2012 World Press Photo winners announced

A Spanish freelance photographer’s image of a woman in Yemen, holding her wounded son in her arms, has been named the World Press Photo of the Year at the annual awards.

The picture, taken by Samuel Aranda for the New York Times, was among more than 100,000 photographs from the world over that were considered by this year’s judges.

Images of protestors in Cairo’s Tahrir Square celebrating Hosni Mubarak’s resignation, rebels holding out against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, and the aftermath of the Japanese tsunami, also received top prizes.

The full gallery can be seen on the World Press Photo website.

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AFP photographer wins political photography award

The AFP has issued a release to say its photographer John MacDougall won the Rueckblende (flashback) award in Germany for 2011.

The agency says this is the first time the award, which is for political photography and cartoons, has gone to one of its photographers.

The winning picture of a German female soldier embracing a relative of one of three victims at a military funeral brought home the human aspect of the tragedy of Afghanistan, judges of the Rueckblende award for political photography said.

MacDougall first started work at AFP in 1989 as a photo editor.

According to the AFP release “his photo was chosen from among 247 entries for the Rueckblende, which was created in 1995 and carries a 7,000-euro ($9,200) prize, and which also awards a prize for political cartoonists.”

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BBC CoJo on the possibilities for ‘drone journalism’

The website for the BBC College of Journalism published an interesting post on Friday by BBC world affairs producer Stuart Hughes, which looked at how news organisations could use drones as “newsgathering tools”.

According to Hughes, “in theory” the aircraft could be a useful tool for news outlets keen to get a bird’s-eye view of certain news events, such as protests.

Photographers covering election demos in Moscow also deployed a UAV – prompting some onlookers to suspect they had spotted a UFO over the Russian capital.

The resulting images were widely used by international news organisations – including the BBC.

However, Hughes said that in reality regulations would make it difficult to operate the aircraft “in built up and congested areas – exactly the sort of places where most news stories take place”.

Understandably so – no news organisation would want to deal with the legal consequences if its unmanned camera crash-landed onto the head of a peaceful protestor.

But nevertheless he is “excited by the prospect of using Big Boys’ Toys as part of our newsgathering”.

It may be some time yet before drone journalism becomes commonplace but, potentially, the sky’s the limit.

Read the full post here.

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – advice on copyright and how to claim for breach

There is an informative article on the website for EPUK – Editorial Photographers United Kingdom and Ireland – which looks at what you can do if you think your copyright has been breached. As the article states, author Simon Crofts addresses: “your copyright, what you are entitled to claim from an infringer, and how to assemble and present a claim”.

Read it in full here.

Tipster: Rachel McAthy

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

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Wired offers creative commons images in exchange for link

Director Tim Burton surrounded by dictaphones at Comic Con 2009, one of 50 images made available by Wired as part of its new creative commons plan. Image: Wired.com

Wired.com has made what looks like a canny move in deciding to license its own images under creative commons in return for a mention and a link.

The technology site doesn’t currently sell the images, so the commons licence will cost it nothing but will probably generate some useful publicity today, like this, plus traffic and SEO in the long run.

See 50 images made available immediately here.

Wired hasn’t stipulated where the link and mention have to go, so presumably it’s fine to put it either right next to the image or bury it at the bottom of your blog post.

The licence also allows users to edit images, as I have with the one above. Just a simple crop here, but mashups and other edits are also fine.

The move also raises a long-standing lack of clarity over the CC “non-commercial” licence. When we use CC images on Journalism.co.uk, we usually steer clear of images marked “not for commercial use” because we carry ads on the site and the site is a profitable entity.

But the distinction isn’t as clear cut as that according to some. Nieman Journalism Lab’s Joshua Benton has an in-depth post about the CC issue, read it here.

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BBC: Powerful audio slideshow shows photographer’s ‘baptism of fire’

The BBC has produced a powerful audio slideshow which documents the experience of Press Association photographer Lewis Whyld when he reported on the riots in Tottenham on 6 August.

The slide show, displayed on the magazine section of the BBC News site, uses Whyld’s own images and audio accountof his “baptism of fire” in covering the riots.

He describes the scenes he witnessed and how he dealt with covering such a hostile environment, often using just his mobile phone to capture images.

Later this afternoon BBC Radio 4 will broadcast “Picture Power: Portraits of five leading photographers”, the second of five programmes looking at photographers who captured images of “the most dramatic events of the past year”.

