Photography « Uganda Radio Network

Description
The People & Planet International Photography Competition aims to select 53 photos to be published in the 2013 People & Planet: Social Justice & Environment Diary and Calendar.
The organizers are looking for 53 extraordinary images of people, places or objects which tell a story about a social-justice or environment issue. Photos of almost any genre will be accepted, including portraits, landscapes, animals, objects, or any combination of these. Photos which tell “good news” stories about social-justice or the environment are particularly welcome.
Eligibility
The competition is open to amateur and professional photographers anywhere in the world. People living in the developing/majority world are particularly encouraged to enter.
Entries are only eligible if they include

a) a title for each photo,

b) 3-5 sentences describing each photo and the social-justice or environment issue(s) which are raised by the photo,

c) the place the photo was taken,

d) the entrant’s name, country & postal address.
Application
You can submit up to 4 photos per entrant. All submitted photos must be accompanied by 3-5 sentences describing the image and the social-justice or environment issues which are raised by the photo. Photos will be assessed jointly with the accompanying description.
The images can be colour or B&W, but must be at least 300 dpi resolution, supplied in JPEG format, with a maximum file size of 10 MB. Photos where photoshoping is obvious, are usually excluded.
Don’t submit images that were submitted to this competition in previous years.
Email your submission to peopleandplanet(at)peopleandplanet.org.au by the 22 April 2012. Please send each image in a separate e-mail.
All participants will receive confirmation of entry via email after the competition close date. There is no entry fee.
In the body of the email you must list the following in English:

 Your name, country, email address, postal address
 A title for your photo
 Three to five sentences describing the image AND the social-justice or environment issue(s) which are raised by the photo
The country and place the photo was taken
Images which do not include all the above information in English will not be accepted.
No responsibility is accepted for ineligible entries or entries made fraudulently.
Entries which have been previously published elsewhere, will be accepted.
All winners will be notified by 1 June 2012.

By entering the contest, you give People & Planet the right to publish your photos in the 2013 People & Planet Diary, the 2012 People & Planet Calendar and any publicity associated with the diary or calendar only. Other use of the photos will be with your permission only.
Prize
All 53 winners will receive a free copy of the 2013 People & Planet Diary, with cash prizes going to the best two photos (1,500 and 1,000 $) and the photo that is used on the cover of the People & Planet Diary & Calendar (500$).

If, in January 2011, you had asked me what I will be doing in September, my list wouldn’t have included setting up and managing a photo bank for a radio news agency. A radio news agency with a photo bank? Perhaps radio stations have to ‘read’ the photo out to their listeners?

But when you are forced to confront the complex question of continuity and relevance, you must think multimedia or you are doomed. So, the brilliant minds at URN came up with an idea of expanding the content-reach, to include photography.

That’s when an aspect of my job as Multimedia Coordinator stared me in the face. Forget that I can make an attempt at taking a passable professional photo. The photo bank had to be accommodated on an already existing website. (I should digress, and note that www.ugandaradionetwork.com is one of the most dynamic, most impressive works of web development I have come across). Evenings of contemplation plus a string of emails between what has come to be informally known as “the URN Thinkers” yielded great ideas. The photos started trickling in. And then there was a torrent.

I don’t like clichéd adages, but today I will indulge. Anyway, said adage goes that “a picture says a thousand words”. I have read zillions of words from pictures. Including those on the URN website.

I have celebrated photos on the site. I have seen the amazing things lenses can do when held in the right place at the right time. I have run off my desk to pull someone off theirs and show them a great photo. I have called colleagues and told them am jealous I wasn’t the one who took that photo. I have taken photos that made me proud of my small self.

But sometimes, a picture says the 1000 words you don’t want to hear. We may know how far from the interviewee we should hold our recorders, but some of our pictures are speaking incomprehensible, baby language.

Here is why;

People walking on their heads. Rotating a photo is a simple computer function. Windows Image/Photo Viewer does the magic.

Out of focus. You intended to photograph a cotton ginnery burning down, but you caught just the smoke. In high school, a guy told us his experience of a Fine Art class. His teacher told them to imagine, and draw, a car rally. His mind was blank. Then he grabbed his pencil and drew smoke-plume-like stuff. When the teacher asked, the student replied; “I imagined the cars had already passed. So I captured the dust!” Time to re-visit Henry Bongyereirwe’s training notes on focusing on the subject!

Birthday photos. Photos with the date and time imprinted on them are amateurish and they belong to birthday parties! Finding the menu of your camera and disabling the “time and date” function works the same way as on your phone.

Captions. Not all of us can write sexy captions, but we can try. A caption that says; “Mr. Musoke” or one that is as long as your story summary makes the editors delegate some of their work to me; to figure out what it means.

