One of the funniest takes on the G20 protests comes courtesy of Vice Magazine. And while the cynical take on the politics involved (on either side) reveals a disturbing apathy among the nation's trendy youth, it's also pretty smart, and includes some interesting snippets for media-watchers.

'There seemed to be so many more journalists than protesters at this point that I almost ditched my camera for an acoustic and some Birkenstocks just to make up the numbers. All the camera men were shouting things like: “Break it!” “Smash them!” and “Kill the pig!” to try and rile the protesters,' writes James Knight, while photographers James Pearson-Howes (aka Queenie) and Jamie Teate's images provide a mordant take on proceedings.

The Home Counties aren't famed for riotous behaviour but, it seems, dissent is in the air and when the Google Street View car rolled into Broughton, near Milton Keynes, the residents didn't take it lying down.

The car carries a roof-mounted camera which records 360° views of the UK's streets for Google's interactive online maps, and, when it drove into Broughton, locals gathered to block its path until the driver drove away. The residents accused Google of invading their privacy and 'facilitating crime' by creating images that allow users to peer into their windows, making them ripe targets for theft. Google protests it is working fully within UK law and only films in public areas.

The BBC reports Thames Valley Police's statement: 'A squad car was sent to Broughton at 1020 BST on Wednesday to reports of a dispute between a crowd of people and a Google Street View contractor. A member of the public had called us to report that he, along with a number of others, were standing in the middle of the road preventing the car from moving forwards and taking photographs. They felt his presence was an intrusion of their privacy. When police arrived at the scene, the car had moved on.'

Image by LordKalvan, licensed under Creative Commons ShareAlike 3.0.

Is it a camera? Is it a gun? It's the Zenit camera Photosniper!

A camera mounted on a shoulderstock, it's designed to be held and shot just like a rifle (check out the trigger) but is actually a 35mm Zenit with a 300mm f4.5 Tair lens. It's available in various models, manufactured by Russian (and formerly Soviet) KMZ company, which also produces the better-known Zorki rangefinder cameras namechecked by Jonathan Eastland in our recent Soviet rangefinders piece. Never has the verb 'to shoot' been more blurred. Not recommended for G20 protests.

Photographers beware? Monthly magazine 'The Digital Journalist' departed from its normal photojournalist position this month, instead dedicating its content solely to the growing field of video journalism.

Ken Kobré who runs his own site 'The KobreGuide.com', takes over as editor for the issue, in which the “Webs best video journalism” is displayed, which is increasingly relevant to professional photographers with the introduction of video capabilities on cameras such as the Canon 5D Mark II. Many column inches are given, promoting the use of Video as a journalistic format on the web.

The Digital Journalist describes how many news organisations were originally reluctant to embrace the technology, but established new sites such as The New York Times have led the way recently; even picking up a 'Peabody award', the first for a web outlet. The work of Colin Mulvany is chosen as the cover story, a photographer who reinvented himself as a multimedia journalist, who explains: “As the newspaper industry melted down and retrenched, I became uncertain as to what my future held.” How many times has that been said. Though a move that has worked for him it seems, judge for yourself here; and to show that his photographic skills are still sharp, here.

A good read is an intriguing interview with award-winning Reuters photographer Lucy Nicholson, who is another example of turning pictures turning into moving pictures.

The photography-to-video relationship is apparent in this video, describing how an iconic photograph of a soldier in the Iraq war has affected the lives of both the soldier and photographer.

Birkbeck College, University of London, held an extremely interesting academic conference on The Photobook on 03 and 04 April, featuring presentations by Liz Wells, David Campany and BJP contributor Gerry Badger among others.

Most relevant to working photographers was Campany's paper, which considered a spread Walker Evans put together for Fortune magazine in May 1946, entitled Homes of Americans. Interestingly Evans didn't shoot the piece, though seven of his images were included in it - edited and designed it. Comparing and contrasting 37 images of American houses, but run almost entirely without text (the captions were printed separately) it was, argued Campany, a sophisticated investigation of the power of the image.

And as such, he added, it was also a severe disruption of the usual distribution hierarchy, in which images shown in galleries have most kudos, and those shown in the press rather less. Evans' work on Fortune, he argued, was just as interesting and valid as his better-known photographic endeavours of the 1930s.

