As 2010 draws to a close it's time to look back at the events of the year and pick out a few of the best pictures from the major news events.
We've published a number of galleries so I thought it might be helpful to bring them together in one place.
ÌýÌý• The UK year in pictures 2010
ÌýÌý• A year of news photographs from around the world 2010 [warning: this gallery contains pictures that some readers may find disturbing]
ÌýÌý• A year in arts and entertainment 2010
ÌýÌý• The best of your pictures on a theme 2010
Thanks to all the photographers for their hard work and I wish all my readers a Happy New Year. See you in 2011.
Kodachrome film has been storing our memories for the past 75 years, but, as I'm sure many of you know, production of the film ended last year and the 31 December is the deadline for film to arrive at the processors in Kansas.
To mark its passing I asked readers of this blog to send in their pictures and memories of Kodachrome, as well as their final frame, the last shot they took on the brand, and I present a selection of those here.
One photographer, Henry Iddon, sent more than just photographs, he also included a few thoughts on what made Kodachrome special:
Henry Iddon:
"Although I've been a full time professional photographer for 15 years I have never used Kodachrome for a client, or had any connection to it for client work. Fast turnaround of E6 and digital capture did for that.
Ìý
"No, for me Kodachrome will always be connected to family memories, and particularly childhood memories of my late Father who died when I was only 11. Through the 70's we would have family ski trips to Scotland, or sailing and hiking excursions to the Lake District, each trip resulting in a roll or two of Kodachrome 64 or 25 being exposed.
Ìý
"I can see my father diligently completing the return envelope - our address being almost embossed into the thick paper. Would the fact that such care had been taken, and each letter overwritten so it almost looked like a 'bold' font, prevent the precious cargo being lost by the Royal Mail?
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"Then the wait, the anticipation. A yellow plastic box in a cardboard sleeve would hit the matt - the address slip, hand written in 15 point 'Iddon' bold, would have guided the memories back from Hemel Hempstead (Kodak's laboratory in the UK for Kodachrome at that time).
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"A slide show, curtains draw, all of us gathered round to relive our holiday escapades. Wonderful memories from a yellow box.
Ìý
"As I was so young when he passed away there had never been the opportunity for an adult conversation, or to hear about his escapades in the 50's and 60's. What were his memories? Where were they now? Had they died also?
Ìý
"The answer was in a heavyweight card board box, containing numerous yellow boxes and in some cases a title, hand written in 15 point 'Iddon' bold. A life in Kodachrome - a life I had access to thanks to Kodachrome.
Ìý
"These images can be scattered on a light box, and thanks to the permanence of the medium, show the escapades of 40 and 50 years ago that I know so little about. The details don't matter - some basic facts do for me, and the rest is for the imagination.
Ìý
"So why do I still shoot the occasional roll of Kodachrome? Simple really, I want my daughters to have the opportunity in years to come to unearth a yellow box, open it, and hold up to the light to see the slides that bring back their memories, and memories of our little family.
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"In theory digitally captured images will be around for ever, but only as far as compatibility is maintained. Holding a DVD, or CD, or what will then be a vintage hard-drive up to the light will not allow memories to flood out.
Ìý
"But a simple colour slide will, it's so simple. Kodachrome isn't about iconic commercial or editorial images; it's about millions of boxes in lofts all over the world. Wonderful memories from a yellow box."
Here are a couple more of Henry's pictures and .
Another reader, Mike Truman, also has a tale to tell about his many years spent shooting on Kodachrome:
"The photo (above right) was from my last roll of Kodachrome and was taken on 11 September this year. The scene is the River Great Ouse, Stony Stratford, about ten minutes' walk from where I live. The camera was an Olympus OM-4Ti, with a Zuiko 21mm lens and a graduated grey filter.
"My wife finally persuaded me to go digital in September, so I took my newly acquired Canon G11 along with me on this final Kodachrome shoot. I was curious to see how the same scene would be immortalized by two different technologies.
Ìý
"The other photo (bottom right) was taken with the G11 from the same spot a couple of minutes later. By then, of course, the light had changed, so I knew the two images would be radically different; furthermore, the Canon was used without any filters.
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"Nevertheless, I feel somehow that the scene shown in the first picture was meat and drink to Kodachrome 64 and the Olympus lens: the contrast between clouds and sky combined with the soft colours of the grass in the meadows would, I suspect, not have been reproduced in quite the same way by a digital camera, unless of course it had received some generous help from Photoshop.
