Issue Archives

In DPP 2.0 there is a sharpness slider in the Raw Image Adjustment window that goes from 0 to 7, and there is a sharpness slider in the RGB Image Adjustment window that goes from 0 to 500. What's the difference?

It's always when I write my December column for The Digital Journalist that the Moody Blues' song "Strange Times" starts echoing through my head.

When somebody asks what I do for a living, I tell them that I produce videos.

What parent isn't familiar with the struggle to get little Johnny to eat those food items that taste a little different?

A while ago I got a call from David Burnett (who I believe I can call a friend of 20 or so years) telling me that he had a Fortune assignment to photograph billionaires Warren Buffett and Bill Gates in Lincoln, Neb.

Just when many critics had all but buried "The West Wing" for being stale and not reflecting what, for some, is the real America - whatever that is - the show redeemed itself with its first live broadcast, a debate between its two candidates for president.

Wednesday, Nov. 9: Four Iraqi suicide bombers - three men and a woman connected with the Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Al-Qaida leader in Iraq - walked into three different western hotels in Amman, Jordan, wearing belts packed with explosives and steel balls and blew themselves up, killing 59 people and wounding hundreds of others.

While I'm thinking that the photo business has been kind of slow for the last two weeks, a short e-mail from Greenpeace changes it all.

This October I set out to photograph the widows of Dujail, a series of simple portraits of the women left behind after Saddam Hussein's forces rounded up their fathers, husbands and sons in retaliation for a 1982 assassination attempt against him.

"Your face is covered in blood," says United States Navy Petty Officer John Gulizia.

News junkies, philosophers, comedians and kings: all who are riveted to national and international theater have found little escape from intense drama as we continue to have daily revelations of the otherworldly kind.

After seeing Bitter Fruit, Magnum photographer Paul Fusco's portfolio of funerals of American soldiers who died in Iraq, I was moved to these thoughts.

I am sitting in my house in Tehran watching 'Sex and the City' on a DVD, which sometimes can make you really happy in this town.

When the earth violently shook on Oct. 8 there was no one to hold accountable, just a foreboding sense of helplessness and the hope that media coverage would lead to greater international aid.

He's been an inextricable part of my life for more than two years now but I'd never known his name, his age or anything else about him.

One of the great heroes of history was John Wycliffe, the 14th century English philosopher and politician responsible for the first common English language translation of the Bible.

The moment a photojournalist releases the shutter a sacred threshold is crossed.

Answers to your tech questions.

The television mini-series "Hooking Up" on ABC television may have passed you by. If so, consider yourself lucky.

During the 10 years I worked in the legal business, my heart was always in my photography.

Throughout his tumultuous 39 years, John F. Kennedy Jr. maintained a charmed relationship with the camera and, thereby, the country.

I haven't lived in London for 27 years and yet people still ask me which are the best restaurants there.

Over the past couple of years, the trade publications have been filled with stories announcing the arrival of a new era in journalism -- one in which independent media thrive, news agendas are formed from the grass roots up, and everyone is a journalist.

Not since the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the violence in the wake of his killing, documented in powerful images by dedicated photojournalists like Flip Schulke and Charles Moore, has the world seen a series of photographs come out of America's Southern heartland as powerful as the ones that filled the front pages in the days and weeks following Hurricane Katrina.

I remember hearing a photographer actually use the words, "By publishing this photograph, will the sum of human knowledge be increased?" I started to chuckle until I looked at said photographer and saw that they were being serious.

Eli Reed, Magnum photographer and now a professor at the University of Texas, Austin, had no thought of making the coverage of Hurricane Katrina's aftermath a class project.

For as far back as I can remember, the word "hurricane" was among the most ominous in the vocabulary.

As Hurricane Katrina was tearing through Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana there were many allusions by the media to the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.

"I'm afraid this one's headed for us."

Last month, the Kansas City Star made it onto "The Bad" list. Sadly, the Star is far from a rarity in the newspaper business.

In one of my previous lives, I was involved in a fundamentalist Christian group that many would probably consider a cult.

There was a sea of pink shirts in every direction.

We drained the last drop of Carmel cabernet...

Renowned photojournalist and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Horst Faas was in Hanover, Germany, Oct. 1, 2005, for an award ceremony of the German Photographic Society.

Greetings and salutations, youngsters. Let me tell you a story.

Last month I wrote about "Stick" (Dick Yarwood) and me and our adventures covering the Republican National Convention in San Francisco where Walter Mondale became the nominee for the upcoming presidential election.

It's hurricane season and this year the big news is about the two killer storms that tore up much of the US Gulf Coast.

As it is with any story of national importance, broadcasters in the television news business attempt to find local stories relevant to events happening thousands of miles away.