The conference was intended as a work-in-progress discussion - a book is planned for early next Spring.

The Royal Photographic Society will be delving through the past 170 years of photography with the launch of a series of events over the spring and summer.

Titled The Real Thing? - Staging, Manipulation and Photographic Truth, the series will focus on all images manipulated, collaged or purely staged throughout photography’s history; a wide-scope indeed. So far announced are a day of talks from contemporary photographers, including Mitra Tabrizian discussing her work such as Surveillance (1989) at the University of Westminster on 25 April. Also The National Media Museum in Bradford will hold events on 11 July.

Historical perspectives along with the contemporary will be analysed, such as the hot topic of how new technologies are used in relation to photojournalism. By combining these issues with historical practice, the lectures by the RPS hope “to explore the enduring relevance of staged photography and the consequences of its myths, metaphors, facts and fictions.” If that’s whetted your appetite, tickets for the lecture are available now.

Attentive readers may remember Brian Griffin's contributions to the blog earlier this year, written while shooting a personal project on America's devastated auto industry. Now you can hear more about it online, in his recent interview for Derby's Format Festival. Including sage advice on photography, portraiture and the history of trade unions, it's well worth a listen.

Never a stranger when it comes to making the news for reasons other than art, an update into one of the lawsuits regarding Annie Leibovitz has emerged. Part of the Briese lawsuit against the renowned photographer has been dismissed, according to PDN Pulse.

The lighting rental company Briese USA initially sued Leibovitz for close to $400,000 in April 2008.

Broken down, this amounts to $220,000 in unpaid rental services, over $5,000 for damaged equipment and $165,000 for ‘for failing to deliver enough business to justify the discount rates she was getting’. It is this part of the suit that has been dismissed by Justice Tingling, still leaving the remaining to be solved.

This follows on from Leibovitz borrowing two successive loans amounting to $15,000,000. The huge amount borrowed from Art Capital Group involves putting up the copyright to all of her photographs as collateral; the consequence being the group will gain ownership of all her photographs, including the ones she hasn't yet taken, if unable to pay. Money problems affecting all in trying times it seems.

So, how do you attract photography assistants to an event relevant to that of harnessing their photographic skills? The answer: Belly dancing, according to photography outlet Calumet.

On 29 April Calumet will be staging an event exclusively for assistant photographers at their flagship store in Euston, in the company of a professional ‘stunning belly dancing duo’. The evening will involve an ‘expert rental team’ alongside Profoto representatives to demonstrate the latest camera gear, whilst providing detailed product knowledge.

Photographers will be encouraged in ‘test driving the kit themselves’. In addition, Calumet are inviting assistants to submit their ‘best ever’ images for the Assistants Photo Contest 2009, with a chance to win a £1000 rental package from Profoto.

Wiggle on down to Drummond Street at 6.30 pm, 29 April, for a spot of photographic ‘danse du ventre’.

The latest copy of Ag just hit BJP's desks, and its a cracking issue. Photographer Andy Gotts describes how he came to photograph Hollywood A-listers, Tim Daly talks through black-and-white ink jet, Gerry Badger reports on a new series of books on books by Errata Editions, and - most hilariously - renown photography writer and educator Bill Jay provides a guide on how to be profound.

'Copy down a paragraph (any one will do) from a current critical theorist,' he writes. 'Stick to banalities...Create a diversion...Be political...If all else fails, act dumb.'

Today, Nikon UK invited journalists to discover the new D5000 digital SLR, the second Nikon camera with high-definition video capabilities after the D90. Here is a quick video shot with the D5000. Like its predecessor, the camera does not autofocus, you have to manually focus if you are panning around a room, which leads to heavy handshake (unless you use a balancing kit designed for video shoots).

And here is a slideshow of D5000 images (shot using a D300 camera).

Eight product shots of the new Nikon D5000 digital SLR. Read our full report here.

Seven more shots after the jump

Sonalle, a photographer and recent contestant in BJP's annual Project Assistance Awards, is seeing her work exposed from this week at the Housmans Radical Bookshop in London (5 Caledonian Road).

Image © Sonalle.

