Dec 31 2010

My Favorite Image of the Year (of Mine)

Category: Viewpoint — Ethan G. Salwen @ 4:07 pm

Here, a few hours before 2011 rolls around, I like the idea of sharing my favorite five or ten images from the year — images I’ve taken that is. And I also like the idea of identifying them with my memory, without searching through my high-ranked images in my catalogs, although that would be fun. I mean, shouldn’t we remember our favorite image, even if we captured hundreds or thousands that we might need to see again to really see for the first time?

Thing is, I got only 20 minutes before I walk out the door to meet up with the parents-in-law-to-be, before we head over to brother- and sister-in-laws to be, for a late night of ¡Feliz Año!, which gets a heck of a lot more play here in Argentina than any other holiday. This one is big!

But perhaps less (time) is more (honest). With no time, I’m going to share, as my favorite image of the year (0f mine), one that I’ve already shared before, when I reported on my teaming up with Human Rights Watch.

Here it is:

ACBlog_100810_HRW_2_Salwen_100728_0409

A few reasons this simple image gets Ethan’s #1 for 2010:

AC_Blog_100810_Human Rights Watch_11. It landed on the this cover for this Human Rights Watch report, which has turned out to be important in relation to current politics in Argentina (which is another story):

2. Actually, it didn’t just “land” on this cover. I made it for this cover, on assigmnment, which had very specific, but yet very open-ended requirements. In other words, this was a very real image-making challenge, and I succeeded at it, which makes the image more likable to me.

3. I captured this image very near the end of my four-hour shoot in Continue reading “My Favorite Image of the Year (of Mine)”

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Aug 10 2010

Working for Human Rights Watch – Multimedia Style

Category: Business & Marketing, In-Camera Techniques, Viewpoint — Ethan G. Salwen @ 10:39 am

AC_Blog_100810_Human Rights Watch_1Human Rights Watch held a press conference in Buenos Aires today to drum up interest in their latest report: “Illusions of Care: Lack of Accountability for Reproductive Rights in Argentina.” I’m pleased to announce the cover image of the report was made by yours truly. It was great to put my photography to work for HRW. It’s even greater that it’s a relationship that has just begun. The next phase will involve my making for them a multimedia production, a topic about which I have been writing so much lately. (In fact, my writing led directly to this job, which is very cool and which I will explain below.)

For the “Illusions of Care” cover I was charged with making an image that spoke to the report’s theme — roadblocks to better reproductive health care for women and girls in Argentina. I could not show the identity of anyone I photographed, unless I obtained a model release, and so I focused on a graffiti-filled hallway in the maternity ward at Hospital Alvarez in Buenos Aires. (The graffiti “Aca nacio” features prominently in the image. “Born here” in Spanish.)

Actually, I was able to get model releases from a number of women I photographed. And some of these images show the women with distressed expressions that might have made a more powerful cover image. However, using one of these images for “Illusions of Care” would have been disingenuous, to say the least. The care at Alvarez maternity ward is excellent. The women’s expressions were the result of them being in various stages of labor.

Although many of the images I made at Alvarez were not right for the report cover, I’ll likely be able to use some in the multimedia project I am now working on for HRW.

Building Trust Was Key

A couple months back Marianne Møllman, the author of “Illusions of Care, contacted me to see if I might be able to make a cover image for the report. I told her I was Continue reading “Working for Human Rights Watch – Multimedia Style”

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May 10 2010

The Frightening, Eye-Opening Five-Shots-Only

Category: Creative Process, In-Camera Techniques — Ethan G. Salwen @ 5:45 pm

AfterCapture-Blog_100510_Five-Only_aI’m not sure exactly why, but suddenly, as I strolled to my bus stop today, passing through the lovely local plaza in Villa del Parque, where I live in Buenos Aires, I thought: I wonder if I can capture this place in only five shots?

I felt a sudden tightness of panic in my chest. A kind of “gulp” panic not felt since my early years working with film, probably during a college assignment, nearing the end of my last roll of 36-exposure Tri-X.

Today I was only carrying my girlfriend’s JPEG-only Lumix point-and-shoot. So the first thing I did was to set the color balance to the “shade” mode, to warm up the cool light in the tree-covered park.

Already my tiny assignment was getting me working. Sure, I know I should set my color balance on my DSLR, and sometimes I do, but more often than not I just snap away with the white balance set to “auto.” (A real dumb and lazy approach considering “I’ll sort this out during raw processing” is definitely not a best practice when recording in the raw mode.)

Continue reading “The Frightening, Eye-Opening Five-Shots-Only”

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Feb 10 2010

Security Cam Photojournalism — Buenos Aires Style

Category: Viewpoint — Ethan G. Salwen @ 2:46 pm

Sure, we all know that any creature with an opposable thumb can take great pictures, thanks to high-tech, digital point-and-shoots. But let’s leave the truly challenging photojournalism to video security cams. I’m mean, check out the first 32 seconds of this baby!

OK, maybe I don’t watch enough “Cops,” and maybe this won’t thrill you, and maybe I clearly can’t even think of a witty introduction, but do check out this video, which kind of feels like a home video for me, and consider this:

• This was filmed near where I live, in Buenos Aires. (Tigre, to be exact, which is like a suburb.)

• Commuter trains in Buenos Aires are huge and crisscross the city — above ground. (Yikes.)

• The picturesque train-crossing safety bars that come down — ding, ding, ding — are often ignored. (See video.)

• Porteños — the people of Buenos Aires — often ride two on a motorcycle, no helmets. (See video)

• Porteño men — even when not drunk — tend to be a little, um, nuts. (See video)

• I first saw the first 32 seconds of this footage twenty times in a row in a television store I had been passing. I was drawn in by the clerks cheering and yelling, like it was a soccer match.

• I was the first one to yell out loud, “Dale, gordo!”,  which seemed natural, and is like is kind of like, “You go, Man!”

• By the time I left the store, we were all chanting it. Dale, gordo! Dale!

And, that, my friends, is me sharing a little bit of my life in Buenos Aires, made possible by the photojournalism of a security cam.

Dale, gordo!

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Nov 05 2009

I Even Got A Christmas Tree!

Category: Creative Process — Ethan G. Salwen @ 2:52 pm

Salwen_071224_1747

So Tuesday Jain Lemos contacts me about whether I might have a Buenos Aires Christmas story and picture package to contribute to News Plink. I don’t know what Plink is, but any project Jain’s involved in is a good one, and I do have some BA X-Mass images I’ve been dying to get out there.

“I don’t know if you’ll want them,” I write. “They’re from ‘Villa 31,’ the city’s most infamous slum.”

Always super efficient, Jain writes back right away, confirming the story without further questions. She’s already run it past Plink’s editor, L.D. Kirshenbaum, and she asks me for a gallery Continue reading “I Even Got A Christmas Tree!”

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