Ìý
"I have been shooting on Kodachrome for 44 years, if I'm not mistaken. I started using Kodachrome II 828 roll film in a Coronet Viscount camera. The films were sent to Kodak in yellow screw topped canisters which you had to place in small canvas-reinforced bags, which were closed with a drawstring.
Ìý
"The postman's daily visits would be carefully monitored for the next couple of weeks until the little yellow box arrived with the twelve 28mm X 40mm slides in their 2" cardboard mounts.
Ìý
"I think each film cost 17/6, including processing, or 88p in today's money. This doesn't sound much, but was a considerable outlay for a 16 year old in 1966, so just one roll of Kodachrome was reserved for the annual summer holiday.
Ìý
"I didn't start using Kodachrome in a big way for another ten years or so, by which time I was earning a salary and had graduated to 35mm. Kodachrome 25 and 64, which came onto the market around that time, were way ahead of the competition and stayed there until Fuji's Velvia appeared several years later. Those were the days!"
Here are a few more of your Kodachrome memories:
Mark Smith:
"This was taken on the North East Coast of Scotland in September 1999 on my lovely (why did I sell it?) Nikon FM2. I carried on shooting black and white and colour print film until I went digital in 2005. Its not my best but it is my last..."
Raid Amin:
"I find it to be most suitable that I take photos of what I hold dearest to me, my daughters, with what I have left in Kodachrome 64 film. While I had been using Fujichrome for over 25 years, I felt sentimental about Kodachrome to disappear."
Lewis Graham (Photo below left):
"My last frame of Kodachrome is of my sister-in-law at her wedding in 2009. It was a chilly February day with poor light but the tones of Kodachrome cast a special light over the shot. The camera used was a 30-year old Olympus OM-10 and the 50 mm standard lens."
Enda McBride (Photo below right):
"This is the last frame I took on Kodachrome, not because it was no longer available, but because I moved to medium format rather than 35mm photography. My wife and I did a lot of 'tramping' as it is called in New Zealand, or hiking as you might know it. This picture is of one of the many swing bridges over rivers in the Tararua Ranges of mountains here."
Edward Conway:
"I tried to capture water bouncing off a leaf, as you can see I failed miserably. It was taken using a Nikon FM and processed in May 1991. At that time I had a young family and could not afford my hobby any more."
Lewis Bush:
"I went out for a walk in the woods a couple of months ago to use a final roll up and found three baby squirrels. They were too young to be afraid so I was able to get very close. One of them was so unafraid that it tried to climb up my leg."
Cee Pike:
"I only started shooting film in any volume again this year, after many years of digital. I got involved with my local Flickr group, which includes a number of film devotees, and I learned/re-learned from them. I experimented with different films and techniques, using my father's trusty Nikon FM and an Olympus OM10 picked up for pennies. Your blog alerted me to the demise of Kodachrome and I thought I should, before it's gone for good. I'm really pleased with the results, even though I underexposed most of what I shot."
Regular readers of this blog will know I have been shooting a long term project on Kodachrome, a project that also draws to a close on New Year's Eve. and the final photograph will be uploaded on New Years Eve.
In the final part of this series on photojournalism photographer David Rochkind outlines how he has funded a number of recent projects through grants and looks at ways in which the funding model can affect the final product.
"I began to work as a freelance photographer in 2003 when I moved to Caracas, Venezuela, at the tail-end of a national oil strike that changed the country's political landscape. I was interested in exploring how Hugo Chavez's self-styled revolution was affecting the country.
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"I spent nearly six years in Venezuela and relocated to Mexico City in 2008 to work on a project about the long-term costs and consequences of the country's drug war. Like most photographers, over the past several years I have seen a significant reduction in the amount of editorial work that is available.
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"In Caracas, most of the newspaper and magazine work I did was for daily or weekly articles written by a correspondent. I was paid by the day, as opposed to by the picture, and in the end one or two images would be published. I enjoyed doing the majority of the work but there was always a nagging feeling that I was simply illustrating someone else's story as opposed to telling my own.
Ìý
"I was initially drawn to photography as a way to become involved with issues that I was interested in, and to go on to tell those stories from my point of view. Sure, my pictures lent a bit of my perspective, but, essentially, they served as an illustration of the written text. It was frustrating and I began to think about how, through still images and multimedia, I could become the primary author, telling stories of my choosing in a variety of platforms.
