Seamus Murphy

The photojournalist talks about the range of tools he used to produce “A Darkness Visible: Afghanistan” for MediaStorm. He’s covered the war-ravaged country since 1994.

Q: In terms of workflow on later trips, how did you manage switching between shooting video, stills and gathering audio? What were the pros and cons of your approach?

A: There was one trip to shoot video with the Canon 5D MK 2, although interviews were largely shot on a Canon XHA1 for the extra control of audio. I also recorded audio and ambient sounds with an Edirol recorder. I also shot stills- color digital and a lot of Kodak Tri-X – especially of the Ba Deli family. It was a crash course but it didn’t take long to adapt once I decided what I wanted to do. It does make it hard at times with all the choices – but its not a bad problem to have.

Murphy’s homepage here. Verve interview with Geoffrey Hiller here. “A Darkness Visible” here.

Jodi Kantor’s Obama Chronicle

After George W. Bush won his first White House term, the echo chamber went into overdrive in an attempt to create the meme that petulant Clinton staffers had trashed 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It was all nonsense, of course. “The condition of the real property was consistent with what we would expect to encounter when tenants vacate office space after an extended occupancy,” the Government Services Administration discovered. Fast-forward eight years, and it turns out the Bush clan left its own mark on the White House. Jodi Kantor tells The Observer:

I spent a lot of time in the White House in the public areas where reporters are allowed to go, but I spoke to people about the private quarters as well. Some of the things I learned were small, novelistic details. For example, the fact that there were still pet stains on the carpets from the Bush cats when the Obamas moved in.

Heydays Come And Go

“Frankly, you have it much easier than Jacob Riis did,” Kevin Moloney tells his photojournalism students and friends in The Heyday Is Now. “You are living in the best time in history to be a photojournalist.”

My favorite leisure camera of the moment is a folding Kodak/Nagel Vollenda 48 from the 1930s. It takes 127 film (thank you, Croatia) and gives everything at which it is aimed the feel of the decade in which the camera was made. It took the place of a digital point-and-shoot in my pocket. I love all of that variety. Sure, about all of it can be modeled with good digital technique, but art is in the process, not just the product. And the latest round of digital technology has brought us fantastic ISO capability that will probably reach a usable six digits before we can say “existing light in a coal mine.” We now have rich color even on the extremes of exposure and more dynamic range than I could have dreamed a decade ago.

As a website editor, I’m now interested in what this kind of conversation about technology can mean in terms of presenting photojournalism in a way that engages audiences in a new way; what distinguishes the work from everyone else’s; what translates into added value for publisher and consumer. Because as an editor feeding a 24-hour news beast, I have to make incessant, instant choices that inform and engage audiences over and over. It’s a great time to be an editor.

I found this New York Times Lens post interesting: James Estrin interviews Jim Wilson about how the process of covering the New Hampshire primary has changed. It’s a great exchange between two award-winning pros.

Estrin: Sometimes you like to use 4-by-5 cameras to take photographs. That’s the kind of slow photography where you actually have to think and really consider what you’re doing. With digital, you can think a little less because you can shoot a lot more. When you include the pressure to transmit quickly, I wonder whether you can compose as carefully or think as much taking pictures.

Wilson: I think people may not be thinking as much, but photographers work off of their instincts to be in the right place at the right time. You still have to think about where the moment is going to be. Technology hasn’t changed that; it has enabled us to show your work better and faster. It also gives us the ability to capture many moments.

Thanks to the technology Moloney and Wilson talk about, editors can see loads of those moments incredibly fast. That’s a blessing when one is selecting work for the public to view in a competitive environment that at the same time is governed by one’s understanding of what grabs the audience’s attention best.

Still, photographers chained to their Nikon and Canon DSLRs, feeding the beast, can’t help but end up shooting work that eventually takes on a feeling of sameness. And I wonder if photojournalism consumers sense the sameness and get bored with it. Certainly celebrated photojournalists have tried to break out visually either by going old school — Arthur Grace’s “Choose Me” during the 1988 presidential race in black and white on a TLR; David Burnett in the 2004 race with a Speed Graphic– they go “back to the future” like Damon Winter in Afghanistan, creating what one might call heirloom-style image using the latest iPhone technology. But these productions are, I would argue, the exceptions that prove the rule. Most photojournalism fits a mold. There are breakout moments, but does the audience get as much joy as the photographer when this happens?

What Buchanan Wrote

Word is that MSNBC and culture warrior Patrick Buchannan are parting ways after his book tour is over. Here’s part of what he wrote. (Hat tip Diane Rehm.)

Is it not a people of a common ancestry, culture, and language who worship the same God, revere the same heroes, cherish the same history, celebrate the same holidays, share the same music, poetry, art, literature, held together, in Lincoln’s words, by “bonds of affection … mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-?eld, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone”? If that is what a nation is, can we truly say America is still a nation?

Excerpt: Patrick Buchanan’s “Suicide of a Superpower”

Garry Winogrand

I think that there isn’t a photograph in the world that has any narrative ability. Any of ‘em. They do not tell stories – they show you what something looks like. To a camera. The minute you relate this thing to what was photographed — it’s a lie. It’s two-dimensional. It’s the illusion of literal description. The thing has to be complete in the frame, whether you have the narrative information or not. It has to be complete in the frame. It’s a picture problem. It’s part of what makes things interesting.

More at 2point8. (And check out his Ways Of Working.)

