ADP Multimedia & Oral History Stories

Hello Patrick, great work, particularly liked the Oral Histories, very interesting. Looking forward to your – "long argumentative essay – Reforming Journalism for a Global Era”.

Brilliant.

After wading through the cod philosophy and doomsday vibe we’ve had on LS lately (with the exception of Guilad’s wonderful self portrait thread), this posting made me excited again about viual media for the first time in a while. What a vibrant and heartfelt rendering of these people and this place.

Great work.

Eat more oily fish, it’s good for the brain. That’s my cod philosophy for the day.

And to be honest, I’m gonna need several portions of sardines to get my head round the stuff Patrick comes up with on a regular basis, ’cos that geezer is a multimedia wizard.

As for the doomsday vibe…well, if your idea of photojournalism is still stuck in a 50 year old print mindset, hoping for that big spread in that big magazine, even though its screamingly obvious that idea is increasingly going the way of the Dodo, then I suppose yes, in some ways you are doomed.

Using 70-year old cameras, shooting monochrome film and living like a self-flagellating hobo might have been the way things worked 50 years ago, but it ain’t now, and personally I’m a bit sick and tired of that image being pushed on us like its some kind of ‘authentic’ photojournalistic practice, while digital media is sniffily seen as being ‘gimmicky’.

It’s people like Patrick who are actually acting in accordance with photojournalisms true and continuing tradition, which has been to ALWAYS seize upon technological change to leverage visual imagery to large audiences.

The 35mm camera, colour film, electronic flashguns and even wireless radio telegraphy (the first photograph was ‘wired’ in 1905) were jumped upon by photographers, but for some reason, over the last decades we’ve become stuck in a rut of our own making – witness the witchfinder howls that accompanied photographers using HDV video cameras to framegrab stills.

The seismic changes in the media taking place now are finally kicking a lot of photographers out of the complacent cosy niche they’ve inhabited for ages – myself included – and all the better for that.

Sion,

I’m a young (33) old (still shoot only film and mainly Leica) color dinosaur(do not own a digital camera). I don’t find nothing wrong with that. As I don’t find nothing wrong with Patrick using new technology. I’m not a progress fan but I’m not against it. I just think that there is place for everybody to express themselves as they like, and I think at the end is just about finding the right tool (because that what cameras and technology are after all) to express yourself.
Nobody criticise painters for being still painting instead of making digital art. Nobody criticise some journalist to do comics to express the news (they did that beginning of the last century too…) It’s just a matter of what works for you.
I just think that you choose your way, you try to make it work and you don’t complain.
For myself I have no complaints about what photography gives me.

excellent work…and what an exciting project. kudos to all who participated.

Giovanni – Photography as a medium of expression ain’t gonna die anytime soon, but that’s not what I was talking about. I’m talking about the mechanics and practice of photojournalism, which in truth is and always has been inimately tied in with technological change.

My point was that nobody criticises painters (neither would I) but painters no longer try and make the claim that they represent some kind of truthful path to enlightenment anymore. That role was taken by a technological shift – the invention of photography – with photojournalism assuming the mantle of reflecting the world as it is in some significant way.

This is still the dominant existing paradigm of photojournalism (and the one that’s still being sold to countless PJ college students), which is the lone photographer shooting photo-essays to be used in newspapers/magazines, which will be seen and then ‘change things’ in some amorphous humanistic way…not to mention the spurious notion that monochrome photography represents some kind of more ‘truthful’ view than any other, along with the deeply conservative idea that it’s all got to be done without flash and with a camera that makes no noise.

That paradigm has been dying in the real world for at least 15 years, and the brutal truth is the number of photographers who can make a career doing that kind of thing nowadays is miniscule, and their audience is diminishing and migrating to other media.

Yet this ‘Perpignan’ view of photojournalism is still overwhelmingly dominant, despite a large amount of evidence that it’s not really working anymore – because most people out there can’t be bothered to see it.

Let me put it another way. I mean no offence to anyone, but if I went out on the street, or into my local pub, or pretty much anywhere in my neighbourhood and listed out 10 top photojournalists working today (and we’d all know ‘em) they wouldn’t have a clue who they were, and chances are they’ll have rarely seen their images.

Yet in our sphere, these names would be instantly recognisable.

In our sphere.

And that’s the rub. If I asked the same people the names of contemporary painters, I’d get the same blank stares.

But painters aren’t in the business of trying to raise awareness of contemporary issues. Photojournalists are.

So if a lot of contemporary photojournalism is as obscure to the general public as painting (or should I say if the images are) you have to question what’s going on.

And it has nothing to do with the audience, ‘cos they aint stupid…they’re just largely not interested in our way of doing things anymore, and the previously dominant distribution channel (print) for photojournalism is withering away.