When visiting the Andrew Smith Gallery in downtown Santa Fe last summer, the sound of live Dixieland jazz lured me across the street, inside "Evangelo's," where I came face-to-face with dozens of photographs of a man I felt I knew - the man featured in the famous W. Eugene Smith photograph, the face of World War II.

I am thinking of trauma, and, after that, post-traumatic stress disorder - PTSD - and how it relates to journalists.

I love the English language, although I have to admit that because it's the only one I speak I don't have much with which to compare it.

When I was first asked to help produce television to go with one of my newspaper stories, I was outraged.

Wildfires are burning in Southern California, and you can smell the smoke if you are sitting in my home office.

I am happy to announce that some new features have been added to your archive, with many more currently under development.

Readers of The Digital Journalist (TDJ) have known of the long partnership with my own Web publication, The Digital Filmmaker (TDF), and our collaboration in the portal site Digital Vision Network.

Most of us have been completely engulfed - for lack of a better term - this September by events along the Gulf Coast.

It must have been in the foyer/bar/restaurant of The Constellation Hotel on Samsen Thai Boulevard that runs towards Wattay Airport in Vientiane, the capital of Laos...

In the room where I do most of my writing, to my right there is a shelf filled with reference books...

Journalism reaches its finest hour when a major story develops. It has risen to the challenge in covering Katrina.

I love San Francisco. It's one of my two favorite US cities; the other being New Orleans.

I came over, expecting to immerse myself in photojournalism and decide whether I truly want to do this for the rest of my life.

We all know W. Eugene Smith the famous Life magazine and Minimata photographer.

Dead bodies in attics. Floating corpses. Crocodiles and rats mangling human remains. These are just some of the grisly sights, we are told, that Hurricane Katrina has left behind in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

This morning, shortly before dawn, I am abruptly awakened by silence...

I got the call on Saturday around noon from one of the photo editors, Leslie White.

Hurricane Katrina had already hit Florida, and now it was headed for the Gulf Coast...

Time magazine assigned me to follow my nose to wherever the Hurricane Katrina story was.

Trying to describe this entire experience is impossible. So, perhaps the best I can do is to walk through one of the more memorable days.

Ever since I was asked to do this, I've been struggling with what to write.

In September of 1997, we launched the first issue of The Digital Journalist.

If Benjamin Franklin's definition of insanity is correct - doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results - then I've just spent the last few days in the company of some delightfully crazy people.

Let's face it. As far as groups of people go, photographers really know how to kick ass when it comes to gatherings.

I was in Bangkok and saw Derek, Mark and Heather - they gave me the tape out of their camera, in fact all your tapes.

When historian Henry Adams attended the Paris Exposition in 1900, he had an epiphany that struck his midsection like a body blow from a heavyweight boxer.

The next time your friendly local college sports information director calls you with an assignment you might want to consider just how friendly he or she really is.

Wednesday, July 27, 2005 will be a day to remember in the annals of television, specifically in the world of Steven Bochco.

The last day of August the Internet version of The New York Times had 83 photographs relating to Hurricane Katrina.

As I write this on September 6, 2005, a full week after Hurricane Katrina hit land in New Orleans, I admit I have been trying for days to find a word or a phrase as the subject of this month's E-Bits.

July 7, 2005. I was looking forward to today.

Night falls; soldiers are shadows and the Palestinians standing at the checkpoint are only moving shapes.

It all started off as a normal day!

Soon after realizing that photojournalism was my calling, I came to understand that if I was going to enjoy a family life and survive in our creative yet incredibly competitive profession, I would have to find a niche.

It was a 13-year-old settler boy from a ramshackle collection of trailer homes along the sea that may have saved me.

Putting the personal against the professional helps shine a light on one of the great mysteries of our time - why professional media people are so completely ignoring the technologies and concepts that are driving the revolution.

Okay, guess which magazine cover this was.

I usually write about other people, but this one is from The Loundy Files.

Probably the most robust debate among photojournalists over the past two decades has been over the uses of digital technology and the legitimacy of electronic image manipulation.

What is the best way to minimize the power consumption with an EOS-1Ds Mark II so I can maximize my shooting time?

Self-publish high quality photos and videos straight to the Web from a Nokia 7610 cameraphone.

In the July 24, '05 issue of The New York Times, veteran reporter Gretchen Morgenson has a piece entitled "The School That Skipped Ethics Class."

First thing? Save EVERYTHING.

I am not a pure defender of the craft, or, if you will, the profession of journalism, especially television and in particular the dregs of gossip programming.

"Over the past 10 years I have morphed, in fits and starts, consciously and unconsciously, from a well-paid newsmagazine photographer into a struggling, independent journalistic everyman."