Ìý
"The correspondents who came and worked with freelance photographers began to come less, then they came with no budget to hire a photographer and finally, many of them stopped coming at all. This dynamic largely continued when I moved to Mexico City in 2008, where I found numerous news bureaus had recently closed. I was confronted with the fact that traditional media was rarely publishing, let alone commissioning, long-form visual journalism. I saw the dearth of assignments as an opportunity that would force me to find different, and potentially more personally fulfilling, ways to reach an audience.
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"All of this led to reflection on what I truly hoped to accomplish with my pictures. Like many photographers, this came down to education, awareness and helping to motivate change. I decided to limit my focus to two projects: one on the global tuberculosis epidemic and one on the drug war in Mexico.
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"I figured that if my primary goal was not to publish in traditional print media, then I should take on projects that were larger and demanded a broader platform. I began to investigate ways to finance those projects and avenues to distribute them. I began to look for grants to produce the work, but was equally interested in figuring out how to reach an audience outside of traditional media outlets in a way that could still have a significant impact.
Ìý
"In 2008 I received a fellowship from the to produce a multimedia piece on the tuberculosis epidemic in the South African gold-mining community. This paid for the travel and production of the story, but the work did not garner significant interest from newspapers and magazines. As this was the kind of work I was interested in and believed in, I needed to find a different outlet that could properly display the work, and that could accomplish my goals of engagement and education.
Ìý
"The project went on to win the , which included a grant to produce an additional reportage about TB. I used the grant to work a piece about .
Ìý
"I was building a broad body of work about tuberculosis and wanted to use it in a way that educated people about TB, but in a more active and engaging way than simply raising awareness. I had images in my head of people reading a magazine with the pictures, or viewing them online, and responding to them, but ultimately moving on with no way to continue the conversation after they put down the magazine or turned off the computer.
Ìý
"I then applied for a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting to work on a story about that was part of a larger proposal submitted to both the Pulitzer Center and the , to create a free online educational curriculum to be used in secondary schools. This curriculum would be based on all of my work about TB and would engage students and teachers with the pictures, asking them to delve deep into the project in order to complete the activities in the lessons and hopefully develop a personal connection to the themes discussed in the work.
Ìý
"The project, EPIDEMIC: TB in the Global Community, is currently under production and should be available to schools in time for World TB Day on 24 March 2011. In addition to the curriculum, the website will teach students about letter-writing campaigns, fund-raising and activism, allowing them to take their experience with the pictures outside the classroom if they desire.
Ìý
"Parts of this project have been published in editorial outlets, both online and in print, but it was entirely funded by 'non-traditional' sources. In addition, its broadest distribution will be in a form that asks the viewer, in this case students, not only to look at the pictures and feel something, but also to engage in a meaningful dialogue about tuberculosis and public health.
Ìý
"I was looking for a way for the pictures to interact with the viewer over a period of time while beginning a conversation that had force and longevity. The project also attempts to impress upon the viewers that the experience with the pictures does not have to be purely passive, that they can be active participants in change. This kind of production and distribution would not have been possible with only the support of traditional media."
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I hope you have found some inspiration in this week's series of posts on photojournalism. I'd like to thank all my guest bloggers for sharing their thoughts and work with us.
If there are any specific subjects you'd like covered or photographers you'd like to hear from, why not e-mail me with your thoughts?
Related posts:
• Michael Kamber on photojournalism today
• David Campbell on photojournalism in the age of image abundance
• Adrian Evans on future funding of photojournalism
• Coming at photojournalism from a different angle
Ciara Leeming is a Manchester-based journalist with a background in local newspaper reporting who freelances for publications including the Guardian and the Big Issue in the North. After discovering photography a few years ago she joined the online MA in photojournalism and documentary photography at London College of Communication as a stepping stone to working with words, photographs and multimedia. Her recurring subjects include urban regeneration, Roma migrants to the UK and Britain's own Gypsy and traveller communities.
Here in the fourth part of a series of posts by guest bloggers, Ciara talks about how and why she has made the leap from words to multimedia.
"It's funny how quickly the bug can take hold. Until three years ago I'd barely held a camera, yet now here I am, trying to gain a foothold in an industry many say is as good as dead.
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"I'm coming at photojournalism from a different angle to many 'emerging' photographers in that I already have the journalism part sorted, having spent the past six years as a staff and freelance writer for newspapers and magazines.
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"I attracted a bit of flak when I first picked up a camera - a few photographer mates protested loudly that I was 'yet another scribbler' trying to earn extra cash at their expense. It's an attitude I've never held with: any freelancer worth their salt should be working up their own stories - that's the way I've always operated as a writer.
