Showing posts with label photo industry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label photo industry. Show all posts

Friday, November 13, 2009

A Day in D.C.: The Best of Both Worlds

Posted by Larissa

This Wednesday, Larissa and Ryan traveled from the country to the city for some face time with ad agency creatives and DC Fotoweek exhibitions. We had traveled to Baltimore for similar purposes last week, so we made sure to grab our little sack of quarters for parking and made our way to our nation's capitol.

Once again we were reminded of how expensive D.C. is in comparison to Baltimore. Both cities are equidistant from our town, but Baltimore seems to be where we have spent the majority of our "city" time of late. Ryan and I laugh now at our innocent little sack of parking meter quarters we never used after spending $30 on parking throughout a day of zipping around Georgetown and other parts of the city. Lesson learned...again.

We had several portfolio showings with some great firms, met friendly, creative people, and even managed to grab an IPA and antipasto at a brasserie in Georgetown. We saw some amazing international photographers at the D.C. Fotoweek exhibits such as Ernesto Bazan, Ziyah Gafic, and João Pina. At the Embassy of Sweden we saw an exhibition called "What Lies Beneath: Nature & Urban Landscape in EU Photography." It is always nice to spend some time immersed in other photographers' work, not just your own.

We made our way from appointment to appointment, to exhibit, to a seminar, to our friends' apartment for a late dinner, all through a consistent drizzle with no umbrella, Ryan tucking his portfolio under his jacket for protection. These adventurous days, outside the norm of our daily farmhouse office lives, remind us of our old city life and all the precariousness that came along with it. They remind us that this urban existence is just down the road, as are our clients, but we can always return happily to our simple country life at the end of the day. Can we have the best of both worlds? I like to think so.

Friday, September 18, 2009

Photo Manipulation: Good, Bad or Who Cares?

I read an article last week about whether photo manipulation is good or bad for photography over at A Photo Editor and thought it would be good to share here on Playing Work.

Rob Haggart wrote an article titled "This Photo is Lying to You" for the September issue of Outside Magazine. It's a fantastic article that you can read HERE. This is a fascinating discussion and I think it’s a great topic for Outside Magazine’s Photography issue. I don’t know a single photographer that doesn’t manipulate in some way but I agree that it would be in the best interest of news organizations to clearly define their levels of manipulation so that readers/viewers know the extent of the changes. Easier said than done right?

Journalism as a whole has had a difficult year. Unprecedented job loss, rapidly declining ad revenue and decreasing public confidence have plagued the industry throughout 2009. Even as media literacy increases and the public becomes ever more skeptical of everything we see, I would think that news organizations would want to make the effort to clearly define their manipulation levels since their entire business structure is built around the concept of telling the truth with accuracy. It's no secret that photography has been manipulated ever since its birth, but when it comes to news I think we all have expectations that what we are seeing is as close to reality as it can be. Here is a link to some famous photo manipulations.

What do you think about photo manipulation? Share your opinions in the comments below.
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