Construction dairy

Two years ago, it was a haunting picture of an Afghan teenager who had had her ears and nose cut off. Last year it was a portrait of a Yemeni mother clutching her son in the style of La Pieta. This year, it's a dramatic burial march of two Palestinian toddlers. These are the 2013 World Press Photo Winners.


The World Press Photo Contest is an annual international competition that attracts photographers from different fields and backgrounds. The contest aims to encourage the highest standards of journalism, and provide a platform for the public to view the best documentary photographs for each year. This year the jury received 103,481 entries from 5,666 photographers of 124 different nationalities in order to find the best of the best.

The 2013 competition featured a few different categories from the previous years, with two winners per category, one for Story Entries (photo essays) and Single Entries. These categories are Contemporary Issues, Observed Portraits, Staged Portraits, Daily Life, Sports Action, General News, Sports Feature, Nature, and Spot News. A World Press Photo of the Year is also awarded to the best image from any category.


The award for 2013 World Press Photo of the Year went to Paul Hansen for his Gaza Image photograph (header image above) showing two young children who died from Israeli air strikes in the Palestinian Territories being prepared for their graves. Hansen also won the 1st prize in the singles section of the Spot News Category.

For Contemporary Issues, Maika Elan won 1st Prize Stories for "The Pink Choice" featuring gay and lesbian couples in the conservative society of Vietnam. Micah Albert won 1st prize singles for 1st Prize Singles for "At The Dandora Dump" showing a trash picker taking a break by reading a discarded book. In the Observed Portraits section, Ebrahim Noroozi took 1st Prize in Stories for "Victims of Forced Love", a story of an Iranian mother and son physically and emotionally scarred by an acid attack. Nemanja Pancic got the 1st Prize in Singles for "Little Survivor", a portrait of a newly orphaned young toddler.

In Staged Portraits, Stephan Vanfleteren earned the 1st Prize Stories for "People of Mercy", a series on Guinean people with different illnesses. Daniel Kaluuya won 1st Prize Singles for his portrait of actor Nadav Kander. In Daily Life, 1st Prize Stories went to Fausto Podavini for "Mirella", a 71-year old devoted wife to a husband stricken with Alzheimer's Disease. 1st Prize Singles was awarded to Daniel Rodrigues for "Football in Guinea-Bissau", a game being played on bare, dusty earth.


Sports Action 1st Prize Stories went to Roman Vondrous for "Cross Country Steeplechase", one of the most demanding races in the Czech Republic. 1st Prize Singles was earned by Wei Seng Chen for "Joy at the End of the Run", showing the final moment of a dangerous bull race. In General News, Alessio Romenzi got 1st Prize Stories for "Syria Under Siege", a photo story on how ordinary citizens are being affected by the current conflict in the country. Rodrigo Abd won 1st Prize Singles for "Aida", another victim in the syrian War.

For Sports Feature, 1st Prize went to Jan Grarup for "I Just Want to Dunk", documenting a group of young Somali women and their passion for basketball despite the dangers of civil unrest. For Nature, Paul Nicklen got the 1st Prize Stories for "Emperor Penguins", the curious group of birds living in the Antarctic. Christian Ziegler earned 1st Place Singles for "Southern Cassowary", a different kind of rare bird feeding of a fruit tree. In Spot News, 1st Prize Stories went to Bernat Armangue for "Gaza", a series looking back at the growing tensions between Israel and Palestine.


The full gallery of images from the 2013 World Press Photo Winners can be found on the World Press Photo website. For previous winners, have a look at the World Press Photo 2012 Winners, as well as Jodi Bieber and the Other Afghan Girl.

This generation of photographers are the most competitive in any category. Whether it's in portraiture or landscape or photojournalism, photographers have to be more creative with the kinds of images they make. Most photographers are lucky to have one of their pictures published in a leading magazine or newspaper, but a few others seem to have the natural talent to get a different shot over and over again. Damon Winter shows he does it with his cinematic photojournalism.


Damon Winter is a commercial photographer specializing in portraits. He has shot for different publications, including the Los Angeles Times,  but is now more well known for his photographs for the New York Times. His celebrity portraits have a more dramatic and captivating style to them, a quality that is also found in his photojournalism.

In 2005, Winter was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for his series on sexual abuse victims in remote Eskimo villages. He was also recognized for his work with the National Journalism Award for Photojournalism (PDF link).

Over the last decade, Winter has earned numerous accolades for his work. The photographer won two World Press Photo Awards, one in 2006 for his dramatic black-and-white portrait of Clint Eastwood, the other in 2007 for his landscape photograph of the Brooks Mountain Range in Alaska. In 2009, Winter finally won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature photography for his exceptional coverage of then Senator Barack Obama's first presidential campaign. His photographs on politics showed off an almost cinematic side to the campaign for the White House.