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"Photography, early on, was simply a creative outlet. Quickly though I tired of snapping single images and it was a natural step to start visually documenting my own stories, which often relate to social exclusion. It did not take long for me to be won over.
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"Today I almost always sell both words and images: while my first love is definitely photography, I doubt I would survive financially without the writing. Some days this dual identity feels empowering - allowing me to take control of my own projects and giving me something of a unique selling point. At other times it feels like an unsatisfactory compromise with the potential to weaken my overall product.
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"I have to flip between two quite different mind-sets while working - deeply involved as an interviewer, yet hanging back and observing as a photographer. The only way to do this is to work slower, so my income has dropped. I increasingly think visually but am still pitching to print editors because I'm unsure how to approach picture desks.
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"As I've observed the industry I've noticed several things. There is simultaneously more camaraderie and more backbiting in the photographic community than between writers. There is too much naval gazing - where photographers seem content to produce work which only interests other snappers.
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"I feel too many photographers are seduced by the exotic and the foreign, and increasingly believe the most important projects are those close to home. It's more challenging to find visual stories in your own back yard - especially in northern England, with its frequent poor weather and flat light.
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"Finally, I've concluded that many who call themselves 'photojournalists' (a term I personally dislike) are sorely lacking in journalistic rigour and thinking.
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"I'm most inspired by the kind of photographers for whom the story is everything; the camera just happens to be the tool they've chosen to communicate with. The likes of Ed Kashi, Joseph Rodriguez and Brenda Ann Kenneally are practising the kind of honest, in-depth journalism I aspire to. I love the fact they stick with their subjects for many years.
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"Other inspirations include the young American photo cooperative Luceo Images, for the way its members balance personal projects with assignments, and pretty much everything which comes out of London-based agency Panos, whose whole ethos and aesthetic I love.
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"This is a hugely exciting - and unsettling - time to be working in the media. It's no coincidence that the photographers I admire most are embracing new forms of online storytelling in the quest to get their work out to a wider audience. It was Ed Kashi's multimedia pieces that first opened my mind to what could be achieved by marrying audio with still photographs and, sometimes, a little video. A weekend of training with UK photofilm producers, Duckrabbit, gave me the basic skills to start to develop my own voice.
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"Maybe my odd sideways route into this industry means I have fewer hang-ups than some of my colleagues about what photography should or shouldn't be. For me, multimedia feels like the ideal way for photographers to dig deeper into their stories, to help their subjects' voices be heard and to - hopefully - break out of the photographic 'ghetto'. Those who care more about storytelling than their images are the ones who I think get it.
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"The way I operate as a journalist today is poles apart from how I did even two years ago. Instead of taking down interviews in shorthand, I'm now routinely recording audio - which must be transcribed and sometimes edited - and, of course, taking photos. Print stories must still be researched, then pitched and written. Everything is far slower, everything is now personal and self-funded and some is published only on my own website.
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"I'm both enthused and a little nervous about what could happen from here, but I'm finally beginning to escape the editorial treadmill and find my own voice."
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In the final part of the series tomorrow photographer David Rochkind talks about how he has funded a number of recent projects through grants and ways in which this has altered the resulting body of work.
Related posts:
Michael Kamber on photojournalism today
David Campbell on photojournalism in the age of image abundance
Adrian Evans on future funding of photojournalism
Photojournalism on a wider platform
Each week, we set a theme and ask you to send in your photographs; this time the theme was "lights". You can see the pictures we have selected here.
Thanks to everyone who submitted their photos and congratulations to those whose were selected.
Next week I'll be running your final frames of Kodachrome, so the deadline for our next theme is not until the new year.
The new theme is: Back to work
Interpret this in any way you see fit and send your pictures to us at yourpics@bbc.co.uk or upload them directly from your computer.
Please include the word "Back to work" in the subject line of your message.
The deadline is midnight GMT Tuesday 11 January 2011, and remember to add your name and a caption: who, what, where and when should be enough, though the more details you give, the better your chance of being selected.
We will publish a selection of your photos this time next week.
If you want to plan ahead, you can see a list of the upcoming themes here.
Files should be sent as JPEGs. They shouldn't be larger than 10Mb and ideally much smaller: around 1Mb is fine, or you can resize your pictures to 1,000 pixels across.
