The Photographer’s Advisory Board for National Geographic magazine has launched a new Web site to showcase the work of National Geographic photographers. Membership in the group, dubbed “The Photo Society,” is limited to photographers who’ve published at least one feature story in the magazine.

The purpose of the group and their Web site is to promote the work of the photographers, and to inform the public about their work. It also appears the site is meant to help would-be (or wannabe) National Geographic photographers understand what it takes to work for the magazine.

“Explaining the diversity and composition of this group is the easiest way to answer the question, ‘How do I become a National Geographic photographer?’” writes photographer Randy Olson on the site. “‘It is not easy or glamorous,” he explains, “And this is not where you begin your career. You are competing with world-class documentary photographers and within that genre there are men and women who are the absolute best at their specialty.’”

Check out The Photo Society site here: http://thephotosociety.org/

If you’ve read PDN‘s story on Marco Grob’s techniques for lighting and shooting portraits fast (see “How I Got That Shot: The 3-Minute Portrait” in our December issue) you may be curious to see Grob in action. This video shows Grob using his portable lighting set up and handheld Hassie to photograph survivors of landmines in Afghanistan.

Grob traveled to Afghanistan in February to document the work of the UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS) and the Mine Action Coordination Centre of Afghanistan (MACCA). More than one million people in Afghanistan have been injured or affected by landmines and other unexploded ordinances left from decades of conflict. Grob documented the work MACCA and UNMAS are doing to clear the Afghan countryside of landmines and to educate the public about the risks these devices pose. Grob talked about his portraits with the UN News Center.

Photographer Andrew Lichtenstein has received a grant of $20,000 from The Aftermath Project, an organization that supports documentary photography that tells post-conflict stories.

Lichtenstein received the grant, which is supported by the Foundation to Promote Open Society, for his work “American Memory,” a series of landscape photographs at historical sites of conflict around the United States. “The judges found Lichtenstein’s project to be a highly original take on aftermath issues, and also found his images to be sophisticated and thought-provoking,” wrote Aftermath Project founder Sara Terry in a statement.

“Among the many photos in Lichtenstein’s work-in-progress that impressed the judges,” Terry added, “was a photo of three women in Confederate-era dress seated on a bench at the exact bus stop where Rosa Parks began her historic ride in 1955, launching the American civil rights movement (the women were participants at a recent Confederate Flag rally in honor of the 150th anniversary of the inauguration of Jefferson Davies, the Confederate leader).”

Judges for this year’s grant cycle, the organization’s sixth, included Terry, VII photo agency director Stephen Mayes, and Anne Wilkes Tucker, photography curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Lichtenstein was selected from a pool of 183 applicants from around the world, the organization said.

The organization also recognized four finalists, whose work will be included in the 2012 Aftermath Project book. The finalists are Christopher Capozzielo, whose project “For God, Race and Country” examines the Ku Klux Klan as it exists today; Michelle Frankfurter, whose “Destino” documents the effect Central American civil wars in the 1980s had on emigration to the United States; Simon Thorpe, whose “Toy Soldiers” is a creative documentation of Sahrawi soldiers who fought for their land in the Western Sahara; and Michael Zumstein, whose “Bon Amis” addresses Ivory Coast’s reconciliation following the contested 2010 election and resulting crisis.

Related: Eros Hoagland Wins $20k Grant for Conflict Photogs

Above: Photo © Andrew Lichtenstein. At the exact bus stop where Rosa Parks boarded her famous city bus trip to fight segregation in 1955, participants in a Sons of Confederate Veterans “Confederate Heritage Rally” wait to march up Dexter Avenue in downtown Montgomery to recreate the inauguration of Jefferson Davis 150 years later.

More Awards News

Nikon released a new top-of-the-line speedlight flash for digital SLRs tonight: the SB-910, which will begin selling in mid-December for $549.95. The new SB-910 replaces the SB-900.

The new SB-910 speedlight flash has a few new features from the previous model, including these three main changes:

• A new GUI (Graphic User Interface) that’s much like the SB-700 flash. The buttons on the SB-910 light up, which helps for working in the dark.

• The thermal cut-out function on the SB-910 has changed. With the SB-900, the flash shut down prematurely when it would overheat to save the flash head. This feature drove some photographers crazy since it would often prevent the ability to fire the flash in certain situations.

Read the full story by clicking here.

Israel’s Defense Ministry has apologized to photojournalist Lynsey Addario after soldiers subjected her to a humiliating strip search at a Gaza Strip checkpoint several weeks ago, according to an Associated Press report. The search occurred after Addario, who is pregnant, was forced to pass three times through an X-ray machine, despite the concerns she expressed for her unborn baby.

Addario complained in a letter to the Defense Ministry that before arriving at the checkpoint, she had asked not to go through the machine because of her pregnancy. She said soldiers “watched and laughed from above” as she was forced through the machine, and that she had never been treated with “such blatant cruelty,” according to AP.

A Pulitzer-winning photojournalist who has worked in more than 60 countries, Addario has endured some rough treatment in the past. Last spring, she was groped by forces loyal to deposed Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi after they captured her along with three other journalists working for The New York Times.

Addario was on assignment again for The New York Times when she was mistreated by Israeli soldiers at the Gaza checkpoint.