All month long I thought about moments captured by photography and what they might say about reality once we are fully aware of the content.

Photojournalism history was made last week. For the first time, both The New York Times and the Washington Post ran photos on their front pages made by citizen-journalists with camera phones.

The voyage into the life of a man who is closely linked to one of the most interesting chapters of photojournalism starts at the European headquarters of The Associated Press, at 12 Norwich Street, close to Fleet Street, the traditional London center of the British newspaper and publishing industries.

Welcome to this month's edition of Tech Tips.

Being an activist in news, as with many of us, I have had my share of physical breakdowns, which I attribute to the life I led.

"There are a lot of wonderful people at The New York Times that I miss seeing and working with. I just wish things could have been as they've always been."

Oh boy. Nostalgia bad. E-Bay bad. Nostalgia + e-Bay = very, very bad.

I have a terrible, awful confession to make. I sometimes use film cameras.

In our culture, when a salesperson doesn't like the term he or she has to deal with, a new one is often created as a substitute.

While working on a six-part project on poverty in Africa, I met three young sisters in eastern Congo.

Bolivia has experienced almost perpetual unrest since it became an independent republic in 1825.

"Finland! Why Finland?"

Distinguishing the present from the past or the future is an interesting exercise that often can be a difficult endeavor.

Several men grab me from behind and are dragging me backwards, holding on anything they can, my arm, a bit of shirt, my camera bag, my camera. I hug my camera tight and start screaming NO.

Vietnam is what we had instead of happy childhoods.

I entered the country as a tourist. A teacher on holiday, to be exact.

We love you Michael

The skies above the eternal city must have vibrated at night with digitalized voices booming into the galaxy to be bounced back down to hometowns across America.

The massive basilica, designed by Bramante and Michelangelo, was nearly silent save for the sounds of shuffling feet and the unfortunate clacking of our shutters.

Polio, in Nigeria, is politics

Our world is filled with tops and bottoms.

He was the German Pope of Photography - one of the great personalities of photography in the 20th century.

It is an honor and a privilege to be invited to produce a monthly column for The Digital Journalist.

On March 31st, 2005, Jocelyne Benzakin died of emphysema at the age of 59.

Welcome to the Brave New World of HD video.

Only a few years ago there were 23 blogs on the Internet. Then silence was truly golden.

We look at some of the major implications of this revolution as HD takes center stage.

"People may or may not say what they mean ... but they always say something designed to get what they want."

Television is now undergoing the greatest change since color.

The Nikon D2X is a big camera in every way.

It is said that humankind is basically nomadic in nature, and civilization has severely cramped the natural lifestyle we all need and want to have.

For a Vietnam correspondent like me the Kingdom of Cambodia in the 1960s was a neighborhood Shangri-la, a country for an exotic vacation - providing a visa was granted by Prince Sihanouk, who had broken off relations with the United States.

Is it possible that photojournalism is not a good profession for young people to enter? Let's look at the downside first.

"Let's go over to my studio"

People see colors differently; they see different things in the same picture.

In this day of digital this and digital that, they still depend on me, my $20 drawing pad, pen and markers in my hand, to come up with the images sent on the satellite around the world to millions.

I was rid of my fixer, rid of my agenda

"It's not even safe to walk to your car in daylight anymore," the local anchor announced as we watched surveillance video of an assailant with a box cutter chasing a woman in a mall parking lot. Welcome to the world of news "teases."

Horst Faas' interview with Jan Arnold, author and director of the documentary film "Heroes Never Die"

"Even when the voices and recollections of witnesses have been extinguished, photographs will continue to illuminate our memories."

Here we have the cat's meow.

Consider the following two incidents involving photojournalists.

The photographer, weary from seeing so much, closes his eyes. The time has come to rest.

Truly creative people are different from the majority of the population.

Everyone has a theory about the current problems in journalism. I, too, have one.

When I planned a long-delayed vacation to Europe last year little did I think that I would be in a place where so many things would be happening ... at the same time.

I took a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree course during the silly but wonderful 1960s, at a time when Pop Art was hitting both the market and the minds of undergraduates with revolutionary zeal.

The next time an editor calls you with an assignment, remember that part of their job is to get the best for the least.

There is a lot of chatter going on these days about basic things once taken for granted.

Photo gallery from the 2005 Oscars"

Photo gallery from the the Gates exhibit in Central Park"

The guys understand that something is wrong, and all they can say is... "Malaria." "

David Alan Harvey takes the world's first digital rangefinder to Tuscany. Here, the veteran Magnum photographer tells American Photo and The Digital Journalist what it's like to shoot the old-fashioned way-and get digital pictures."

