Screenshots from Easy Release

Over the past few months, I have had to get model releases for many of my assignments. In the past, I’ve hated dealing with all of the paper–you know the drill of carrying around a stack of releases, scanning, filing–and trying to remember who’s who later on. Luckily, a few enterprising developers have made apps for the iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch to do the job. There are a few apps available, but the one I settled on is Easy Release, which handles both model and property releases. It’s stable, integrates the device’s camera, offers releases in a few different languages, and let’s you customize the release language beyond a standard blanket release with an app upgrade. It’s been wonderful for my workflow. I bring along either my iPad or my iPod and easily collect signed releases from as many subjects as I need. After the release is completed (with a witness signature, too), I just email a JPG or PDF copy of the release to myself through the app and file it away with the shoot, and everything’s done. No scanning, no trying to remember which release corresponds to which subject, no forgetting to fill in an address or phone number (all fields need to be filled before the subject can sign the release). The app does not require an active internet connection except when you want to email the release to yourself, so it’s good to use anywhere in the field. You can get Easy Release for iPad, iPhone/iPod Touch, and Android devices.

There are a number of other model release apps available for iOS devices, but I don’t have any personal experience with them. Check out these other iPad and iPhone apps and you might find something to help your workflow: Model Release, Photographers Contract Maker, Release Me HD (iPhone), Portable Contracts, Image Release, Contracts HD (iPhone), iRelease for iPhone, iD Release for iPhone, mRelease for iPhone, and Visual Media Release for iPhone. Some of these have model release language already built into the app, while others are sort of like contract frameworks which require you to import your own contract language.

UPDATE: Just noticed in the Easy Release FAQ that Getty and Alamy have stated that they accept Easy Release model releases.

By the way, if you click through our links to buy anything here, we get a small cut of the sale. It’s a way for us to keep the lights on here at dvafoto. Thanks to those of you who have clicked through us in the past!

“On a very literal reading of the terms and conditions, there’s certainly an argument that the IOC could run that you wouldn’t be able to post pictures to Facebook. … It would appear that if you or I attended an event, we could only share our photos with our aunties around the kitchen table.” -Paul Jordan, legal adviser on Olympics-related regulations to sponsor and non-sponsor businesses, speaking to the Guardian

The 2012 London Olympics have been dubbed the first “social” Olympics, whatever that means. But, don’t be misguided and think that means spectators can post their photos and videos to facebook, or that athletes can tweet about their competition. There a whole host of restrictions on what sort of imagery, branding, and tweeting can and can’t be shared from the upcoming summer Olympics. Tickets to the Games state, ““Images, video and sound recordings of the Games taken by a Ticket Holder cannot be used for any purpose other than for private and domestic purposes and a Ticket Holder may not license, broadcast or publish video and/or sound recordings, including on social networking websites and the Internet more generally.” Olympic officials admit that these photo restrictions imposed on spectators are “unenforceable,” but they remain in place to protect organizations who have purchased media rights to the coverage. And in line with laws such as the Olympic Symbol etc. (Protection) Act 1995 and the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act 2006, “branding police” will also be deployed in the Olympic Village to cover up the logos of companies that are not official sponsors of the games and make sure that non-affiliated companies don’t use the Olympics to drum up business. To report violations of any of these restrictions, there’s a website (inaccessible to the public) available to people involved in the Olympics that would fit right at home in Orwell: Olympic Games Monitoring.

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Praveen Shaligramji Bhumbhar, 34, owed 80,000 Indian Rupees (US$1,746). He was married with three children. He set himself on fire when no one was at home.

Archana Sanjay Sarate is now raising her children alone. In mid 2010, her husband consumed pesticide. On June 11, 2010, Sanjay Avbhutrao Sarate, 35, stumbled on the family's doorstep and said: "I have taken pesticide. I am going to die. This is the end of my life.” As he took in his last breath, Sanjay lay on a bed and hugged his six-year-old son, Sameer. The family now owes 130,000 Indian rupees (US$2,910).

Hand.

Chandrabhan Zitheu Chaturkar, 70, owed 16,000 Indian rupees (US$358). He committed suicide May 2, 2010 by hanging himself in his house.

Veins.

Twenty-five-year-old Vaishali Kishor Hood's life has changed forever. In late 2010, her husband committed suicide due to a loan he could not afford to repay. "I am surprised," she said. "We had no arguments with each other and without giving any information, he just killed himself," she added. Her husband, Kishor Manohar Hood, 35, consumed pesticide and died on November 27, 2010.

Kiran Devraoji Satone, 28, owed 80,000 Indian rupees (US$1,789). He hung himself in his family house on January 18, 2007 from a wooden plank in the ceiling.

