Gary Hopkins
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- Posted by: Gary Hopkins
- Tags: Photojournalism

Traffic makes its way over the Cahill Expressway near Sydney in the midst of a dust storm Sept. 23 that dumped thousands of tons of dust on the most populated city in Australia. "It did feel like Armageddon because when I was in the kitchen looking out the skylight, there was this red glow coming through," Sydney resident Karen told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio. (Greg Wood, AFP / Getty Images)
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- Posted by: Gary Hopkins
- Tags: Photojournalism

Soldiers from the U.S. Army Old Guard place flags at grave stones at Arlington National Cemetery May 21 in Arlington, Va., in preparation for Memorial Day weekend. It took 1,300 soldiers, sailors and Marines about three hours to place a flag at each of the more than 300,000 gravestones.
See all of this week's top photos in ...
- Posted by: Gary Hopkins
- Tags: Digital Cameras

Switched.com has a pretty nice rundown of Panasonic's refreshed Lumix line of cameras. A quick sum-up -- there are six new models, a bunch of colors, 5x optical zooms and 12.1 megapixel sensors (there are some variances by model). Except for one model, all the new cameras also shoot high-def video. Retail prices range from about $250 to $400. The cameras are scheduled to hit the stores in April. Check out the complete review at: Switched.com.
- Posted by: Gary Hopkins
- Tags: Digital Cameras

Our friends at Switched.com have put together a very simple guide to buying a digital camera. Their post, 'Five Things to Consider Before Buying a Digital Camera' condenses what can be a pretty complex subject into five bullet points.
So if you're in the market for a new camera, check it out. The post touches on the size of the camera, including getting into the megapixel debate; the amount of control you want over making your exposures; taking a 'test drive'; and battery life considerations.
- Posted by: Gary Hopkins
I'm in Charlottesville, Va., attending the LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph, which has taken place over the past three days -- June 12-14 -- and is billed as three days of "peace, love and photography." It truly is a love-fest of photography here in the shadow of Jefferson's Monticello and the nearby University of Virginia, with works of dozens of photographers getting exposure in a variety of venues throughout the downtown mall area.

There are at least 17 different exhibits sprinkled around the brick-lined mall in galleries, coffee shops, restaurants, the downtown transit station, even hung among the trees that run through the middle of the mall.
This is only the second year of this festival, and co-executive directors Michael Nichols and Jessica Nagle have powered it with some of the top figures in photojournalism: James Nachtwey, Mary Ellen Mark, David Alan Harvey, Joel-Peter Witkin, Sam Abell, Eugene Richards, to drop just a handful of names.
Each day has had a headline event -- 'INsight' conversations with Marks on Thursday, Witkin on Friday, and Nacthwey later today. They're styled along the concept of 'Inside the Actors Studio,' an interview show in which host James Lipton interviews prominent actors. Same concept here, with Marks, Witkin and Nacthwey being interviewed about themselves and their work while their work is shown on a large screen in the downtown mall's historic Paramount Theater.

Marks (above, right) talked about her career and highlighted some of her recent work, including 'Prom,' a collection of portraits she shot using a 20x24" Polaroid camera, and 'Twins,' again a collection of portraits she shot at the Twins Days festival a number of years ago at Twinsburg, Ohio. She lamented that over her 40-plus year career as a documentary photographer, that right now, "the world of documentary photography is very, very narrow ... not a lot of magazines are doing this anymore."

The downtown mall area in Charlottesville is a wonderful location to serve as a hub for this event -- everything is walkable, including the multimedia show Friday night at the Ix Warehouse that displayed an amazing variety of photography -- some two dozen or so photographers' works being shown inside a bare-bones warehouse with exposed brick walls, steel girders and in some areas, no roof. Everything wraps up tonight with another display of images at the Charlottesville Pavillion at the end of the mall.

In two short years, this event that emerged from 20 years of informal backyard celebrations of photography is most assuredly a visual event not to be missed.
- Posted by: Gary Hopkins

The FujiFilm S100FS
With Father's Day fast approaching, our friends at Switched.com have put together a gadget guide of hot gifts. Called out from among the various suggested items -- which include stuff like a GPS navigation device, a unique charging station, even a programmable slow cooker -- are a couple of digital cameras: the Olympus Stylus 1030 SW and the FujiFilm S100FS.
The Olympus is marketed as a camera that can take a beating -- it's supposedly crush proof and will operate underwater at up to 1 fathom (33 feet). And as Switched review Evan Shamoon notes, the Fuji camera is sort of a "faux digital SLR" in that it does not have interchangeable lenses, but it does have a relatively flexible fixed lens that can give you focal lengths of between 28mm to 400mm -- an incredibly wide range. That kind of flexibility will allow you the ability to shoot everything from fairly wide angle to a nice, tight zoom to get you close to a subject even though you might need to stand relatively far away. Think kids baseball or soccer games or zooming in on a particularly unique species of bird that you come across on a walk.
If you're looking for those kinds of features in a camera, check them out.
- Posted by: Gary Hopkins
- Tags: Photojournalism

We ran one photo from this series in our Pictures of the Week photo gallery, but I thought that showing these photos as a group would give a sense of just how close this Marine came to being hit, and how instantaneously and irrevocably things can change in combat. Luckily this Marine escaped with his life.
- Posted by: Gary Hopkins
- Tags: Photojournalism
Slightly blurry, but easy to read what's happening. The caption says, "A woman survivor tries to escape from the debris of a collapsed building after an earthquake in Dujiangyan, Sichuan province May 12, 2008." You realize it's been hours and hours since this photo was taken, and you think of the fate of this woman, trapped amid tons of rubble from a collapsed building. How badly was she hurt? Did she make it? It's clear she's been trapped a while. It looks as if someone tried to give her comfort by placing a red pillow under her head.
- Posted by: Gary Hopkins
A young woman reads a book at the opening of the Turin book fair, which honors Israeli writers, in Turin, Italy, May 8. The fair in the northern Italian city opened Thursday amid heavy security. (Massimo Pinca, AP)
This is the stock in trade of many daily photographers -- getting assigned to cover something as relatively mundane as the opening of a book fair. You draw that assignment and think, "You've got to be kidding me. I'm gonna have to go make a picture at a book fair? Great." And you wonder what you did to get on the wrong side of the assignment editor that day.
Then you get to the assignment and see possibilities in light. You think, "OK, I can work with this ... " And you wait for something to happen. And it does. Click.
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