Vision Slightly Blurred

In the midst of global protests in support of #BlackLivesMatter, the Poynter Institute caused a ruckus within the photojournalism industry last week with the provocatively titled “Photographers are being called on to stop showing protestors’ faces. Should they?”At least part of the outright dismissal of the article by some photojournalists stemmed from the second sentence which reads “But there’s a growing movement that calls for journalists and citizens to blur or not show protesters’ faces.” In the same week, the encrypted communications app Signal released a feature to blur faces in photos, which served to conflate journalism ethics with social media norms. In this episode, Sarah Jacobs and Allen Murabayashi discuss:Photojournalism ethics and the Poytner articleDarnella Frazier, the 17-year old who captured the killing of George Floyd on videoJohn Edwin Mason's essay on protest photosControversy at the Pittsburgh Post-GazetteBuzzfeed keeps embedding Instagram postsNYMag's cover of the BLM protest

In the span of less than a week, concerns about COVID-19 have taken a backseat to the nationwide protests against police brutality and racism sparked by the deaths of George Floyd, Ahmad Aubrey, and Breonna Taylor. Photojournalists covering the scenes have been confronted with violence against them by police and unknown agitators.In this episode of Vision Slightly Blurred, Sarah Jacobs and Allen Murabayashi discuss the incredible photography being produced around the country – including by many smaller newsrooms, discuss whether we should be calling images "Pulitzer Prize worthy" in the moment that the work is created, and how ordinary citizens with cellphones are capturing incredible (and often unbelievable) scenes..Finally, we meditate with graduation photos and a piece about skateboarding in NYC.

Harvard professor Sara Elizabeth Lewis raised the ire of some photojournalists by suggesting that there weren't enough photos of COVID-19-related death to create "mental images" of the breadth of the pandemic and the wake of destruction. In this episode of Vision Slightly Blurred, Sarah Jacobs and Allen Murabayashi discuss the reactions by Gary He, Lucas Jackson and Reading the Pictures, Philip Montgomery's work for the NYT, plus a visualization of the news by Josh Begley.But wait there's more! Is it unethical to use a telephoto lens to portray crowds during the pandemic? Jörg Colberg reacts to a photo of nurse Colby Hutson, Caitie McCabe's FaceTime photos, The Joys of Deleting Photos, and New York Nico's #BestNYPhotos

In this episode of the PhotoShelter podcast, Vision Slightly Blurred, Sarah Jacobs and Allen Murabayashi talk about Travis Long's photo of a missile launcher-carrying protestor, Nicola Cordi's "Italy in the Spring of 2020" diptychs using Google Earth, Robert Pattinson's selfies for GQ, an interview with New York Magazine's Jody Quon, Emman Montalvan's portraits of Kehlani, and Justine Kurland's new book featuring the work of her Girl Pictures project.

Happy belated Mother's Day to all the moms out there!In this episode of Vision Slightly Blurred, Sarah and Allen laugh at Daniel Arnold's remote portraits of Jerry Seinfeld, critique Spencer Tunic's latest attempt at photographing nudes via Zoom, fawn over Justin von Oldershausen's apartment building portraits, compare Olivia Harris' sun worshippers to Greg Miller's Primo Amore, review more quarantine shoots by Nikola Tamindzic, Elizaveta Porodina, and Grace Gelder, and give a final wave goodbye to Deanna Dikeman's parents. 

Spring is in the air, and we've got the photos to prove it. Er, we're talking about the photos to prove it.In this episode of Vision Slightly Blurred, Sarah Jacobs and Allen Murabayashi go gaga for Bryan Derballa's Brooklyn Botanic Garden photos, laugh with Liz Devine and her roomies, talk race with Elijah Nouvelage's viral nail tech photo from Georgia, those crazy UFO videos and much more!

Your weekly dose of photography and culture with hosts Sarah Jacobs and Allen Murabayashi. In this episode, we talk about a collection of 15 essays written by NYT staffers and contributors, DJs and strippers on Instagram, the trend of recreating famous artwork at home, and cool images of dolphins and whales to end the show!

A judge dismissed Stephanie Sinclair's lawsuit against Mashable after the website embedded an image she posted to Instagram without permission. How should photographers react and protect themselves?Photojournalist Joshua Bickel's image of protestors in Ohio has been likened to zombie movies, and for good reason. But he's a bit uncomfortable with the comparison.Matt Mendelsohn is trying to photograph an entire 500-student graduating class in Arlington, VA, while Calla Kessler captured students in their prom attire with an assist from her father. 

In this week’s episode of PhotoShelter’s podcast “Vision Slightly Blurred,” @sarahjake and @allen3m discuss sheltering in Dallas and Honolulu, the dystopian photography of empty places, how teachers are dealing with distance learning, and the creative things that photographers do.

What once seemed like a distant threat has turned into a major nightmare for photographers. The rapid spread of coronavirus (COVID-19) has led to major uncertainty for freelancers dealing with a "black swan" event that has resulted in cancellations of music festivals, tech conferences, weddings, and nearly every sporting event. In this episode of Vision Slightly Blurred, Sarah and Allen discuss how COVID-19 has already impacted freelancers, how photo editors are trying to help, how the media is using photography to illustrate the outbreak, and much more.