Please see our terms and conditions, but remember that the copyright remains with you. The pictures will only be used by the ±«Óãtv for the purposes of this project. Finally, when taking photos, please do not endanger yourself or others, take unnecessary risks or infringe any laws.
In the third of a series of articles on photojournalism Adrian Evans, , suggests that photojournalists should cast off the past and look to new models of funding.
"Working in photojournalism it sometimes feels as though industry commentators are circling like vultures waiting to pick over the corpse of our industry.
Ìý
"They misguidedly link the fortunes of photojournalists to that of newspapers and magazines, referring to an almost mythical past, a golden age when newspapers were the champions and supporters of photojournalism. Whether this era ever really existed is debatable. What is undeniably true is that newspapers ceased being the paymasters of photojournalists a long time ago. Quality photojournalism is expensive - researching the story, gaining access, spending time with your subjects, post production and editing - there are no short cuts. Newspapers and magazines spend a tiny proportion of their income on content and they certainly don't want to spend it on photography.
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"Contrary to what you may have read photojournalism is alive and well in the 21st century. Photographers have unhitched themselves from the yoke of the print media and moved on to new possibilities offered by the internet and digital technology. Success now lies in being multiskilled, merely taking photographs is not enough. My advice to aspiring photographers is that they need to be able to design a web page using html, know their way around a multitude of publishing software programmes shoot and edit video, record audio and most importantly research and pitch stories.
Ìý
"They will also need to be aware of new funding models. There isn't a one size fits all model but there are two major trends:one is to seek funding from the beginning rather than the end of the story production process. In other words rather than sourcing funding from the print media or distributor of a story, photographers are working with organisations who have a message they want to disseminate.
Ìý
"In the case of my agency, Panos Pictures, we specialise in social issues which translates into working with NGOs and foundations. This can often take the form of active involvement in their visual communications, advising on how best to approach a subject visually and then exploring different outputs for the resulting work. It is a very different relationship from working on a regular assignment where the photographer has very little say in what is photographed. It is a much more creative partnership then a client/photographer relationship.
Ìý
"The other is to package your photographs in many different versions which is where a photographer's multiskilling comes into play. A body of work can simultaneously be a print feature or a series of print features, a book, an exhibition, a multimedia piece, a web gallery all of which carry different price structures ranging from the free to the expensive.
Ìý
"Where photojournalists most often fail is in their tendency to repeat themselves. As the director of the photo agency , Stephen Mayes, recently declared 'photojournalism is trying to be relevant by copying itself rather than by observing the world.' Photographers have a duty to think far more about the stories they are trying to tell - what are they trying to say and who are they trying to say it to. Their question to themselves should be 'has this story been told before' and if so 'how can I tell it differently.'
Ìý
"A recent Panos project on contemporary Slavery faced the problem of how to take a familiar subject and make a UK audience engage with it. Not wanting to go down the tried and tested route of photographing slavery in the developing world we decided to bring the story much closer to home. We held discussions with UNICEF and Amnesty, who eventually became our funding partners on the project, who told the story of women trafficked from one EU country, Lithuania, to another, the UK. Our challenge was to find a device that would place the problem firmly in a British context.
Ìý
"Through the police's Human Trafficking Unit we were given the addresses of brothels raided by the police where trafficked women had been found. We then assigned David Rose to make landscape photographs of those same streets in a style that would emphasise the normality and mundanity of everyday British life. When placed together with graphic descriptions of what had happened behind closed doors, these seemingly innocent photographs came to life in a way that brought home the reality of the lives of thousands of women in the UK today (See photo below). Ultimately it was a simple creative solution arrived at by extensive research.
Ìý
"As the photographer Tod Papageorge wrote, 'if your pictures aren't good enough then you're not reading enough'."
Tomorrow journalist Ciara Leeming talks about how she has made the leap from the printed word to the still image and mulitmedia production.
Related posts:
Michael Kamber on photojournalism today
David Campbell on photojournalism in the age of image abundance
Coming at photojournalism from a different angle
Photojournalism on a wider platform
In the second of a series of articles on photojournalism, David Campbell, a photographic consultant, writer and producer, and member of the Durham Centre for Advanced Photography Studies, presents his view of the industry at a time when almost everyone carries a camera.
"Photography is more ubiquitous than ever. In politics, fashion, design, news media, advertising, personal relationships and family rituals - indeed, in all aspects of individual and collective life - pictures proliferate and mediate.