So what are we going to do about it? Well, it looks like some solution will be forced upon us, because the economic viability of photojournalism is bottoming out to a flatline…at least in print, which will increasingly diminish, because the people who run magazines and newspapers are not as sentimental as photojournalists and certainly won’t run dying circulation publications solely for our benefit.

It’s the relentless mechanistic operation of capitalism – people (and their money) is going to the Web. If you’re a print media company you will HAVE to go to the Web or go broke. It’s the only place where you can get potential growth for shareholders.

Once the print costs outweigh the return, the publication closes, and if you think print publications like Time, Newsweek or the New York Times won’t close down, then I have two words for ya:

Life Magazine.

That magazine was a photojournalism giant and it’s dead. It was a national icon, yet when it became simply too expensive, for a diminishing audience, the axe came down.

Organisations like the NYT are investing massive sums making sure their migration to the Web as a multimedia news channel is seamless…ready for when they either close the paper, or radically reduce it.

So the question is – if your working paradigm is shooting stills for use in print, and print no longer exists, or is too small to provide you a living, or if the audience is so small as to be irrelevant in raising awareness by that mode…or if Kodak or Fuji stops making film, because it’s simply no longer profitable…what do you do then?

The question of whether that means the death of photojournalism largely depends then, on the people doing it. It will possibly mean the death of a particular kind of photojournalism, a kind whose time perhaps has come to an end, but that doesn’t mean another kind won’t take its place.

People like Patrick are beginning to explore that territory.

My whole argument is predicated by the way, on the view that although photography is a perfectly valid way of doing ‘what works for you’, photojournalism as a genre of photography has traditionally been concerned with communicationg with an audience, and not being a medium which solely pursues self-expression.

Self-expression is of course one aspect, but it isn’t the raison d’etre of photojournalistic practice, at least in my opinion.

This is another problem which I think has clouded the waters of the medium in recent years and stopped it from developing towards viable audiences.

terrific!….

all we have are songs and spits and tales, long and short of it….and it aint the media that’s important (never was, never has has been, never will be) so much as the one and only thing we have: the story…..

love the stories, the access for readers/viewers, the sharing of tales, that’s it plain and simple….

embrace whichever way you can pass the life of those around you along the way, that’s all that matters.

dig the story, the presentation, the thumb-nail bumbs too….

great job….

cheers,
bob

p.s. waitin’ for the oral history about the mustache too ;)))))))))))

super stuff. just keep going patrick, keep going…

Sion, we have all discussed this before and in greater depth on other threads. I am pretty much in agreement with what you say, but I would add in a further distinction for clarification: the crucial difference, the central issue that faces us, is not so much the elements we encounter at the production end of things (the cameras you choose, film v. digital, b&w v. color, etc) but the distribution end — as you say, the WEB. Paper is ceding its historical hegemony to code (0010010000). Fine by me. I can shoot according to my lights (pardon the pun) and still participate in the new economy. I got no problem with that. My last grant from OSI — the Documentary Distribution Grant — taught me a huge amount about effective communication and what we all need to do in the future to cultivate a potentially larger audience than that which we enjoyed in the past.

But there are caveats. At the moment the Dominican sugar industry is aghast because France recently hosted a colloquium on sugar which featured a film, The Price of Sugar, that has all the industry captains pissed off as hell. One single movie has done more to provoke discussion than all the (excellent) PJ work that has been done down here in the last five, no seven, years. Why? Because film is the narrative genre par excellence of our times — magazines dont count for shit in comparison. And yet film has the same limitations that magazine work does — a film appears during a given moment, makes the rounds, and eventually disappears.

So maybe there is hope for us still, because things like multimedia give us the kinetic energy and contemporary caché of film while it also allows us to keep our message perenially alive. And narrative experiments like that which Peress and Ritchin presented on Pixel Press are yet to be capitalized on by all of us — it shocks me that none of us here is experimenting likewise – though you can bet your ass I am! The Web presents us with opportunities and formal possibilities that have yet to be defined fully and exploited. (look on THIS THREAD for a previous discussion of some of this).

Part of it is we need to remember that we, as journalists, are pedagogues of a sort — we are here to teach and inform. Let’s take that role seriously and explore the means whereby we can cultivate new audiences and exploit the new means of communication that are offered us. When my Dominican Batey website is up and running you will see what I am getting at — but all the work I did this winter was lost when my laptop was burgled. It shouldnt be much longer before the preliminary or skeletal form is up on the web.

