Cops and Prisons

<p>Mike here. Professional old-school PJ (photographing and writing) for the last 20 or so years. Since 1998 specializing in photographing law enforcement, forensics, prisons, and related topics for my editorial stock photography business. I'm probably about as far as you can get from both commercial and artistic photography. For me editorial stock photography is really the blue collar manual labor of the photography industry. It's about content, knowing your topics, and being good with people so you get access to where you need to get to photograph. My website isn't fancy but it gets the job I need it to do done - helping photo researchers and editors finding the specific images they're looking for. You can find it at http://arrestingimages.com if you're sufficiently bored and have some time to fritter away.<br /> <br /> I still do PJ work but these days we're not talking breaking news or anything like that. Rather it's feature stories and articles plus photos for a variety of trade magazines and specialist publications. Not surprising police and prison publications but quite a few others as well. Everything from the meat industry to social justice issues. Running my own business I work a lot and when I'm not pitching new article ideas to magazines I'm out riding around in a cop car or spending time inside prison. <br /> <br /> I also write a few of the guides and reports for editorial stock photographers published by PhotoSource International. I've worked with Rohn Engh and PSI for almost as long as I've specialized in photographing cops and robbers. When I first started out a few eons back I was very fortunate in getting help and wisdom from more experienced colleagues and I like to be able to give some of that back to other photographers. Helping others is always a good thing in my book.<br /> <br /> If you are currently taking a college level class in criminal justice, forensics, criminology etc chances are pretty big that one or more of your textbooks will have a few photos by me. I have been fortunate enough to be able to work with the main US national book publishers within this field. My work also appear in a surprisingly large number of kiddie books. "My Dad's a Police Officer" type of books. I really enjoy what I do and best of all I get to spend a lot of time with some really fantastic people. Especially the Gang squad and Street Narcotics squads at the Kansas City, MO, PD. <br /> <br /> Nothing more to say really. Married, no kids. Live in Nebraska and yes, it really is as boring as everybody says here...;-)<br /></p>

<p>Mikael is too modest to mention it, but he was a featured member for photo.net the other month:</p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/featured-member/2010/january/mikael-karlsson-law-enforcement-stock-photographer</p>