ASMP NorCal Presents 'Photojournalism Today'

Please join me and four accomplished photojournalists on Tuesday, March 13 in San Francisco for a panel discussion about the challenges of working in the news media today.

Hosted by the Northern California chapter of the American Society of Media Photographers, the "Photojournalism Today" panel includes:

Noah Berger, a freelancer who has spent the past 17 years covering Bay Area news for editorial, corporate, and government clients. On the news side, Berger works principally for the Associated Press, San Francisco Chronicle, Bloomberg News and the New York Times. He also covers transportation/development issues for state agencies and health care for the Blue Shield Foundation and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

Mike Kepka (pictured), a San Francisco Chronicle staff photographer since 1999. Five years ago, he started producing his own photo/multimedia column for the Chronicle called The City Exposed, which celebrates San Francisco’s quirky collection of characters. In the past year he has transformed his column into a venue for new forms of multimedia techniques that continue to follow a true “one-man-band” style of reporting and production. You can follow Kepka’s work at www.Sfgate.com/cityexposed and vimeo.com/sfchronicle and on Twitter at @thecityexposed.

Jane Tyska, a photo and videojournalist at the Oakland Tribune/Bay Area News Group. Tyska spent a month in Nepal and Bhutan in 2010, following a Bhutanese refugee family from a camp in eastern Nepal to their new home in Oakland, and continued to document them until the birth of their first baby. Tyska also documented the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti and a local contractor’s efforts to help rebuild. She has won a national award for the Bhutan project from the South Asian Journalists Association and a YIPPA international press photo award for her Haiti work. Tyska has also received recent awards from the California Newspapers Publishers Association and the East Bay and Peninsula Press Clubs.

Judy Walgren, the Director of Photography at the San Francisco Chronicle for just over one year. She faces daily challenges involving a depleted budget and fewer photojournalists to shoot the increasing number of Chronicle iPad app assignments, which require panoramas, galleries, and multimedia. Before coming to the Chronicle, Walgren was staff photographer at the Denver Post, the Rocky Mountain News and the Dallas Morning News, where she was part of a team that received the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting on violent human rights abuses against women worldwide. She has been awarded the Barbara Jordan Award for reporting on people with disabilities, the Sidney Hillman Award, and multiple Harry Chapin World Hunger Awards, in addition to other honors.


I'll be debuting segments of my new documentary feature, "Deadline Every Second: On Assignment with 12 AP Photojournalists."

Price:

ASMP NorCal members:     5.00

Affiliates, students            10.00

Non-members                  15.00

Pizza and drinks will be available with the purchase of a $5 food ticket.

Time:
6-7 pm Social hour with pizza and drink
7-9:30 pm Panel discussion

Location:
Left Space Studios
2055 Bryant Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

 http://www.leftspace.com/   

My First Flak Jacket & Other Stories from Israel

I was in Israel for a month, shooting my documentary about AP photographers called “Deadline Every Second.”

The first morning I walked into the AP office in Jerusalem, the staff outfitted me with a bullet proof flax-jacket, weighing 16 pounds, a steel helmet, a portable telephone and sent me off to document Pulitzer prize-winning AP photographer Oded Balilty covering the "Day of Rage."

I later found out that protective gear comes in two sizes -- “heavy” for war wear and “light” for clash wear. Unfortunately, AP was out of the “light” at the moment.

The uprising, which was called by Hamas, involved "riots" or "clashes," depending on your politics, between young, rock-throwing, tire-burning Palestinians and Israeli police shooting tear gas, stun guns and rubber bullets. The police also used dogs to chase down rioters. The one place you don't want get caught is between the two groups. Especially when police unleashed the dogs who go after the protesters. The dogs, however, cannot distinguish protesters from journalists. The clashes alternated between the masked teenagers, using an overturned garbage container for protection, advancing on the police by throwing stones or using sling-shots to launch stones, and the police repeling the youth with canisters of tear gas and loud stun guns.

The sound of the stun guns made me think I was in the middle of a war. To add to the overall auditory illusion, the Palestinian youth were firing a series of firecrackers. As soon as the tear gas went off, all the kids ran up the hill with me huffing and puffing behind. AP was fresh out of extra gas masks for visiting photojournalists the day I arrived, so I was left to cough, cry, run away from the cloud of gas. Wearing his gas mask, Balility stayed in the thick of the action when the tear gas exploded, as I made a hasty retreat up the hill and shot the action with a long lens.

Two photojournalists were injured during the day at the clash I covered by Israeli police bullets and tear gas canisters. The Reuters bureau photographer wound up with shrapnel in his leg and the AFP (Agency France Press) photographer was shot in the wrist with a rubber bullet. I did not get hit with anything more than tear gas....

Read the whole story of my month in Israel shooting video of AP photographers in action for my documentary "Deadline Every Second" here.

Photos by Oded Balilty.