The Sony World Photography Awards has professional and amateur competitions with separate  awards for each.

The first Sony World Photography Awards were held on 21-25 April 2008 at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes.

The 2008 competition opened on October 7th and closed on 31st January.  In those four months 70,286 images were entered from 12,294 photographers.  The images entered came from  178 countries.

Vanessa Winship won the l’iris d’or and Arup Ghosh the best amateur in 2008.

Toronto Star photographer Lucas Oleniuk and columnist Jennifer Wells created a multimedia noir presentation on the Conrad Black trial in Chicago.

"Marianne Thomas, a former photo editor at The Chronicle known for her
passionate advocacy of news photography, died Sunday in Millbrae after
repeated battles with cancer. She was 57." … San Francisco Chronicle

The Images for Conservation Fund has announced winners in its 2008 Pro-Tour competition.

You’ve gotta love Keith Lanpher‘s photo from a night on the town.

Pulitzer Prize winning photographer Don Ultang at the Des Moines Register has died. Ultang and co-worker John Robinson won the Pulitzer for their series of photos showing a racially charged on-field assault on Drake University football player Johnny Bright in 1951. He was 91.

Des Moines Register Story  | New York Times Obit

I had a conversation today with a photographer whose documentary on immigration was recently published. We were looking over his contact sheets from a trip to Europe where he continues the project.

One of the questions we were tasked to answer was "what is a documentary photo and what is a news photo? "How are they different, if they are? How are they similar? Does it matter?

This is one of those academic questions that professors toss into a class hoping there would be enthusiastic disagreement generating strong emotional discussion about the role of photography to communicate.

Our neutral agreement was news photos have a singular purpose, tell the story of the moment. That doesn’t exclude them from becoming part of a documentary project just as a single image in a project may be a great news photo.

Documentary photos are usually the images that radiate from the impact of the news photo. They complete the storytelling that begins with the single image much as Eugene Smith’s Minamata photo story is known for the photo of deformed Tomoko Uemura cradled in the arms of her mother for a bath. Smith’s singular image is arguably the most striking and effective environmental photo ever published. Its news value expresses with clarity and emotion the human impact of the ignorance and pollution.

The greatness in Smith’s reporting is the series of additional images he uses to complete the story of what happened in Minamata. They become the document of history. Yet, none of them have immediate impact of the Eumura photo. It requires the viewer to ask "What happened here?" with one of the tenets of reporting contained in the question. When told the answers, the reporting sequence is completed with who, what, when, where, why and how. WWWWWH.

The images radiating from Smith’s most famous Minamata photo do not elicit the reporting mantra because they are part of a greater document and lack strong news impact. Their importance in communicating the entire story or forcing the viewer to ask more questions is weaker than the required strength of a news photo.

The harsh reality of childbirth in Sierra Leone and Afghanistan is shown in a pair of slide shows at Time.com. Included in the two sets of images is a rare moment of visual clarity that begs asking about the subject, to bring the photo to import as a news photo.

Photographer Alixandra Fazzina traveled to Afghanistan, home to the highest maternal mortality rate in the world where she photographed a woman, Siamoy, breast-feeding her one-month-old child. Just as Smith’s Eumera photo pays homage to Michelangelo’s Pieta, Fazzina’s photo with classic composition and lighting  elevates the photo from documentary to a striking news photo that holds the viewers attention enough to require questions.

"Death and Life in Sierra Leone" by Anna Kari is linear storytelling with strong individual images creating a body of emotion at their conclusion that compels the viewer to question not only the political, economic and medical reasons for what happens but their own involvement, or lack of involvement, in the tragedy. Kari’s photo series carries all the news value of a single image yet there isn’t one image that stands alone, forcing the viewer to ask wwwwwh. It doesn’t make the series any less important or Kari a less talented photographer. Nor does it lessen the impact of the series. Kari’s story is probably more powerful, more emotional, and tear inducing than Fazzinna’s.

Now for the professorial hat. When do singular images become news photos and when does their collective impact document the surrounding story of the single image in the story? How does a photographer approach documentary photography mindful of the power of strong news photography to pull in a viewer’s interest? Is there room for news photography in documentary photography? Is it important the news photos communicate with single images of dynamic impact?

Wikipedia: Eugene Smith | Minamata | Michelangelo’s Pieta
Eugene Smith Links: Google Images | Masters of Photography and here | Uemera photo
Alixandra Fazzina Links: Time Magazine Story | At Lightstalkers | Personal Site | Her publisher | Oxfam
Anna Kari Links: Time Magazine Story | Personal Site | Documentography

Congratulations to the Detroit Free Press (above) and the The Mercury News in San Jose, CA, for their wins in the National
Academy of Television Arts and Sciences News & Documentary Emmy
Awards.

The FreeP won for "Forty Years of Respect," a piece on singer Aretha’s Franklin’s iconic hit "Respect" (above) and "Pit Bulls: Companions or  Killers? ", about the dangers of owning the fighting dog.

The Mercury News won for "Uprooted," a five-part story on a mobile home park, its closing, and the effect on the residents.

I’m struck by the contrasts by all the hoopla over Vincent LaForet’s 95 seconds of video from the Canon 5D Mark II and what appears to be little interest in what are already winning, storytelling multimedia pieces produced by staff photographers, editors and artists. VF is astounded by the 19 terrabytes of bandwidth his video has consumed in such a short time. I’m astounded by few mentions of the emmys won by newspaper staffers working in new media.

Eds note: As of 24 hours after this original posting there are 80 entries about the Laforet video on sportsshooter.com. There are 10 entries about the three Emmys won by newspaper photographers.

From NATAS –

NEW APPROACHES TO NEWS & DOCUMENTARY  PROGRAMMING:  ARTS,
    LIFESTYLE & CULTURE

freep.com / Detroit  Free Press
  40 Years of Respect                                                                           freep.com         
   
              Senior Videographer
                  Mandi Wright
              Reporter
                  Kelly L. Carter
              Online and Video Executive  Producer
                  Nancy Andrews
              Senior Video Producer
                       Kathy  Kieliszewski
              Video Producers
                  Brian Kaufman,  Mandi Wright
              Director of Videographer
                  Craig Porter
              Videographer
                  Elisha Anderson
              Interactive Designer
                  Brian Todd
              Picture Editor
                Diane Weiss

NEW APPROACHES TO NEWS & DOCUMENTARY  PROGRAMMING: REGIONAL
    NEWS COVERAGE

freep.com / Detroit  Free Press
  Pit Bulls: Companions or  Killers?                                                   freep.com
   
              Photographer
                  Rashuan Rucker
              Reporter
                  Ben Schmitt
              Video Producer
                  Kathy Kieliszewski
              Video Executive Producer
                  Craig Porter
              Interactive Designer
                Brian Todd

NEW APPROACHES TO NEWS & DOCUMENTARY  PROGRAMMING:

    DOCUMENTARIES

mercurynews.com                                                                   mercurynews.com

          Uprooted
              Executive Producers
                  Richard Hernandez, Geri Migielicz
              Producer
                  Dai Sugano
              Reporter
                Julie Patel