Photographer of the Week: Sebastião Salgado

Twice named Photographer of the Year by the International Center of Photography, Sebastião Salgado is a socially-conscious photographer from Brazil. Born in 1944 in Aimorés, he was raised on a farm with his seven sisters. He worked as an economist for the International Coffee Organization until he was 26 years old, when he decided to become a photojournalist instead.

Photograph from Genesis by Sebastião Salgado

He has traveled around the world as both a photojournalist and a documentary photographer, documenting the hardship and strife on the natural world caused by industrialization.

Mr. Salgado has published many books of photography, starting with Other Americas in 1986, which featured pictures he took of rural peasants in Latin America. Next he worked with Doctors Without Borders to document famine in Africa in two books: Sahel: Man in Distress and Sahel: The End of the Road. His next book, Workers, published in 1993, showed the workers of large-scale industrial and agricultural operations. He began work on Migrations around this time to document people migrating en masse due to industrialization. Migrations was published in 2000. In 2004 he began working on Genesis, showing the undeveloped natural world in the most remote regions of the planet. Genesis was published in 2013.

Works cited: http://www.biography.com/people/sebastião-salgado-40046

Photo Story: Cigarette butts in Corvallis

A cigarette butt rests at the edge of a storm drain on Jackson St in Corvallis. Without intervention, this butt would have washed down the drain and straight into the river.

Cigarette butts litter the ground at the "unofficial smoking area" near the Pride Center on the "non-smoking" campus of OSU.

A cat walks by a homemade ashtray installed in a campus neighborhood north of OSU. This ashtray was created in response to the increased cigarette litter caused by the prohibition of smoking on campus.

Litter and cigarette butts in a red wagon from an individual cleanup effort by Corvallis resident Cheyne Willems

These bags of cigarette butts were collected over Labor Day weekend to serve as a visual aid for the Corvallis City Council meeting to show the need for proper smoking receptacles

Richard Arterbury, founder of the Ocean Blue Project, receives bags of cigarette butts to be shipped by train to be recycled into new products - September 11, 2015

Week 10 Blog Forum: Favorite Photo(s) & Goals

Topic 1:

Favorite Photo(s)

This one is my favorite, but I didn't put it up on my blog because it didn't have enough people in it. Or it wasn't newsworthy. Or whatever.

A discarded M&M's wrapper in the dew-dappled grass on the campus of OSU - November 12, 2015

But I like it. I loved the dew on the grass, so I MACRO-ed in on the candy wrapper and composed my shot. Yes!

But seriously, my favorite picture that I actually put up on my Photojournalism blog is this one, of Hayden Smith jumping over a rail on his skateboard.

Skateboarder Hayden Smith hops off the deck, as his skateboard rolls under the rail, at the skate park in Corvallis - November 14, 2015

This photo stood out because I'm a sucker for this kind of picture. The stopped motion always gets me, and I end up looking at these pictures longer than I look at the others.

Topic 2:

My Goals

I set some goals way back in Week 1, three to be exact, and these are them:

My goals for this class include getting some of my work published, improving my ability to take news-worthy photos, and gaining the confidence necessary to take pictures of strangers making news.

First goal: Get some of my work published. Yes! Multiple times my pictures were featured in print in the Commuter.

A woman holds a burning candle at the candlelight vigil for Umpqua Community College, at LBCC - October 7, 2015

Second goal: Improve my ability to take news-worthy photos. Yes again, my skills have improved. (Unfortunately, my name-getting skills are still not-so-good.)

Foodservice workers serve food in the courtyard of LBCC - November 12, 2015

Third goal: Gain confidence necessary to take pictures of strangers making news. Yes, I have gained confidence in taking pictures of strangers, now I need to get their names.