An exhibition of photographs by Ian Beesley, course leader for the Bolton Cohort of the MA in International Photojournalism, Documentary and Travel Photography, is being held at Bradford 1 Gallery |until early August...more
While an exhibition sponsored by the British Council of multimedia and photographs by D J Clark the course leader for the Dalian cohort of the same course is now on show in Hanoi, an e-book version is online ...more
As of Monday 18th May I will be moving the industry news section of the blog (Awards/grantsEquipmentEventsGallery/slideshowGeneralIssuesPhoto MA NewsPhotojournalismwork) to my twitter feed. Most of the stories I have been posting are simply links to existing stories on the web, and I can provide these links much more efficiently using twitter. The MA News will continue to be blogged at this site, as well as through the twitter feed.
To follow me on Twitter - go to www.twitter.com, click on find people and type "djclark". If you have a twitter account (its free and I recommend you do this) you can "follow" me. There are numerous pieces of free software to help you integrate the twitter feed with your web browser and phone.
Dutch Government to pay for journalists to work in their newspapers ...more
Nearly three-quarters of U.S. newspaper executives responding to a recent survey said their ability to inform readers has diminished with their steadily shrinking staffs. ...more
Why People Won't Pay for Online News the Way They Pay for HBO ...more
The Kindle invites bloggers to distribute wirelessly to the kindle but the Kindle user has to pay a fee set by Amazon and the blogger only gets 30%. ...more
A new Kindle beater is released in flashy colours. A good comparison chart is here ..more
If the fusion of video cameras and dSLRs hadn't blurred enough before, Esquire shot their June issue cover of Megan Fox in video—a purported first in the magazine world.
Rather than click and endless series of stills, photographer Greg Williams shot the cover with the 4K Red ONE video camera. Fox essentially acted out a scene for 10 minutes, the best moment of which will appear on the June 2009 cover. (Not to be wasteful of Megan Fox footage, the video will also be uploaded to Esquire's site, of course.)
It's fascinating that as digital cameras evolve, so will the roles of photographers, models and publications. I can't see traditional photography ever dying, but whether photos will always be captured in photographs is another question. [Esquire] ...more
"It's hard to believe that for a subject as trendy as climate change, there are so few photographers who specialize in it. As Wolfe explained, it's a topic that defies journalism's typical demands of daily deadlines and breaking news. "It's a very hard story to cover," he said, "because it's so huge and so slow, and it's one that doesn't really fit the way we gather news. ... That, and none of us make any money."" ...more
Earthquake Anniversary Special on assignment for Stern Magazine
Setting out to find and interview the survivors, Photo MA graduate Boris Austin flew to MianYang to join Journalist Janis Vougioukas and his assistant.
In under 10 days they were challenged with finding 10 people who featured in iconic news images of the earthquake to find out how their lives had changed..more.
Photo MA graduate Andrew Smith has recently been contracted by Reuters as a stringer in Jamaica. On one of his first assignments his image made Reuters picture of the day.
Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper (R) talks with Jamaica's Prime Minister Bruce Golding at the launch of the four-year Justice Undertakings for Social Transformation programme in Kingston April 21, 2009. REUTERS/Andrew Smith (JAMAICA POLITICS IMAGE OF THE DAY TOP PICTURE)
In the first week of May 2009, 24 professional Chinese photojournalists gathered in Hangzhou for a four day conversion workshop with Canon's new 5D MKII. Sponsored by Canon (who provided the venue, cameras and microphones) and the University of Bolton (who organised the workshop content) four tutors Huang Wen, Chang He, Wang Xi and D J Clark collaborated with the participants to discover the potential of using the camera as a short form multi media journalism tool.
The workshop was one of a series being run to fund a new £5,000 award in Chinese Multi Media Journalism just announced at www.yxaward.org.
Many familiar videos are featured in the webby awards video journalism categories. Ken Kobre makes it really simple by providing a page of links directly to the videos...more
The London School of Economics is commissioning photographers to shoot a story on issues around poverty and its representation, past and present. The photographers selected will be paid £2,000 for their work, which will be exhibited at the LSE next year. Applications are invited from photographers who are either from or living in the following cities:
London, Kinshasa, Mumbai, Istanbul, New York, Jakarta, Cairo and Shanghai.
Selection will be based on the best ideas/approaches submitted for any four of the eight cities highlighted above. The deadline for submission of ideas is 16 June 2008. Successful entrants will be contacted by 4 July. The deadline for final submission of all assignments is 29 August 2008.
The continuing belief by some publishing execs that, eventually, some mythical e-reader standard will rescue the business is misguided. In a quest for reach, newspapers have spent the last 10 years divorcing their bits from the shackles of atoms. Now that their intrinsic content is freely available via any number of outlets, there’s no easy way to recoup any money by once again locking their text behind the tyranny of tangible form.
