I ran across this article from the Guardian last week on Lightstalkers, and didn't really get a chance to sit down and read it through until this morning.
Is photography really dead? Andrew Brown, an accomplished English journalist in his own right, says it is. He points to the ease-of-use of modern photographic equipment, and lamenting the fact that it is "so easy" for the Everyman to take a photograph now, claims that the overall quality of pictorial stock is in decline.
In some ways, Andrew seems to be on the right track. It is infinitely easier to take a photograph today than it was, say, 50 years ago. The equipment necessary to take high-quality photographs even through the 1970s was cumbersome, difficult to use, and required a great attention to detail in order to get a professional picture. Of course, the Polaroid camera existed back then for the amateurs, so it's not like "easy to use" is really all that new.
What really makes the difference now is that one can take extremely high-quality photographs using digital cameras these days, and easily meet or exceed the quality of many editorial photographs sent across the news wires. Andrew is certainly correct in saying that a professional can take a beautiful photograph with every click of the shutter, whereas amateurs can only get one once in every dozen pictures or so. Heck, I know that's true -- that's about how often I can get a relatively professional-looking photograph with my consumer equipment (and, more importantly, my consumer eye). Chris Anderson, who is a professional, can accomplish the same 100% of the time. I'm fine with that, that part of the photographic world is still, and will remain, completely intact.
I can sympathize, of course, with Andrew's point. We in the computing world have been dealing with increasingly simple computers for a decade now, and have seen the bar of entry into our profession be lowered continually. Whereas it took a team of computer scientists hours of work to develop a basic database application back in the 1970's, anyone can do it themselves today, without putting much thought into it. Sure, the quality of some software packages has declined over the years, but overall, is the computing industry better for all of the simplification? I think it is. (Other than the managers, but that's a whole different topic.) Similar discussions were had back in the 80s, when the advent of the personal computer, printer, and desktop publishing software seemed like it would threaten the entire publishing industry.
The outcry died down quickly, once we discovered that the publishing industry wasn't genuinely threatened by the types of publications produced on this consumer equipment, which tended to be more of the Church-bulletin, PTA meeting variety.
Where I think Andrew is missing the point is that it's not just the quality of news photography that's in decline, but also in the editorial process itself. How else could we be in a situation where the Reuters wire editor admit that, in the middle of a major conflict, he didn't have anyone on staff that could write a decent caption? Or bother to check the accuracy of the ones that had been sent in? In what world is it acceptable for the New York Times to distort and misrepresent the context of a photograph so completely that the photographer himself takes to the streets to denounce it?
Most egregiously, in what world is it acceptable for a news organization to accept and transmit a guerrilla army's word as fact, without bothering to objectively try to ascertain the facts on the ground or otherwise make note that the information provided to them is carefully-orchestrated propaganda? The editorial process, once the vaunted guardian of objectivity, has fallen into complete disrepair, and the resulting lack of objective coverage is, from my point of view, what is hurting the photojournalism industry more than anything.
Andrew's correct to point out that there are some problems with the photography industry. I'm just not sure he's looking in the right place.
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
We all helped to speed the demise of professional photographers
Andrew Brown
Thursday May 3, 2007
The Guardian
Half a dozen lurid and splodgy pictures in the local paper brought home to me the death of an honourable profession this week. I took them. I am in my small way responsible for impoverishing an old friend, because he, not me, is a professional photographer, and his living has been more or less abolished by the changing world. Just as film has been replaced by digital, professionals are being replaced by amateurs. The changes are partly technological and partly economic, but the final blow to his profession has come from Flickr and similar Web 2.0 sites.
Twenty-one years ago, when he and I started together on the Independent newspaper - then famous for the quality of its photographs - the pictures that could sell newspapers could only be produced by professionals. Not only did photographers need the cunning, determination and eye for a story that journalists admire, they needed quite simple equipment and considerable technical skills. It took years for them to learn to see the world in black and white, and to get the best out of their cameras. It took years, too, to learn how to develop film and print it so as to bring the best out in every picture.
The first blow to this world was the adoption of colour photography. Colour film is so much harder to develop that it is all done by specialists. There is no longer room for the individual photographer to refine his own style. And colour requires a much less specialised way of looking at the world. To make a striking black and white picture, you need an eye; to make a striking colour picture, all you need is a patch of striking colour. Black and white photography makes the world look strange, and new; colour makes it look vivid and familiar, so colour photographs of much lower technical accomplishment became acceptable in newspapers.
As the demand for technically accomplished photos was shrinking, technology was making them easier to take. You now have to pay quite a lot to find a digital camera that will even allow the photographer to make any of the decisions once demanded for every photograph. And the digital camera, left to itself, will get these tricky decisions right. It will adjust itself, focus and even search out the face in a picture. My mobile phone takes better pictures than a snapshot camera would when the Independent started.
These developments may have diminished the value of a professional photographer's skills. But they couldn't eliminate the need for professionalism: the difference between a professional and an amateur is not that the amateur never takes really good pictures. It is that the professional will always come up with usable ones. A talented, hardworking and lucky amateur can produce wonderful pictures on the best days. But that will be one picture in a hundred. A professional can produce something that is nearly as good as their best 50 times in a hundred. That's why they are worth employing.
News photographs don't have to be technically accomplished. They sell on their captions. But many professionals make their money from photographs that are no longer news - the stock images sold by picture libraries. This is the market that the web will devastate. It is already damaging it: when I went round to see my friend, he was looking at a pile of 4,500 stock transparencies returned to him by a well-respected agency that had just gone bankrupt.
