theprintspace, a photo gallery in London, has announced a summer group exhibition comprised entirely of Flickr photographs, allowing up-and-coming photographers a chance on the big scene.

Four photographs will be selected each month from theprintspace’s Flickr pool by a different industry professional. The guest judge for March, World Press Photography Award-winning photojournalist Laura Pannack, says,

This is a fantastic opportunity for photographers to have their work exhibited and brilliant that theprintspace is lending its space to the best of amateur photography on Flickr. The lack of restrictions on the competition opens up a world of diverse photography, from photographers of all ages, with no distinct theme or genre. We can look forward to discovering some hidden gems.

If you’ve never had work shown in a gallery before, why not give this a shot?

(via PhotographyBLOG)

World Press Photo has disqualified one of the winners of this year’s contest after concluding that the photographer digitally manipulated his work. The disqualified entry “Street fighting, Kiev, Ukraine”, shot by Stepan Rudik for the Russian news agency RIA Novosti, had won 3rd prize in Sports Features.

This year, for the first time, photographers were required to submit RAW image files if the judges suspected that photographs were manipulated beyond what the rules allowed. The rule states:

The content of the image must not be altered. Only retouching which conforms to the currently accepted standards in the industry is allowed.

According to the British Journal of Photography, the manipulation involved removing the foot of one of the subjects in a photo.

(via Amateur Photographer)

Update: Stepan Rudik just contacted us with the original photograph and the version he entered in the contest. He says,

Your website gave information about disqualification of my material at the World Press Photo contest. I do NOT argue the decision of the jury.

At the same time, I would like to present the original photograph, from which it is clear that I haven’t made any significant alternation nor removed any important informative detail. The photograph I submitted to the contest is a crop, and the retouched detail is the foot of a man which appears on the original photograph, but who is not a subject of the image submitted to the contest. I believe this explanation is important for my reputation and good name as a reportage photographer. I’d like this picture to be published.

Here is the photograph in question:

It was actually a crop of the following photograph:

It wasn’t the crop, nor the post-processing, that caused the photograph to be disqualified, but the removal of the portion of the foot that is visible between the thumb and fingers of the hand being bandaged. We’ve cropped it ourselves here (Hover your mouse over the image to compare it to the version Rudik submitted):

Do you think the disqualification was justified? Share your thoughts with us in the comments!

Image credit: Photograph by Stepan Rudik

Online entertainer Ze Frank has an interesting gallery called young me / now me, which features user submitted “before and after” photographs.

Anyone can submit a photo duplicating a photograph from years ago. Here’s an example:

Reproducing my baby photographs would be fun and interesting, but some of them would definitely be pretty weird…

If you have similar photographs, feel free to link us to them in the comments!

The Shorty Awards now have a prize dedicated to Twitter photography: The Shorty Award for Real-Time Photo of the Year. The winner of the award will be invited to the special awards ceremony on March 3rd, 2010 in New York City.

Candidate photographs are nominated through the website, and must be cameraphone photos shot in 2009 and distributed on Twitter through one of the popular social media channels (i.e. Twitpic, Flickr, etc…). The nomination phase ends on February 5th, 2010.

An obvious favorite to win is the following photograph by Janis Krums of US Airways Flight 1549‘s successful ditch in the Hudson River on January 15, 2009:

Krums was on the ferry sent to pick up the passengers, and sent the tweeted the photo via Twitpic from his cameraphone. Here’s a screenshot:

What made the tweet and story particularly noteworthy was that the real-time nature of Twitter allowed the photograph to circulate widely before any mainstream news sources were able to obtain photographs. We’re guessing this is exactly the type of photo the new Shorty award would like to honor.

The ubiquity of cameraphones combined with real-time distribution offered by Twitter has changed the world of photography. When something happens in one part of the world, people can now see it all over the world almost instantly — if someone with a cameraphone and Twitter account is nearby.

