Here’s a fascinating video in which Italian photographer Ruben Salvadori demonstrates how dishonest many conflict photographs are. Salvadori spent a significant amount of time in East Jerusalem, studying the role photojournalists play in what the world sees. By turning his camera on the photographers themselves, he shows how photojournalists often influence the events they’re supposed to document objectively, and how photographers are often pushed to seek and create drama even in situations that lack it.

You might start looking at conflict photos in the news a lot differently after watching this.

(via ISO1200)

News agency Reuters is being accused of biased reporting after it was discovered that photographs released by the agency had critical elements such as daggers, blood, and injured soldiers cropped out. The story originally broke on Little Green Footballs over the weekend.

Here’s a photograph released by Reuters showing activists attempting to take an Israeli soldier hostage:

Inspection of the original photograph reveals that three important elements were cropped out of the photograph. The first is the second injured soldier in the upper right hand corner, the second is the knife being held by an activist, and third is the large pool of blood on the wooden railing.

Here’s another photograph released by Reuters:

From looking at the original photograph, we see that a knife was cropped out of this one as well:

Reuters is no stranger to controversy, as there have been quite a few cases where photographs were retracted, with the subjects ranging from Middle East conflicts to the recent volcano eruption in Iceland.

Reuters has responded to this latest controversy on their blog, saying:

A number of readers contacted us about this. At the top and bottom you can see our initial cropped versions on the left, and the full frame versions on the right.

The images in question were made available in Istanbul, and following normal editorial practice were prepared for dissemination which included cropping at the edges. When we realized that a dagger was inadvertently cropped from the images, Reuters immediately moved the original set, as well.

Reuters has also published a series of non-cropped photographs of the raid in a slideshow.

What are your thoughts on this controversy? Do you think the daggers were “inadvertently” cropped from the images, or is this a case of biased reporting?

(via Amateur Photographer)

Last week, we posted news that Oren Lavie’s music video for “Her Morning Elegance,” filmed using stop-motion by photographer Eyal Landesman, was nominated for a Grammy Award. Though the video did not win the award, Landesman has already garnered several photo accolades as a commercial and documentary-style photographer. Landesman is based in Israel, but his work has also been shown internationally, including exhibitions in Boston and Budapest. His print stills for “Her Morning Elegance” are on display at Space F2/Bergamot Station in Santa Monica, California, and are available for purchase at the HME Gallery site.

PetaPixel: Can you tell us about yourself, what you do, and your background?

Eyal Landesman: I was born in Haifa, Israel in the year 1970. My professional career started in 1993 as a photojournalist for various magazines in Israel and a number of international press agencies. Today I specialize in dance and theater photography.

PP: Your website portfolio reflects a strong awareness of the human body, motion, and dance. Was it natural to shift your style of capturing that motion and converting it into a stop-motion music video?

EL: I was drawn always to the exploration of the borders between imagination, illusion and documentary work through photography. Throughout my career I investigated these borders by a variety of technological and cultural platforms, starting at the theatre, both in front and behind the curtains. Later, by expanding my interest in a search of the borders of conventional photography both in time and space in images created with the use of diverse technologies and presentation forms, e.g. zooming and projection of the captured image, using public or darkened spaces or using Stop motion technology.

PP: What was the shooting process like?

EL: The clip was made a year ago in my studio located in Tel-Aviv, Israel. The video was made using simple technology. We used Tungsten light and a gobo mask for the windows. It took us around 48 hours to shoot the video; we worked on it almost non-stop… I used the Canon 5D camera, only a month later did the Canon Mark 2 arrived to Israel (I did it without using live view).

PP: What did you find most challenging while making the music video?

EL: All my life as a still photographer I try to catch one moment (mostly in 1/1000 sec). in stop motion the challenge is to think about 2096 photos together one after the other, in 3.2 min.

PP: I’d imagine there would be so many elements to think about: music, motion, image composition, and so forth. How did you manage to blend all those elements together so seamlessly?

EL: We work together, directors, animation, and of course  Oren Lavie the musician, and together we created it.

PP: Congratulations again on your Grammy nomination. Were you expecting such a mainstream response to the video?

EL: I was not expecting such an amount of viewers. I was more surprised by the 10 million hits on YouTube, than the Grammy nomination.