Pete Souza / The White House

Pete Souza, Official White House Photographer: May 1, 2012 "In Afghanistan, there was virtually no light inside the helicopter as we flew from Kabul back to Bagram Air Field after the President had met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. (For the photo buffs, this photograph was taken at ISO 6400, 1/5 second at f/1.4.) Flanking the President are  General John Allen, Commanding General of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan, and U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker. Denis McDonough, Deputy National Security Advisor, is at left." 

• Year in Photographs 2012 by Pete Souza on Flickr
• The White House's photostream
• Story: Obama hails the future of a 'new kind of relationship' with Afghanistan

Married at the age of 8. That fact alone is hard to fathom. It's even more difficult to stomach when you think of the resulting forced sex, physical abuse and early pregnancies that often result. But for girls in more than 50 countries in the developing world, and for a minority in the developed world, this is their reality. The reality of child marriage.

Stephanie Sinclair / VIl

Faiz, 40, and Ghulam, 11, sit in her home prior to their wedding in the rural Damarda Village, Afghanistan on Sept. 11, 2005. Ghulam said she is sad to be getting engaged as she wanted to be a teacher.

Photojournalist Stephanie Sinclair has been documenting this issue around the world since 2003. A large body of her work was published last year in National Geographic.

We asked Sinclair to tell us more about her reporting:

How did you come up with this story idea and how long have you been reporting it?
This project began in 2003, after I met several girls in Herat, Afghanistan who had attempted suicide by self-immolation. I noticed that many of the girls who had set themselves on fire had been married at very young ages, in many cases prepubescent. It was the first time I’d ever encountered anyone who had been married so young. This phenomenon seemed to link many of these girls and this intense act of desperation. I couldn’t help but feel a responsibility to research and document whatever it was that would make these girls take such drastic measures. The resulting project has taken almost a decade to date, and I am still working on the issue. What makes it so complicated is its prevalence in more than 50 countries worldwide. To document it properly, one needs to address the many cultural reasons behind the issue as well as the differing impacts on the varying societies.

How many different countries did you travel to for this story, and how did you gain access to these sensitive stories and events?
I have documented this issue in Afghanistan, Nepal, India, Ethiopia and Yemen. Access has always been incredibly difficult for several reasons. The most obvious obstacle is that parents and families innately know that what they are doing can harm their children. But they continue this harmful traditional practice because they may feel societal pressures, have concerns for their safety and well being should they remain unmarried, or may even need to simply sell their girls in a desperate move to feed their other children. Fortunately, almost every image in this project was done with the help of the locals living within these societies. They wanted this issue to get support so they could be further empowered to combat child marriage. Those people were key in helping me gain access, and telling these stories would have been impossible without them.

Stephanie Sinclair / VII

Nujood Ali was ten when she fled her abusive, much older husband and took a taxi to the courthouse in Sanaa, Yemen. The girl's courageous act and the landmark legal battle that ensued turned her into an international heroine for women's rights. Now divorced, she is back home with her family and attending school again.

What is most disturbing to you about child marriage and what would you most like people to know about it?
There are many disturbing factors related to child marriage. But I think the thing that we must acknowledge is that in most cases these young children do not want to be married. They want normal lives — to play with their friends, be educated and have a full adolescence. These marriages rob many girls of their innocence, many times before puberty, and this is something that as a global society we cannot tolerate. The bottom line is child marriage isn't just harmful to the girls involved. It's at the root of so many other societal ills: poverty, disease, maternal mortality, infant mortality, violence against women. All of those are symptoms connected to the same problem: child marriage. If you solve the child marriage problem, these other issues benefit as well.

Is there a solution?
A multifaceted approach is needed to address the issue of child marriage. In fact, yesterday Sec. Hillary Clinton announced a USAID-sponsored pilot program in Bangladesh that will work with religious leaders, media, local governments and NGOs to foster community support for an end to child marriage. However education is still the single most protective factor against this practice. This means keeping the children in school as long as possible, as well as educating the communities about its harmful impact on the health of their girls, their grandchildren, as well as their societies as a whole. 