Blurred photos. You don’t stand on top of Kibuli hill with a 3.3x (times) Zoom Lens and take a panoramic view of Kampala city. I asked a colleague why his photo of a wildfire was so blurred and he replied; “I feared getting burnt!” Unfortunately, our cameras are not anywhere near those lenses that take the magical photos we see on NatGeo. So let’s get closer to our subject.

I can’t stop going back to the photos from Karamoja. A guy called Bernard Wesonga seems to be setting the pace. I know he has years of experience under his belt. Which is perhaps why we should take a look at his photos. No, don’t take a look; ‘read’ them. He is not exactly a Pulitzer prize-winning photographer, but within our circles, we could learn a few tips and make each other proud.

Here we go URN Photographers

The Foreign Correspondents’ Association of Uganda (FCAU) has announced plans to run a photography competition for Ugandan photojournalists in 2012. The winners, along with some of the Association members, will get a chance to showcase their work at a photo exhibition to be held in Kampala.

Michele Sibiloni, an AFP photojournalist who is organizing the competition, said, “There are many talented Ugandan photojournalists, and the exhibition will be a unique opportunity to promote our work together.”

The details of the competition will be posted on the FCAU website
(www.fcau.org) in the coming weeks. The photography competition is part of a wider plan to increase interaction between the association and journalists working for Ugandan media.

This was agreed at the Association’s second Annual General Meeting, held in Kampala.
At the meeting Joshua Mmali, BBC and Malcolm Webb, Aljazeera were re-elected as co-chairs, to lead an elected board that runs the Association and organizes events. The Association was founded in May
2011 and has since grown to nearly 30 members.

“Our first year was a great success and the association is moving from strength to strength. We’ve held several events, including off-record briefings with key newsmakers, which have proven to be a great forum for exchanging thoughts and ideas for both the journalists and the guests. We’re looking forward to hosting more briefings this year,”
Mmali said.

FCAU has also launched its website (www.fcau.org) that profiles some of the members and shows their journalistic work.

The Association provides networking opportunities for members and is a contact point for anyone who wants to reach foreign correspondents working in Uganda. Members are broadcast, print and photojournalists from a wide range of foreign media outlets including BBC, Aljazeera, Reuters and The New York Times.

ENDS

For further comment please contact Petri Burtsov, FCAU Communications Secretary
+256 (0) 791 788 175 [email protected]

“A picture is worth a thousand words” goes an old adage and a good picture does not require any accompanying story. It allows the reader to delve into their own world of imagination, draw out a context and interpret their own stories.

But a picture of a dead nude decomposing body is worth “a trillion emotions”.

While we strive to take dramatic pictures, telling pictures and pictures of happiness, conflict and death, two questions must stick in our minds.
• What is the purpose of the picture you are taking?
• For whom are you taking this picture?
• Who do you want to see this picture?
• And for what results?

What is the motive behind a photographer, who grabs his camera, rushes to a scene to capture real horrid pictures of a dead nude decomposing body? To put this question into context, let me refer to three pictures sent in this weekend from Fort-Portal linked to the pit sawyer murdered and buried in the saw waste.

The first picture showed the bulging, decomposing black man turned pink body, with all skin scaled off, lying vertically naked in the saw dust.

The second picture, a medium close up showed the swollen nude body, lying on top of the saw dust. Third image showed the body partly out of the saw dust but with the tree roots entrapping.

I must admit that a cold chill went running in my spine as soon as my curious eye pried over the first image. My moral self recoiled in horror. With shock and shame still spinning in my mind, I braved one more look at the pictures, for the sake of piecing up this article.

The three pictures depict what one of the writers has described as the “pornography of the suffering and the dead”.

The three images beg for the ethical and moral question of News reportage. Questions to the photographer- How would you react if you knew this man? How would you react of this man was your brother or even a relative? For what reason would you take this picture?

The commitment to tell the truth and to support the story that was already sent in and published should not override our need to be sensitive to the situations and people.

In the case of the three pictures, the photographer ought to have realized the need to be sensitive to the grieving family, respect for the dead, embarrassment of the deceased been pedaled naked for all to see.

To put this concern right, I want to allude to Ethic number four of the photographers;
• Treat all subjects with respect and dignity… intrude on the private moments of grief only when the public has a justifiable need to see.

Let’s not shun the pornography of the living and yet rejoice in taking pictures that glorify the pain of the deceased, the grieving, and the suffering. Cardinal rule. What’s the purpose of the picture you are taking? Who do you want to see that picture, what story does it tell.

Quote of the Week: “Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it and, above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light. – Joseph Pulitzer (1847-1911) was editor and publisher of the New York World and one of the great men of journalism of the 19th century.

Have a wonderful photography week.

Tag Archives: Photography

The People & Planet International Photo Competition 2012 – open to amateur photographers around the world – Deadline April 22!

When a picture says the 1000 words you don’t want to hear

Photography Competition for Ugandan PhotoJournalists

URN News Digest Vol No. 012: – Photography versus Pornography of the Dead