One of the more controversial awards Winter has received was the third place in the 2011 Photographer of the Year Awards for his entry, "A Grunt's Life" covering a platoon of soldiers embedded in Afghanistan. Winter only used an iPhone for his photographs, but the controversy came from his use of the Hipstamatic app which drastically altered the look of the images. Because of this "photo editing", some people won't consider his pictures as photojournalism, only simple photography. This intensified the debate for the definition of photojournalism, but there's no doubt that his pictures were a refreshing view of the ongoing American war in Afghanistan.


Winter's reportage photographs make viewers look twice as they have a movie-like quality to them, as if they were staged just so they were dramatic. Of course, as any good photojournalist will know, it's really a combination of great lighting, timing and positioning, along with conscious preparation beforehand. For Winter, it seems as if all of his documentary photographs happen to luck out on the best lighting, timing and position every time.

His portraits also have a very engaged quality to them, which makes it clear that Winter prepares his set to ensure that his subjects are comfortable before his camera. This is a philosophy he takes wherever he goes in order to get a different angle on things in order to "...look beyond the obvious, in a more subtle way."


This is Damon Winter's website. More cinematic photojournalism over on his New York Times blog. For another take on cinematic photography, have a look at Alex Prager.

Photography and video share almost the same early history, yet the two disciplines rarely go together in one package. Professional photographers stick to their camp, while filmmakers do the same. Even with the advent of video-capable DSLRs, it's hard to find artists who utilize both mediums and produce good results. Alex Prager is an exception with her images which can be accurately described as "Cinematic Photography".

Alex Prager is a photographer and filmmaker who only began her career in the field when she stumbled upon a special photograph when she was a teenager. A nearby museum at that time was staging an exhibit for the works of the great color photographer William Eggleston. The photograph in question was Eggleston's 1972 photograph, "Shoes Under Bed", an inconspicuous image of a couple of worn out dress shoes and sneakers in an older gentleman's room.

For Prager however, that photograph lit a light bulb in her mind, and it was at that moment that she decided to be a photographer. Eggleston's works in general became a source of inspiration for Prager, who uses saturated colors in most of her photographs as a way to heighten the stories in her images. Her other inspiration comes from old silent films and film noir.


Prager then began shooting for magazines in Los Angeles in order to support herself as a serious artist in the field of photography. Each of her photography projects are part of a larger series that all share similar themes. In her 2007 series, "Polyester", all the models play archetypal roles found in mid-20th century films. In the 2008 "Big Valley", the women play younger roles of 1960s and 1970s movies. These roles take on a darker tone in her 2010 "Weekend" and 2012 "Compulsion" which pay homage to last century's suspense films, especially those of Alfred Hitchcock.

The photographer also has an ongoing series called "Film Stills", which, as its name implies, heavily emulates still images from the color movies of the 1950s. This cinematic style along with her use of strong colors are what makes Prager's images unique in the world of photographic arts.


In using rich colors for her photographs, Prager fights for the same recognition William Eggleston did when he started using color photography when every other serious photographer was using black-and-white film. For Prager, the colors aren't just circumstantial, rather they tell a story unto themselves. Her photo shoots are also meticulously done, down to the costumes and wigs that she uses which the photographer feels are essential to telling her stories.

For Prager, her movie-like photographs pay homage to the "perfect costumes and sets" of old films which help sell the movies even though they told violent or imperfect stories. In the same way, Prager's photographs hint at a larger story before and after the moment presented in her images. For her cinematic stills, Prager was awarded the Foam Paul Huf award for 2012, a unanimous decision by this year's jury.


This is Alex Prager's website. Her cinematic photography, specifically her "Film Stills", can be found here. Her past works have been published in different collections, among them Polyester, The Big Valley / Week-end and Compulsion.

This week, the Flickr Commons celebrates its 5th Year Anniversary. Since launching over half a decade, ago The Commons has helped propagate unique and beautiful photographs from different educational institutions around the world, all for free. Here is a sampling of the anniversary galleries of Flickr Commons' Five Year Anniversary Celebration.


The Flickr Commons was launched on January 16, 2008 in order to present "hidden treasures in the world's public photography archive". The initial images showcased in partnership with The Library of Congress was aimed at improving the accessibility of publicly held photographs, and to allow the general public to contribute information about these photographs.

Since its inception, the library of photographs and images has grown to over 250,000 from 56 libraries, archives, museums and educational institutions around the world. Some of the other participating organizations include the Smithsonian Institution, the George Eastman House, the New York Public Library, and NASA on The Commons.


Normally, any photograph whether or not it's on the Internet is protected by copyright. This legal protection (usually for a limited time only) gives the photograph creator, owner or copyright holder the right to be credited for his work, decide when and where it can be used, and who can gain monetary income from it.

In The Commons' case, the images come with "no known copyright restrictions". This is either because the copyright has already expired and the work is now in public domain, or the institution which owns the copyright is no longer interested in exercising control over the work.

Of course, the statement is not foolproof as copyright law varies from country to country. These organizations also cannot guarantee that all images are in public domain as some of them lack proper documentations. Still, these institutions are providing these images for free as they believe to the best of their knowledge that they are not violating anyone's copyright through the sharing of these photographs.


