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World Press Photo Announces New Ethics Guidelines and Rigorous Review Process After Massive Controversy

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Earlier this year it was revealed that 22% of entries into the 58th annual World Press Photo competition had been immediately disqualified due to ‘careless’ post-processing.

Two weeks after that announcement, an entirely new controversy arose when the mayor of Charleroi, Belgium claimed a series of winning photographs were staged and sensationalized. It was later revealed that the photos would not be disqualified, as the World Press Photo Association (WPPA) said there were ’no grounds for doubting the photographer’s integrity in carrying out his work.’

In hopes of preventing a repeat of the controversies of the past few years, WPPA has announced a new set of ethic guidelines for the 2016 competition.

These Sucked Faces Demonstrate How Smartphones Alienate Us From Ourselves And Our Surroundings

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In this rather unusual photo set, French photographer Antoine Geiger criticizes our obsession and addiction to modern technology and smartphones by creating faces being sucked into screens.

Using candid photos captured in the Louvre and elsewhere in Paris, Antoine says this project places the screen “as an object of “mass subculture”, alienating the relation to our own body, and more generally to the physical world”.

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, these photos make an interesting point.

Concert Photographer: Where Did Your Integrity Go? (Or How Concert Photographers Handle Contracts In Norway)

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The last couple of weeks, the matter of photo contracts once again has been debated. First came Jason Sheldon’s blog post, calling Taylor Swift out on her hypocrisy when attacking Apple for demanding musicians give away their music for free while doing the exact same thing to concert photographers in her photo contracts. If you’re reading this, you’re probably well aware of that whole ordeal, so there’s no need to get into it further other than to say that I fully support Sheldon’s views.

His post made some waves, the latest being The Washington City Paper refusing to sign Foo Fighters infamous contract. Honorable as it may be, as pointed out by Kevin Bergin, their way of solving the problem, will make matters even worse for concert photographers. Petapixel’s Michael Zhang calls the decision a brewing revolution in the world of concert photography, but, I’m not so sure. Right now, it’s “viral”, so there is an immediate payoff, but, as soon as the story fades, so does the will to make change among the decision makers. After all, this is not the first time we’ve seen an “internet riot” against photo contracts, and yet, they are breeding. Well… except in Norway, but I’ll get back to that.

IN EXTREMIS – Captures The most Glorious Accidents Ever (mildly NSFW)

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Remember that epic fall that Madonna had in the Brit Awards? This stuff is to Epic to be staged. Originally from Rome but now living in Barcelona, photographer Sandro Giordano creates and photographs even more bizarre falls and accidents (albeit not featuring famous singers).

We picked inside Sandro’s brain to understand where those crazy photos are coming from.

Mayor Claims City’s Image Was Distorted; Requests World Press Photo To Withdraw Prize

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Just two weeks after World Press Photo’s announcement that 22% of entries that had reached the penultimate round were disqualified due to excessive post processing, a Belgian politician claims a winning photoset should be disqualified due to its “serious distortion of reality”.

The mayor of Charleroi, where the winning photos of the “Contemporary Issues Stories” category were taken, justified his request to have the award withdrawn saying that the photos hurt not only the people of Charleroi but also the profession of photojournalism.

World Press Photo is currently verifying the facts behind the photos of Italian winner, Giovanni Troilo.

Interview with with ISS Astronaut Don Pettit (from smugmug’s From Above)

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Astronaut Don Pettit has become one of the most prolific astronaut photographers during his expeditions aboard the International Space Station. He could (and did) saturate downlink transfers with photos for three full days from just one 30-minute photographic session in space. While photography is part of an astronaut’s job requirement, Pettit’s engineering ingenuity and natural curiosity has led him to create photos that are as stunning for their artistic beauty as they are for their scientific value.

Let Me Know When You See Fire: What a Video Shot at 1000 FPS Looks Like in 4K

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Whether we may think it’s excessive or not, 4K is slowly starting to become the next standard in video. It makes me think of a criticism I once heard against digital filmmaking: that it becomes too real for the viewer to suspend disbelief. Growing up, many of us have been used to movies being shot on 24 FPS film; in a way, it allows us to “escape” the real world and watch a story set in a fantasy world. The blurs, light leaks, and contrast burns – every imperfection from that film – separates the world of the movie from the reality of the world in which we reside.

Fast-forward to today’s time, and you have the Hobbit films being released in 48 FPS across theaters worldwide. When Peter Jackson filmed the trilogy, he described watching the final result as looking through a window. The problem is that many people don’t want to view movies in a world that real.

Milk & Sea Is A Collection Of Mermaids Photographed Across Europe

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Czech photographer Hana Vojackova was drawn to images of mermaids but she noticed that the common concept of mermaids lacked connection to the real and present world.

She began a multi-country journey where she “[looked] for local girls who felt a bit different or special. Influenced by the places, the cultures and the girls’ real lives, she created narratives that she then staged for the tableau photographs“#

So far Hana found mermaids in Sicily, Czech Republic, Germany, Portugal, England & Iceland.

BTS: Lost In The Flood By Tomer Jacobson

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“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” –  Lucius Annaeus Seneca.

When you direct or plan a photograph it seems that you control each and every aspect of that photo.

In street photography you try and capture a decisive moment, which is completely out of your control. In a stage shoot, however,  you can try and create a reality from scratch. The more you put into planning and preparations, the more you can get closer to that perfect image you conceived  in your head.

I have given this a lot of thought when I started working on our last photograph in the song series. The ambitious idea was to shoot a staged photograph with multiple models tens of meters into the sea while everyone is standing on rocks. It quickly became obvious that there are many technical challenges to such photoshoot and I will talk about a few of them in this post.

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