I also strongly believe there is not just a need for awareness-raising and prevention work, but we must find ways to help these girls who are already in these marriages — be it through giving financial incentives to their families to let them stay in school, or vocational training so they can have more say in their lives and households. Quality medical treatment is also needed for girls who are giving birth at these young ages. These girls need long-term solutions. Unfortunately, there is no quick fix. But there seems to be a growing  movement aimed at ending child marriage. In fact, at yesterday's State Department announcement, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, chairman of The Elders, announced a very ambitious goal: to end the practice by 2030. If this issue remains a global priority, I'm optimistic that we can meet that deadline.

To mark the first inaugural International Day of the Girl Child on October 11, 2012, the United Nations Population Fund will partner with VII Photo to host an exhibition at the United Nations Headquarters in New York to present the personal narrative of the girls themselves. The hope is that their stories, presented in photography and video productions by Stephanie Sinclair and Jessica Dimmock, will renew global attention toward this critical issue and accountability across the international community. Archbishop Desmond Tutu and UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon will be among many prominent figures attending the opening.

• Follow the campaign at Too Young to Wed and tooyoungtowed.wordpress.com
• See additional images from Sinclair's project and read more about child marriage at National Geographic Magazine
• View a video including interviews with some of the child brides at the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
• Read 'In Niger, child marriage on rise due to hunger' in PhotoBlog

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By Meredith Birkett and Jim Seida, NBC News

"I drove by that tree for 19 years and never took a single frame of it,” photographer Mark Hirsch told NBC News.  The tree, a massive oak, is on his way home, along a country road in southwest Wisconsin.

Mark Hirsch

L to R: Jan. 20, Hirsch's first photo of the tree; March 14, still ten days before the official start of the project; Day 19, April 11

But one day when a friend challenged Hirsch to try out the camera on his new iPhone 4S, he stopped his truck and trudged 500 yards through the snow to make his first picture of the tree (left frame, above). Surprised by the image quality - despite being used to professional gear – he showed the pictures to another friend who told him it could be a cool project if he did more.

Mark Hirsch

Day 184, Sept. 23

Hirsch committed to taking a picture of the tree every day for a year and posted the images on Instagram and Facebook. Fast forward 190+ days and Mark Hirsch has captured seemingly every angle and every kind of light that could hit this tree which stands out from the surrounding cornfield. Doing so is not without effort, though. He’s woken his wife with the alarm clock to be ready for dawn light at 4:30 in the morning. On another day when the light just never seemed to get good, he jumped up mid-salad during dinner to take a picture when the sun finally broke through the clouds.

Mark Hirsch

Day 101, July 2

As much as Hirsch depends upon good light to make beautiful images, he's not afraid of the dark. From Hirsch's Instagram feed: "During dusk one evening the lightning bugs were coming out and I wanted to capture their sporadic bursts of light. The iPhone camera really doesn't allow for times exposures so I utilized another app, SlowShutter, which essentially stacks video frames into a single image.  The resulting photo (above) doesn't have the sharp resolution of a still frame image but I think it produces an interesting effect regardless.

There are days when Hirsch struggles to come up with something fresh. On those days, he tries a few tricks, like taking a different path toward the tree, or taking a closer look, which helped him discover a moth almost perfectly camouflaged against the bark. Or he'll lay down on his back and get a new perspective looking straight up. (below)

Mark Hirsch

Day 119, July 20

Mark Hirsch

Day 123, July 24

“It’s kind of funny," Hirsch says, "If someone was off in a corner watching me they’d think I was some crazy guy because I’m all alone. It’s kind of my one on one time with this silly tree.”

Hirsch is a professional photographer, doing both commercial and editorial work. Despite the occasionally stressful sprints home from his assignments to get a shot done before day’s end he says, “Those expeditions are actually some of the most relaxing and rewarding moments in my day.” Hirsch's German Wirehaired Pointer 'Magnum' (below) frequently and enthusiastically joins him on his photographic expeditions to the tree.

Mark Hirsch

Day 137, Aug. 7

The social networking of Hirsch's project has fostered other connections as well.  Childhood friend Lora Kohnlein, who now lives in Henderson, Colo.,  found his project on Facebook and decided to pay a visit to the tree when she was visiting her hometown. From Hirsch's Instagram feed:  "...I had a fun time early this morning introducing Lora Kohnlein and her sons Duggan and Patrick to that tree. The boys and I climbed the tree, examined dozens of bugs and discussed the finer points of the video game angry birds. Thanks boys for inspiring me to see things like a kid again!"