A picture-sharing site like Flickr contains the work of tens of thousands of talented amateurs, all of them capable of producing one or two photographs a year that could be published anywhere. A British photographers' site, EPUK, has calculated that if only 1% of the pictures on Flickr are publishable, that would mean 1.5m usable pictures uploaded there every year. Most of the drudgery of identifying good, relevant pictures is also done here - by the photographers themselves, who tag them, and by the other users, who notice them and have their interest recorded by the software.
Perhaps none of these people could make a living as a photographer, but few want to. Any money they make is gravy for them - and bread taken from the mouths of professionals.
Thursday May 3, 2007
The Guardian
Half a dozen lurid and splodgy pictures in the local paper brought home to me the death of an honourable profession this week. I took them. I am in my small way responsible for impoverishing an old friend, because he, not me, is a professional photographer, and his living has been more or less abolished by the changing world. Just as film has been replaced by digital, professionals are being replaced by amateurs. The changes are partly technological and partly economic, but the final blow to his profession has come from Flickr and similar Web 2.0 sites.
Twenty-one years ago, when he and I started together on the Independent newspaper - then famous for the quality of its photographs - the pictures that could sell newspapers could only be produced by professionals. Not only did photographers need the cunning, determination and eye for a story that journalists admire, they needed quite simple equipment and considerable technical skills. It took years for them to learn to see the world in black and white, and to get the best out of their cameras. It took years, too, to learn how to develop film and print it so as to bring the best out in every picture.
The first blow to this world was the adoption of colour photography. Colour film is so much harder to develop that it is all done by specialists. There is no longer room for the individual photographer to refine his own style. And colour requires a much less specialised way of looking at the world. To make a striking black and white picture, you need an eye; to make a striking colour picture, all you need is a patch of striking colour. Black and white photography makes the world look strange, and new; colour makes it look vivid and familiar, so colour photographs of much lower technical accomplishment became acceptable in newspapers.
As the demand for technically accomplished photos was shrinking, technology was making them easier to take. You now have to pay quite a lot to find a digital camera that will even allow the photographer to make any of the decisions once demanded for every photograph. And the digital camera, left to itself, will get these tricky decisions right. It will adjust itself, focus and even search out the face in a picture. My mobile phone takes better pictures than a snapshot camera would when the Independent started.
These developments may have diminished the value of a professional photographer's skills. But they couldn't eliminate the need for professionalism: the difference between a professional and an amateur is not that the amateur never takes really good pictures. It is that the professional will always come up with usable ones. A talented, hardworking and lucky amateur can produce wonderful pictures on the best days. But that will be one picture in a hundred. A professional can produce something that is nearly as good as their best 50 times in a hundred. That's why they are worth employing.
News photographs don't have to be technically accomplished. They sell on their captions. But many professionals make their money from photographs that are no longer news - the stock images sold by picture libraries. This is the market that the web will devastate. It is already damaging it: when I went round to see my friend, he was looking at a pile of 4,500 stock transparencies returned to him by a well-respected agency that had just gone bankrupt.
A picture-sharing site like Flickr contains the work of tens of thousands of talented amateurs, all of them capable of producing one or two photographs a year that could be published anywhere. A British photographers' site, EPUK, has calculated that if only 1% of the pictures on Flickr are publishable, that would mean 1.5m usable pictures uploaded there every year. Most of the drudgery of identifying good, relevant pictures is also done here - by the photographers themselves, who tag them, and by the other users, who notice them and have their interest recorded by the software.
Perhaps none of these people could make a living as a photographer, but few want to. Any money they make is gravy for them - and bread taken from the mouths of professionals.
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Need Photography?
Need your products shot for the web or your company brochure? Perhaps you are an interior decorator who wants to have professional photos taken of your work for your portfolio? Or maybe you simply want to sell your house and need some great shots of it to seal the deal.
I use professional Canon digital cameras and Lenses so your pictures will be ready for any output you need: web, print, posters, billboards, or even vehicles! I am a professional and work quickly and accurately so you won't feel that your money has been wasted.
A typical day long shoot in the Tallahassee area would cost from $250 - $500.
I am a member of The American Society of Media Photographers (asmp.org).
I use professional Canon digital cameras and Lenses so your pictures will be ready for any output you need: web, print, posters, billboards, or even vehicles! I am a professional and work quickly and accurately so you won't feel that your money has been wasted.
A typical day long shoot in the Tallahassee area would cost from $250 - $500.
I am a member of The American Society of Media Photographers (asmp.org).
Would you let "Cousin Louis" shoot your wedding?
From this months Photo District News a couple of great quotes from editor Holly Hughes:
"Some designers , for example, are demanding that photographers hand over unretouched digital image files, in hopes that this will save on photography or postproduction fees. Wedding photographers are having to deal with brides who want to pay a flat fee in return for a cd of unedited, unaltered images (a few short-sighted photographers are giving in to their demands). Luckily many wedding photographers are making headway in educating clients that if they have bothered to hire a photographer whose style they like--as opposed to, say, Cousin Louis who has a digital camera--they would be making a mistake by not letting a professional finish the job"
"What's changed in two years is that art buyers have realized they need the skills of an experienced photographer as much as they ever did to oversee shooting and retouching of believable images"
"Some designers , for example, are demanding that photographers hand over unretouched digital image files, in hopes that this will save on photography or postproduction fees. Wedding photographers are having to deal with brides who want to pay a flat fee in return for a cd of unedited, unaltered images (a few short-sighted photographers are giving in to their demands). Luckily many wedding photographers are making headway in educating clients that if they have bothered to hire a photographer whose style they like--as opposed to, say, Cousin Louis who has a digital camera--they would be making a mistake by not letting a professional finish the job"
"What's changed in two years is that art buyers have realized they need the skills of an experienced photographer as much as they ever did to oversee shooting and retouching of believable images"
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