Friday Happy Hour: Experts Confirm Integrity of World Press Photo Winner

Friday Happy Hour: Experts Confirm Integrity of World Press Photo Winner

The announcement from World Press Photo that the 2013 winning image was determined not to have been manipulated outside the contest’s allowed guidelines sheds light on an important conversation happening in the photojournalism world – in short, how much retouching is too much? Feel free to share your thoughts, and be sure to check out the other launches and blog posts from around the industry that made it into this week’s Happy Hour.

Experts confirm the integrity of World Press Photo winner Paul Hansen’s image

There was a lot of swirling debate after Paul Hansen’s image was named World Press Photo of the year. People argued that the image must have been digitally manipulated (Allen even wrote a blog post titled, “Why Do Photo Contest Winners Look Like Movie Posters?”).

Photo by Paul Hansen, World Press Photo winner 2012

As a result, the Word Press Photo submitted his image files for forensic analysis. Here were their conclusions:

“We have reviewed the RAW image, as supplied by World Press Photo, and the resulting published JPEG image. It is clear that the published photo was retouched with respect to both global and local color and tone. Beyond this, however, we find no evidence of significant photo manipulation or compositing.” – Dr. Hany Farid and Kevin Connor of Fourandsix Technologies.

Eduard de Kam, digital photography expert, adds, “When I compare the RAW file with the prizewinning version I can indeed see that there has been a fair amount of post-production, in the sense that some areas have been made lighter and others darker. But regarding the positions of each pixel, all of them are exactly in the same place in the JPEG.” (via World Press Photo)

Launch: Corbis Crave offers exclusive imagery for art buyers and art directors

Corbis launched a new image platform this week directed at creatives from “the world’s top ad agencies”. The site features “the most premium imagery without the stock image ‘flavor'”, according to the About page on Corbis Crave. The platform is accessible via the web and iPad, and features specific photographers’ portfolios. (via PhotoArchiveNews.com)

Unused Lightoom tools by Janice Sullivan

Fine art photographer Janice Sullivan specializes in macro, landscape, and travel photography. When she’s not taking photographs, Janice is passionately sharing her tips and tools with fellow photographers. Her YouTube channel features valuable information on sharpening and noise reducing, Nik software Viveza 2 tutorial, and even exporting image to PhotoShelter.

Janice was kind enough to create a unique video for the PhotoShelter community featuringunused Lightroom tools, including: tone curve adjustment and split toning. Check out her video below, and big thanks for passing this along.

The Polaroid Years

After Polaroid announced that they would stop producing instant film and cameras in 2008, Vassar College curator Mary-Kay Lombino heard an outcry from artists who had once loved the medium. She started collecting Polarids largely considered to be works of art – some of which have appeared in museums, and some that have been largely forgotten. Polaroid was actually known for giving artists supplies on the condition that they would donate work to the company’s collection.

Prints from “The Polaroid Years” will be on exhibit at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College until June 30. See one of our favorites by Chuck Close below. (via CNN Photos)

Self-Portrait/Composite/Nine Parts, Nine dye diffusion transfer prints. (Chuck Close/Courtesy Pace Gallery)

Eddie Adams Workshop still accepting applications

The Eddie Adams Workshop is one of the premier photojournalism events for students and young professionals, and the only one that is tuition-free. The weekend workshop held in upstate New York offers an excellent opportunity to meet the top photojournalists in the world, and to work alongside the best photo editors in the business. Applications are being accepted until May 31, 2013. Find more information and apply here.

Harold Feinstein: Why I loved my Rolleiflex

Celebrated photographer Harold Feinstein has recently been making frequent updates to his blog, the latest of which professes his love for the Rolleiflex medium format TLR. “In fact I would call it the most beautiful camera I’ve ever seen,” writes Harold. “It was relatively easy to use, light weight, extraordinarily well-constructed, simple and had the best lenses in the business.” Harold shared a handful of archived images in the post from the late 1940s – check them out here.

Photo by Harold Feinstein

Comprehensive map of the photography landscape

Part venture capitalist, part professional photographer describes Taylor Davidson, creator of the map you see below. Taylor was inspired by LUMAscapes, a collection of maps of the advertising technology industry. With over 380 billion photos taken last year, Taylor thought it was high time to map the flow of a photo from the creators to a variety of users (people., consumers, brands, marketers, buyers, etc.). “It’s not meant to be exhaustive in naming all the companies in each bucket, but directional in capturing the main players that exist today,” says Taylor. He expects to make this an ongoing series.

By Taylor Davidson

TED talks: Brandon Stanton on The Danger of Good Stories

Last fall Brandon Stanton spoke at Columbia University on “The Danger of Good Stories”. Brandon is the photographer behind the wildly popular and inspiration blog Humans of New York, which stemmed from his idea that “it would be really cool to create an exhaustive catalogue of the city’s inhabitants, so I set out to photograph 10,000 New Yorkers and plot their photos on a map.” That idea transformed into a new two-year-old blog tha tprovides glimpses into the lives of strangers in New York, and worldwide.

Brandon speaks to the difference in what’s covered in movies and the news, and the reality we live in. Check out his talk below:

The top 100 travel photographers in the world

UK off-the-wall blog Chillisauce (which claims to feature “the most utterly bizarre things people are doing around the world as they embrace a life less ordinary”) has compiled a list of the top 100 travel photographers in the world, featuring many PhotoShelter members. The list includes Ken KamineskyJohn LanderCraig FergusonRobert CaplinJim GoldsteinJacob MaentzDavid Sanger, and surely many more. We hope everyone was notified!

Photo by John Lander

10 young and talented photographers

In another list of the best-of-the-best, My Modern Met named its picks for top 10 young and talented photographers. “Over the course of several years, we’ve watched them grow, their innate ability coupled with their undying passion produced some incredible results…Believe us when we say, these ten are the ones you want to keep watching.” The list features mainly surrealist fine art imagery, including work from Brooke Shaden and Alex Stoddard.

Photo by 25-year-old Brooke Shaden

Mesmerizing facades of beach hotels in Venice by Luigi Bonaventura

Many of us don’t notice the architectural wonders around us, either because we’re not looking up or simply can’t isolate particular features. Thanks to New York-based Italian photographer Luigi Bonaventura we can appreciate the color and symmetry of the hotel facades in Jesolo Beach, a town in Venice, Italy. (via Design Taxi)

Photo by Luigi Bonaventura

Photo by Luigi Bonaventura

Photo by Luigi Bonaventura

Photo by Luigi Bonaventura

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There are 4 comments for this article
  1. James McArdle at 6:20 am

    Lauren, good news exonerating Paul Hansen, who is more than once a prize-winning photojournalist and whose reputation has been besmirched by dubious ‘experts’. Nevertheless the ‘cinematisation’ of documentary images carries a warning for all photographers.
    There’s a discussion of subjective and objective, and HDR, in photojournalism on my blog Camera/Eye at http://wp.me/p1ZU6J-hN

  2. Pingback: Photoshelter – A great company for photographers
  3. Brett at 1:26 pm

    The photo still has far too much tonal and color manipulation to be published as a piece of photojournalism. I’m unimpressed that “experts” say it doesn’t have pasted in elements. I don’t know anyone who thought that. That wasn’t the issue. If we were to see the original raw capture I don’t think it would hold up to AP standards for example, not even close.

    “normal toning and color adjustments that should be limited to those minimally necessary for clear and accurate reproduction”

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