Over the five years since its launching, The Commons has given greater access to images that would normally only reside in museums and libraries. Their availability and descriptions have also been improved by the tags and comments left by viewers around the world. So far, there are now over 2 million tags and 165,000 comments accumulated by The Commons images.

These images here represent the garnered the most views, comments or favorite marks by viewers, and were selected by the different Commons member institutions themselves. The Commons still accepts photographs and images every day, but the most effective way for the ordinary viewer to add to body of work is to leave insightful comments and tags to the photographs already in the archive.


Visit the Flickr blog to find out more about five year anniversary of the Commons on Flickr. The full galleries can be viewed here, here, here, and here. For some previous features from the Library of Congress, check out Bound for Glory - Color Pictures of Old America, Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky - The Glory that was the Russian Empire and The Glory That Was Kodachrome.

With the new year comes the chance to recap the best entries of the previous year. National Geographic, one the leading publications in photojournalism, continues to encourage the tradition of excellence in professionals and amateur photographers alike with its photography competitions. Here are National Geographic Photo Contest 2012 winners.


This year saw the National Geographic Photo Contest 2012 accept some 22,000 entries from 150 countries, from beginners to professionals, all hoping to be recognized in at least one of these three categories: People, Places and Nature. Each of these categories had a winner, with honorable mentions included. A Grand Prize Winner was selected out of all of the categories and entries combined. A Viewers' Choice was also selected for each of category. Overall, there were 13 top photographs selected by the judges.


The winners of the Places category were Nenad Saljic, Indra Swari Wonowidjojo, and Adam Coish. The People category winners included Micah Albert, Wendell Phillips, Ulrich Lambert, Kwan Ka Shing, and Kai-Otto Melau. The Nature category winners were Ashley Vincent, Fransisca Harlijanto, Jason Ching, Eric Guth, Micheal Eastman, and Sanjeev Bhor, with the Grand Prize going to Ashley Vincent.


There was some controversy this year as one of the original winners, Harry Fisch, was disqualified shortly after he was informed of his winning entry. After mailing the contest organizers a copy of his original photograph, his entry was disqualified as it seemed he had edited the photo against the rules of the competition.

Fisch had edited out a small plastic bag in a scene he captured in Varanasi, India. Unfortunately, the competition rules state that "only minor burning, dodging and/or color correction is acceptable", and Fisch's edit was considered a major image edit. This just goes to show how even a small edit can affect even the best entries into a photo contest.


The full gallery of the National Geographic Photo Contest 2012 winners can be found here. For a very related photo contest, check out the winning entries to the National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest 2012.

With only a few more days before the year ends, and coming off from the first five in the series, here then are the rest of the entries for the top photography posts of 2012.


5) Ansel Adams - A Different Kind Of Landscape
Ansel Adams has become a byword for great landscape photography and black-and-white photography in general. His images have become icons for the natural landscape of North America, while his technique proved to be the cornerstone for beginner photographers looking to get a grasp of the rule of thirds and the zone system. While new photographers have produced refreshing landscape pictures, Adams' name still remains at the top of the list of best landscape photographers of all time.


4) Anne Geddes - Babies, Babies Everywhere!


Anne Geddes has remained popular name on this blog ever since her photography was featured over a year ago, and for the simplest reason: babies. Geddes' photography portrays newborns both in their natural state as innocent and fragile beings, and in a more creative setting as flowers, animals and other cute creatures. It's amazing how such a simple concept can remain so popular, but Geddes manages to remain relevant with new images year after year.


3) Henri Cartier-Bresson - Looking Back


Henri Cartier-Bresson's entry in this blog was nothing more than a short description followed by a few examples of his street photography, but it has garnered a surprising number of views. Cartier-Bresson's works have stood the test of time, displaying a timeless sense of timing, emotion and geometry that can only be captured with patience and passion. Cartier-Bresson's photography prove that he truly is the father of modern photojournalism and the master of street photography.


2) Shirin Aliabadi and the Iranian Girls


Shirin Aliabadi's curious portraits of modern, teenage Iranian women has attracted attention for their surreal quality. Aliabadi wanted to document how today's generation of females raised in Iran have different perceptions of the West, and how they flaunt these beliefs through their outrageous clothing and make-up. Aliabadi's images prove just how powerful photography can be when used to document a world that's rarely seen by others.


1) A Royal Portrait: Queen Elizabeth II by Annie Leibovitz


Annie Leibovitz's magnificent portraits of Queen Elizabeth II have garnered the most number of views by a wide margin. The photographs were taken in 2008, just before Her Majesty's state visit to the United States, but they became even more timely during the Queen's 60th anniversary celebrations of her monarchy earlier this year. The subdued tone of the portraits set against the lavish setting of Buckingham Palace served to create some of the best portraits of any monarch in modern history.


These five top off the most popular photography posts for the year. Three out of the five were portrait series focusing on totally different subjects, with one entry in the landscape category, and another in the street photography category. This just goes to show that photography can be as diverse as they photographer wants it to be. Be sure to also check out the previous entries in The Top Photography Post of 2012 (Part 1).