If there is one thing that best encapsulates my experience at this year's PhotoPlus Expo it is: Veni Vidi Vinci. (We Came, We Saw, We Conquered).

I arrived at the Jacob Javits Center at about 9 a.m. and promptly received my press pass. I rushed to the first session. Andrew Rodney, aka. DigitalDog, had begun his seminar on color management. I found a seat to the side of the room, one of the only ones open. His use of simple language to explain the most complex of steps to produce rich, honest color out of our printers was greatly appreciated. The room was packed with people. Let me say this much, if you are ever befuddled about setting up your machine to produce accurate color and you have an opportunity to hear him speak, I urge you to go.

If you are a professional, not knowing how to calibrate your monitor or use those printer profiles will cost you dearly in time, money and eventually clients.

I skipped the first afternoon session and decided to go onto the Expo floor. As expected, it was elbow-to-elbow room only. Canon, Nikon and even Fuji (thanks to their new flagship DSLR, the S3 Pro) were all crowded beyond belief. To top that off, some camera companies had lines stretching beyond their own booths for those of us who wanted to pick up a signed poster or two. It made navigating from one end of the large hall to the other very difficult.

I slid into the third session; Joe McNally‘s workshop on location lighting. Not quite what I expected. Mr. McNally must have been tired. Between self-depracatory quips and anecdotes, he managed to persuade some in the audience that all that is required to light a scene or a subject is a bag full of expensive Nikon Speedlights. I wasn't terribly impressed or convinced by the presentation; though his story on how he bagged an image at the very tip of the Empire State Building for a National Geographic magazine story made the two-hour session bearable. Next time Mr. McNally, please structure your time to make it a real workshop. If I had paid $80 for that session, I know I would have wanted to get my money back.

Later that evening, I attended a special session moderated by the legendary Peter Howe. The session was cynically titled “Is Anyone Out There Listening? The Relevance of Photojournalism Today.” The panel consisted of photographers from the VII photo agency; Ron Haviv, Lauren Greenfield, Antonin Kratochvil, James Nachtwey and Christopher Morris. Nachtwey went first because he wanted to get to the Eddie Adams wake that evening.

Nachtwey's slide show made my jaw drop. If you pick up TIME magazine, you will a lot of the images he was showing, but to see them at that size gave them a sense of urgency that one doesn't experience while flipping through a magazine. Wish he could have said more about the images and his work. Lauren Greenfield followed him but I was just way too tired to sit and listen to her. The images she began to show were from her book, “Girl Culture.”

As I left the Jacob Javits Center, I ran into James Nachtwey. Initially shy about introducing myself, I took off to the other side of the street as soon as it was safe to cross. Nachtwey remained on one side, presumably waiting for a taxi. I thought about it for about a minute, turned back, crossed the street again and extended my hand out – “Mr. Nachtwey, my name is Seshu Badrinath and I am genuinely honored to meet you,” I said. I handed him a card. He quickly stuck it ino his jacket and smirked. He seemed to be in a hurry and I didn't want to seem like I was cramping his style. So, once again I crossed the street and headed North to Barnard College.

Getty Images, one of the two power-house photo agencies in the US is facing a barrage of questions from photo editors across the nation about their business dealings conflicting with their editorial decisions. As a wire service, hundreds of newspapers depend on the news feed Getty Images provides. But recently there have been charges that Getty Images which has business relationships with the National Hockey League (NHL) and the National Basketball Association (NBA), has failed to send through their service some poignant and editorially important images.

The most recent controversy sprung from the lack of images from the infamous ice hockey game between the Vancouver Canucks and Colorado Avalanche. Colarado's Steve Moore was sucker punched by Todd Bertuzzi of the Canucks. Moore fell face forward and broke his neck and ended his season. But curiously there were no images of this particular incident on the Getty wire service. Naturally Colorado papers using the service will be miffed.

Is Getty Images censoring their own photographers, on behalf of their business partners – the NHL, the NBA or more recently the Major League Baseball (MLB)? Who looses in the end? Not only do the photographers loose the sale of the image nation or even world-wide, but so does the audience from seeing what happened. While I am open to the idea of promoting businesses, I get antsy when editorial freedom gets curbed in the process. It kills the notion of ‘what you see is what you get' and that's plain troubling. It's time to revisit our Ethics 101 books about this.

This was originally posted on the NPPA-L by Paul Guillory, a photojournalist turned Copy editor at The Advocate, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana:

I posted a note here earlier this week encouraging a photographer to defect to the word side as a way of helping teach editors about picture usage. And it set me thinking about an occasionally visited topic on the list: respect.

We often complain that we photographers are not taken seriously in the newsroom. Would you consider for a moment that we create a persona that makes it easy for us not to be taken seriously?

Here are a few suggestions (from a former photographer who now gets to watch the photographers from the other side of the room):

Be careful about what you put on paper. You are actually being evaluated on the cutlines, memos, evaluations, purchase requests, etc., that you write. So buy a dictionary and use the spell checker. Find a stylebook. Let a copy editor read your memos before you submit them. Write an occasional story to
prove that you are a “well-rounded” journalist. (Your writing is a BIG deal. The word people complain about bad cutlines, poor grammar, misspelled names and shady fact checking. The more polished your writing is, the more respect you are granted.)

Wear the uniform. Instead of jeans and hiking boots, change into pressed slacks and a long-sleeve shirt before the news meeting. Keep a tie and jacket on hand for when you will be in front of the publisher or mayor.

Modulate your voice. Photographers love to bitch. But a well-reasoned, quietly delivered argument goes much further.

Take a copy editor, city editor or features editor to lunch. And DON'T talk about newspapers or photography. Get to know these people. Let them see you as a person. Talk about your kids, hunting, the cabinets you built for the kitchen. Save any attempts to “educate” for the fifth, eighth or 10th
luncheon.

Be ahead of the game. Read the paper and read the wire budgets early in the day. Know what's going on in the world so you can participate in newsroom and budget meeting discussions.

Be interested and involved in the process, but don't micromanage. (This suggestion comes from a news editor friend of mine.) Attend the planning meetings and have your picture ideas ready. Propose stories. If an assignment is crap, be honest about it; BUT be ready to suggest something better. Offer alternatives at all stages of the process. (One sports editor says he wants more than one picture.) And make deadline.

Apologize when you're wrong. Don't try to explain bad decisions. Just say “I'm sorry, I screwed up,” and leave it at that.

Good luck,
Paul Guillory