"The 500-billion photographs taken globally this year are testament to our collective desire to photograph and to see photographs. With digital camera sales rising by ten percent each year despite the recession, the world market for digital photography is expected to be worth $230 billion in 2013. Add in the ever-present, camera-enabled mobile phone and the number of images in circulation is only going to grow.
Ìý
"These developments both drive and respond to what Kiku Adatto calls our 'photo-op' culture, where much of everyday life seems picture driven and played out in front of the camera.
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"Think, for example, of the photographs showing crowds of people with compact cameras and cell phones raised snapping a scene. This 'photo-op' culture contains two competing impulses that shape the way photography is regarded. We take pictures because we retain an implicit faith in the camera's documentary function. As much as anyone wants to look his or her best in a photograph we want the resultant picture to be a reasonable facsimile of the subject, preserving it for the future.
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"However, because the digital revolution means more of us are directly involved in the production of photographs, we understand how pictures can be fabricated, manipulated and differently interpreted.
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"Photojournalism is located at these cultural crossroads, under pressure from the way digital technology has democratised the tools for making high quality images and undercut by the financial strictures of its traditional media outlets.
Ìý
"As a professional practice, photojournalism has historically relied on two forms of scarcity. The first involved the scarcity of skills to make good images, and the second the scarcity of popular access to the dominant forms of print distribution, the newspapers and magazines. Both of these limits have now been fundamentally challenged.
Ìý
"Amateurs are able to purchase and use the best camera technology to make striking photographs, and - although it is not solely responsible for the decline of newspapers - the transformative power of the Internet has reduced the cost of publication to near zero, thereby opening up new channels for the circulation of imagery. Together these transformations have produced a new era of abundant pictures.
Ìý
"When Time magazine used a $30 stock photograph for its 27 April 2009 cover (to illustrate The New Frugality) the victory of abundance over scarcity, to the demise of photojournalism, seemed to have been confirmed.
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"With few staff photographers full time on major newspapers and magazines, and few print publishers regularly commissioning new work, those who define photojournalism in terms of its traditional business model have now pronounced its death. Of course, such declarations have been commonplace for decades, going back as far as the 1950s and reaching their apogee when the most famous of the picture magazines, Life, closed its doors in 1972.
Ìý
"Given that a newspaper might publish 1,500 pictures a week in its print edition, supplemented by many more on the web, in online galleries and through various apps, it is clear that the industry's demand for news pictures is strong.
Ìý
"Popular consumption is equally vibrant, as reflected in the 750,000 unique visitors each month to The New York Times Lens blog and the 2.4 million people that attended the international showings of the 2009 World Press Photo exhibition."
"The appetite for longer, documentary projects is evident in the success of major gallery shows and the sales of expensive photo books. While much of this work has to be funded from a wide range of often-indirect sources, the commitment of creative practitioners to its production is far from waning.
Ìý
"Photojournalism is alive and well, being produced, and in demand, even if economically challenged. The task is to find ways to leverage the new possibilities enabled by the Internet to sustain production and enhance circulation, while presenting the work in a variety of formats across a range of platforms to reach as many people as possible.
Ìý
"Although photojournalism is no longer the sole source for pictures that are used simply for illustration and graphic design, it can still offer something that is scarce - in-depth, narrative explorations of important issues at home and abroad. Indeed, our familiarity and fondness for single images in the 'photo-op' culture might have expanded the space and grown the demand for more complex, thoughtful visual stories.
Ìý
"Perhaps the mass audience remains elusive, but a large and engaged community is certainly looking for this kind of work."
David Campbell is a photographic consultant, writer and producer, and member of the Durham Centre for Advanced Photography Studies. He writes a blog on documentary photography, photojournalism and multimedia at .
Tomorrow Adrian Evans, the Director of Panos Pictures, looks at what skills photojournalists of the 21st Century require.
Related posts:
Michael Kamber on photojournalism today
Adrian Evans on future funding of photojournalism
Coming at photojournalism from a different angle
Photojournalism on a wider platform
Michael Kamber is an award winning photographer who currently works for the New York Times, here he outlines his view of the state of photojournalism today.
This is the first in a series of articles to be published this week, each one by a different author looking at the world of photojournalism from a number of angles.
"I remember arriving in New York in 1985 only to find that I'd arrived too late: photojournalism was dead. This was common knowledge - everybody said so. Life, Look, and The Saturday Evening Post were gone and photojournalists were struggling to find new markets and new ways to finance their work and reach the public. The murderer was television. The evil box had reduced attention spans and created a hunger for constant movement - something we photographers could never match.