Over the past 15 years, more than 250,000 farmers have committed suicide in India. Many had borrowed money through government lending schemes or private lenders to plant more efficient crops, but could not pay off their debts. Because of the extremely fast transition has undergone — from a rural to an industrial, urban economy with an open market — farmers have been confronted by immense social and economic problems.

To tell this story, El-Tantawy uses archival materials, strong portraiture of the women left behind, and a visual examination of the land and place. It’s a refreshing approach to something so difficult to photograph, and it’s a departure from much of her other work (which you should check out while you’re at it). I thought I’d ask her a few questions about the project and her approach. Our conversation is below:

What got you started on the project? What drew you to the issue? How did you begin work for the project (such as identifying potential subjects, approaching subjects for the piece)?

The start of the project coincided with me taking part in the prestigious Reflexions Masterclass. It’s a two-year photography seminar directed by Italian photographer Giorgia Fiorio and French Curator Gabrial Bauret. The workshop is based around developing a photographer’s visual language and story-telling capabilities by assigning a series of themes that participants use as inspiration to build on a new body of work or continue to develop an ongoing series. At the time the theme assigned was “faces”. I really struggled with this because all my immediate ideas were centered around portraiture, which I always considered as an area of weakness for me. I felt a strong portrait should convey an emotion and lend some insight into the subject’s character, frame of mind or emotional state – this I had never accomplished well. Meanwhile, as I am thinking about this, I come across an article about farmers committing suicide in India. Everything seemed to come together at that moment for me, in a way that I can honestly say I never reacted to anything else, subject or story. There was something different about this work from the start. So from the moment of its initiation, this project was very unique for me.

I went to India with nothing but the intention to meet the families and photograph their faces. This was my main motivation. I wanted to understand why they were committing suicide, such a brutal act and one with finite consequences. Having been in India before, I always saw India as a country where people really work hard to live in order to avert death. It was the country of vibrant colors, crowded streets – a country where life is seen at its best and sometimes worst, but life and living dominate. Death was not associated with India in my mind, which is why I believe I reacted so instinctively and vigorously to the suicide of farmers, which ultimately led me to think about my own grandfather, who was a farmer all his life. Perhaps you can see there were just too many elements here that led me to pursue this story as passionately and seriously as I did.

In India I landed with ideas, but I had nothing in hand that could translate my ideas into reality. I wanted to shoot the work on film (which I had never done before). I bought the film from a friend of mine living in India and borrowed his Mamiya. He also offered to send his studio assistant with me to meet the families and she became my team-mate at that stage in the project, doing what I consider half the work: translation.

When we left Mumbai we had nothing but the determination to meet these families and hear their story. Once we arrived in the village we had identified as the starting point, we just asked around and things started to work out.

We approached the families with total honesty explaining I had come from London and wanted to hear their story. At that moment the work as I had visualized it only centered around documenting the female survivors and making an archive of photographs of the men who died. The idea of “Man and Land” came later and after much searching for a visual approach to show the strong bond between the people and the land they inhabit, which I believed was ultimately the cause of these suicides.

What was your strategy for telling this story visually? I imagine it was a difficult piece to develop, photographically–the events happened well in the past and the causes of these suicides are abstract economic and psychological notions that don’t present themselves in a straightforward visual way.

Intimacy – all I could think about was intimacy. Given the sensitivity of the issue in and of itself and the delicate nature of addressing issues related to life and death, I felt that I had to move slowly, but somehow give a sense of intimacy. It was imperative to me to attach a face to the suicides and not follow a conventional approach that would deprive the story of emotion or developing a relationship with the women survivors and the men who died. I wanted to focus on the faces to make the suicides real to myself and to viewers and not just portray this as something abstract that could happen anywhere to anyone. I felt the urge and the responsibility to anchor this in reality, or at least what I perceived as reality (we all have our different realities or interpretations of it). For me a more photojournalistic approach would not have told this story the way I felt it and instinctively reacted to it: the deep emotion, sorrow and absolute sense of anguish and deprivation these men must have felt at the time of the suicides, all feelings that were carried onto the women now surviving them. People died – thousands of them – and I chose to tell this story. I was responsible for what people would think and feel when they see the pictures. This was always at the back of my head.

The suicides are continuing to happen, so this is not an old story, but very much an ongoing one. In the past 15 years, more than 250 thousand farmers have committed suicide and the numbers are still rising.

How did you get the women to be part of the project? In parts of India I’ve visited, women tend to be hidden from the public and I imagine they initially did not want to be photographed. What about the issue of suicide? In some societies, suicide is a very shameful act. Was there a societal or cultural stigma that you had to overcome in order to get people to even talk about the suicides? How did you approach that issue with your subjects?

A few things could account for me being able to gain access to the families. Perhaps the fact that I was a woman myself allowed the women to gain some sense of comfort around me, but I think ultimately the main reason I was able to talk to them is because they wanted someone to talk to – they wanted to be heard and in all cases helped (which I shamefully explained I was not in a position to do). They wanted their struggle to be acknowledged and the fact I had come from an entirely different country to meet them and understand their plight probably made them feel some sort of respect and seriousness towards me.