Mark Hirsch

Day 111, July 2

The massive tree, whose trunk Hirsch says is more than two grown men’s arm lengths around, is not as fixed as it might appear. Arable land in the area is in high demand because the price of corn is so high.  A bulldozer operator was working to expand some farmland nearby and asked the farm’s owner if he’d like the giant oak taken down too. The farmer, Tim Clare, replied, “That tree’s been there for over two hundred years.  I’m not the guy that’s gonna push it over.”

Through the project, Hirsch has gained a new environmental awareness.“ I would not label myself an environmentalist, but I have always had a grand appreciation for the environment. My relationship with “that tree” has awakened a new-found vision, and appreciation for the fragility of our world and our need to embrace a more sustainable use of our resources.”

Mark Hirsch

Day 149, Aug. 19

Mark Hirsch

Day 71, June 2

Hirsch has been surprised by the public appreciation of what is at its core, a simple idea. He has an exhibit currently showing in Dubuque. He hopes to publish a book. You can get near-daily updates on the “That Tree” Facebook page or by following @blockhouseroller on Instagram (both iPhone and Android).

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Sebastian Rich has covered every major war and conflict of the past 30 years. He has been wounded several times, kidnapped and held hostage while on assignment as a photographer and television cameraman.

Children in Conflict, an exhibition at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., is showcasing a selection of images from Rich's career alongside a new body of work produced for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. The new collection illustrates the plight of Afghan refugees in the Jalozai refugee camp in Pakistan.

Sebastian Rich

Young Afghan refugee in the Jalozai UNHCR refugee camp, Pakistan, 2012. Jalozai is one of the largest of 150 refugee and transit camps in Pakistan, holding Afghan refugees from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to the present day.

By Sebastian Rich

The reason I became a photojournalist is summed up eloquently by this saying:

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.

Being a chronic dyslexic to the point of near-illiteracy, I guess taking photographs was a natural progression, given the old adage, "A picture speaks a thousand words."

I left school, or should I say, ran away from school, at the tender age of 15 and have been looking through cameras of one sort or another at the world's wars ever since.

Sebastian Rich

Pakistan, 2012. An outside classroom for Afghan women and young girls in the UNHCR Jalozai refugee camp.
One of the women had brought her small son with her, and he cheekily leaned back from the group to look at me.

Sebastian Rich

Bosnia, 1993. A local priest talks to the crew of a British United Nations tank. He is trying to negotiate some sort of cease-fire between a local Bosnian militia and a group of heavily armed Croatian fighters. The cease-fire lasted all of ten minutes then the priest and myself ran for cover!

These past decades have not been without personal loss and pain. I have lost so many friends in the theater of war that I am ashamed to admit I have lost count.

I have lost most of the hearing in my right ear and 30 percent of the vision in my right eye -- courtesy of a Serbian sniper with a high velocity rifle. Obviously, not a very good sniper, otherwise I would not be telling the tale, but good enough to cripple.

Sebastian Rich

The first prisoners of war taken by the United States Marine Corps during the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

A large chunk of my lower intestine is missing due to the shrapnel from a rocket-propelled grenade. I was lucky that the hot shrapnel was slowed down by two Lebanese soldiers standing in front of me. They were not so fortunate.

My sternum is cracked and deformed, once again from a Serbian sniper, this time hitting me directly in the center of the chest smashing the ceramic plate in my flak jacket and crushing my rib cage. Last, but not least, I have experienced being kidnapped in Lebanon and a mock execution in an unpronounceable town in the former Yugoslavia with far too many consonants in its name--particularly difficult for a dyslexic.

Sebastian Rich

Fighters of a warlord in Mogadishu, Somalia. They tolerated me as they fought but as you can see there were those whose burning eyes did not fall too kindly on this photographer.

I am often asked how I keep my objectivity while constantly photographing and filming the worst the world has to offer. Well, I believe we all have an agenda to some degree or another, however subtle. My agenda, if you like, is not left or right of the political spectrum, but in the center of the insanity that I witness. Hoping somewhat (very) naively, that a single image one day might change the course of that conflict, ergo an agenda.