Ìý
"I scratched my way into the profession with a generation of men and women now approaching the age of 50. We shot demonstrations on spec, souped our film in the bathroom, sold photos to or for $25, slept in groups on hotel room floors in Port-au-Prince and Mexico City.
Ìý
"And lo and behold, we scratched out a living as photojournalists. Some of us did quite well. True, the grand picture magazines were gone, but Time, Newsweek, US News and most of the big papers in the US had photographers on assignment all over the world. Gamma, Sipa, Sygma and other photo agencies thrived.â€
"Now, 25-years later, I'm the one saying that photojournalism is dead. And it is dead, as ; at least as we have know it.
Ìý
"I was in Baghdad covering the election this past winter - a historic election marking a supposed turning point in conflict of the decade. Ten years ago there would have been 20 photojournalists there. I was there with one other Western photographer that I'm aware of - , who had come largely on her own.
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"I have the luxury to work on contract for , probably the only remaining paper in the world with the budget and commitment to finance photojournalism on a large scale. And I'm proud of my paper - we've covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from top to bottom, start to finish. Three hundred people were recently laid off, but the NYT's foreign bureaux remain open.
Ìý
"Yet we are the last stalwarts; my photojournalist friends at other mainstream newspapers say their travel budgets are gone. The LA Times, US News and Newsweek appear to be sliding towards bankruptcy; The Washington Post closed nearly all its foreign bureaux; Time is a shadow of its former self.
Ìý
"But is photojournalism really dead? When my mentors in 1985 lamented the passing of photojournalism, what they were really marking was the passing of their system, their model. And it was a great model. And the model that we reinvented in the 1980s and 1990s was pretty damn good too. Now it's my generation's turn to lament the passing. But once again, what is dead is not photojournalism - what is dead is the particular culture of photojournalism that supported us for the past 30 years.
Ìý
"Today there is a new way, a new system. I meet young photographers constantly: idealistic, excited, naïve, creative. They may have missed out on the magic of baryta paper in a tray of Dektol, but they love image-making nonetheless. And as has been said ad-nauseum, they are focusing on new models for raising cash to do projects - the grants, agency workshops, , the partnerships with NGOs (which I find troubling for reasons I won't detail here), and others. I myself am using Emphasis to raise money for a book project.
Ìý
"And of course, a photojournalist today has to be much more of an overall journalist - video, written pieces, and multi-media are crucial to stitching together a living.
Ìý
"Do I like this new developing model? Not much. Does it allow for a photographer to have job security, raise a family with health insurance, know that someone will evacuate him or her if injured in a warzone? Absolutely not.
Ìý
"But this developing model is what we've got and we have to work with it, there is no other option. What troubles me is that we are becoming ghettoised. As the mainstream press dies a slow and ugly death, we increasingly work for each other - for the cultish community of photo festivals and workshops, awards and grants, boutique print collectors. And this new model will surely exacerbate something I deplore about photojournalism: it is increasingly a community of privileged white people. I was astonished a few years ago to sit at an awards ceremony in Amsterdam with about 300 other photographers and editors. There was exactly one African and possibly one or two Latinos in the room, though probably 75% of the ‘subjects’ were people of colour.
Ìý
"It is up to the photo community to break out of this new model, democratise it and reach new audiences. I can see it happening already. And though I may not like the business model, the bottom line is this: there is a new generation out there shooting pictures in the corners of the world every day.
Ìý
"No doubt, 35 years from now, there will be yet another new model. This will allow the youth of today their deserved turn to lament the death of photojournalism."
. [Warning: The site contains photographs of warfare and graphic violence.]
Tomorrow, David Campbell, photographic consultant, writer and producer, talks about photography in the age of mass media and image abundance.
Related posts:
David Campbell on photojournalism in the age of image abundanceAdrian Evans on future funding of photojournalismComing at photojournalism from a different angle
Each week, we set a theme and ask you to send in your photographs; this time the theme was "text". You can see the pictures I have selected here.
Thanks to everyone who submitted their photos and helping to create such an interesting set of pictures.
If your photograph didn't make this week's selection, why not send us something for next week?
The new theme is lights.
Interpret this in any way you see fit and send your pictures to us at yourpics@bbc.co.uk or upload them directly from your computer.
Please include the word "Lights" in the subject line of your message.
The deadline is midnight GMT Tuesday 14 December 2010, and remember to add your name and a caption: who, what, where and when should be enough, though the more details you give, the better your chance of being selected.