TikTok, the video-based social media app, usually conjures visions of teens mimicking the latest dance craze, but it's probably better described as short attention span YouTube. In 2017, ByteDance, the Chinese-owned parent company of TikTok, acquired the Musical.ly app, which had gained a toehold with an under-18 demographic by becoming a replacement for the comedy-oriented Vine app along with a burgeoning lip synching community.Although the app still skews heavily towards music, it has predictably evolved as a youth-oriented, generic video delivery platform. As such, a whole gaggle of teen photographers has emerged as "experts" – delivering pop song-soundtracked mini-tutorials that are largely devoid of narration.On this week's episode of the PhotoShelter podcast Vision Slightly Blurred, @sarahjake and @allen3m discuss how TikTok is helping inspire a new crop of photographers.

Late Winter and early Spring bring another cycle of photo contest season – that time of year when many major prizes are announced (especially in the photojournalism realm). And with each year bring another round of punditry regarding the value of photo contests and an almost inevitable controversy regarding the winners.In this week's episode of PhotoShelter's Vision Slightly Blurred podcast, Sarah (@sarahjake) and Allen (@allen3m) discuss the controversy around the 77th Pictures of the Year contest, as well as the Sony World Photography Awards'  decision to censor images of the Hong Kong protest taken by Ko Chung Ming (高仲明) and David Butow.

The New York Times investigative reporter Kashmir Hill uncovered some unsettling details about Clearview AI – a facial recognition start-up that scrapes publicly available photos from sites like Facebook, YouTube, and Venmo and makes the data searchable by law enforcement – even if you're not suspect or convicted of committing a crime.Facial recognition is an incredibly useful consumer tool for organization burgeoning albums, but the privacy implications are enormous when third parties start to aggregate images and make the data commercially available.In this episode of Vision Slightly Blurred, Sarah and Allen revisit the issue of facial recognition (first covered in the inaugural episode of Vision Slightly Blurred last year), and see how far the technology and ethical implications have come in less than 12 months.

As a part of the launch of the Fuji X100V, Fuji posted a video of Japanese street photographer Tatsuo Suzuki at work. Suzuki's aggressive style rubbed people the wrong way, and within the week, he was scrubbed from the campaign, and then erased from the Fuji website.But Suzuki is an accomplished street photographer who has also helped build a community of street photographers with his zine/collective Void Tokyo. Why does Suzuki get canceled when photographer like Bruce Gilden earn gallery shows? In this episode of Vision Slightly Blurred, Sarah and Allen discuss Suzuki's body of work, his aggressive style, and the effects of cancel culture on the arts.

Last week, Emerald Expositions, the owner of Photo District News (PDN), announced that PDN would no longer publish new content online or in print. The magazine was a staple of the professional photography industry, particularly for advertising and commercial photography. Their articles covered a wide range of topics from pricing to major campaigns to the venerable PDN 30 list. In addition, PDN produced a number of photo contests including the PDN Annual.In this episode of Vision Slightly Blurred, Sarah and Allen discuss the climate that makes it nearly impossible for niche print publications to exist, what PDN could have done to potentially thwart its demise, and ideas for the future of PDN 30.

The crash that killed Kobe Bryant, his 13-year old daughter Gianna, and seven others aboard a helicopter shocked millions around the world. Near the Staples Center in California where Bryant played for 20 years as a member of the Los Angeles Lakers, make-shift memorials appeared. And online, fans posted messages of grief and condolences on social media. Unsurprisingly, images of Bryant were widely shared as if a way to collectively remember him through the most accessible and visceral medium available to us – photography. And photographers who had the opportunity to shoot Bryant during their careers expressed a connection for having done so. Even in the most public of settings, there is something intimate about taking someone’s photo.In this episode of Vision Slightly Blurred, Sarah and Allen share some of their favorite images that they've seen on social media in the wake of Bryant's death, and talk about the role of photography in creating a collective memory.

Does knowing the science behind photography help us create better pictures and/or get more out of our equipment? Or does the accumulation of such knowledge simply make more technical photographers feel superior?In this episode of Vision Slightly Blurred, Allen Murabayashi makes the case that beyond understanding the exposure triangle and acquiring specific knowledge for the types of photography that you practice (e.g. astrophotography), it's unnecessary to be pre-occupied with understanding the physics of lenses or how sensors work. 

On January 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded during liftoff due to a faulty O-ring design on the rocket booster which allowed hot gas to ignite a fuel tank. STS-51-L was the 25th space shuttle mission, and in the mid-1980s, launches still captured public attention and imagination.On hand that day was photographer Bruce Weaver, who has been a mainstay of Cape Canaveral launches for over 30 years. Although the NASA video of the tragedy was available immediately, the grainy, low-resolution video couldn’t hold a candle to the still image that Weaver captured. Weaver’s image perfectly captured a major inflection point for NASA and space travel. NASA grounded the program for three years, and there was a palpable sense that the heroic age of space flight had ended. The image was just an explosion, but it carried with it the baggage of hubris, bureaucracy and seven dead astronauts.On Sunday, January 19, 2020, Elon Musk blew up a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on purpose to test a crew escape system – and I’ve n