Can you think of any other candidate photograph for the new award?

Nikon just announced the winners of the Nikon Festival short film (140 seconds or less) contest a few hours ago, with the grand prize winner going to Marko Slavnic for his Chicken VS Penguin film embedded above. The win comes with a cool $100,000 and a Nikon D5000 DSLR kit. Slavnic’s description:

We all have our share of bad jobs as teenagers. This was mine.

The audience award winner ($25,000) was New York State of Mind by Josh Friedberg.

24 hours in New York City, shot over two different days last year. Working with the Driendl Group I’m lucky enough to gain access to some amazing locations. Starting with sunrise over the East River, moving on to shoot Jerry Driendl at the old Yankee Stadium, back to the lab for a bit, then out to a packed Times Square. Just when I thought the day was done, huge snowflakes started falling from the sky, so it was time to break out the kit again and try to capture the fleeting interaction of nature and the city that never sleeps. A beautiful end to another day in the city. I love the energy of NYC.

About a month ago we reported that José Luis Rodriguez had come under fire after winning the prestigious Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year award. The winning photograph depicted a rare, Iberian wolf hopping a fence to reach food placed outside by the photographer, but rival photographers soon began to question whether the wolf was indeed a wild wolf.

After a month of investigation, Rodriguez has been stripped of the prestigious award and banned for life, in what some are now calling “the biggest scandal to ever hit the world of wildlife photography”. The winning image was selected from among 43,135 submitted from 94 countries.

A statement on the competition’s website states,

The judging panel looked at a range of evidence and took specialist advice from panel judges who have extensive experience of photographing wildlife including wolves. They also considered the responses to specific questions put to the photographer José Luis Rodriguez.

However, Rodriguez continues to deny that the wolf was a captive wolf.

(via Amateur Photographer)

Spanish photographer José Luis Rodriguez recently received the prestigious winning title as the Veolia Environment Wildlife photographer of the year, along with £10,000 (about $20,000 $16,000) in prize money for his image, Storybook Wolf.  The photograph depicts a rare, Iberian wolf hopping a fence to enter a corral where the photographer had placed meat to attract the animal.

However, rival photographers along with a wolf expert allege that the shot was set up, suggesting that the wolf would not naturally jump over the fence, but would be more likely to squeeze through the openings.  Additionally, they allege that Rodriguez may have used a captive, tame wolf from a zoological park near Madrid, and trained the animal to hop the fence until he got the shot.

The contest prohibits use of a captive animal unless specified in the description, and the judges noted they would give preference to photos of natural wild animals.

The description that ran with photographer Rodriguez’s image explain the painstaking efforts he made to get the shot, baiting the wolf with meat, camping out and anticipating its entry into the corral.

Now, the photographer not only has prize money and the winning title at stake, but now his reputation as a photographer is on the line as judges decide the image authenticity during the next few weeks. However, the Guardian quotes contest judge Rosamund Kidman Cox, who said,

But until one bit of evidence can be verified I don’t think it’s possible to accuse the photographer of cheating. [...] It’s not 100%.

(via The Guardian)

Update: This giveaway has now ended. The winners have been randomly selected and are posted here. Thanks to everyone who entered this first contest!

Something I hope to do regularly on PetaPixel is give away gear, accessories, and software to my readers. Today I’m giving away seven (7) free licenses to Unified Color’s HDR PhotoStudio, each worth $149.99.

If you don’t know what HDR is, check out the Wikipedia article on it or take a look at the HDR Flickr group. Here are some sample images showing you what you can do with the software:

To enter this contest, all you need to do is answer the following question:

What is your favorite camera or lens?

There are two ways you can tell us your answer (feel free to use both methods to increase your chances, but one entry per channel please):

1. Leave a comment on this post
2. Send @petapixel a tweet on Twitter. Please hashtag the tweet with #photography

Winners will be announced in a week on the evening of June 20th, 2009.

Good luck!