Listen to Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine, discuss working with Annie Leibovitz: “You have to give her an important dress. You don’t go to annie to do a t-shirt and a pair of jeans. She loves the couture, she loves a ball gown. She needs something that will really fill the page. Otherwise I don’t think she can take the picture. Or she needs a narrative involving a lot of people. So her approach to fashion was very different for Vogue, and I think very innovative and very exciting, and certainly got us a huge amount of attention because she took fashion in such a different direction.”

The post Annie Leibovitz
Annie Leibovitz And Fashion Photography appeared first on Witnify.

This video features colleagues and subjects speaking to Annie Leibovitz’s work ethic and persona while on a set. Tina Brown, former editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair, says of Leibowitz’s demeanor: “I never found that her difficulty was something that wasn’t always 100% worth it. And very often the difficulty was just about her determination to get the absolute right thing, and her commitment was to her vision. Period. And if you didn’t want to buy into it, tough. It was just too bad.” Features editor of Vanity Fair, Jane Sarkin, speaks to Leibovitz’s self-awareness: “She knows she’s tough. She’s the first one to admit she’s tough, but she’s really passionate about what she does and she wants to do a good job. She has always tried her best on every single shoot that I’ve done with her. There’s never a question that it’s not going to come back perfect. Never a question.”

The post Annie Leibovitz
The Work Ethic Of Annie Leibovitz appeared first on Witnify.

In this video, colleagues and subjects, including Whoopi Goldberg, Patti Smith, and Arnold Schwarzenegger discuss Leibovitz’s own celebrity status and what it is like to be photographed by her. On Leibovitz’s own celebrity status, and how that translates into her work, Tina Brown, former editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair says: “She is a major star herself, and stars relate to other stars. They’re like dolphins. They speak to each other the same language.” Of being photographed by Leibovitz, Goldberg says: “When you look at her work and you look at all the people she’s photographed, it’s not bad company to be in. It’s like winning an Oscar. It’s limited. It’s a limited company. And the company you’re keeping is not bad at all.”

The post Annie Leibovitz
Annie Leibovitz: A Celebrity Photographing Celebrities appeared first on Witnify.

In this video, colleagues such as Anna Wintour, Jim Moffat and Jane Sarkin discuss Leibovitz and her process of composing sets and shoots. Lori Goldstein talks about Leibovitz’s contribution to the merger of editorial and advertising: “We wouldn’t have just one set. Every idea is a production onto itself. We’d have four or five ideas for each person. And there would be four or five – you’d look around and there would be four or five different sets. It really was like doing a movie, and I think those were the days when it started – editorial and advertising started meshing into there was no difference, and I think that Annie is really, you know, part of being responsible for that.” Philippe Garner, international head of photographs at Christie’s, discusses Leibovitz’s incredible use of light, saying: “One of her great skills is the ability to create artificial light situations out of doors. SO you have this disconcerting aspect of realizing that it’s an out of door picture, and yet the light is quite unreal.” Goldstein also remarks on how Leibovitz is the complete package: “Annie knows what looks great. In every aspect. She knows when makeups not right, she knows when the hair is not right, she knows when the clothes aren’t right. Even though sometimes I disagree. But she has a great eye for everything, and that’s what most people don’t have.”

The post Annie Leibovitz
Colleagues On Annie Leibovitz And Her Process appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRhbqtV6RcA

Annie Leibovitz is a world-renowned portrait photographer whose career began working with Rolling Stone Magazine. In this video, Leibovitz answers questions from readers of Time Magazine. When asked if she thinks she is difficult to work with, Leibovitz says: “It took me a long time to learn how to work with people.” When asked if she’s ever been so frustrated that she has shut a photo shoot down, Leibovitz responds: “No. If anything, if something goes wrong with a photo shoot, it’s my fault… If I don’t get a good picture, I don’t blame my subject. I blame me.”

The post Annie Leibovitz
Annie Leibovitz On Working With Celebrities appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhjEQpEGvaQ

Prior to a state visit to the United States, the British government asked Annie Leibovitz to photograph the Queen. In this video you can see a glimpse into the behind-the-scenes work that goes into a photo shoot. Of working with the Queen, Leibovitz says: “I just liked her feistiness. I was really impressed with it. At first, i wasn’t too sure if she was kidding or not, and then I realized she wasn’t kidding and I thought ‘Oh, this is going to be a five minute session.’ I thought she totally pulled herself back together and started to enjoy herself, and she totally wanted ot make sure that she did her part on her end.”