Air Safety On The Cheap

My former City Pages colleague Nick Pinto is now at the Village Voice, and he’s just published a great takeout on what passes for airport security:

Jackson has something to eat and is asleep by 9 a.m. He’ll wake up around 3 and prepare a dinner to take to work. Most of his meals come from the food pantry at his church, where he volunteers. After he makes dinner, Jackson will nap some more, or maybe watch TV. At 8 p.m., he’ll get up, shower, and put on his uniform. By 9, he’s on Sutphin Boulevard and waiting for the number 6 bus. An hour later, Jackson is at work, at Delta’s two terminals at John F. Kennedy International Airport, where hes a security guard. Jackson makes sure no one enters the gate area without passing through the Transportation Security Administration screening checkpoints. He ensures no one unauthorized exits the access doors to the tarmac. He guards the employee entrance and makes sure only properly accredited staff come in. He responds to alarms.

Charged with keeping the terminals safe, Jackson is an integral part of aviation security at JFK. He makes $8 an hour, doesn’t get sick days, and doesn’t have health insurance.

More at Air Safety on the Cheap | Village Voice.

RNC 2008 Revisted

At MPR, we’re ramping up our coverage in Iowa ahead of the caucus voting next week. Two reporters there now, and the show hosts will be setting up camp shortly. It’s hard to believe the 2008 primary season was just three+ years ago. Here’s a photo from the Republican National Convention, which I helped cover for Internet Broadcasting (Leica M6, Summicron 35mm, TriX). More here.

Zombie Subdivisions

The perfect name for an undead suburb.

Peter O’Dowd of KJZZ via NPR: Some experts believe up to a million dirt lots in central Arizona were in some stage of approval for new homes when the market crashed.

Sportswriting’s Last Badass

Alex Belth has penned a wonderful appreciation of the late George Kimball over at Deadspin. “Sportswriter” doesn’t even begin to cover the bases.

“The last of his kind,” according to Michael Katz, the longtime boxing reporter for The New York Times. He drank one-eyed with Pete Hamill and Frank McCourt, smoked dope with Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, and did with William Burroughs and Hunter S. Thompson whatever was in their heads to do at the time. George covered Wimbledon and the Masters, the World Series and the Super Bowl and more than 300 championship fights. He golfed with Michael Jordan and sat in a sauna with Joe DiMaggio. “He’d show up with Neil Young,” Katz said, “and get drugs from the Allman Brothers. Mention a name and he’d somehow know the person.”

More on Kimball here.

First Kiss

Signed, sealed and delivered courtesy of the U.S. Navy.

Update 12/23/11 via Romenesko, who spoke with photographer Brian Clark:

Q: Is there an interesting back-story to share?

A: Going into this story we had no idea that this kiss would take place. The public information officer said simply that we should expect a surprise. I was half expecting sailors dressed up as Santa as the ship pulled in. We did get tipped off a bit before that the “first kiss” would be the surprise and it would have national implications.

Q: Do you ever predict how an image will be received by readers/viewers?

A: I suppose with hot button issues I’m always expecting reaction to be across the spectrum. However, I did not predict that it would receive this amount of attention. The video alone stands at over 1-million views in just a few days. Pretty incredible.

Jay Rosen’s News Corp Theory

Here, then, is my brief theory of News Corp. News Corp is not a news company at all but a global media empire that employs its newspapers – and in the United States, Fox News – as a lobbying arm and intimidation machine. The logic of holding these "press" properties is to wield influence on behalf of the much bigger and more profitable media business and also to satisfy Murdochs own power urges or, in the case of Australia, his patrimonial legends.

via Via Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Slab City

Homelessness recast as a religious experience. The kids don’t sound like they’ve caught the spirit. (Via the LA Times.)

China’s Abandoned Wonderland

(via China’s Abandoned Wonderland - Alan Taylor - In Focus - The Atlantic)

Reminds one of Shelley:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.[1]

We The People

NPR held a hypothetical constitutional convention of sorts. Four measures passed muster. They are not especially noteworthy for soaring rhetoric, but definitely reflect the disgust many Americans feel about the political system today.

The Electoral College should be abolished and presidents should be elected by popular vote.

75 percent voted to ratify
25 percent voted against ratification

Campaign contributions to any candidate for office in the United States government from any entity shall not exceed those limits set for citizens. Corporations, companies, unions, PACs and other organizations shall not be considered citizens.

86 percent voted to ratify
14 percent voted against ratification

The rights enumerated in the Constitution are expressly for the benefit of living human beings. Corporations are expressly denied any claim of protection under the Bill of Rights.

82 percent voted to ratify
17 percent voted against ratification

No member of Congress shall become a lobbyist or a consultant for anyone or any company or business doing business with the United States government once they have completed their service in Congress, nor shall any member of their immediate family.

67 percent voted to ratify
32 percent voted against ratification

Via We The People: NPR Readers Would Ratify Four New Amendments : Its All Politics : NPR.

Planned Installations

Via the good folks at Grist, who published these maps from Black and Veatch.

Installations of non-hydro renewable energy in 1970:

Non-hydro renewable energy installations built or planned> today:

The point the B&V analyst takes from that is that Solyndra is a sideshow. It’s not going to stop the march of renewables in the U.S.

That may or may not be true. One wonders about the wisdom of creating a map of built and planned installations and assuming those planned units amount to a done deal.

Military Censorship

Now that the U.S. occupation of Iraq has officially ended, I’m reminded of this post at BagNewsNotes on Michael Kamber and his thoughts about military censorship during the war, and how it became more and more strict as the war stretched on:

“I think that we need to publish those photos for history even if we can’t get them in the newspaper today.”

When that happens, as it surely will, what will we see, and will it make a difference?