Lots of links — visual edition

The Photography Tips That 96 Photographers Wish They Would’ve Learned Sooner — Fifteen tips there, here are the first five, minus the insight:

Lesson #1: Envision, plan, and then create

Lesson #2: The histogram is NOT optional

Lesson #3: Learn to wirelessly fire the flash off-camera

Lesson #4: Learn to change the active focus point

Lesson #5: With tripods, it’s “Buy right, buy once”

Tips for journalists shooting photos: rookie mistakes, pros and cons:

There are many ways to tell a story and photography is only one. Photography is not the best medium for every task. Your story may be better told as an audio feature, a written account or a video. If you choose to tell the story with stills, make sure to use the medium for its strengths.

Newspapers And Video: Slow And Steady Or Flood The Zone?:

The Wall Street Journal has embraced video with gusto. The venerable paper is pumping out hours of live news clips and splashing them onto everything from the iPhone to the X-Box.

[...]

What this means in practice is that the Journal is showing over four hours a day of live video on devices like the iPad and also using that footage to place clips on platforms like Boxee, Roku and YouTube.

ONAvation Webinar: Illustrating the Story: Comics and Illustrated Journalism:

From interactive images to comics, an increasing number of journalists and news organizations are experimenting with new forms of illustrated journalism. And it’s no wonder: visual journalism can be shared, generate web traffic and provide a engaging entry point into complex stories. But a successful foray into illustrated storytelling requires smart teamwork and a keen editorial eye.

In this one-hour webinar,offered in partnership with Poynter’s NewsU, you will learn about the types of stories that can be effective illustrated journalism and you’ll see some concrete examples of successful (and not-so-successful) projects

Tornado aerial

Hope everyone made it through the Friday storms, which were devastating to many on a wide scale. Here is a weather, Google Maps mashup detailing the hard-hit areas.

And this is an aerial from Henryville, Ind. by Bob Scheer who, I believe, is a photog with The Indianapolis Star.

You can see more of their tornado damage photos on their photography Twitter account.

In the Southeast, as you know, this is severe weather season. Please stay aware of the forecasts for your area.

Photogs, visual artists, historians rejoice

I love this new New York Times Tumblr, where they are posting archived photos in large sizes and good resolution. Love it. The first two are my favorite. So far.

And the accompanying cutline … three lovely links, context, quotes, a line you won’t soon forget. Brilliant:

Aug. 13, 1969: “Data processing cards joined ticker tape in paper blizzard,” read the caption on this photograph, which was published the day after the three Apollo 11 astronauts paraded through New York. The Sanitation Department cleaned up 300 tons of paper the following day. Mayor John V. Lindsay had urged employers to give their workers time to watch the motorcade. The city’s public events commissioner said the turnout was “the biggest ever in the history of New York.” Another article quoted an 8-year-old from Connecticut. “There’s a lot of confetti down there,” he said, “but I don’t see any astronauts.”

This one is definitely going in my RSS reader.

Via Poynter.

Series to look forward to

Director Michael Mann, who produced this terrific movie:

is set to create a documentary series about the lives of combat photographers.

That will be worth watching. (So is The Insider, if you haven’t had the chance to see it.)

Just the links

Textbook publishers? Apple is looking at you

Digital textbooks available for iBooks 2 on iPad will come at a significant discount over regular paper-based books, with prices at $14.99 or less from major publishers like McGraw Hill and Pearson.

The implications will be widespread.

Who? Whom? Geoffrey Pullum will tell you, in just 786 words.

Is HDR photography acceptable in journalism? Interesting ethical question. Is it news only if it is in the human visible spectrum? (No.) Is it acceptable to publish a photograph treated in any number of techniques as NASA frequently does? (Yes.)

The old-school photojournalism professor — like the man I studied under, a talented old veteran who spent his formative years covering civil rights marches — would say that what is in the viewfinder is the news. His point was that cropping a picture is editorializing. (We all know that even the presence, if not the interaction, of a photojournalist can impact the news event, so in that strictest sense this becomes a thorny issue: any opened shutter is potentially changing the story.) I spoke with a younger photojournalism professor about this recently and he laughed at the notion. To him that is an ideal of a photographer who hasn’t had to get a job in years.

Ultimately, if you open a photo in Photoshop or video in After Effects or your software of choice you can improve the shot, or you can alter your story. After the Iranian faux-missile launch story a few years ago Guardian leapt into the debate. Others have similarly chimed in on both sides of the Photoshop/photojournalism “Does it lie?” issue.

It can, but this is increasingly difficult to get away with. (So don’t be tempted.) It doesn’t even take long to get caught. (To be fair, that one was on the hands of a stringer, and not a staff pro. And herein lies the key, it comes down to trust. It comes down to credibility. So hard to earn, so easy to lose.

Scrupulous photogs, scrupulous people of any industry, know that and guard their credibility zealousy.

And then you get into grey areas. The court won’t let cameras in, so a television station is re-creating “the more absurd aspects” of a corruption trial with muppets. (Video is at the link.) I’m sure it is useful and captivating and will probably be remembered by the newscast’s audience for a good long while, but I could see it also making people queasy, though it is just another way to reach audiences. I bet a lot of the people working on that project never imagined themselves as puppeteers.

Pew research says it is the economy

The public’s interest in news about the economy far outreaches media coverage of it for the second week in a row this year, with 20 percent of people surveyed saying it was the story they were following most closely, while only 6 percent of news coverage was devoted to it. The week before, 19 percent of people said it was their top story, while 8 percent of coverage was devoted to it. This discrepancy continues a trend from last year, during which the economy was one of the most closely followed stories 32 out of 52 weeks, and was the top story of 2011 with 20 percent of coverage devoted to it. And yet in December alone, there was about twice as much interest in the economy as there was coverage of it.

Even during weeks when the economy was the top story, interest surpassed coverage.

Smart comments on that Poynter story, by the way.