GLOVERSVILLE, N.Y. — William J. “Sandy” Colton, a Stars and Stripes Korean War correspondent and later the chief photographer of the paper’s Pacific edition, died Christmas Day after a long battle with cancer.

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Taking some time away from this to be with family and friends through the Christmas and New Year holidays. If you want to see new work before I return on New Year’s Day visit MyFinalPhoto every day.

Merry Christmas and Blessings for the New Year.

‘You put your camera around your neck along with putting on your shoes, and there it is, an appendage of the body that shares your life with you. The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.’

– Dorothea Lange

Three-quarters of a century has passed since Dorothea Lange looked into the eyes of a migrant mother and captured the despair and determination of a depressed nation.

Today, Lange will become the second photographer inducted into the California Hall of Fame at the California Museum for History, Women and the Arts in Sacramento.

Lange will join contemporaries Ansel Adams and writer John Steinbeck in the hall established in 2006 to honor legendary people who embody California’s innovative spirit and have made their mark on history — inductees as diverse as Ronald Reagan, César Chávez, Jonas Salk, Amelia Earhart, Walt Disney and Willie Mays.

Modesto Bee Story by Ted Benson

Top Daily Mirror photojournalist Kumara Dayawansa Nannetti died last afternoon after suffering a severe heart attack.

Kumara aged 47 at the time of his death was a versatile photojournalist who specialized in news, sports and fashion photography.

Educated at Pannipitiya Dharmapala Vidyalaya, Kumara followed several photographic courses and joined the Wijeya Newspapers Limited in 1987 and began his media career at The Sunday Times. At The Sunday Times, Kumara specialized in news photography under the guidance of its founder Editor Vijitha Yapa and then News Editor Lalith Allahakoon.

Daily Mirror

At last – the results are in! Photographers from across Asia submitted more than a thousand images for this year’s FCCT Photojournalism Contest. Categories included Spot News, Feature Photography, Environmental Photography (for photos about the environment, climate change and natural resources) and Photo Essay. The winning images come from just about everywhere, including Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, China and the rest of Asia.

Don’t miss this opportunity to see some of the most compelling photo images of the year from some of the region’s best photographers. The exhibit serves to continue promoting Bangkok as the leading regional hub for photojournalistic work in Asia. The winning photos will remain on display in the FCCT Clubhouse for the months of December 2008 and January 2009. Thanks to all the photographers who participated in this year’s contest, as well the judges who helped make it happen:

- Philip Blenkinsop, one of Asia’s best-known photographers who has devoted much of his work to covering forgotten conflicts across the region.
- Masaru Goto, a 20-year photography veteran who has examined social and human rights issues in South America and Asia and has won a number of awards.
- Adrees Latif, a Bangkok-based regional photographer for Reuters who won the Pulitzer Prize for his pictures of a monk uprising in Myanmar in 2007.
- Patrick de Noirmont, a veteran photographer based in Bangkok and Paris with more than 30 years experience with various wire services including AFP, Associated Press and Reuters.

FCCT also extends its warm thanks to the generous sponsors for this year’s contest: Canon, Toyota, Star Alliance, Anantara and The Oriental.

The winning photos will also be displayed on the FCCT’s web site later this month and a link will be given here when that is available. This year’s winners are:
Photo of the Year: Surapan Boonthanom, Thailand (Southern Thailand violence)

Spot News

First Place: Will Baxter, Thailand (Cyclone Nargis, Burma)

Second Place: Nick Nostitz, Thailand (Thai political unrest)
Feature Photography

First Place: Tawatchai Pattanaporn, Thailand (Southern Thailand life)

Second Place: Vinai Dithajohn, Thailand (Thai drug trade)

Third Place: Timothy Syrota, Australia (Burmese migrants)
Environmental Photography

First Place: Lino Escandor, Philippines (Boat disaster, Philippines)

Second Place: Nguyen Viet Thanh, Vietnam (Ben Do fish market, Vietnam)

Third Place: David Chan Leprozo, Jr., Philippines (Wooden scooter race, Philippines)
Photo Essay

First Place: Surapan Boonthanom, Thailand (Southern Thailand violence)

Second Place: Nic Dunlop, Thailand (Burmese refugee)

Third Place: Peter Harris, Cambodia (Education in Cambodia)

From the Reuters’ Blog

Blog Guy, please continue answering questions about photojournalism. I was wondering, what do photographers do when people they cover are out of sight?

Good question! They shoot pictures of each other trying to shoot pictures, like these guys trailing President-elect Barack Obama. These are always popular shots.

But why are they trying so hard?

I gather there’s a serious shortage of Obama photos, despite the fact that we’ve taken roughly 720 million pictures of him this month alone. See, there is always a chance he’s changed his appearance. You know, a mullet haircut, a tattoo, a handlebar mustache, some of those plastic hillbilly teeth…

You spend millions of dollars just waiting for Barack Obama in plastic hillbilly teeth?

Hey, pal, back off! When YOU’RE the shooter who gets those hillbilly teeth in your zoom lens, you’ll understand what it’s all about!

The Portland Art Museum notes with great sadness the passing of Terry Toedtemeier, curator of photography and curator of the Museum’s current exhibition, Wild Beauty.

For more than 20 years, Toedtemeier shared his passion for the art of photography with visitors to the Portland Art Museum. As the Museum’s first curator of photography, he assembled a collection of more than 5,000 images for the Museum which chronicles the history of photography; a selection of which is permanently on view in the Jubitz Center for Modern and Contemporary Art, the largest dedicated exhibition space for photography in the region.

Perhaps one of the most surprising aspects of Maxim Salomon’s photojournalism is the shortness of the period this fantastically creative – and difficult – man produced his most important body of work.
The lion’s share of the journalistic work on display at the Eretz Israel Museum exhibit “Maxim Salomon: Reportage, 1947-1957″ was shot for Uri Avnery’s sensationalist tabloid Ha’olam Hazeh, where Salomon worked for only one year, and the Israel Defense Forces weekly Bamahaneh, where he worked for the next five.

Even if you grew up in the decades when magazines like Life or the British Picture Post brought the world into your home each week by way of powerful photo essays, you may have long since forgotten the sweet anticipation that accompanied the moment when you opened up an issue and began to page through it to see what surprises it contained. Walking through the small Dekel Pavilion at the museum, where the Salomon show will be up until the end of the year, you may feel a similar feeling of excitement, and also participation, as still photographs – especially when they come without the texts that originally accompanied them – often demand the active use of the viewers’ imagination, if they want to understand the story being told.

GA Magazine | Eretz Israel Museum | Haaretz.com