Exposed Interview Archives - Page 2 of 3

2014 Best In Show: Aziz Yazdani

March 10, 2014 By Meaghan Gay

As we were excited to announce earlier this year, we’re introducing Best In Show prizes for the 8th annual Exposed DC Photography Show. We invited a panel of distinguished Washington-area photojournalists to, in their esteemed opinion, pick their favorite photograph from our group of 49 images. Each Best In Show winner receives a $100 prize sponsored by the Corcoran College of Art + Design.

We’ll be announcing the winners each day through next Monday.

Today’s Best in Show image is the fantastic “Orange Line” by Aziz Yazdani. Congrats Aziz! His photo was chosen by judge Jamie Rose, an international photojournalist and senior partner at the Momenta Group, LLC. (We interviewed Jamie about Momenta last month.)

Exposed: The contrast between the people in the photo is so striking, and a perfect slice of life on the Metro where everyone is in their own world. I know everyone is wondering what caused the girls in the background to have the reaction they did. Do you remember what it was?

Yazdani: This photo was taken on Halloween night and this group of adolescent girls definitely wanted the entire train to know they were ready to make some noise. They wanted attention, so I gave it to them.

Exposed: What were you thinking when you took the photo?

Yazdani: As soon as I saw the man with the headphones blocking out the ruckus from behind him, I knew that I had to frame him in the photo. The juxtaposition was immediately obvious so I framed, focused, and hit the shutter.

Exposed: Did taking the photo cause any reaction from any of the subjects? Did they even notice that you took it?

Yazdani: They definitely noticed me. Although I had my small unassuming Leica M7 with me, I had my big old Vivitar 283 flash firing while photographing them. I took about four or five photos of them (see strip from Contact Sheet). I generally try to engage people in situations like this. I may have complemented them on they’re hair accessories or something, who knows? Long story short, they didn’t mind at all.

Exposed: Jaime Rose from Momenta awarded this prize to you, are you familiar with her work?

Yazdani: I am familiar with her work. She may have come through the Leica Store DC, where I work, for a Momenta Workshop that was hosted here. I really respect and enjoy her photographs. I see too many mundane political grip and grin shots from photographers in this city and she is able to break away from that boring type of photograph and make interesting, well-thought images. I am flattered and appreciate that she chose my photograph.

You can see more of his work at STRATA Collective and his website.

How are Local Retail Photography Businesses Doing? A Survey Says: Not So Great

February 25, 2014 By Meaghan Gay

Part of being a good photography business owner is understanding the market for the work you are doing. There are large photography organizations that can provide info on trends in the industry across the country, but finding information on a local level has been more difficult. Photographer Kat Forder is trying to change that, and created a survey last year to understand how retail photographers have been fairing in the D.C. area.

Many of the results from last year’s survey are not good news for retail photographers: “52% of the respondents reported that their business gross for the previous year was below $30,000.” Forder has brought the survey back for 2014 and made some updates. We caught up with her to get more information about this endeavor.

1. Can you give us some background on the survey?

The 2013 survey asked retail photographers to look back at the past year (2012). That survey was launched March 2013, timed to coincide with when photographers were attending to their year end bookkeeping, and the results were tabulated and summarized and published a few months after that. This year’s survey has also been released during the end of the fiscal year, and asks for information from the past year.

The survey and the results are free, and the responses are completely anonymous. The questions have been developed very carefully to ensure the integrity of the responses and anonymity of the participants.

[Read more…]

Exposed Interview: Nick Gingold, California BrewMasters

February 6, 2014 By Meaghan Gay

Vinnie Cilurzo, Russian River, Santa Rosa, in his barrel room, home to some of the best sour beers in the world.

Washington D.C. is a city that sees many residents come and go, and that includes photographers. After living and working in D.C. as a photojournalist for six years, photographer Nick Gingold moved to California and started working with California craft beer brewers. His California BrewMasters project is a series of portraits and interviews with many of the craft brewers in the Golden State, and Gingold is trying to raise $25,000 through Kickstarter to produce a book.

While Gingold may no longer call D.C. home, he still travels here several times a year for work. Anyone who can produce such hilarious portraits of our annual High Heel race participants, will always be part of the D.C. photo community.

Exposed: What interested you in Craft Brewers, and how did this idea get started?

Gingold: This all started about two years ago. I had just moved back to my hometown in Southern California from Washington D.C., and as a photographer I was trying to find a new project to sink my teeth into. My brother-in-law was getting really into craft beer and began introducing me to all of these amazing flavors. He now works at a brewery called Left Coast in San Clemente, CA. I started to explore it more and realized there was this rapid acceleration within the craft beer industry, they were seeing double digit yearly growth during a down economy. With that, a really interesting sub-culture of beer-enthusiasts was being formed. Today, there are over 300 breweries in California, next year we’ll see 40-60 new ones come out of the San Diego area alone. It just seemed like something really great was happening and there was an opportunity for that to be explored.

[Read more…]

Exposed Interview: Paulo Ordoveza of @PicPedant

January 28, 2014 By Meaghan Gay

Photo by Cameron Davidson/Corbis Images used with permission. This photo was posted by @EarthPics without attribution or payment. It was removed from Twitter after @PicPedant posted the name of the photographer. — Photo by Cameron Davidson/Corbis Images, used with permission. This photograph was posted by @EarthPics on Twitter without attribution or payment. It was removed from Twitter after @PicPedant posted the name of the photographer.

If you use Twitter, you have probably seen one of the dozens of feeds that post photos without giving proper credit to the original photographer. Some accounts, like @HistoryInPics and @Earthpix, have millions of followers who retweet and share the uncredited images thousands of times. Those accounts recently sparked debate after the teenagers who manage them were interviewed by Alexis Madrigal for the Atlantic. While not crediting the photographers is bad enough, sometimes these accounts post historical photos with inaccurate captions, bad science, or images that are photoshopped and passed off as unaltered.

But as the number of accounts sharing uncredited photos grows, so does the backlash. A few Twitter accounts are dedicated to exposing the truth about the images. One of them is run by Paulo Ordoveza, a local who posts as @PicPedant. Ordoveza started his account just five days ago, and already has over 1,300 followers. He responds to tweets from the offending accounts, providing the photographer’s name or the correct scientific or historical information. Ordoveza’s work caught our attention, so we asked him a few questions about his uphill battle exposing uncredited or false images.

[Read more…]

Exposed Interview: Jamie Rose, Momenta Group

January 22, 2014 By Meaghan Gay

Uganda's Kids of Africa have been helping orphans find a home in a safe, loving community. (Photo by Jamie Jackson/Momenta Workshops) — Uganda’s Kids of Africa have been helping orphans find a home in a safe, loving community.
(Photo by Jamie Jackson/Momenta Workshops)

Jamie Rose is an international photojournalist. She earned a Bachelor’s Degree from American University, and a Master’s Degree in Visual Communications from Syracuse University. She has won awards and grants from the United Nations, the Alexia Foundation and the White House News Photographers’ Association. Her work has been published in leading newspapers and magazines around the country.

In 2008 Rose helped found the Momenta Group, LLC, a communications company based in D.C. that runs Momenta Workshops and Momenta Creative. The Momenta Workshops are photography and multimedia workshops held around the world, with a focus on using photography for social change. This year alone, Momenta is hosting workshops in New Orleans, Bali, and Sierra Leone. All photographs accompanying this interview were shot by Momenta students.

Rose is also a special guest judge for the 2014 Exposed DC show. We spoke with her about Momenta, working with non-profits, and the D.C. photo community.

[Read more…]