In Focus: February 2022
In this issue: Unrest in Ukraine, POYi winners, ethical considerations and much more.
Hello. It’s Monday, Feb. 28.
Welcome to the February 2022 issue of “In Focus” — a newsletter bringing you photojournalism and photography-adjacent resources, news, and opportunities straight to your inbox. This edition of the “In Focus” newsletter is written and edited by Brian Munoz with contributions by Portland-based freelance journalist Taylor Balkom.
As trade publications have shuttered in the last several years, the Fellow Photogs team looks to fill the gap with this newsletter while helping connect those within the industry, domestically and afar.
This newsletter accompanies the Fellow Photogs group on Facebook. If you’d like to join our community, just click on the group link above. Do you like what you see here? If so, you can subscribe to the newsletter below and get it straight to your inbox.
News in a flash: Here are tidbits of photo news and other things that came across our feeds we found interesting. Is there something that we should be paying attention to or featuring? Please reach out at fellowphotogs@gmail.com.
Ukraine unrest: As Russia continues its military mobilization into Ukraine in an attempt to gain control of the country, photojournalists are documenting history. One of them is the Los Angeles Times’ Marcus Yam. His intimate and haunting photos give a frontline look into the situation in eastern Europe. Melissa Lyttle, a Washington D.C.-based photojournalist, also made a Twitter list of photojournalists on the ground to follow.
Pictures of the Year International: A huge congratulations to the individuals and teams who have been recognized in the 79th annual POYi contest. Gabrielle Lurie, of the San Francisco Chronicle, was named the local photographer of the year for the second consecutive year — you can view her award-winning portfolio here. Lynsey Addario was named the international photographer of the year. Kevin Martin, of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, was named the Photo Editor of the Year.
Esquivel murder: Ten people have been arrested in connection with the killing of Tijuana-based photojournalist Margarito Martínez Esquivel, the Los Angeles Times reports. He was shot to death outside of his home as he left for work last month.
The arrests were made at dawn earlier month in Tijuana, during the search of six different properties, where authorities also seized an AR-15-style rifle, a Smith & Wesson handgun, phones and drugs, including cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine, according to officials.
Less than a week after Martínez’s killing, a second Tijuana journalist, Lourdes Maldonado López, was shot to death in her car in front of her home. Three suspects were arrested on Feb. 8 in connection with her killing.Amplifying Black Voices: PhotoShelter’s Jeremy Berkowitz compiled a list of 100 Black visual artists who you should be following. Their work is simply stunning and also highlights several online communities have been established to highlight and amplify the voices of Black creatives including: Black Women Photographers, Diversify Photo and Color Positive.
AP under fire: After the Associated Press launched its own “NFT” marketplace last month, the team was under fire for putting an NFT up for auction featuring "migrants drifting in an overcrowded boat in the Mediterranean." The original Tweet was deleted, but the ethics of the practice quickly came under question.
The @AP had their grotesque NFT tweet up for 4 hours, @JortsTheCat posted about it and they deleted it in 5 minutes.
“I'm pretty devastated that we seem to have damaged our work to date with our planned use of the rescue video,” writes Dwayne Desaulniers, the AP’s Director of Blockchain & Data, in a public Discord chat which was posted on Twitter. He adds: "What I did that was unethical and warrants significant scrutiny was to greenlight the migrant rescue photo. That was a mistake.”
This Twitter thread explaining the process and raising the ethical question of the NFT-journalism space is quite interesting and provides the AP’s perspective on the situation.Ethics watch: A freelance photojournalist was under fire after what some have called questionable ethical behavior when they were photographing an anti-mask protest for Getty Images. The concern led to Getty Images and Reuters pulling the photographer’s images from their collections. Sue Morrow, the editor and creative director for the National Press Photographers Association magazine, wrote a column after speaking with the photographer which provides thoughtful insight as it relates to the NPPA Code of Ethics.
Olympics nightmare: Chills ran down every photographer’s spine as NBC captured a photographer’s camera tumbling down a snowy slope the day before opening ceremonies. You can see pieces of the camera chip and break away — yet the camera survived. Surprisingly, the Sony Alpha 1 and 24-70mm 2.8 was still relatively unscathed apart from damage to the lens hood and rear LCD screen.
Getty at the Games: Even in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, photographers at the Olympics need to deliver their images as quickly as possible. At the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, the Getty Images photo editing team is mainly remote and the agency shared how their system works.
Super Bowl LVI science: Photographer Reed Hoffman wrote a stellar blog post on the importance of photographers evolving with changing times and equipment, using his experiences over the last two NFL seasons as an example. Definitely a must-read for any sports photographers out there.
Day in court: ACLU Minnesota won over $800 thousand for journalists along with a permanent injunction that will prohibit Minnesota State Patrol from attacking or arresting reporters. The verdict comes on the heels of the George Floyd-related protests in June of 2020.
“We firmly believe in First Amendment rights and the role of a free press in protecting society and upholding our democracy,” said Pari McGarraugh, an attorney with Fredrikson & Byron. “Providing impartial information to the public about demonstrations, protests and other conflicts between law enforcement and the public is at the heart of journalism, and the right to witness and report must be protected and upheld.”