Sebastian Rich

A terribly malnourished Afghan baby boy in a UNICEF Therapeutic feeding center in Herat, Afghanistan. His fate is unknown to me.

Objectivity was ironically summed up for me by my mentor and friend, the extraordinarily talented American combat photographer John Hoagland.

John and I had been trying not to get shot by Salvadoran troops in that bloody civil war by hiding behind a cow. To the left of me was the dead body of a pregnant woman, who had been shot through the stomach revealing part of the fetus. In a moment of calm from the hail of bullets, I lay on my back shaking and asked John, "How do you stay objective in all this horror?"  He answered, "It's easy Sebastian. You do something good, I will take your photograph. You do something bad, I will take your photograph."

John was shot and killed just a few weeks later photographing Salvadoran troops doing something very bad. He was 36 years old.

Sebastian Rich

U.S. Army Medics fighting hard to save the life of a young baby girl on board a Blackhawk medevac helicopter in Afghanistan, 2011. She had been hit by shrapnel from a Taliban RPG. Inside an airborne Blackhawk helicopter you can hardly hear yourself think. But I could hear the little girl's screams of terrible pain clearly above the roar of the rotors.

Sebastian Rich's exhibition, which is supported by UNHCR and The Diplomatic Courier, runs at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. from October 2 to October 12, 2012.

Rich will be giving a talk at the Drexel University Westphal College of Media Arts and Design in Philadelphia on Thursday, October 4th.

Click here to see more of Sebastian Rich's work and here to view a trailer for Crossing the Line, a documentary about his experiences in Bosnia.

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Colin Rich

A behind the scenes view during the filming of "Nightfall".

Click here to see "Nightfall"

 By Matt Rivera, NBC News:

Cinematographer Colin Rich has released a new film on video called "Nightfall." Here is a brief interview with Rich about what it takes to put together a project like this.

 How do you choose your locations?

The hard thing in a city LA is that it’s very hard to get an original shot. You look at a place like LA, New York or Chicago and you’ve seen a billion shots from the same places. And they’re all shot by amazing photographers.

 It takes a long time, getting access to the shots, driving around at night, stuck in traffic, looking at things and wondering, how can I get on top of that? It could be a building or a fire escape or whatever. I probably shouldn’t say too much about this. The pay off is, after a complete night of shooting where you're frustrated, you may take a weird road and you just find a shot. It’s never an easy feat.

 How is Nightfall different from your last piece, LA Light?

I’ve been working on Nightfall on and off for over a year. In total it’s 105 time lapses in three minutes. It’s intense, much more intense than before. One shot will progress into the next shot. You might see a really wide shot from Mount Wilson, and the next shot you’ll see another landmark from that last shot, but you’re 13 or 14 miles closer.

There’s a different energy behind it. For me, LA Light kind of had a reflective feel. It wasn’t a feeling of loneliness in the city, but it was trying to capture some of that overall feel. I feel like whatever I shoot reflects how I feel at the time. For Nightfall, I wouldn’t say it’s chaotic, but it reflects the movement of the city. I think that once you compare these two, it’s apples and oranges.

 What’s the hardest part of shooting?

You certainly run into security guards or police officers and the best thing I can do when they really don’t want you there is buy time and try to change the subject. Sometimes I’ll point a camera in the complete opposite direction and monitor it. Then they’ll stand in front of it and give me their spiel. Meanwhile, I’ll have another camera pointed at the shot that I want, but I won’t look at it. And then after awhile I’ll say, ‘Ok, I’m leaving.’ And I’ve got the shot anyway.

 Before, security guards would be on you very quickly. After LA Light, things have gotten a little easier. And I don’t know what it is, but the harassment hasn’t been as bad. Last night I was shooting at a train station when a security guard asked if I had permits. I told him what I was doing, he radioed in and they were cool with it.

 I know they have a job to do, and I have a job to do too. I’m going to do everything in my power to get that shot.

 What comes first? The music or the shots?

The music. For me, each shot embraces the pacing of the music. I kept shooting and experimenting with different techniques in the beginning. You know how some musicians write lyrics first and then the music afterwards? I don’t really do that. Once you find that piece of music to lock in to, it helps me define each shot. It’s kind of like shooting a music video.

 What kind of rig do you use?