Yes, there is a huge stigma attached to suicide. You must remember India is a predominantly Hindu country and suicide is not accepted within the Hindu belief. Surprisingly, this was not an issue that took much of the conversation I had with any of the families I met. It was about survival and for the men who had committed suicide, living had become an impossibility. Tradition among the conservative and modest farming communities dictates men are the main providers. Girls get married because their fathers can pay their dowry and are of a good reputation in the village, so once a man starts to sink below the expected status in the community, he starts to be overcome by shame. Status and community standing play a big role in the decision to commit suicide in these villages and I think they would in any village in the world. Farmers are a unique breed and their work and lifestyle are about modesty, pride and survival under the harshest of conditions. But I think if any of these elements start to shake, their whole existence comes into question.

“If any of the things we see don’t suit us, guess who is to blame? It’s never us, it’s always the photographer. It’s never the fact that we want to see certain things, it’s always that someone else is not showing us what we want to see.” Joerg Colberg – Colin Pantall on what photographs tell us

Colin Pantall and Joerg Colberg both recently wrote interesting posts on what photographs tell the viewer and how they do so. Analyzing two well-known photos of apparently disinterested observers in the middle of crises, Colin Pantall investigates how photos work to inform preconceived and simple narratives in the viewer’s apprehension. If the viewer is looking for hip, young New Yorkers unaffected by the attacks on September 11, that can also be seen in Thomas Hoepker’s photo. If the viewer wants to see a diverse group talking about the events of the day, that can be seen, too, as one of the subjects of the photo suggests. Joerg Colberg continues the thread, suggesting that we should approach all photographs by understanding what role the subjects of those photos are expected to play in such “simplistic narratives.” Both posts are well worth a read.

We’ve already had the debate this year on the reading of photographs to fit into easy narratives with Samuel Aranda’s World Press Photo 2012-winning photo of a Yemeni mother comforting an injured man. Some saw a Western photographer shoehorning Christian ideology on a Muslim and Middle Eastern scenario; others saw a beautiful and heartbreaking devotion of mother/woman taking part in revolutionary struggle. For what it’s worth, the woman in the photo found out about the photo via facebook and thought it supported the revolution and showed that Yemenis were not extremists.

Not a week goes by that I don’t get a request for free images or a low-ball assignment fee. When I balk, the person on the other ends usually asks, “Well, do you know anyone else who would do it? Maybe a student?” Publications, PR companies, and wedding clients frequently look to student photographers as a cut-rate way to get their photography done, preying on students’ business naivety and their desire to get exposure.

Now, a UK agency called Cartel Photos aims to nip this situation in the bud. Its member photographers are current undergraduates and recent alumni from the BA(Hons) Press & Editorial Photography course at University College Falmouth, and the agency’s goal, in partnership with the school, is to get student photographers practice working for local publications and organizations for pay. It may be a simple idea, but it lays the groundwork for fair pay and decent contracts from the beginning of these students’ careers. They gain experience working in a freelance environment, the publications get great photography, and the local Falmouth photography market continues on in an environment of fair pay with a new generation of photographers who already have business experience before leaving school.

Nothing like a bit of good news like this to start the weekend off right!

(via duckrabbit)

Corey Arnold’s fun blog just announced an awesome looking and massive outdoor exhibition as part of the “Wonderland” Photo Festival in Knokke-Heist, Belgium. I’ve been growing more fascinated with outdoor exhibitions in the last year, and am considering doing something similarly grand here in Belgrade soon. So put this exhibition right into the inspiration folder. For more, see our reader-favorite post Bringing Photos Back to the Street, or Taking it to the Streets in Belgrade and a Simon Norfolk outdoor exhibit at the Guernsey Festival (I love those stone bases for the frames). And don’t forget all of the terrific outdoor exhibitions by JR.

Click the photo or the link above to see the rest of Arnold’s blog post with many more photos of the installations, work from other photographers at the festival and even some prints inside buildings. Bravo.

American Journal

Pete Marovich recently got in touch to talk about his project, American Journal, an online magazine collecting photos and stories about the United States from a variety of contributors. There’s a lot of interesting work there, including: Michael Webster’s Curious People, Peter Marovich’s Legacy of the Black Cowboy, Andrea Morales’ Extracted Dreams, Implanted Realities, Jennifer Whitney’s Love and the Third Degree, and Jenna Isaacson’s All Thrifty States. The site started as a way for Marovich and his wife to collect work they did outside of their regular newspaper assignments, but grew to include other contributors. They welcome submissions. The goal is to make a sort of general interest magazine about contemporary American life, and I think they’re well on the way.