PDN interviews photographers Pete Souza, Diana Walker, David Hume Kennerly, and Robert McNeely about their years covering the White House and their access to the president. From Souza’s photo of Reagan flying a paper airplane off a rooftop to Kennerly’s image of Ford in his pajamas, the accompany slide show barely touches the breadth of work accomplished by these photographers.

Kennerly doesn’t have kind things to say about current White House presidential photographer Eric Draper, a former AP staffer. You’ll have to wait for the printed version of the interview to read Draper’s response.

Here are some fresh headlines. Read them on the Web instead of your newspaper.

Paraphrasing Col. Kurtz – “The irony. The irony.”

• Layoffs Coming at Time Inc.
• Orange County Register Laying Off 110
• Christian Science Monitor to Drop Daily Publication
• Gannett to Trim 10% of its Local Newspaper Jobs
• L.A. Times Lays Off 75 More Editorial Staffers
• Mourning Old Media’s Decline
• Some Newspapers Shed Unprofitable Readers
• Online advertising to suffer
  

Storm-battered Yemen – The Big Picture – Boston.com

It’s not an early April Fools joke. The Christian Science Monitor announced today that starting in April 2009 it will move all content to the Web and no longer print a daily edition. A redesigned Web site and weekly edition of the paper replaces more than 100 years of printed journalism.

The newspapers said its circulation had steadily declined during the past 40 years and economics makes home delivery via US mail too expensive as advertising dropped and readership moved to online sources for news.

Subscription to the weekly edition will be $89, less than the current daily subscription rate of $219.

Just received this from SAA. Looks like no one is moving from PhotoShelter to DRR.

“To our valued Members:
We’re sorry to inform you that Digital Railroad (DRR) has shut down.

On October 15th we reported that the company had reduced its staff and was aggressively pursuing additional financing and/or a strategic partner. Unfortunately, those efforts were unsuccessful. Therefore Digital Railroad has been forced to suspend all operations.

This archive may only be accessible for the next 24 hours.

Digital Railroad has attracted a loyal set of members. Thank you for allowing us to serve the photographic community these past few years.

All questions pertaining to claims should be addressed to:
Digital Railroad, Inc.
c/o Diablo Management Group
1452 N. Vasco Road, #301
Livermore, CA 94551″

Included in the DRR archive are some power hitters. Wonder where they’ll head?

NBC Universal Photo Bank
UPI NewsPictures
VII Photo Agency
Blend mages
Eve Photographers

DRR Agency Directory

My favorite Red Huber story is from his first two weeks at the Orlando Sentinel. Red settled into a new staff position with great ease. His personality fit right into the photo staff whose attitude bordered on irreverence and enthusiasm pushed all of us to never admit we could make a mistake.

We shot color transparency every day, ran one column color mugs of rockets lifting off from Cape Kennedy and trampled over Mickey Mouse’s over-sized shoes as Disney began to change the landscape of central Florida.

We also traveled to Cuba, stepped between war protesters and police officers, and flew cross country for the release of Vietnam War POWs.

Red stepped into the photo maelstrom without causing a ripple and went about his job with great ease. it certainly didn’t hurt that he had a great laugh that followed a broad smile although he was a little shy being the new person on staff and still learning the ropes.

Red had been hired by then-photo chief Gene Blythe who left for a job with the AP the same week Red arrived. They hardly got to know each other before Gene was gone and Red settled into our cadre of never fail photogs. It was several weeks later that Gene, now working at the Miami AP bureau, received a call from Red. He’d been too embarrassed to ask the interim photo chief a question. The interim chief was the object of scorn by most of the photo staff because he was not a photographer. He was the assistant librarian in the paper’s morgue.

It seems Gene, in the haste to leave, had forgotten to file the paperwork for Red to get paid. The personnel department had no record of Red. He didn’t exist as a staffer. Of course, he’d been issued company cameras, had a company ID, drove a self-insured company car, and used the paper’s authority to step into people’s homes and businesses for photos.

Red had been having such a good time he didn’t notice he wasn’t getting paid until the bills weren’t getting paid. I’m sure Red now  gets a regular paycheck.

Read more about Red in this 1998 piece at Digital Storyteller. That’s Red in the photo at top installing camera remotes at a Space shuttle launch. Also check out a multimedia piece with Red at the Orlando Sentinel’s Photo Channel.

The Canon Learning Center now includes a brief film by Bruce Dorn highlighting the video capability of the 5D Mark II camera in a practical application, a wedding. The video shows Dorn executing the shoot using the 5D with a full complement of fast lenses (EF 35mm f/1.4L USM, EF 50mm f/1.2L USM, EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM, EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM, EF 200mm f/2L USM, EF 400mm f/2.8L IS USM, EF 70-200mm f/2.8L USM) and a tripod.

The strongest contributory element in shooting video with the 5d is the lens resource on a full-frame sensor. I’ve complained about my Canon G9’s small sensor and short lens creating depth of field and angle of view for closeups very difficult to work with for stills and video. It’s the same for the 1/3 CCDs of most HD video cameras.

My cameras are set to A for aperture, not auto, to control depth of field for subject isolation. Shooting video with the narrow dof of 35mm full frame format completely changes the shooting environment.

For a photographer with an understanding of composition details and capable of integrating them into a video environment the 5D may be the perfect start to transition into adding a video component to an assignment. In the hands of photographers who are technicians and not storytellers it becomes nothing more than a very sophisticated point and shoot.

Dorn’s video is a great paid ad for Canon. It’s obviously not a real wedding but a well produced video short created to highlight the camera’s capability. There’s nothing wrong with Dorn producing an ad video. It’s part of the marketing game. I was impressed and I’m a Nikon guy.

The result is very impressive and certainly worth an additional line item charge on the wedding invoice.

“Alex Rivera of Durham, a retired photojournalist who covered the civil rights movement and created the public relations office at N.C. Central University, died Thursday night. He was 95.” — The News & Observer

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