New Orleans wins Super Bowl...

...and elects new mayor, Mitch Landrieu

Both times I have visited New Orleans it has captured my heart, firstly with it’s wonderful music and people and secondly with it’s hope and resilience as I returned only 6 weeks after hurricane Katrina.

So it is with great joy that I read that last weekend New Orleans won the Super Bowl for the first time. For a city that is still rising form the ashes this means more to many of the residents than just a sports victory.

Hopefully this win, together with the election of a new mayor, Mitch Landrieu, on 6th Feb 2010 will see a series of new beginnings for this wonderful city.

Is photojournalism expoitative

Photographs of Haiti

The role of a photojournalist in disaster zones is a difficult one. There has been some criticism about photographers in Haiti photographing rather than helping and it has opened up this debate once again.

Whilst I understand peoples sentiments about helping, photographers are there to do a job, to tell the story of a newsworthy event in such a way that helps the viewer to engage more fully with it.

It is not an easy thing to do and the suffering seen by photographers often stays with them throughout their life. So just let them do their job. That way more of us see and understand the story they are photographing and donate more money to the aid agencies who are there to help.