Aiming to shed some light on how photography mavens find innovative work, W.M. Hunt moderated the seminar Your Picture is Fabulous: The Tastemakers and Why We Look at What We Do during the 2011 PhotoPlus Expo. The panel featured a gallery owner (Yossi Milo of Yossi Milo Gallery), a magazine photo editor (Caroline Wolff of W) and an agency director (Kelly Penford of Jed Root)—in other words, a wide array of influential people every photographer dreams of impressing.

Though it’s not easy to articulate what makes a photograph cutting-edge, Hunt, a photo collector and former gallery director, noted that he needed to be excited by the work and told the story of traveling to Paris to see photojournalist Luc Delahaye’s Taliban Soldier, a large-scale image of a Taliban fighter lying dead in the dirt. Though Vanity Fair and The New Yorker both passed on the photo (American Photo ended up publishing it) when he returned to the U.S., Hunt was able to sell the image to a collector for $15,000—using just the color Xerox of the print—proving he had indeed discovered something new. Milo seconded Hunt’s sentiments, saying he wants to be blown away by a work and cited the example of Kohei Yoshiyuki’s series “The Park,” which not only excited him, but also had an amazing concept he was intrigued by.

Yet Hunt readily admitted that it’s hard to be fresh and pressed the panelists to find out what is trending now. In a word: technology. Milo said he’s been looking to younger photographers and is currently captivated by innovations in the picture-making process. An example is Matthew Brandt’s series “Lakes and Reservoirs,” in which he develops the photographs using water from the lake or reservoir featured in the photo. Wolff explained that she recently commissioned on online video from Santiago & Mauricio in which still images contained moving droplets of water, while Penford added that digital is the only acceptable method for his clients, who expect to see instantaneous results.

So how do you get your work in front of a tastemaker? Wolff said she reads a variety of magazines and newspapers, and used the examples of a few up-and-coming photographers she’s either commissioned or is keeping tabs on: She discovered Santiago & Mauricio through their submission in W’s Fashion on Film series; Chadwick Tyler was featured on the cover of Grey magazine; and Elle Muliarchyk’s “Dressing Room” series was published in The New York Times Magazine.

Penford said he looks at everything and anything, but emphasized the power of photo blogs. His agency currently represents Scott Schuman whose blog The Sartorialist receives millions of visitors each month, the popularity of which lead to new assignments, and recently signed Bill Gentle largely due to the photos on his blog Backyard Bill. Milo said he also reads a lot, both print and online, as well as travels and goes to shows. However, he tends to track photographers and follow them for a couple years to see how their style evolves before contacting them.

The moral of the seminar? Though there’s no way to guarantee your work will be deemed worthwhile by influential people in the industry, one thing that’s for sure is that it has to be out there in order to get noticed in the first place. Start a blog, enter a contest, send an introductory e-mail—do whatever you can to get your photographs seen by the right people.

In our feature “Does Editorial Post-Production Cost Too Much?” which appears in the November issue of PDN, photographers, retouchers and photo editors weighed in. They offered their experiences about both how much photographers and retouchers charge editorial clients, but how they explain their fees to clients.

“One of our biggest challenges is that the fees vary so greatly between photos,” Wired photo editor Zana Woods told PDN.

Kathy Ryan, the director of photography at The New York Times Magazine says she’s seen photographers asking for as much as $1000 per image.

Photographer Jeff Minton, who does most retouching himself, says he charges editorial clients a flat $75-$100 per image, depending on the work they want done, which is comparable to the price he once charged for custom color prints.

Retoucher Angie Hayes says some magazines at Condé Nast simply stick to a standard per-image fee of $350 for an inside photo, and $600 for a cover. Andi Kounath, owner and retoucher at redfishblack in New York, says small magazines “never pay for retouching.”

So, what do you charge for retouching? And do you think photo editors have a reasonable expectation of the costs of producing and delivering print-ready images? Do you incorporate retouching into your photo fee, or is it a separate line item? How do you calculate what post-production costs you? Is it reasonable for photographers to mark-up the cost of retouching when they hire freelancers? Are you losing money on retouching because editors don’t have the budget to cover the costs?

Please enter your comment below or in the Facebook discussion here.