This longing for an “iPod moment”, replicating the boost Apple’s iTunes Store gave to record labels, is understandable from dyed-in-the-wool print veterans, for whom e-readers comfortably reimagine the humble book, magazine, even newsprint. But the faith is retrograde - Amazon’s Kindle is all well and good, but do consumers really want to carry yet another gadget that does only one job, when mobile phones, netbooks and a dozen yet-to-materialise devices offer the same content and more for free? ...more
according to a recent study by the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication. It found that 22 percent of Internet users have canceled a print subscription because they could get the same product online....more
New Panasonic GH1 includes mic socket (but not standard) but still has auto audio gain (the undoing of the Canon 5D MKII sound). However looks to compete well with 1080P with other current offerings....more
Newspapers "not only will go away but they should go away," he said, adding that today's talk would "cap" his statements and then he would "never speak of the death of newspapers again."...more
On Wednesday, Amazon introduced a larger version of the Kindle, pitching it as a new way for people to read textbooks, newspapers and documents. It also offered limited information about new partnerships that are intended to put Kindles in the hands of more university students and newspaper readers. ...more
Zuckerman even has a solution for the faltering newspaper industry. "Bingo!" he told us. "Just make bingo legal on our websites." Bingo? we asked hesitantly, thinking for a moment that the billionaire was showing his age after all. "Yes!" he answered. "The newspapers in England are supported almost exclusively by the profitability of running bingo games on their websites. It attracts an enormous audience. ...more
The NY Times has been the most aggressive of all the publishers searching for a solution to the ailing print business. It's common to see a Times product on a new communications device, from the first iPhone to the first Kindle. Later this month, the paper is supposedly coming out with a new Times Reader — the section fronts and archived crossword puzzles free, the rest by subscription — available as an Adobe Air application. It would hardly be surprising then to learn that the newspaper has been quietly working with Amazon to create an even more compelling Kindle-based product that takes advantage of a larger display screen. ...more
Now, The Daily Beast has learned, Murdoch’s News Corp. has set up a global team, based in New York, London, and Sydney, to create a system for charging for online content in an environment where consumers have come to expect to get it for free. According to a knowledgeable source, the team is said to be “looking at hardware” to deliver the content in a “user-friendly way”—a prospect that will surely catch the attention of the developers of Amazon’s Kindle and the Sony Reader. ...more
Photo MA graduate Dave Wyatt is showing work from his time in China on the 1000 Words Photography Magazine Blog.
"Thames town is an English style new satellite town built close to Shanghai as part of the local governments ‘One City –Nine Towns’ plan. This plan was hatched out of the population boom being experienced in Shanghai. In the past 15 years the population has increased by 8 million and the landmass it covers has increased from 100sqkm to a staggering 680sqkm. Despite this growth Shanghai is still four times as densely populated as New York. The ‘One City –Nine Towns’ plan seeks to construct nine satellite towns around Shanghai. Six of these towns are to be themed on European style cities from the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Sweden, and Italy. These images document the beginning of the next great revolution within China, a suburban revolution as the new middle class within China seeks to make use of their new found financial freedom." ...more
Photographic Story Telling and Publishing : 2 Day Workshop - 16/17th May Taught by Boris Austin
- For students wishing to make something meaningful from their travel or personal photography -
Explore the creation of visual narratives and combine your photos with music and typography to create multimedia slideshows. Then learn how to publish your stories to the internet for all to see.
This course gives the beginner or amateur photographer the chance to make stories from their work. Whether you want to share your travel adventures with friends and family back home, have a specific personal or artistic project that you would like to undertake or even start to develop your work into a portfolio.
My aim is to help you explore your creativity and ideas whilst providing you with all the technical knowhow in a simplified hands on approach. Visual demonstrations are given in a workshop environment and students are personally aided in creating their slideshows to share with the group.
Course Requirements : You will need to bring your digital photos ready to use on a Laptop plus some headphones (normal ipod headphones or similar is fine). If you would like to use your own music please bring that with you. (an mp3 file is fine) . The slideshow software you need will be provided for your MAC or PC. We will also provide you with a specially made DVD containing extra material for you to use such as music, audio samples, fonts and imagery to help you get the most out of this experience.
Workshops will run from 10am – 4pm each day. ( 5 Hours with 1 hour for lunch )
PRICE: 850RMB
To reserve a place or for more information about this course please contact me
Boris Austin Borisaustin@gmail.com Beijing 13810642340 www.BorisAustin.com
Some people are calling it a lifeline for newspapers and magazines. Amazon is expected to announce it’s larger screen Kindle today designed especially for these larger publications...more
David Hunke said some paid online content could begin to appear: "there is paid digital content in some areas in the future for us and everyone else," Hunke said. "There will always be an element of free access to some level of news and information." He added, "we are all racing to give everything away for free and everyone is seeing the pricing model in digital begin to decline."...more