The court ruling also comes with a slate of regulatory practices the agency must uphold for several years, partly including: Issuing body cameras to all troopers by June 2022, training on treatment of the media and First Amendment rights, and amending MSP policy so that allegations of press First Amendment violations are considered “serious misconduct,” triggering an Internal Affairs investigation, and requiring the allegations to be reported to a supervisor and the POST Board.‘Torch Lady’: Movie buffs out there will instantly recognize the Columbia Pictures “Torch Lady” logo. But, how did it come to be? Pulitzer Prize-winning New Orleans photographer Kathy Anderson details her process which includes many low-budget photo props, including some bed sheets.
Kristina Barker: A Q&A with Evan Cobb: The following is an excerpt from an interview between Portland-based photojournalist Kristina Barker and Cobb, a photojournalist and filmmaker based in northern Indiana, about processing grief through photography.
EC: How has photographing your mother and your family impacted your commercial and editorial work for other clients?
KB: There was a long time in my life when I had a line dividing how I photographed for my job and how I photographed for myself. I know that this came about over my time as a newspaper staffer in South Dakota. There was a relatively rigid expectation of what photos should be and most often they were frames that a word editor had dreamt up and we were just there to fill the box with very literal evidence. And while that was necessary sometimes, it wasn’t necessary all the time and that really squashed inspiration and imagination.
Which is maybe me just being a giant sensitive photo baby. But it was hard to come back from that sort of thinking while layoffs and furloughs were also happening. It took me a few years of freelancing to finally be including my “photos for me” photos in an edit. Because I didn’t think anybody wanted that. I thought they all wanted evidence. So as I began to share more of that in what I was sending for an edit, and would get good feedback on that, I began to photograph more like that—more of photographing for myself but for my clients—weaving together how I saw and storytelling. It’s been a total journey of sort of clearing all the noise and fog to see my vision.
I will never forget when Morrigan McCarthy, a picture editor at The New York Times, sent me to cover flooding in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, and she made a point of saying, (and I’m paraphrasing) This might be spot news but don’t forget to take the quiet photos that you take. We love the quiet photos that you make. And I was like what? Really? She had anticipated that I would be thinking spot news, spot news, spot news — and she was so right.
If she hadn’t said that, I think I might have photographed that story through the lens of: what does a spot news photo need to look like? Those checkboxes are a framework, not an exact list, and I’ve spent my career trying to build confidence in how I see. It’s a journey, for sure.
Make sure to read more about Barker’s project, “how old are you? how old am i?,” with her interview with Cobb for his “A Longer Look” newsletter. The newsletter takes deep dives into photographer’s work, motivations and inspirations.
Featured Jobs and Internships
Staff Photojournalist, The Advocate/NOLA.com | Baton Rouge, LA
Staff Photojournalists, The Baltimore Banner | Baltimore, MD
Staff Photojournalist, Tampa Bay Times | Tampa, FL | 3/9 DEADLINE
Photo Editor, The Seattle Times | Seattle, WA
Photo Editor, The Baltimore Banner | Baltimore, MD
Video Journalist, The Philadelphia Inquirer | Philadelphia, PA
Staff Photographer/Videographer, The Caller-Times | Corpus Christi, TX
Video/Motion Producer, Apple | Cupertino, CA
Senior Video Producer, Airman Magazine | Fort Meade, MD | $89-$116K
Public Engagement Manager, Photoville | Brooklyn, NY | $55K
Find more jobs and internship opportunities on the Photography/Multimedia Internships and Jobs group, Jamie’s List, or at Fellow Photogs. Have a job to feature? Please send it over to fellowphotogs@gmail.com.
Other Opportunities and Resources
The Doug Pensinger Photography Fund is accepting applications for its 2022 Sports Photography Grants from March 15 - May 1. The organization is going to be gifting $35,000 in grants and mentorship opportunities to up-and-coming sports photographers.
The Fellow Photogs group allows all of their members to submit their information for our public database directory. The directory is consistently updated and can be used by members to connect and share job opportunities. You can access the database here.
Good Reads: If you like this newsletter, check out what our members are diving into:
Full Stop: Melyssa Little gives you insight into her mind through conversation about life, photography and creativity. “I’ll be highlighting the work of others, pointing out great photography and interesting things (books, podcasts, articles, art) I’ve come across,” she writes in her first post.
The FlakPhoto Network: Andy Adams takes you into the wider world of photography within his various social media groups that are part of the “FlakPhoto Network.” His communities have rich dialogue about everything from historic photo work, printing and other photo-related topics.
The Objective: a bi-weekly newsletter “covering the steps forward and backward newsrooms have taken to make journalism a more equitable field.”
Featured image: Ronda Churchill, a Las Vegas-based freelance photojournalist, created the featured image for the month of March. This is voted on each month the members of the Fellow Photogs group on Facebook.
Quote of the month: “I shoot because I see. I shoot because if I don’t, I don’t know who will?,” photographer Ruddy Roye said in a 2017 interview with TIME Magazine. The article gives some in-depth advice and motivation from industry leaders.
That’s all for now, thank you for reading.
The “Fellow Photogs” newsletter brings you photojournalism and photography-adjacent resources, news, and opportunities straight to your inbox. This newsletter is curated and compiled by the all-volunteer Fellow Photogs team. If you’d like to help with this endeavor, please email fellowphotogs@gmail.com.