The launch takes place on 18 April at 5pm. Ethnic Minority Domestic Violence Survivors is Sonalle's on-going project. As an Indian, British-born female, 'I am aware of how domestic violence can often be accepted as a part of everyday life, especially so as not to bring “shame” upon the family name. I have discovered that the mentality of many ethnic minority women is to just accept and not question what happens to them.' she says.

'Education and raising awareness could change this. This project aims to raise awareness through representational portraits of ethnic minority women with text describing their experience. These women suffered from domestic violence but have sought help and are now beginning their independent lives.

Most women were met through refuges and domestic violence organisations. Some of these women still weren't ready emotionally or psychologically to speak about their experience and so were unable to participate fully.

Most women wanted full anonymity so photos had to be taken to represent them whilst hiding their identity. They were asked to choose an expressive part of the body which was then photographed, experimenting with the natural light available. Digital media was used to allow the women to see the photos immediately. This made it possible for them to criticise and choose the images to be used. As some women in the refuges had no family or friends, this project provided an escape from the everyday life of the refuge, which could often be quite lonely.'

For more information, visit www.sonalle.com.

As if having 12,640 of your slides go missing is not quite cruel enough, a judge has ruled that the cost of this loss to photographer Chris Usher will be just $7 a slide, as reported by Bohemian.

The photographer has lost his appeal against the Corbis Corporation following a seven-year-long battle after they misplaced Usher’s images. Included in the lost slide are photographs of George W Bush and Al Gore during the campaign for the 2000 US Presidential race and the farce at the Supreme Court that followed, as well as a host of other significant global news stories.

The judge involved decided to value the images as a whole at $7 each, rather than consider some images will differ in value, and be worth thousands of dollars in some cases.

What is causing disquiet among photographers is that the ruling could potentially be setting a dangerous precedent for any similar cases in the future.

Any photographic agencies or publishers could theoretically be as careless as they please with clients’ images without any consequence. 't will be cheaper for them to trash them then returning them to you,' as Rob Haggart of A Photo Editor says.

Right now there are dozens if not hundreds of final year photography students musing the veracity of photojournalism in the digital age for their graduation thesis. So this one's for you....

Earlier this year the judges of Denmark's Picture of The Year contest decided to ask some questions about a set of pictures they felt uncomfortable about. Just how much Photoshopping had been done? Did the pictures cross the line between simple cropping and enhancement into unseen territory?

They asked Klavs Bo Christensen to submit his unedited raw photos from Haiti, and they didn't like what they saw. To them, the colours in the edited comparisons were 'too much', too 'surreal', and ultimately they rejected them. But, says the aggrieved photojournalist, can you really judge reality by looking at a raw file?

'In my opinion, a raw file has nothing to do with reality and I do not think you can judge the finished image and the use of Photoshop by looking at [it]... 'There are also huge differences between raw conversion tools, and on how the files from different cameras are converted. And there are significant differences in the profile you choose to use in the conversion tool for each camera.'

Now pressefotografforbundet.dk presents the before-and-after shots in a translated article that offers a fascinating insight into the dilemmas faced by photographers, editors, jurors and just about anybody with a healthy interest in news media.

There's no doubt about the striking difference between the two sets of images, but are they any different from a little old-fashioned darkroom magic? And if a raw file doesn't constitute a sufficient 'digital negative' can any such thing ever exist? Does it really matter when a simple change of shutter speed would have delivered a different image anyway?

(Thanks to Yasmina Reggad for passing this on.)

Excitement hit the BJP offices recently with the arrival of Canon’s latest DSLR offering in the EOS 500D, as presented by the BJP here.

Provided below is a step-by-step photographic slide of the ‘Unboxing’ process, normally a sacred bond between camera and owner. The 15.1 million pixel camera sporting full high-definition video is due to be released on 01 May.

Photography by Tim Boddy

Those of you who enjoyed the round up of London's last darkrooms a couple of weeks ago in BJP will also enjoy Richard Nicholson's recent project - inside London's last darkrooms.

Film's graceful decline is generating an interesting subgenre in photography. Last year Michel Campeau published a quirkily appealing book with Nazraeli Press called Darkroom, while we published a feature on Kate Jackling and Mark Pattenden's tribute to Polaroid's Dutch factory. Be great to hear about any more projects...