No matter what the rig is that I’m using, it always needs to lend itself to the particular shot. I never let the rig make the shot. The shot’s defined beforehand. Usually I’m shooting on a 5D Mark 2 or Mark 3.  Some of it’s linear motion control. Sometimes it’s 3 axis motion control. Sometimes it’s just on a tripod. I use Zeiss ZE Primes for my shoot. I have a 16-35, 24-105 and 70-200. But I just use them as view finders.

Colin Rich / Pacific Star Productions

A view of Los Angeles from the time-lapse film

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Bill Bouton

Boaters and kayakers waited with their cameras for a pod of humpbacks to breach the ocean's surface, an occasional sight around Port San Louis, according to amateur photographer Bill Bouton.

Bill Bouton, a retired high school biology teacher, was on an unsuccessful outing to photograph birds in San Luis Obispo, Calif., when he happened upon a breathtaking sight beneath the skyline: a pod of humpback whales feeding in shallow water.

The 69-year-old captured one of the enormous mammals breaching the surface while feeding on a “bait ball,” a dense mass of sardines that forms to ward off predators. But the defense mechanism just seemed to be attracting more hungry creatures, Bouton said, as hundreds of pelicans and seagulls were diving in the water and flying up again.

Bill Bouton

Despite federal guidelines that warn observers to stay at least 100 yards away from whales or risk being fined $50,000, onlookers hovered around the feeding site.

Scores of brave onlookers gathered around the whale as well, some daring to venture only a few feet away from the lunging giant.

“There’s a woman in what looked like a black party dress standing calmly on her paddle board and taking a photo with the whale,” Bouton told TODAY.com. “It was priceless.”

Bouton spotted the rare scene on Saturday from his moving car and pulled over immediately. After rushing to set up his tripod, he took photos from the passenger’s seat for nearly an hour.

Bill Bouton

Bouton said the humpbacks have been feeding for at least a couple of days in the shallow, sheltered waters, drawing crowds to the coast.

“I was really lucky,” he said.

In the 35 years that Bouton has been taking photos of animals, mostly birds, he’s never had a photo go this viral. He was surprised to find that in just 16 hours, the humpback pictures garnered over 200,000 views.

“It’s been absolutely crazy,” he said.

More on Animal Tracks:

Fat cat loses weight, gains Facebook fame
Sloth bear cub plays with family like a dog
Killer whale moves to Sea World San Diego

Biswaranjan Rout / AP

One-and-a-half-year-old sloth bear Buddu plays with Juli Kisan outside her family's home in Lakhapada, India.

Is there anything better on a Friday than adorable photos of a sloth bear acting like a dog? We don't think so!

Check out these pictures of the playful Buddu below.

Biswaranjan Rout / AP

Buddu wandered into the village following a herd of goats, and ended up staying with the Kisan family.

Biswaranjan Rout / AP

If you're concerned about Buddu's fate, worry no more. The cub, seen here getting his hair combed by Juli, was taken from the family by wildlife officials Friday.

Biswaranjan Rout / AP

Faithful companion: Ghasiram Kisan rests next to the young sloth bear.

More:

• 17 of this week's best animal photos
• Video: Snow leopard cubs debut in New York
• After 10 long years, woman reunited with her stolen horse

In a recent interview with NBC News's Ann Curry, Getty Images Chief Photographer Adam Pretty discusses why he loves shooting the Olympics and how he captures those special moments that occur in a blink of an eye.

This year’s Olympics are Pretty’s fifth summer games, and as a sports photographer, he believes they are the premiere event. "It's a compressed version of the human life," said Pretty. "It's the whole range of emotions in a really short space of time."

Watch the entire TODAY video.

Adam Pretty / Getty Images

Getty Images photographer Adam Pretty has photographed five summer games and has had the opportunity to document Michael Phelps from the beginning to the end of his Olympic career. In this photo Phelps, competes in the Men's 200m Individual Medley final.

Adam Pretty / Getty Images

Sports photographer, Adam Pretty, enjoys capturing moments underwater at the Olympic summer games. "The water light, and the athletic bodies is sort of the photographic nirvana." In this photo, Noemi Batki of Italy competes in the Women's 10m Platform Diving Semifinal.

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Slideshow: Olympic Emotional Moments

Click for more from the 2012 summer games in London.