“We would like to apologize for this particular mishap,” the Defense Ministry said, explaining that security was tight on the Gaza border “to prevent terror from targeting and reaching Israel’s citizens.” The Ministry said that Addario’s request to avoid the X-ray machine had not been handled properly, according to the AP report.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), a non-governmental group that deals with “complaints about advertising” in the U.K., banned a Miu Miu fashion ad shot by Bruce Weber because they found it to be “irresponsible and in breach of the Code in showing a child in a hazardous or dangerous situation.” The child in question is 14-year-old American actress Hailee Steinfeld, the breakout star of last year’s True Grit.

The ad shows Steinfeld donning 1940s-inspired Miu Miu clothing while sitting on abandoned railroad tracks. The ASA accepted parent company Prada’s explanation that the setting was meant to depict an actress on a movie set, relaxing between takes and rubbing her eye nonchalantly, rather than to suggest the young girl is upset and contemplating suicide. The ASA also acknowledged that the ad was geared toward a mature audience since it was published in Tatler magazine, whose readership is for the most part adult. However, the ASA still found the ad to be troublesome since Steinfeld is shown in a “potentially hazardous situation” and noted the “ad must not appear again in its current form.”

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A print auction held at the annual PDN PhotoPlus Expo Bash on October 28 raised more than $8,000 for the Red Cross’s relief efforts in Japan, PDN PhotoPlus Expo has announced.

Harry Benson, Douglas Kirkland, Susan Meiselas, John Isaac and Art Streiber were among the 50 photographers who donated prints for the benefit silent auction.

Unique Photo, Fuji Film and Modernage sponsored the event, held at Highline Stages in New York City, which featured live music by Tyburn Saints and was attended by more than 1,200 people.

“It was important for us as an organization, and an industry, to organize an event that would give us an opportunity to participate in the worldwide efforts to help the victims in Japan,” Jeff McQuilkin, Group Show Director for The Nielsen Company, said. “Obviously, the photographic industry has strong ties to Japan and its culture and was deeply affected by the disaster. The fundraising event was one way we could show our support.”

“It was amazing how the industry came together to support this event,” added Lauren Wendle, Vice President, Nielsen Photo Group. “Everyone had a great time but never seemed to lose sight of fundraising aspect of the event. The print auction was very active and we want to extend our warmest thanks to the photographers who donated prints, and our guests who bid and bought them.”

Getty has announced a take-it-or-leave-it rate cut for its editorial contributors under a new contract that specifies 35 percent royalties for all sales. Under current contracts that will soon expire, Getty pays photographers 50 percent for some sales, and 35 percent for others.

Photographers who don’t sign the contract will be terminated when their current contracts expire.

The agency notified photographers of the changes on November 9, giving them 30 days to sign the new contract. The agency told photographers that the new contract terms will enable Getty “to more easily modify content use across more and new license models, products, services and selling environments, including subscriptions, high-volume customer deals and new or emerging pricing, licensing and payment models.”

In other words, customers will be paying less for images in some cases. By cutting photographers’ rates, Getty will be able to offer images at lower prices with less negative impact on its own bottom line.

Asked whether Getty has found itself unable to compete for low-priced business without asking for concessions from suppliers, agency spokesperson Jodi Einhorn said, “No….[W]e are developing new ways for customers to use more of our content and as a result, new ways to pay contributors must be created in these situations.”

One way photographers benefit from the new contract, Getty says in the November 9 memo, is that photographers will now be paid in 60 days rather than 120 days. Einhorn also told PDN that Getty is “making changes and improvements around how we share and license our content, which will benefit our photographers,” by providing more exposure and more potential for sales of their images.

Einhorn did not say how many photographers are affected, or whether they are resisting the changes. But she did say, “It is totally normal for those affected to have questions. So we are responding to questions we receive and our team are always available to discuss any changes with our photographers, to help them understand these changes.

© Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos, courtesy Christie's

Christie’s took advantage of the interest surrounding Paris Photo last week by holding three auctions at their Paris auction house, one of which saw a photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson fetch a record price for the photographer of $590,455.

The record-breaking 1946 print of Derrière la Gare Saint-Lazare, Paris, 1932, the famous photograph of a man jumping over a puddle, was part of an auction of 100 photographs from the collection of the Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson. The sale more than doubled the $243,000 high estimate for the print. Total sales for the auction reached $2,818,097.

A sale of 51 Irving Penn prints from an unnamed private collection generated $2,848,546. The highest sale at the auction was $492,273, paid for Penn’s Woman in Moroccan Palace (Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn), 1951.

The top two sales in the general photography auction also belonged to Penn prints. The still life Two Liqueurs, New York, 1951, and Mouth, New York, 1986, both earned more than $200,000. A pair of Peter Beard prints were the next highest sales. The auction of 56 lots brought in $2,320,576.

We recently did a story about professional photographers who are choosing to go with smaller cameras and smartphones for their photography because it makes the process simpler and more discreet. Add to that list one more noted photographer: Annie Leibovitz.

Leibovitz recently told NBC’s Brian Williams that her favorite “snapshot” camera these days is Apple’s iPhone. The reason?

“It’s so accessible and easy,” Leibovitz told Williams.

Meanwhile, the New York Times just posted this story about accessories to turn your smartphone into “a semi-pro camera.” (Whatever that means.)

Watch the interview with Leibovitz below and tell us in the comments what you think about the whole “smartphone photography” phenomenon.

Just a fad or does it have the makings of a major move away from big digital SLRs to compacts as the tool of choice?

(Via Petapixel)

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