Photojournalism is interesting more than ever and represents one of favorite news reporting options. So, it is great to see that citizen journalists and photojournalists have more place for their work, place to upload, share and view photos from all around the world. Perfect community for this kind of activity is Glopho.

Everything about Glopho you can find here, in our interview with Simon Walker, Glopho CEO.

Q: What is Glopho and how it works ?

A: Glopho is a news photo-sharing community where the users themselves make the news by defining what they consider to be important and what they want to make public. It is centred on a website hub but supported by iOS and Android apps that allow users to both shoot photos and upload them, then view the photos currently live on the site.

Q: Glopho is interesting name. For me it’s short for global photography. Am I right ?

A: Absolutely - made up word based exactly as you guessed on global photography.

Q: What was your motive for starting Glopho ?

A: I worked as a photojournalist for a range of national and international newspapers and magazines for 15 years before becoming News Picture Editor at The Times. During this 20 year period I was always at the cutting edge of technology in photography and news gathering and when I saw the emergence of ‘citizen-journalism’ and the massive increase in photo-sharing it seemed only natural that this is where the future lay and I left the traditional media world to set up Glopho and immerse myself in this new phenomena.

Q: Tell us something about Glopho apps

A: We have always seen the apps as sitting alongside the website and adding to the experience rather that replacing it. As such we released the apps first as a simple way of shooting photos and uploading the results but we have just released our latest versions which enable the user to also view the latest photos on the site as well as those of their followers and those they follow. Over the coming months we have many more updates planned for both iOS and Android that will see the features and functionality go beyond even what is available currently on the website itself.
We also have a very basic shoot and upload Blackberry version available.

Q: What is the main link between Glopho and citizen journalism ?

A: I see citizen journalism as a critical part of the news gathering experience for the 21st century. With a camera to be found in most people’s pockets the potential to capture everything is pretty much upon us and it will be about how we decipher this digital noise rather than how we capture it that will determine what we call news in the future.

Q: Speaking of which , what do you think about citizen journalism ?

A: As blasphemous as it may sound to my colleagues of old, I am as excited about where citizen journalism may take us as I was when I first used a digital camera in the mid 1990’s.

Q: What is your vision of citizen journalism in the future ?

A: I think it is inevitable that we will see the citizen journalist becoming an important part of the news gathering process and the possibility of crowd-sourcing providing a genuine hierarchy for what’s important and valued becoming a reality very quickly. The opportunity for us all to take control collectively of the news agenda is an exciting prospect.

Q: Glopho in the future .

A: My vision for Glopho is that it will continue to grow and as more and more people discover it and understand what it represents, the more it will become a powerful tool for all of us to shape the news. We are all becoming increasing visually literate and Glopho is poised to satisfy the demand there is to sort our digital photos - those we want to keep private and those we want to share with the world.

Tags: Glopho, photo, photojournalism, Simon Walker