Launch slideshow

Scott Strazzante / Chicago Tribune

Shooting from the Hip street photography in Chicago, IL. Photograph taken with Hipstamatic on an iPhone.

A combination of chance, timing and an unobtrusive way of documenting communities.

 Chicago Tribune staff photographer Scott Strazzante’s “Shooting from the Hip” blog features street-photography from the neighborhoods of Chicago with unpredictable compositions that offer a genuinely candid look at the people and their lifestyles.

Scott Strazzante/Chicago Tribune

Shooting from the Hip street photography in Chicago, IL. Photograph taken with Hipstamatic on an iPhone.

Key to Strazzante’s aesthetic is a method of shooting without always looking through the viewfinder.  Despite the uncertainty that it can bring Strazzante says, “chance became one of the tools in my arsenal.”

 Getting the shot while literally shooting from the hip is actually a well-honed skill. Scott began years ago with film cameras that had removable prisms which allowed him to compose while positioning the camera at high or low angles to get unique views. Not bringing the viewfinder up to his eye enables him to capture natural moments without his subjects reacting to his camera and also expands his field of vision.

 “If I shot from the eye, I might be walking down the street and see a moment but as I’m lifting the camera to my eyes it might be gone.  So now it’s almost just part of my thought process where I see it and I shoot it.”

Scott Strazzante / Chicago Tribune

Bus stop. Photograph taken with Hipstamatic on an iPhone.

Scott Strazzante/Chicago Tribune

Shooting from the Hip street photography in Chicago, IL. Photograph taken with Hipstamatic on an iPhone..

“One of the other byproducts for shooting from the hip is that I have a wider range of vision to see moments coming together.  I can see the guy with the big Afro coming down the street while there’s a woman with a crutch coming in from this way and then there’s a person with a balloon so I can kind of wait till they all intersect.”

“I wanted my blog to be a little more free-flowing and just kind of my thoughts, but it kind of turned into more literally shooting from the hip.  One of the things that I think over the years of being a newspaper photographer that started to grate on me was that every place I went outside of a sporting event, people knew I was there.”

 “They knew they were being photographed.  And obviously, that kind of influenced what they would do, they would either do something for the camera or they would have this knowing expression on their face that they were being photographed and for me that kind of ruined the photos.”

 Strazzante started with the “shooting from the hip” method as a way to avoid that camera awareness of his subjects.  “No one is putting on a show, even though they are in public, they still have a reality to it.  There’s not any kind of influence from me because I’m just another pedestrian,” he said.

Scott Strazzante/ Chicago Tribune

After rushing for a career high 205 yards, Chicago Bears' Matt Forte meets Carolina Panthers' Steve Smith at midfield after Bears' 34-29 win in NFL game at Soldier Field in Chicago, IL on Sunday, October 2, 2011. Scott Strazzante took this picture by reaching around other photographers to get the right angle.

Additionally, Strazzante discovered a path to a newfound creativity along the way.  “I came to realize that the compositions that I made that were more happenstance are more interesting than the ones that my brain could put together.  I really enjoyed that surprise of, oh, this leg is in there framing this or, I got low enough for this, all this was in the frame.

One example of this came at the end of a Bears football game in which running back Matt Forté ran for over two hundred yards.“I knew I had to rush out on to the field and get some sort of post-game Matt Forté. photo.”

Scott Strazzante/ Chicago Tribune

Second version of the meeting between Matt Forte and Steve Smith. Photographer Scott Strazzante was able to line up the image after the media cleared.

After finding Forté mid-field with Steve Smith of the Carolina Panthers, surrounded by other media, Strazzante reached around another photographer to get the shot of the players together ( at left ) without looking through the viewfinder. “Matt Forte’s entire head was obliterated by sun, and then people kind of cleared out and then I moved over and I stepped into the correct exposure and I shot it with my eye. “

“I went back and I compared like the photo I took just kind of reaching down which I thought was a super creative and interesting, I really liked it and then I looked at the photo that my mind put together and it was just this boring expected newspaper image. It’s like what I’ve been trained over the years to make.”

“I have this kind of schizophrenic line in my work where I have my creative, out-of-control photographs from the iPhone or “shooting from the hip”. Then when I’m shooting through my-- with my eye, with my brain, sometimes I get trapped in this newspaper-world of all these years of expectations of editors telling me ‘the horizon can’t be crooked’ or ‘it has to be in focus’.”