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App of the week for journalists – Teleportd, location-based Twitter and Facebook image search

App of the week: Teleportd

Operating systems: Apple (iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad). Requires iOS 4.3 or later

Cost: Free

What is it and how is it of use to journalists? Teleportd was released earlier this month as an app as the “closest thing to teleportation”, transporting you anywhere in the world by allowing you to see photos taken on mobile devices shared on social media, including Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Instagram and PicPlz.

You can explore photos shared near you or see those taken anywhere in the world by using the map and see images being shared in real-time.

It is a fantastic app which promises consumers a pictorial insight into a news story as it breaks. As a journalist you can see what photos are being shared, which could provide a possible library of images (remember, you must seek permission to use pictures – if in doubt read this guide explaining how to know when to use photos from social media) or you can use the app to view photos from a huge number of sources which could potentially contribute towards your verification process when faced with a breaking story.

The first screengrab here is of the photos being shared in real-time in Brighton (where Journalism.co.uk is based); the second is of images being shared in Tripoli, Libya.

Reviews: Apple has not yet received enough ratings to display an average.

Have you got a favourite app that you use as a journalist? Fill in this form to nominate an app for Journalism.co.uk’s app of the week for journalists.

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Tool of the week for journalists – Error Level Analysis, to test if a photo is a hoax

Tool of the week: Error Level Analysis

What is it? A free tool to allow you to test whether or not an image has been digitally manipulated in programmes such as Adobe Photoshop. Paste the URL of a photo and Error Level Analysis will return results in an instant. The tool tests how many times an image has been manipulated and re-saved.

How is it of use to journalists? Journalists frequently have to verify images and work out whether they have been manipulated. It may be to test whether an image from a press release has been altered, or from social media sources using Twitter and Facebook.

Take the case of a journalist’s quest to find the man behind the world’s most expensive everything. Stewart Campbell, the deputy editor of Motor Boat and Yachting, set out to prove that a press release claiming the launch of a £3 billion golden superyacht was a fake. Campbell’s keen eye led him to the original photo, which he could prove had been doctored. Error Level Analysis would have demonstrated the level of digital manipulation, which you can see by clicking here.

The Error Level Analysis site clearly explains how the tool works – and comes with a word of warning about interpreting the results:

It works by resaving an image at a known quality, and comparing that to the original image. As a jpeg image is resaved over and over again, its image quality decreases. When we resave an image and compare it to the original, we can guess just how many times the image has been resaved. If an image has not been manipulated, all parts of the image should have been saved an equal amount of times. If parts of the image are from different source files, they may have been saved a number of different times, and thus they will stand out as a different colour in the ELA test.

It is worth noting that edges and areas red in colour are often depicted as brighter in the ELA tests. This due to the way the photos are saved by various programs. It is not proof that image was manipulated.

If you are unsure how to interpret the results, please do not claim the results of this tool as proof of anything.

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App of the week for journalists – Photoshop Express, for photo editing on the fly

App of the week: Adobe Photoshop Express

Operating systems: Apple (iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad) and Android

Cost: Free

What is it and how is it of use to journalists? Photoshop Express on your Android, iPhone or iPad will allow you to edit photos on the fly. As a journalist you may find you need to crop an image, sharpen it up or correct the exposure before posting to a blog or news site.

There are various apps out there that allow you to do this, including Camera Plus.

It is worth having this free app on your phone in case you find yourself in a situation where you have photograph that needs cropping before it can be shared.

Reviews: Adobe Photoshop Express gets 3.5 stars in iTunes App Store and 4 stars in the Android Market.

Have you got a favourite app that you use as a journalist? Fill in this form to nominate an app for Journalism.co.uk’s app of the week for journalists.

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App of the week for journalists – Pro HDR, for better photos (without an iPhone 4S)

App of the week: Pro HDR

Operating systems: Apple (compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPod touch, and iPad 2) and Android

Cost: £1.49 in the App Store, £1.24 in the Android Market

What is it and how is it of use to journalists? If you followed the unveiling of the iPhone 4S yesterday you will have learned that it has a better camera than current models, a feature that is no doubt of benefit to journalists.

This week’s app of the week is one for anyone who has struggled with the limitations of their current iPhone or Android camera, and taken a picture on their phone and found the result has either washed out sky or dark foreground.

Pro HDR works by taking two photos, each picture focusing on a different part of the the subject, and the app then blends the two together.

For example, the below photo, which was taken on an iPhone 4 using Pro HDR, is two pictures: one exposed for the sky, the other with the focus on the foreground.

Reviews: Pro HDR gets 4.5 stars in the Apps Store and3.5 stars in the Android Market.

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