© Jody Rogac. A recent entry on Jody Rogac's Tumblr.

Photographers have used micro-blogging site Tumblr as a tool to share their work with audiences online, many of them building followings that number in the thousands and even tens of thousands. (For more on how photographers are using Tumblr see our October feature, “Why Photographers Love Tumblr.”)

But photographers also use the site to follow other shooters, keeping up with what their peers are doing and passing along work they like or admire.

JUCO, the photography team of Julia Galdo and Cody Cloud, keep up with other photographers like Noah Kalina, with whom they share a rep, Chris McPherson, Elizabeth Weinberg, Ryan Schude, Dan Busta and the duo Day 19. (Kalina also published a list of photographers who have Tumblr pages, which is useful for people who are new to the site or want to find new people to follow.)

Ryan Pfluger follows Daniel Shea, Tony Katai, Christopher Schreck, Alexi Hobbs, and a Tumblr called “Mull it Over,” run by Jonathan Cherry, which features Q&A’s with new photographers once a week.

Alec Soth, who used Tumblr for a Magnum project earlier this year, says he recently “confessed” to an intern that he likes Terry Richardson’s Diary on Tumblr.

“In my Google reader, there’s a thousand unread things, and I find myself clicking on [Richardson’s Tumblr] repeatedly for guilty pleasure or whatever it is,” Soth says. “But there is a sense that I’ve followed him, I’m along on the ride, and I guess I’m hungry to experience that with other types of photographers as well.”

In addition to following professional photography peers like Emiliano Granado and Jessica Eaton, and an aspiring professional named Megan McIsaac, Jody Rogac follows current and potential clients like the New York Times T Magazine, Rolling Stone and Dazed & Confused to keep up with what they’re doing.

Sacha Lecca, a Rolling Stone photo editor who also posts his own images to Tumblr, says he generally follows photographers who he’s worked with, met or is familiar with. But through Tumblr’s “reblogging” function, where users share the work of others on their own Tumblr page, he can often “find out about someone I didn’t know.”

Related: Why Photographers Love Tumblr

Photographer collective LUCEO Images announced the opening of an online store that the group of documentary photographers hopes will allow them to “assert more creative control over the production and distribution of our work,” they said.

The group will sell limited- and open-edition prints, books and other creative work through their online store. The store’s proceeds will go into a general fund supporting new projects by the photographers, as well as other initiatives like their grant for student photographers and their donations in support of other photographers through crowd-funding sites like KickStarter and Emphas.is.

LUCEO is launching the store with the sale of the second issue of their magazine, 2×2. The magazine features the work of members Kendrick Brinson and Matt Eich, and it is also being sold in a limited edition featuring two prints.

The collective plans to offer a new print for sale on the site every two weeks.

More at store.luceoimages.com.

Photographer Brian Kuhlmann directed this video, Geneva, (shot by Ryan Van Ert using a Canon 5D Mark II) while shooting the cover of Chicago Magazine’s June Special Travel Issue. Kuhlmann says the jump cuts in the video follow the music line (music by Vincent Gallo). “We thought it was a great time to shoot a video because of the talent, props and location that we already had access to,” Kuhlmann says. “I rented an underwater housing and we just played.”

Geneva from Brian Kuhlmann on Vimeo.

The following video by photographers/filmmakers Micah Garen and Marie-Helene Carleton of Four Corners Media profiles four young women who participated in the 2011 Egyptian revolution: a student, a cancer researcher, an art curator and a journalist advocate. Garen and Carleton are currently working on a longer documentary titled If, a coming-of-age story about young women and their experiences during the revolution. (If, which Garen and Carleton hope to debut this Fall, will include some scenes and characters from this video. (Garen and Carleton have also launched a fundraising campaign on Kickstarter.com to continue filming in Egypt as their characters stories unfold.)

A standing ovation for photographer/writer Ruth Gruber, who in her 19 books documented refugee crises and humanitarian issues, marked an emotional high point at the International Center of Photography’s Infinity Awards, held last night in New York City. Gruber, 99, won the Cornell Capa Award, named for ICP’s founder. She told the audience that Edward Steichen had told her to shoot with her heart. “I try to use these images to fight injustice and hopefully bring peace to the world,” she said.