The post Annie Leibovitz
Annie Leibovitz Photographs The Queen appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8ZaD0W3yms

Ansel Adams was an American photographer and environmentalist who took many well-known landscape photographs of the American West. One of his most famous shots was entitled Moonrise Over Hernandez. In this video, Ansel Adams’s son, Michael Adams, recalls being with his father when he took the famous photograph: “I was seven years old, we were coming back to Santa Fe from North and Ansel saw this image. He pulled the car off the road very rapidly, got out, got us – there were two of us also with him – and we were trying to get the tripod and he got the camera on it and he made it – he looked at the picture, and then he wanted his exposure meter but he couldn’t find it.”

The post Ansel Adams
Ansel Adams’ Son On Shooting Moonrise Over Hernandez appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_xVSgPY8Qo

This video reveals the rescued photographs of the late former first lady of Argentina Eva Perón, which were taken by Alfredo Mazzorotlo during the last six years of Perón’s life. Mazzorotlo’s photographs depict Perón at different ceremonies, on various trips, and in private meetings. The photographer’s daughter, Maria Teresa Mazzorotola explains that her father chose to bury the photographs for nearly twenty years because he feared they would be lost or damaged. Maria Teresa describes that it was necessary to protect these photographs because Eva Perón was an incredibly influential political yet controversial figure in Argentinian political history.

The post Eva Perón
The Lost Photographs of Evita Resurface appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bb51KrjvQ74

War photographer Philip Jones Griffiths discusses the pictures he documented and the visions he saw when visiting Vietnamese villages that had been sprayed with Agent Orange, a herbicide that contains high amounts of dioxin. As targets of the United States’ plan for herbicidal warfare during the Vietnam War, these areas were routinely covered with this herbicide, causing many children to be born with deformities. In this video, Griffiths talks about his experience visiting a village with the highest percentage of malformed children in Vietnam. He discusses the upsetting images he photographed and also shares an emotional anecdote about one girl assumed to be “brain dead.”

The post Agent Orange
The Long-Term Effects of Agent Orange appeared first on Witnify.

Author: Winslow Townson

“If I had run aimlessly around the perimeter of the blast sites, I would have wasted my time and a chance to really contribute to the story…”

Patriots Day. This Massachusetts holiday celebrates the battles of Lexington and Concord, which were the first battles of the American Revolutionary War in 1775. The day always begins with battle re-enactments. Then the Red Sox play an 11AM game, and during and after the game there is the running of the Boston Marathon, a race that first ran in 1897.

There are always lots of photojournalists working in and around Boston on Patriots Day.  This year it fell on Monday April 15, 2013, and it also included celebrating Jackie Robinson Day at Fenway Park and ballparks across the country, with every player wearing number 42.  The Red Sox celebrated a bottom of the ninth walk-off win just eight blocks from the finish line of the Boston Marathon. The real story of the game was not so much the walk-off-win by the home team, but the celebration of the first African American man to play in the Major Leagues. Being assigned to the baseball game that day I knew that being sure to photograph multiple players in one frame wearing the number 42 became the most important picture of the game, and combining it with something patriotic to commemorate Patriots Day would be a bonus.  Well before I even got to the ballpark, I knew that was the picture I needed to make that day.  It was a sunny day, so I did all my cropping and toning underneath my GriffGear laptop screen shade- a quality, durable and compact screen shade made in Australia.

Boston Red Sox players wearing number 42 (2013). Source: Winslow Townson.

Forty-five minutes after the game ended, I was just finishing filing the last of 48 pictures from the game, which included 22 for the wire and 26 out takes which go directly into the archive.

Then, my phone rang.

The Boston Photo Editor told me that “people were maimed” at the finish line of the Marathon and I was directed to head there right away. He said nothing about a bomb, two bombs, or anything else, because initial information was sparse. That is all the information or direction I received from my editor all day. Cell phone’s didn’t work around the ballpark due to the shear volume of calling and texting about the bombings, and around the finish line all cell phone communication was cut for fear of them being used to trigger another bomb.

As I was leaving the ballpark, word on the street began spreading that bombs went off at the finish line. That information, combined with the never-ending sound of the sirens of emergency vehicles, started to paint the picture for me.