 “These things that have been ingrained in my head for years and years that I sometimes have a hard time mentally breaking through with that, and I feel I have all this freedom when I’m shooting for my blog that sometimes I forget to put into my daily work because my editors at the Tribune, they’re almost constantly telling me,  Scott,  please, be as creative with your daily assignment, as you are with your blog work because we like that.”

Scott Strazzante / Chicago Tribune

Photograph taken with Hipstamatic on an iPhone.

Scott Strazzante/Chicago Tribune

Maywood Park Racetrack in Melrose Park, IL

 Strazzante borrowed his daughters iPhone on a family trip last year and was quickly hooked.

“In December I got my own iPhone and then it slowly replaced my professional cameras as my street photography weapon of choice.  Then I started doing Instagram, and now I’ve completely stopped doing street photography with my normal camera. Now I just use the iPhone exclusively because I really just love the Instagram community and it’s been really a fun thing for me.”

 “I feel that I have the right to photograph anyone on the street I want...but there will be some photographs that I won’t published because I just think they are almost cruel.  So there are definitely some photographs I won’t publish,  but there’s no photograph I won’t shoot because I just don’t know how it will turn out.”

• See more of Scott Strazzante's work on his 'Shooting from the Hip' blog on the Chicago Tribune website.
• View Scott Strazzante's "Common Ground" project which explores the evolution of one plot of Illinois farmland into suburban neighborhood.
• Follow Scott Strazzante on Twitter here or on Instagram here.

Scott Strazzante/Chicago Tribune

Shooting from the Hip street photography in Chicago, IL.

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In this handout image provided by Disney Parks, Actor Russell Brand poses for acclaimed photographer Annie Leibovitz as Captain Hook from Disney's "Peter Pan" on Nov. 3, 2011 near Newhall, Calif. The new "Disney Dream Portrait," commissioned by Disney Parks for their ongoing celebrity advertising campaign which debuted in 2007, is one of two new images unveiled Aug. 1, 2012 by Disney Parks. The Leibovitz image, which will appear in several fall magazines, is entitled, "Where every moment leaves you hungry for more."

Actors Jack Black, Will Ferrell and Jason Segel pose for acclaimed photographer Annie Leibovitz as the comically spooky "Hitchhiking Ghosts" from Disney's landmark theme park attraction, the Haunted Mansion on March 5, near Lebec, Calif.

Actors Jack Black, Will Ferrell and Jason Segel pose for acclaimed photographer Annie Leibovitz as the comically spooky "Hitchhiking Ghosts" from Disney's landmark theme park attraction, the Haunted Mansion on March 5, 2012 near Lebec, Calif.

Actor Jason Segel and photographer Annie Leibovitz on the set during her photo shoot of the "Hitchhiking Ghosts" from Disney's landmark theme park attraction, the Haunted Mansion on March 5, 2012 near Lebec, Calif.

 Rarely do we get a behind-the-scenes look at one of Annie Leibovitz's photo shoots. Even though these images were taken a few months ago, and have now been released for publicity purposes, I thought that other photographers might appreciate a peek at what it takes to pull off a big shoot with top celebrities.

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Mike Blake / Reuters

Marcel Nguyen of Germany competes in the horizontal bar during the men's individual all-around gymnastics final in the North Greenwich Arena during the London 2012 Olympic Games August 1. This picture was taken using multiple exposures.

Mike Blake / Reuters

Marcel Nguyen of Germany competes in the horizontal bar during the men's individual all-around gymnastics final in the North Greenwich Arena during the London 2012 Olympic Games on August 1. This picture was taken using multiple exposures.

Mike Blake / Reuters

Kazuhito Tanaka of Japan competes in the horizontal bar during the men's gymnastics team final in the North Greenwich Arena during the London 2012 Olympic Games July 30. This picture was taken using multiple exposures.

 Reuters photographer Mike Blake has been experimenting with high-speed multiple exposure images of athletes at the 2012 London Olympics gymnastics events. To read more about his process follow this link to the Reuters Photographers blog.

See more images from the 2012 Olympics in the NBCNews.com PhotoBlog here.