Congratulations to Alison Viskovic, who has been successful in gaining her Fellowship of PSNZ (FPSNZ). Alison will be formally presented with her award this Saturday at the PSNZ National Convention.

“Hand Lady of the Forest” (c) Heather Feary

At the Convention her granddaughter Heather Feary will also receive the Ronald D Woolf Youth Award & PSNZ Silver medal for her image “Hand Lady of the Forest” which was the best print by an under 25 year old for the PSNZ Canon National Exhibition (Natex).  Heather’s image is on the right – you can see this plus other awarded Natex images in this blog post and also this blog post. 

Alison played an important role in encouraging Heather and getting her to enter, as noted in this recent news story.

Meeting Monday 28 April

At Monday’s meeting Alison will show her fellowship set and explain how she produced it.  We will also see a slide show of the images that members have submitted for the Waikanae Estuary exhibition.  So far there have been around 100, which is excellent. But we still need lots more, so get snapping and submitting by the deadline of 26 May.

Photojournalism Ethics (Image Manipulation)

Thanks to Catherine Strong for her talk to KCPS last Monday which did indeed prove to be very interesting.  She started by distinguishing between a Journalism Photo (part of a story, perhaps a head and shoulders image of a newsmaker), versus Photojournalism where the photo tells the story by itself, perhaps aided by a descriptive caption.

Another important distinction is between Editing and Manipulation of an image.

Editing corrects problems in HOW the photo was made (e.g., too light, red eye problems, too wide a frame), and should result in something which is more or less the same as seen by the naked eye at that time.

Manipulation corrects or alters things in the actual scene (e.g., more smoke from a fire, different background, re-position a ball, remove a video camera, remove markings on a baby’s toy).  Manipulation results in something which is different from what was seen by others there at the time. In general this is a no-no for photojournalism.

Catherine showed lots of examples to illustrate her points, and her talk was very well received.