developed in the aftermath of the Dust Bowl have kept the nightmarish storms from recurring. (AP Photo, File)

Farmer and sons walking in the face of a dust storm in Cimarron County, Oklahoma. Arthur Rothstein

Son of farmer in dust bowl area in Cimarron County, Oklahoma. Photo by Arthur Rothstein

Title: Four families, three of them related with fifteen children, from the Dust Bowl in Texas in an overnight roadside camp near Calipatria, California
Creator(s): Lange, Dorothea, photographer

See the rest of these astonishing pictures here on The Denver Post website

The full monty of photography links and tutorials

From Toad Hollow via Lightstalking

The internet plays host to so many fabulous photographers and artists, and Toad Hollow Photography searches high and low every week trying to find the best links to tutorials, great photography and blogs of interest to share with everyone here.  This week’s list is chock-full of awesome images and great posts by a wide variety of super-talented people.  We really hope you enjoy checking out the photographs and posts as much as the Toad did in bringing this list to you.

Casting a shadow on an autumn frosty land by broo_am, on Flickr

Have a look at all the tutorials and links here

TUTORIALS

Top 7 Natural Light Portrait tips that I’ve learnt – a fabulous list of tips and tricks for doing portrait photography in natural light settings.  Tristan Jud outlines a short series of thoughts here that can really help you make the most of this genre of image production.

DIY: Keep Your Turkey Company with Beautiful Photo Place Holders – what a neat idea!  With the Thanksgiving Holidays nearly upon our American friends now, this timely article shows how you can incorporate great photography into dressing up the dinner table.  This step-by-step tutorial takes you through the entire process.

Click Here: This Many Awesome Photography Links May Be Hazardous to Small Children

“Homo Urbanus Europeanus” by Jean-Marc Caracci

Some time ago we posted about a really interesting series of images by Jean-Marc Caracci, here is a link to our earlier post

What we liked about this work was the use of a theme to find interesting and absorbing images where ever he found himself and within the context of that theme how all over Europe people are similar. Jean-Marc has been in touch to tell us about his touring exhibition, here are some venues where the exhibition has been and where you might be able to catch the exhibition

Here they are the most important exhibitions scheduled in 2012 :
- in Slovenia… Novo Mesto, in the frame of “Maribor European Capital of Culture 2012″ [done]
- in Slovakia… Bratislava, at the “Central European House of Photography” [done]
- in Germany… Duisburg, at the “Ruhr Biennale 2012″.
- in Korea… itinerant exhibition in 5 cities [right now]

You can see a portfolio of Jean-Marc’s work on line here

There is also a review of the exhibition here  “Silvershotz” has published my “Homo Urbanus Europeanus” portfolio in 2011 [article on the link below]… and the American magazine “Rangefinder” did the same recently : You can find that here

 

Jean-Marc is also going to publish a book of his portfolio  with text and here is some information about that

“I am going to publish the album “Homo Urbanus Europeanus”, a book which will include 31 original texts written by 31 European writers… as much writers as European capitals visited in the frame of the project. The British contributor is the writer Stella Duffy.”

There is also a catalogue for the exhibition which is available to buy on line  “Homo Urbanus Europeanus”  (made in Poland in 2009) . You can see it on the link below :

http://homo.urbanus.free.fr/europeanus/book.html

London Olympics 2012 in pictures, the first week

From the more than excellent The Atlantic pictures from the first days of the London 2012 Olympics. There are some truly astounding images in this set so do go and have a look at all of them.

More than 10,000 athletes from 200 national Olympic committees around the globe have gathered in London for the 17-day 2012 Summer Olympic Games. So far, dozens of Olympic and world records have already been broken and more than 500 medals have been awarded. As we pass the Games’ halfway point, here’s a look back at some amazing events that have taken place in the U.K. over the past nine days. [62 photos]

Jessica Ennis of Great Britain crosses the line during the Women’s Heptathlon 800m to win the race and the overall gold on Day 8 of the London 2012 Olympic Games at Olympic Stadium, on August 4, 2012. (Michael Steele/Getty Images)

Jamaica’s Usain Bolt crosses the finish line to win his second consecutive gold medal in the men’s 100-meter final in the Olympic Stadium, on August 5, 2012. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

Russia’s Aliya Mustafina warms up before competing in the balance beam during the women’s individual all-around gymnastics final in the North Greenwich Arena, on August 2, 2012. (Reuters/Mike Blake)The South Korean men’s cycling team trains on Monday, July 30, 2012, in London. (AP Photo/Sergey Ponomarev)

Britain’s Jessica Ennis celebrates winning her women’s heptathlon at the Olympic Stadium, on August 4, 2012. (Reuters/Lucy Nicholson)

Gabrio Zandona (right) and Pietro Zucchetti (left) of Italy compete in the Men’s 470 Sailing on Day 6 of the London 2012 Olympic Games at the Weymouth & Portland Venue at Weymouth Harbour, on August 2, 2012. (Clive Mason/Getty Images)

Samantha Arevalo Salinas of Ecuador starts in a women’s 800-meter freestyle swimming heat at the Aquatics Center in London, on August 2, 2012. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

Jamel Herring, of the United States, after being defeated by Kazakhstan’s Daniyar Yelessinov in their men’s light welter 64-kg boxing match at the 2012 Summer Olympics, on July 31, 2012. (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev)

Russian gymnasts and team officials react as teammate Kseniia Afanaseva falls while performing on the floor during the Artistic Gymnastics women’s team final, on July 31, 2012, in London. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)

See all 62 images here