Photojournalists Move To Instagram, As Superstorm Sandy bore down on the Eastern Seaboard, Time magazine’s director of photography, Kira Pollack, had a snap decision to make about how to document the impending chaos. “We came in Monday morning [October 29, 2012]—Sandy hit Monday night,” Pollack says. “We really didn’t know what would happen: whether the power would go out, or how we would file images.” The solution? Pollack’s team contacted five photojournalists and handed them the keys to Time’s Instagram feed, granting unmediated access to the magazine’s presence on the social-photography platform; the images would also appear on LightBox, the magazine’s photography blog. “I had immediate access to hundreds of thousands of viewers,” photographer Michael Christopher Brown says about shooting the assignment.
“There was this tremendous sense of power, as I was both a photographer and an editor, able to reach an audience faster than any wire service.” “It was really about speed,” Pollack says. Expand Michael Christopher Brown. Hipstamatic: too hip for photojournalism? AFP Photo/Patrick Baz By Marlowe Hood When AFP’s Patrick Baz recently returned to Baghdad for the first time in four years, he found that – compared to the decade of conflict he had covered as a photojournalist – daily life had improved in every way. Except one. “Working as a photographer in the streets of Baghdad is a complicated, red-tape nightmare,” he told Correspondent. “You have to show your credentials everywhere and need clearance for everything. After French journalist Nadir Dendoune got arrested on January 23 for taking pictures of the secret service headquarters, signs have gone up everywhere, Patrick said, especially next to the city’s dozens upon dozens of manned roadblocks: “NO PHOTOGRAPHS”.
Patrick did what he could, and then he switched to ‘Plan B’. “My girlfriend gave me an iPhone 5 for Christmas and I had been playing with the photo apps just for fun, and sharing the results on my Facebook page. “Photographers write with light,” Patrick said, explaining his choice. New York Times edits best of Instagram for storm, Fashion Week (with images, tweet) · storify. How Journalists Are Using Instagram. Social photo sharing is quickly finding its way into newsrooms. Even though the payoff might not be immediately clear, many media organizations are turning to Instagram as a place to experiment. (Part 1 of a 4-part series on how journalists are using social networks beyond Facebook and Twitter.) Instagram's value to news organizations is less obvious than that of most other social networks. Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest can be used direct audience members to the publisher's site, but Instagram doesn't even encode URLs dropped in comment threads.
See also: How Journalists Are Using Pinterest For those willing to take an experimental plunge, Instagram is more about branding and engagement than eyeballs and dollars. "We haven't totally figured out a strategy, to be honest," NPR Multimedia Producer Claire O'Neill said last week at the Online News Assocation (ONA) conference in San Francisco. By contrast, Yahoo! Part 1: How Journaists Are Using Instagram. Photojournalist Ben Lowy explains why he uses an iPhone. EyeEm is asking photojournalist Ben Lowy, famous for being one of the first to take mobile photography to mass media, everything we've always wanted to know about his work. In an interview being published on the social photo sharing service's blog simultaneously with this post (the folks at EyeEm were kind enough to let us get a sneak peek), Lowy, who recently began sharing his images via EyeEm, offers insight into his photography, journalism's changing landscape and his penchant for the iPhone.
In the interview Lowy gives reasons for using his iPhone, especially in conflict zones when he's reporting, which you may have heard before: "it was anonymous, it wasn’t particularly heavy, it didn’t get in the way of being intimate with a potential subject. And it was fast, I could just pull the phone out of my pocket and take a picture as things were happening in front of me. " But he also explains the broader implications of this choice: iPhone Photojournalism. Tuesday, January 1, 2013 By William Sawalich, Photography By Michael Christopher Brown Inside a club in Goma, Congo, where cameras weren't allowed. When journalists use mobile phone cameras, it's usually for one of two reasons: They're either writers with no other options or photographers exploring a gimmick. That's what makes Michael Christopher Brown's use of iPhones for serious photojournalism so interesting.
He's a classically trained photographer with plenty of "real" cameras at his disposal, and he's fairly uninterested in the quirky filters and special effects that are so often synonymous with mobile phone photography. "With the phone, I enjoy the ease of operation," Brown says, "which is inspiring. "At some point in 2009, I noticed I was a different person with a camera in my hands, that it had dictated important decisions in my life and that I wasn't being true to myself in some ways.
Although the device itself may be insignificant, its effect is anything but. Photojournalism & The Smart Phone. Japhet Weeks, a multimedia journalist and Yuli Sollsken, a photojournalist, are a couple that live and work together in Cairo, Egypt. I was following Japhet from some months but never realized about Yuli. When I discovered that they are a couple, doing amazing images, each one from a particular view of the same event, subject sometimes, I couldn’t help but wanting to interview this cool American duo that happens to live in some of the most dangerous zones in the world. What could be a problem makes it a source of inspiration for doing their documenting work in a beautiful and unique way.
To make it short I will let them tell us all about it. – Fabs Grassi F: Fabs J: Japhet Y: Yuli F: Can you tell the readers, briefly how you both got into photojournalism? J: Yuli and I met in China in 2004. We always wanted to work together. F: How much do you use mobile photography in your daily work? J: When we are out on assignment we both take photos on our iphones. F: Glad you mentioned it Japhet!