The Secrets to Making a Living as a Street Photographer

All images by Jonathan Higbee. Used with permission.

Street photography isn’t obviously the act of documenting every day occurrences in public as they happen–but one of the biggest challenges that everyone who calls themselves a street photographer faces is getting their work out there. Photographer Jonathan Higbee never let that slow him down.

He loves gear, but he never let it slow him down or cripple him. In fact, he’s been fighting a struggle inside of him that only fuels his creativity and drive to succeed as an artist. The result: he actually makes taxable income from his street photography in addition to his other work. Indeed, Jonathan lives the dream of so many aspiring photographers out there.

And it’s not just us that recognizes it. The lead image of this story made the cover of the World Street Photography Awards 2016 book.

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Weekend Humor: Chicago Sun-Times Alters the Terms of its Rehire Contract

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Weekend Humor isn’t meant to be taken seriously. So don’t, ya rube.

Word on the street has it that the Chicago Sun-Times is in talks to rehire a handful of the photographers fired in May. If the plan works, four photographers will be rehired, and the rest will each get a lump sum of $2,000. The four that will rejoin the Sun-Times will have to, among other things, do extensive video work. The Sun-Times, however, has added a clause that will require the rehires to use iPhones exclusively. Continue reading…

French Newspaper Libération Publishes Issue Without Images to Show Importance of Photography

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In a brilliant move to highlight the importance of photography, the French newspaper Libération published its Nov. 14 issue without photographs. The layout is unsettling in a necessary way. The issue is formatted as if it had images, but there are only empty frames. The move emphasizes how integral photography is in telling the news. Some of the best journalism has the perfect marriage of text and images, and a newspaper without photographs is a newspaper not worth reading.

Interestingly, the end of the issue has a flat plan that shows only the images as they would have appeared, but this time, there is no text. While some of the images may be striking, they inevitably fall flat without proper context. Photography isn’t dead, and this should serve a boon to news photographers everywhere. And photographers in general, really. It would be interesting to see the New York Times try that. The Chicago Sun-Times took a step towards that already as Stephen Colbert articulated in the best possible way.

Via British Journal of Photography

Do I Need a Model Release?

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Do you get signed model releases?

It’s a question that I hear on a regular basis when doing a presentation on my work, which primarily revolves around street photography. It’s also a question that I hear posed to other photographers who produce similar work. The question is asked so consistently that I could set a clock by it when it comes time for the Q&A.

To my ear, the person posing the question may be curious about whether I get model releases. However, what they really want to know is whether they should be getting signed releases.

The answer to that million-dollar question is: it depends.

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Commuter Takes Street Photos of Others Involving Newspapers and Forced Perspective

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Think your morning commute sucks? Well, many people do. One anonymous person decided to do the clever thing of combining street photography with something Banksy might do. According to the NY Daily News, he perfectly folds newspapers and then strategically places them using forced perspective. Then he takes a photo. The Daily News isn’t stating who shot these images, but they’re quite hilarious. Some of them have Yoda, some have the Queen of England and more. Many other photographers have done similar projects–or just taken bits and pieces of ads to create a collage of some sort.

Take a look at some of them after the jump.

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The Telegraph Uses an Absolutely Brilliant Photo To Illustrate a Story

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Not many people know or really understand what a Photo Editor does at a newspaper or a publication. No, they’re not taking a photographer’s RAWs and doing loads of color correction after massive culls–at least not all the time. Instead, what they’re doing is making crops, adding metadata and maybe some minor brightening or darkening. But their main job is to choose a photo that illustrates the story that the publication is trying to get out to the world. So if a newspaper is reporting on the closing of loads of Starbucks around the nation, they’ll show an image of a storefront or something else creative with the Starbucks logo (maybe even a tall Skinny Vanilla Latte with the Starbucks logo on the cup.)

But today, the Telegraph has chosen a positively brilliant photo to illustrate a story going viral around the web right now. The photo shows former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice holding up a gesture that can easily be mistaken for something else.

And that, ladies and gents, is how some images can easily be misinterpreted–no matter how hysterical they may be.

Reader Question: Tips To Help a College Newspaper Staff

Photo by Vincent Pastore

Today’s reader question comes from Nicole Balbone, another photographer I know in the NYC area that is still in college. Nicole is the photo editor of her school newspaper and wants to give some pointers to her staff: so she turns to me. I’m a former News Editor of my college newspaper and former Editorial Director (and President) of my college radio station. Hit the jump for the reader’s letter.

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