We will publish a selection of your photos this time next week.
If you want to plan ahead, you can see a list of the upcoming themes here.
Files should be sent as JPEGs. They shouldn't be larger than 10Mb and ideally much smaller: around 1Mb is fine, or you can resize your pictures to 1,000 pixels across.
Please see our terms and conditions, but remember that the copyright remains with you. The pictures will only be used by the ±«Óãtv for the purposes of this project. Finally, when taking photos, please do not endanger yourself or others, take unnecessary risks or infringe any laws.
Photographer Daniel LeClair works for Reuters and has been based in Central America since 1999, but is now facing the possibility that he will have to leave. The ongoing bus war and violence in Guatemala City, where he and his family have been living, has forced some changes. Here is the story in his own words:
"I can clearly remember the day the bus war escalated. It was 4 February 2008. Two extortionists were shot and killed while trying to collect a payment on a bus in downtown Guatemala City. Drivers, tired of paying thousands of dollars in extortion, had hired the assassins.
"As I photographed the scene, I overheard police telling each other this was a declaration of war. The response from gang members was brutal. Fifteen drivers and eight assistants were killed over the next three days. I would spend my whole day going from one bus driver's murder to another, then to a funeral for the drivers killed the day before.
"The scenes were chaotic and similar. A driver would be on his route, his bus full of passengers. Suddenly a young man would stand up, approach the driver shooting him at close range in the head, then jump off the moving bus to a waiting motorcycle. The bus would career down the street, crashing into anything in its path. It was out of control, even drivers who made their payments were being killed. It wasn't just the gangs doing the killing now. Drivers confessed privately that those who didn't pay were also being targeted by their own peers, as one non-compliant driver on a route would inevitably make all of them a target.
"Gangs began to take hold in the 1990s, attracting impoverished and uneducated young men and women. Now they've become organized money-making enterprises, extorting businesses, including bus companies, for regular payments and assaulting people on the streets for cash. Narco traffickers have cemented their presence in Guatemala, taking advantage of the authorities' inability to cope
"Three years on and drivers still get up every day to go to work, despite the knowledge that 450 of their colleagues have been killed. Sometimes when I photograph them on some of the most dangerous routes, I can sense the fear and tension. More than once they've dangerously cut off a suspicious motorcycle. Passengers seemed to trust no-one, not even me. Tactics have changed somewhat since the authorities have beefed up security on the buses and extortionists have responded by spraying whole vehicles with gunfire, killing many innocent passengers in the process.
"Once in March 2009, a woman, so stressed from witnessing a driver's murder, spent 45 minutes trying to calm her crying baby at home before realizing the baby had been struck in the stomach by a deflected bullet. The baby died in the hospital.
"A new, modern, city-owned bus system has started to come online, with pre-paid tickets, assigned bus stops and better security but the violence has not abated. The old privately-owned buses continue to be attacked at a rate of two per week. As I wrote this, a driver from the 40R route has been attacked.
"I've been covering Central America for a decade - coups, riots, hurricanes and so on - but never seen violence like this. I have never seen so many innocent people caught in the middle. The tragedy is that Guatemala has so much to offer. It's so beautiful and so full of wonderful people. As much as I love this place, I've already sent my family away, the future here is very uncertain."
Each week, we set a theme and ask you to send in your photographs; this time the theme was "windows".
You can see the pictures I have selected here.
Thanks to everyone who submitted their photos. Some great colour this week, though the photo above by Frederick McLean was my favourite.
If your photograph didn't make this week's selection, why not send us something for next week?
The new theme is text.
Interpret this in any way you see fit and send your pictures to us at yourpics@bbc.co.uk or upload them directly from your computer.
Please include the word "Text" in the subject line of your message.
The deadline is midnight GMT Tuesday 7 December 2010, and remember to add your name and a caption: who, what, where and when should be enough, though the more details you give, the better your chance of being selected.
We will publish a selection of your photos this time next week.
If you want to plan ahead, you can see a list of the upcoming themes here.
Files should be sent as JPEGs. They shouldn't be larger than 10Mb and ideally much smaller: around 1Mb is fine, or you can resize your pictures to 1,000 pixels across.
Please see our terms and conditions, but remember that the copyright remains with you. The pictures will only be used by the ±«Óãtv for the purposes of this project. Finally, when taking photos, please do not endanger yourself or others, take unnecessary risks or infringe any laws.
I'm 
