I’ve said before that the long version of my life story (i.e. why I am a photographer, and why I’m interested in Russia and Eastern Europe) owes everything to the movie Top Gun. From four years old through high school I dreamed of being a fighter pilot, in the F-14 if I could make it happen. Things went a different way of course, but sometimes they overlap again: on Friday a Canadian CF-18 crashed during practice for an Alberta airshow. The pilot ejected and is reportedly fine. But the crash produced some tremendous video and some even more incredible still images shot by Lethbridge Herald photographer Ian Martens. Unbelievable.

Of course as a photographer who has a lifelong fascination with jet planes I have an eye out for this kind of picture. I’ll never forget this horrifying video of a Ukrainian crash into a crowd of spectators nor this award-winning image of an American F-16 pilot ejecting shot by USAF Staff Sgt. Bennie J. Davis III. Both are slightly more dramatic than today’s footage from Alberta but its incredible to see such images again. Dangerous business.

Two collectives are putting their money where their mouths are and supporting new journalism. It’s great to see this kind of effort and monetary support rising up from within the ranks of photographers.

Luceo Images’ Student Project Award is due real soon, but you still have time to submit. From the call for entries: “Central to LUCEO’s mission is our belief in the importance of long-term projects. We also understand that developing photographers need support. To advance both of these causes, LUCEO has created the Luceo Student Project Award, which will be disbursed annually to a talented student photographer in support of a significant and developing body of work.” One winner will receive $1000 to pursue the project as well as direct mentorship from one member of Luceo Images.

MJR’s film grant aims to support film-based projects, and will grant $500 to one photographer. More than that, the group wants “to start a conversation. This is where the information/drinks evening, portfolio reviews and the winner’s event come into play – it’s all an opportunity for us to get to know you and for you to get to know the wider photographic community.”

I know many photographers worry that their work isn’t good enough to win these sorts of competitions, but the only sure way not to win is not to enter. You lose nothing by entering, and gain valuable experience of editing a story or portfolio. If you’re even halfway thinking about entering, do it!

Be sure to check out more calls for entry on our photo calendar.

There are quite a few big deadlines this weekend on our photocalendar. Some are free, others have entry fees…

Our monthly posting of dvafoto’s deadline calendar. The calendar can be accessed in a web browser, or with ical or xml applications. If you know of any upcoming deadlines not on the list, please send them to deadlines@dvafoto.com or use the submissions page.

A photographer who, last April, invoked California State Shield Law protections revealed one photo and his own name by entering and winning an award in the College Photographer of the Year competition. Alex Welsh, whose work we mentioned previously when it won the Gold Medal in Documentary Photography, photographed a murder scene while working on the Hunters Point story which has been widely recognized this year. Police investigating the crime asked Welsh to hand over images of the crime scene, but Welsh refused to do so, citing protections against releasing journalists’ unpublished material and notes. A San Francisco Superior Court judge sided with the photographer, deciding that Shield Laws applied in this case, and kept the photographer’s name withheld from other media and court documents for the photographer’s safety. The photographer, it turns out, had already released his name and at least one of the images in question to the College Photographer of the Year competition. Now, police again are trying to get Welsh’s cooperation in their investigation. The San Francisco Weekly has more.

“After careful consideration, we found it imperative to disqualify the photographer from the contest. The principle of World Press Photo is to promote high standards in photojournalism. Therefore, we must maintain the integrity of our organization even when the outcome is regrettable.” -Michiel Munneke, managing director of World Press Photo

Lens, PetaPixel, and BJP all have good coverage of the latest photo manipulation scandal in photojournalism: World Press Photo has disqualified Stepan Rudik, 3rd place Sports Features in the 2010 contest, for an ethics violation. Rudik removed an element of a picture (see the slideshow above) in violation of World Press Photo contest regulations against image alteration, specifically this rule: “The content of the image must not be altered. Only retouching which conforms to the currently accepted standards in the industry is allowed.” The object seems to stem from the removal of a person’s foot from the background of the picture, which Rudik defended to the BJP, saying, “the photograph I submitted to the contest is a crop, and the retouched detail is the foot of a man which appears on the original photograph, but who is not a subject of the image submitted to the contest.”

I’ve got to echo Asim Rafiqui: What a laughable extreme crop and toning job. Color and tilt correction in photoshop is one thing, moody vignetting in photoshop is another, but this is a whole new level of turning a crap photo into something entirely different. Wow. This, rather than the offending foot, is the bigger problem for the credibility of photojournalism.

Our monthly posting of dvafoto’s deadline calendar. The calendar can be accessed in a web browser, or with ical or xml applications. If you know of any upcoming deadlines not on the list, please send them to deadlines@dvafoto.com or use the submissions page.

Citing difficulty experienced by those trying to upload their entries, Worldpress Photo has extended the 2010 contest deadline to Jan. 17.

Our calendar has been updated.

Also, in speaking with others, it seems like twitter would be a natural way to keep people informed about deadlines. We’ve begun using the #photocalendar hashtag (rss for #photocalendar)

As has sometimes happened in previous years, so many people tried to submit at once on the day of the deadline that some of them could not get through, or experienced random errors.

In order to ease the crunch and allow everyone who has been trying to submit to get their work in, the deadline has been extended to Jan 17, 2010. -Magenta

Magenta’s Flash Forward 2010 deadline has been extended to January 17, 2010.  Good to hear if you missed the deadline.  The contest is open to “All photographers in Canada, the UK and the US, 34 years of age and under….”  Our calendar has been updated.  Here’s the 2009 list of winners, which includes plenty of familiar names.  Also, in addition to the yearly Flash Forward competition, Magenta plans a bi-annual Flash Forward Festival, the first of which will happen in October 2010.

We’re going to start posting our deadline calendar on a monthly basis in the interest of making it more visible. The calendar can be accessed in a web browser, or with ical or xml applications. If you know of any upcoming deadlines not on the list, please send them to deadlines@dvafoto.com.

SocialDocumentary.net has announced the winners in the site’s “Documenting the Global Recession” contest. Tomasz Tomaszewski’s story “Hades?,” a story documenting widespread loss of industry and jobs in Poland, took the top prize with honorable mentions going to Khaled Hasan, Michael McElroy, and Shiho Fukada, and the People’s Choice awards going to Matt Eich and David Wells. Lots of great work to see behind those links, but I’m especially interested in the contest being used as a way to generate interest in work addressing the economy. We’ve written previously about tired images of financial crises and the difficulty of photographing something as nebulous and abstract as a recession related to complex financial derivatives. These stories recognized in SocialDocumentary.net’s contest humanize complicated international financial issues from a deeply engaged and emotional perspective. Definitely worth a look.