The five minutes it took for me to get from Fenway Park to the area of the finish line was enough time to formulate a plan in my mind before I got out of the car. So, just like the baseball game, I arrived near the bombing scene already knowing the kind of picture I needed to look for. Considering the technology of cameras we use today, knowing what the picture is can often be the bigger challenge than actually making the picture.

Without being able to communicate with any editors or photographers, this was the way I thought out what I needed to do: I knew my wire service had several people covering the finish line and I knew that, considering the scope of what had happened, that getting anywhere near the blast sites was not going to happen. But that did not frustrate me. I knew those extremely experienced photographers we had at the finish line were going to take the responsibility for the pictures in and around the blast sites (the scene, the injured, the rescuers, and the responders).

So, instead of running around wildly all over the area taking pictures, my plan was to locate the spot where runners who had finished or who were taken off the course before they finished were meeting up with their loved ones. Surviving the incident was now part of the story.

I left my car with two EOS 1D X’s, with a 400mm lens on one and a 20mm lens on the other (I also carried a flash and several other zoom lenses with me). I was either going to be able to get right amongst the runners or I was going to be kept a ways away, so I planned for both.

As I suspected, the block and a half away from the blast sites were completely off limits to everyone- and the cops were not screwing around. They were very concerned about more secondary explosions, which are a common terrorist tactic. Here was my first chance at a picture, the police directing people away from the blast sites.

One block further away on Boylston Street (which is the street the finish line is on), I found the busses that all the runners were to get on after they finished the race. This was the spot I was looking for. Here I found people holding signs with the names of runners they were looking for, runners being reunited with others they had run with, runners being reunited with family and friends and people basically walking around with that blank, lost look on their face. There were potential pictures everywhere.

Two thoughts crossed my mind at this point: One was that, with pictures everywhere, it kind of reminded me in a weird way of the moment a team wins a championship. In that case there are pictures with different emotions all over the court, field or rink. The problem now was where to find that one storytelling picture that we all look for at the end of any emotional or championship event. My second thought was that this was an obvious place for a secondary explosion, and I needed to be aware of the surroundings. A long row of porta-johns caught my attention as an area to avoid, and I made myself aware of the locations of mailboxes and trashcans. It seemed sad that in this country, I was in a place where I had to be concerned about these things. And it’s just my own belief, but I’ve always felt that no picture is worth dying for.

It was at this point that I was now basically using two lenses; a 20mm and a 70-200mm zoom. I have stopped using a wide-angle zoom because of trouble with edges of the frame or even sides of the frame not being sharp when other parts of the frame were sharp.

Trying to be respectful of the situation and not just shoving my camera in everybody’s face, I spent a large amount of time just looking and listening for a picture. That’s when I heard it–a faint crying, a kind of quiet whimpering. A young, female runner all by herself, walking towards me wrapped up in a foil blanket and crying as she wrapped her arms around to comfort herself. Instead of walking towards her, I let her just walk past me. I shot about 10 frames (and with the EOS 1D X that doesn’t take long) with a 20mm lens as she passed right by me.

Sometimes you don’t know how a picture will feel until you bring it up on your laptop. So, working for a wire service and knowing that a deadline is passing every second, I headed back to my car to transmit with a wireless card.  The picture of the female runner crying on this page just worked, and I’m not ashamed to say that some luck was involved. It worked for me because other runners are walking around in different directions.  An ambulance is leaving the scene, and the man in the red coat is holding flowers that are obviously for a loved one when the marathon was finished.

Woman crying after the Boston bombing (2013). Source: Winslow Townson.

This picture was just one moment in a day of thousands of moments in Boston, but it appeared on over 75 front pages of newspapers around the world the next day, and it was a double truck in “Leading Off” in Sports Illustrated.

As I said before, there was some luck involved when the different features within the picture all lined up at the same .005 of a second. But I also believe that my thought process on approaching this tragedy got me pictures on this day, just as much as my eye or the camera did. Whether you have a whole day or just a few minutes to come up with a plan, it is a necessity to think clearly, assess the situation, and approach a scene at the place where you best fit into the big picture. If I had run aimlessly around the perimeter of the blast sites, I would have wasted my time and a chance to really contribute to the story.

With over 25 years of experience as a photojournalist, this approach has become second nature.

Winslow can be reached for questions or comments at wwtownson@aol.com; Visit his web site here. 

The post Boston Marathon
[Text] Photojournalist on Capturing Mass Tragedy in a Moment’s Notice appeared first on Witnify.