Many of the awards underscored the ICP’s original mission as an institution devoted to supporting humanistic photography. In his opening remarks, ICP director Willis Hartshorn noted the increasing dangers facing photojournalists around the world. He expressed gratitude for the safe return of two past Infinity winners, Tyler Hicks and Lynsey Addario, who had been captured and detained in Libya this spring, and noted the deaths in Libya in April of Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros. He said their work was “a testament to their dedication to the spirit of ICP’s mission.”

In accepting the Lifetime Achievement award, Elliott Erwitt said, “The wonderful thing about being a freelance photographer is the opportunity to be in marvelous situations sequentially.” In the video that preceded his speech, he noted that Photoshop, while a powerful tool, has hurt photography’s credibility. In the video, Erwitt then donned a black wig, fake mustache and sunglasses, and adopted the persona of a pretentious art photographer who “adores Photoshop.” The art photographer’s advice to young photographers: “Photograph many famous people and print the pictures big. The bigger they are, the more artistic.”

The video, showing many of Erwitt’s amusing photos, brought laughs from the audience, but at the end of the video Erwitt said, without disguise, “I think there is sadness in many of my pictures. But humor and sadness are closely related.”

Adrees Latif,  a photographer for Reuters, won the Photojournalism award for his coverage of the floods in Pakistan. He thanked ICP for honoring images of “one of the worst humanitarian crises of our time.”

Abelardo Morrell, winner of the award for Art, showed his camera obscura images for which he is best-known, and also recent work he has done exploring the west, using a tent to create images that are cast on the ground. The Infinity Award for Publication was awarded to From Here to There: Alec Soth’s America, the catalogue of a Walker Art Center retrospective of Alec Soth’s career. Soth (“Rhymes with both,” the photographer said in the video shown before his speech, “it’s a lifelong problem”) said he became photographer because he is “a socially awkward person” who “wanted to work alone,” but over time he’s been drawn more and more into collaborations like the one he had with the Walker Art Center. “The truth is, I like it.”

Other awards given out were the Applied Photography award, given to fashion photographer Viviane Sassen; the Writing award, given to writer and curator Gerry Badger; and the ICP Trustee Award, given to the Durst family of real estate developers, who are also ICP’s landlords.

Among the photo industry people attending the Infinity Awards were photo editors Kira Pollack, Paul Moakley and Patrick Witty of Time; Michelle McNally of The New York Times and James Estrin of the Times’ Lens blog; New Yorker director of photography Whitney Johnson and her predecessor, Elisabeth Biondi; Jack van Antwerp of The Wall Street Journal; Chris Dougherty of People; David Friend, editor at Vanity Fair;  Stefano Tonchi, editor of W; Glenda Bailey, editor of Harper’s Bazaar; photographers David Burnett, Misha Erwitt, Ron Haviv, Rick Smolan, Susan Meiselas and Lynsey Addario who, having spent the last few weeks in New York accepting an Overseas Press Club award and giving interviews, was on her way home to New Delhi.


—Holly Stuart Hughes

W, ESPN The Magazine and The New York Times Magazine took home the three awards for excellence in magazine photography at last night’s National Magazine Awards gala, sponsored by the American Society of Media Editors.

The recently redesigned fashion magazine W took home the award for general excellence in magazine photography. W beat out GQ, Martha Stewart Living, National Geographic and The New York Times Magazine in this category.

ESPN The Magazine won the award for feature photography for its portfolio “Bodies We Want,” a series of nude photos of athletes shot by Art Streiber, Martin Schoeller, Sheryl Nields, Peter Hepak, Finlay McKay and several other photographers.

The prize for News and Documentary Photography went to The New York Times Magazine for the photo essay “The Shrine Down the Hall,” photographed by Ashley Gilbertson. Other finalists in this category were National Geographic, Time, Virginia Quarterly Review and another story in The New York Times Magazine.

This year, the award for magazine design went to GQ, for its June, August and December 2010 issues, and its design director, Fred Woodward. GQ beat out last year’s winner, Wired, as well as Esquire, Fortune and New York.

The awards presentation was preceded by a tribute delivered by Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter to photographers Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros, who were killed on April 20 while covering the fighting in Misrata, Libya. Hetherington was a contributing photographer at Vanity Fair; Hondros had been a longtime contributor to Virginia Quarterly Review.

