Monday, March 17th, 2008
Hard to believe that five years ago we started a war with Iraq. Now, just before the anniversary I’ve finished my first piece for MediaStorm: Bearing Witness: Five Years of the Iraq War. It’s a co-production with Reuters, using stills, video and interviews of their journalists. None of the major characters in this story are Americans. All are seasoned journalists, many are locals and most understand Iraq and its people in a completely different fashion.
Click on the picture below to watch the 30 second trailer I cut:
Visit the full project> Reuters Bearing Witness: Five Years of the Iraq War.
Saturday, December 8th, 2007
I was out of the country for my great friend Ed Kashi’s birthday so instead I made him a little film using only my Canon Powershot S3 point-n-shoot camera.
Monday, November 19th, 2007
Spent the last two weeks in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico teaching a pair of workshops for National Geographic Expeditions. I was blessed with two amazing groups of students, as well as two great co-teachers: Raul Touzon and Sarah Meghan Lee. The first week I filled in for National Geographic staff photographer Nick Nichols and the second week, I taught my scheduled and advertised workshop.
Both groups of students worked extremely hard and we were all thrilled with the work produced both weeks. Here’s the final slide show from the second week, the one where I was the advertised “prize-pig”, err, I mean the “lead teacher”. I also recorded the ambient sounds at the beginning and end of the show and mixed the soundtrack.
Thursday, November 1st, 2007
UPDATE: MSNBC has purchased “the soldier” and is running it on their front page in time for the 5th anniversary of the Iraq war. See it here.
The Eddie Adams Barnstorm Workshop, now in its 20th year, is one of the best in America for photojournalism. Every year 100 students come to the late Pulitzer Prize winning photographers farm in upstate New York to shoot a photo story and listen to the greats of photojournalism talk and show their work.
This year I was lucky enough to be asked by Brian Storm (Mediastorm) and Tom Kennedy (WashingtonPost.com) to be a member of their multimedia team. I was then assigned to the Blue Team with photographer Chris Hondros and picture editor Pancho Bernasconi, both of Getty Images News and producer Leah Latella. Chris chose Shakespeare’s Seven Ages of Man as the theme for our team of 10 photographers. I tagged along with talented team member Brian Sokol who shot the images. I recorded and edited the audio and his images to produce this piece.
Our multimedia team was amazing in its breath and talent. Check out the rest of the multimedia presentations.
Sunday, September 30th, 2007
Tuesday I start leading a graduate seminar at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in the photojournalism/documentary photography graduate program. I’m excited because the students I’ve met thus far have been anxious and ready to learn.
I will say they’re quick: Interesting how they automatically re-enacted the famous opening shot from Reservoir Dogs when I turned around to shoot them on the street in Queens last week.
Wednesday, September 12th, 2007
I used to do a lot of portraits when I started working for magazines in NYC and I remembered those days when I did a fun portrait a while back of Professor E.O.Wilson. He’s the Mick Jagger of Science, often referred to as “Darwin’s Natural Heir” and a genius. He is an amazing thinker, a two time Pulitzer prize-winning author, the man who coined the term “biodiversity” and also a very gentle man. I made this image at the Darwin exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC. After the session, I got to walk through part of the Darwin exhibit with him and hear some stories about Darwin’s family, who he knew. It was one of those moments that made photography the joy it continues to be for me.
Tuesday, September 4th, 2007
I’ve had a great summer travelling and teaching. I wanted to share a bit of what the workshop experience is like for me. This workshop, The Spirit of People, was held at the Tuscany Photo Workshops in August 2007.
Sunday, September 2nd, 2007
NYTimes staffer Nicole Bengiveno headed down to Atlanta to do a story on the home foreclosure trauma,where home foreclosures are up 75% over the prevoius month. Her excellent work ended up as a picture page in today’s paper. She wrote the text too.
But if you head over to the NYTimes online, you can see the exact same story (with many more images) as a 4 minute slide show narrated by Nicole with the voices of the people who lost their homes. Tell me which one you think is more powerful. I don’t think there is any doubt.
Sunday, August 26th, 2007
Published work from National Geographic Magazine: 1 Magazine 3.5 minutes 21 years.
How fast time flies…
Sunday, August 26th, 2007
Sunday’s New York Times hit my doorstep with a major package on China’s pollution crisis, headlined with a huge photo stretching across 4/5 of the top front page.
What caught my eye was a prominent notice under that Chang Lee photo that read: This series, with extensive multimedia features, can be found at nytimes.com.
Well, I finished my coffee, pushed aside the rest of the paper and rushed right over to my computer to find a juicy online package with a beautiful slideshow by NYT staffer Chang Lee, a small uncredited video complete with the excruciating Times reporter as badly lit talking head –god sakes, I want to see China, not some American talking to me with books behind him. I can get that in my own living room– and interactive graphic/map. You can even hear a summary of the story read to you in Mandarin.
At least check out the slideshow in full screen mode.
[I did a similar story for National Geographic Magazine in 2004, in the age before multimedia.]