Smack-dab in the middle of North Carolina lies the city of Durham..."

That we live in the digital age is undeniable..."

Who are you? Are you really who you are?"

Those who worship the Web often mistake anarchy for freedom..."

The only thing worse than a square peg in a round hole is a square peg trying to get into a round hole."

Do you remember those yellow diamonds that everyone had in their car windows that said: Baby on Board? "

I started out learning on an IBM mainframe the size of some small houses and we programmed it using punch cards."

I have long had a fascination with Frank Lloyd Wright's work. His work in Racine."

It was early, very early. On those days I had to start long before sun up."

I live and work with my photographic feet planted in two different worlds."

People are always asking me if I've ever photographed celebrities during my long career as a newspaper photographer."

This column will be about creative expression in one way or another, whether it is alone at home, on the Internet, in the news, from TV archives, or in a public park that is transformed into a saffron wonderland."

SADR CITY, Iraq: "He gave you a miracle..."

Mudslide: La Conchita, California: I thought, I gotta get in here, and I can't stand at the yellow tape.

Sri Lanka: The scene was difficult to capture, even more difficult to comprehend

Band Aceh: You start to frame bodies into strong compositions. You justify it by telling yourself your images might make a difference.

Sri Lanka: It was harder to look at the eyes of a mother

Banda Aceh, Indonesia: They say journalists should witness and report; not cry. But how should you not. The only way is to kill your heart while you shoot your footage.

Sri Lanka: As I photographed them, I wondered what to make of their smiling.

I used to think I was a photojournalist. I didn't just work at photojournalism; news photography was wrapped around my very soul.

Oh, the differences between Washington and Central America.

Stories about how photojournalists craft their work are engaging to anyone who is interested in learning more about the process.

Just about the time this column appears on the Web, the 2005 AIPAD Photography Show will be held in New York.

How a $150 Radio Shack scanner could have saved hundreds of firefighters' lives on 9/11

Word has spread that what used to be known as the Saigon Press Corps will descend once more on the former capital of South Vietnam.

I've been in New York for 26 years; why I have no idea, but it's the longest I have ever lived anywhere continuously. To live here is to be in close contact on a daily basis with people in varying stages of mental derangement.

I don't know whether or not the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson was also a photographer, but he certainly thought like one when he said: "Our business in this world is not to succeed, but to continue to fail, in good spirits."

Despite wishes, dreams, hopes and predictions, the end of network news as we know it is still far in the future.

You can find him in every engineering shop, a strange fellow tucked away in some corner who just doesn't seem to click with everybody else.

Talent comes in many forms, and this month's E-Bits gives testimony to that fact.

Bodies dotted the landscape. I walked to the beach where workers were pulling them out from the sea. I just kept on shooting.

I was the new guy: AFP Kuala Lumpur hired me one week ago as a temporary shooter.

When we walked into the hospital, we had to take care to not trip over bodies; dazed survivors streamed in like ghosts.

In a few minutes my SUV was submerged and I suddenly slipped into the water.

He felt that I was making disaster pornography from his family's plight.

I took out my mask and covered my face, but after a while, there was a point where I could not continue.

People back home have jobs, kids, lives. There is only so much time for other people's distant crises.

A front row seat as history is slowly etched into reality, into the past.

Chronicling the dramatic changes occurring in China is no easy task for a photographer.

To observe a society in a snapshot of time can create a false impression. Erasing the past is nothing new to China. (includes photo gallery)

Perhaps it is only when you know a place so well that it can seem so strange. (includes photo gallery)

In July of 1971, while Nixon was summering in San Clemente, a bombshell went off.

I believe my work is about searching out my lost childhood wherever I go. The strong connection with Cuba stems from this hungry search.

There's been a recent development on the DV front that I believe is beyond evolutionary. It is downright revolutionary. And that is the introduction of high definition miniDV.

Longtime readers of this column have met Timothy, Gulliver, Marilyn and Dave -- the dogs that have been companions and test subjects since we first started photographing.

Tom Brokaw is gone. Dan Rather follows in March. Will Peter Jennings be far behind? Should we care?

Twenty-four years ago last November David Burnett and I were working alongside each other in Washington, photographing Jimmy Carter as he made the concession speech that marked the end of his flawed presidency.

2005 will be the most important and difficult year in the history of local broadcasting, and by year's end, the landscape could well be littered with the corpses of those who hung on too long.

No matter who we are or what we believe, the week between Christmas and New Year's Day is generally a time for reflection as we find ourselves in the last week of the year.

I felt really sorry to be in their shots, but what to do, I should have a great picture, too.

My cameras are magical. They protect me from harm and major life catastrophes.