The evening began with an announcement by Larry Hackett, managing editor of People, that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg had proclaimed May 9 to be Magazine Day in New York, a surprising piece of news to those of us who think every day is magazine day.

Photo © Ashley Gilbertson

Adam Dean, a Beijing-based photojournalist represented by Panos Pictures, arrived in Japan roughly 20 hours after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that struck the northeastern coast of the country.  After he returned  home to Beijing  on March 26, Dean (one of the 2011 PDN 30 emerging photographers) answered our questions about the logistical challenges of covering the catastrophe, and also wrote about the story’s emotional impact. We reprint his email to PDN below.

(Some of Dean’s images from Iwate and Myagi Prefectures can be seen on The New Yorker’s Photo Booth blog, and were printed in last week’s issue of the magazine.)

Dean writes:

“I was traveling and working with a British writer from The Daily Telegraph newspaper,  and between us we have covered earthquakes in China, Pakistan and Indonesia, cyclones in Burma and tsunamis in Thailand, India and Sri Lanka, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as undercover reporting trips to North Korea and Burma but from a logistical point of view this has been one of the hardest assignments to cover.

“When we first arrived it was almost impossible to find a car available to hire and a fixer or translator who was prepared to travel north. In Japan, obviously a wealthy country, it is much harder to find an English speaker who has the financial motivation to come and work in a potentially dangerous environment with journalists compared to poorer countries …. Japan is also a deeply rules-based society so therefore the ‘work-arounds’ that journalists might normally use when covering a story like this are less effective here.

“When we first arrived in Tokyo about 20 hours after the tsunami, we were hearing reports of water shortages up north so we bought up as much food and water as we could find in stores in Tokyo where many of the shelves were already beginning to empty.  In the first 36 hours most of the flights and trains north from Tokyo were canceled, all the highways were closed to all but emergency vehicles and as a result the minor roads were clogged with traffic. The other real supply issue was fuel. Some of the oil refineries were damaged in the earthquake so there has been a shortage of fuel which has been compounded by residents fleeing from areas affected by the nuclear reactor leaks who have been constantly topping up on fuel fearing a meltdown. Over a week after the earthquake, there were queues of up to seven hours for fuel in some areas.

“Communications has also been a problem in the tsunami-affected areas where the network infrastructure has been badly damaged but generally it is not too bad. I hired local mobile phones and 3G data cards on arrival at the airport which allows us to be online in most areas and I have a satellite phone and a BGAN for transmitting images when conventional networks are down.

“Once on the ground,  the access has not been a problem. Soldiers, police and other officials have been very helpful in allowing us to work. The real problem has been a logistical and supply issue and access to the remote areas that were affected by the tsunami.

“The catastrophic tsunami was sadly eclipsed by the potential threat of a nuclear meltdown so I have been covering both angles of this story. Once we had sorted out the logistics after our arrival, we headed north to Sendai and stopped on the way in Fukushima at some of the evacuation centers for people living in the exclusion zone close to the failed nuclear reactors. Since then we have been working our way up the tsunami devastated northeast coast in the Myagi and Iwate provinces.

“Covering stories like this is always harrowing. You are photographing people on what is likely to be the worse day of their lives. Many whom I met had lost everything; family, home, savings etc and were now living in cold temporary evacuation centers with little to eat and no idea what or how they would recover their lives. Despite this, without exception all the people that I talked to and photographed in Japan were kind, gracious, generous and optimistic. There was very little complaining or even criticism of the government response.”

Photo © Adam Dean/Panos. Dean’s March 15 image of rescue workers piling bodies onto a truck in Rikuzen-Takaata, Japan, was recently published in The New Yorker.

This is the story of Sebta, who belongs to the Abu Eid Tribe from the Bekka Valley in Lebanon. The video was made by photographer Laia Abril for COLORS magazine issue #77 (The Sea) when the magazine’s editorial team took seven people to the sea for the first time. Abril, who shot both stills and video for the project, started shooting multimedia stories for COLORS in 2010. Here she used a Canon EOS 5D Mark II with an external microphone. (The final video was edited by Pablo Pastor and Bryce Licht.)