Rob Haggart at APhotoEditor.com has been on a roll lately: Ask Anything – Does a photographer need a rep and do they really get you work?, The Value Of A News Photograph, Ask Anything – Should You Tell Your Clients If You Are Pregnant Or Have A Life Threatening Illness?, the editorial staff’s perspective on Negotiating The Editorial Contract, Ask Anything – How Do You Get Started Photographing Fashion?, Photographers- How To Deal With Infringements, a survey of Commercial Photographer Income, Ad Agency Guide To Photography Usage Terms, Ask Anything – Should Photographers be Unionized?, Ask Anything With Amanda And Suzanne – How Not To Blow The Face To Face Meeting, Ask anything with Amanda and Suzanne – How Much Money Do Commercial Photographers Make?, and especially the most recent post, Stop Accepting $200 Assignments. All well worth a read, discussion in the comments usually is worth a look, too.

President-Elect Barack Obama has rolled out a brand-new site detailing his transition plans: Change.gov. Good idea maybe (a lot of my friends are linking and smiling about it on facebook), but it feels so weird. Maybe it is rolled out too soon? Foreign Policy’s Passport Blog found it first and found an even uglier site (check the link). It gets worse though, look at this lead picture.

First, what a strange picture … Obama looks so tired and solemn (which I assume are very likely and real emotions for a man going through that moment) and it doesn’t seem like the ‘message’ you want to send into the blistering transition period. Second, oh, what a weird burn job on that stadium light behind them. I think I’m going to submit this both to BAGNewsnotes and Photoshop Disasters.

Speaking of change though, go read Rob Haggart’s rousing call for it in the publishing industry on his A Photo Editor blog. One of his ideas: “Gather all the employees you were about to fire because they don’t fit in so well with your organization or because they are too green to have mastered traditional publishing and give them promotions. Put them in charge. Gather all the people you’ve trained to say no to change and yes to whatever you say is good and fire them (ok I know this will mean there is nobody left in accounting and IT so keep a few of them around but maybe go for the junior ones).”

One more: Newspaper Execs Jokes over at Recovering Journalist Blog. Funny, and it deals kinda with the change that needs (and probably won’t) come to newspapers…

Oh, and give M. Scott all the credit for talking first about the ugly burn job. I just posted before him.

UPDATE (a few minutes later): I really should have taken more of a look around the site, as Scott did, because he found this at http://www.change.gov/americaserves/plan:

Grabbed 9:03pm Pacific 11/6/08