Nature Photographer of the Year Wednesday November 22, 2023
Canadian photographer Jacquie Matechuk is the top prize winner of the 2023 Nature Photographer of the Year contest for his image “He Looks to the Heavens”—a painterly photo of a male spectacled bear amid Spanish moss in the Andes of Ecuador. “He sauntered effortlessly across a burly branch and sat peacefully against the tree’s trunk. When a gentle rain began to fall across the valley, he stood and turned to look up as though embracing the cool moisture on his speckled face,” notes Matechuk, who is also a certified bear guide.
Read the full Story >>
COLOSSAL Wednesday November 22, 2023
Climate science has a communication problem: Abstract data, figures, and projections into the distant future can be tough to comprehend. Open Planet— a free-to-use video library — could help storytellers explain the crisis with immediacy and impact, notes Colossal. A collaboration between Studio Silverback and Carnegie Mellon’s CREATE Lab, the new digital library contains a growing collection of climate and nature footage — there are currently some 4,500 clips that travel around the globe, from Bird Island off the Georgian coast to Brazil’s Jamari River to Pangti Village in western India.
Read the full Story >>
The New York Times Wednesday November 22, 2023
“The visual chronicle of the war between Israel and Hamas has become its own disturbing case study of the age of disinformation, when photographs, and the act of photojournalism itself, are weaponized by both sides of a highly charged conflict.” So notes The New York Times, which has vigorously denied that photojournalists had advance knowledge of the Hamas surprise attack on Oct. 7. Such disinformation, and restrictions on photojournalists, have complicated decision-making about the visual chronicle of the Israel-Hamas, declares The Times.
Read the full Story >>
THE VERGE Wednesday November 22, 2023
The World Press Photo Contest has updated entry rules for the Sony World Photography Awards contest to exclude submissions for AI-generated imagery, The move, notes The Verge, comes just days after the organization announced that such images could be entered into its Open Format competition category. That earlier decision met with immediate backlash from photojournalists. “Both generative fill and fully generated images will be prohibited in the Open Format category (as was already the case in the other categories: Singles, Stories and Long-Term Projects),” notes the WPO.
Read the full Story >>