In the meantime, Bob is right to remind us – all this is just an adumbration of a very basic thing: the story. As both Plato and Aristotle fully understood — mimesis is the key, narrative is what provides us the means to shape and give meaning to experience. We are what we tell ourselves. I think that with the tools we have at our disposal, we are or can be every bit as powerful in our storytelling as any other medium — if we tackle head on the whole issue of distribution in the age of the Fourth Screen and the Seventh Mass Media, we can hope to enjoy an active and influential role in communicating the important ideas of our times. Hey, while Homer undoubtedly owes his fame in part to the incredible narrative ingenuity of his poems, you can bet he suffered from the blisters he acquired while making his rounds from one campfire to another to orally relate his poetry. In other words, he energetically took command of distributing his own work. we can no longer be content to allow our agencies and our magazine editors to control this essential half of the communication equation.

“The 35mm camera, color film, electronic flashguns and even wireless radio telegraphy (the first photograph was ‘wired’ in 1905) were jumped upon by photographers, but for some reason, over the last decades we’ve become stuck in a rut of our own making – witness the witch finder howls that accompanied photographers using HDV video cameras to frame grab stills. —Sion Touhig”

It is my humble opinion that this “rut” that so many of us cling to is a type of self-preservation, not necessarily an honest aversion to “new media” and video stills. I think for the most part the new media that we interact with, or know of, on a daily basis is that created by newspapers, for newspapers. Their philosophy on new media seems to mirror that of convergence from a few years ago: get as much as you can for as little and generate as much revenue possible.

This, obviously, is a bad formula for photographers and it is that formula that NEW MEDIA has come to represent for most of us. There ARE exceptions, but for the most part newspapers are the bottom feeders of the newspaper world, and so is the multimedia that they produce. It generally lacks content, is unsatisfying to produce and work for, and generates a lot of unhappy and frustrated photojournalists. I think most of the aversion we feel is because we fear having to produce enormous amounts of mediocre content for the web. In contrast with most newspaper multimedia, there is the work produced by the likes of VII, Mediastorm, MSNBC.com, Mountainworkshops, and in my humble opinion The American Diversity Project. I think the philosophy to run with is to emphasize function over fashion, using the best tools necessary to tell the story that we want to convey. In the case of the American Diversity Project we are completely based on the still image, as far as the photographers go. From there we take the strongest stories that could also benefit from the application of sound, video or anything else and then develop it as a multimedia piece. We do not, however, have the photographers gather any multimedia content unless that is something that they choose to do. Carla and I feel that this is vital. The ADP staff includes photojournalists who eat, breathe and sleep and love multimedia and it is those people who gather the additional content and later produce the multimedia pieces.

It is probably important for “still” photographers to be versed in the growing technology, because it is important to at least know what tools are available to best tell the story, even if they aren’t the ones wielding those tools when the new media story is produced. Personally, I love GOOD multimedia. I HATE the bad. I like dabbling in new media for my own stories, but I know there are those who love it more and are better at it than I am. This is why my wife and I are proud to collaborate with the Gonzo Photojournalism Collective and Patrick yen whenever possible. We have a personal project that will be taking place in Guatemala in early 2008 and it is for that reason that we chose Patrick Yen to accompany us in both documenting and publishing, on the web, the piece we produce down there. I cannot repeat enough how big a fan I am of collaborating with other creative types in producing well rounded work.

I think Jon Anderson in his earlier post made a really good point when he said: “At the moment the Dominican sugar industry is aghast because France recently hosted a colloquium on sugar which featured a film, The Price of Sugar, that has all the industry captains pissed off as hell. One single movie has done more to provoke discussion than all the (excellent) PJ work that has been done down here in the last five, no seven, years. —Jon Anderson”
The interesting this about this whole new media adventure is that not only are there more tools for us, as storytellers, to convey what we’re documenting, but that there are now an infinite amount of ways to publish this work and also receive work in turn. How many of you have received assignments as a result of having a portfolio online, or being listed in a directory such as PhotoServe?? You have outlets such as MySpace, LIGHTSTALKERS, nppa’s multimedia clip contest, Flickr, your own web space to self publish your own work. Not only that, but there are outlets like Digital Railroad and Photoshelter that not only allow you to publish your work and contact info on the web, but you can send lightboxes to any magazine or agency that you can find an email address for. You now have the opportunity to be you own one-man agency. Right now ADP is published exclusively on the web solely because of budget. ADP does not receive the grant necessary, nor do Carla and I have the savings, to publish a book version of ADP. So it stays on the web.

I think the greatest advantage of the web and new media is that we now are offered the opportunity to have independence. We don’t need traditional outlets to have people see our work unless we choose to rely on them. I understand that this is a bit idealistic, but I think the goal of breaking free of newspapers is something we all as photographers, still or otherwise, should fight tooth and nail for. I like Jon Anderson’s post where he said of Homer: “In other words, he energetically took command of distributing his own work. we can no longer be content to allow our agencies and our magazine editors to control this essential half of the communication equation.”

If this means delving more into the commercial realm with our photography or exploring new outlets then so much the better. While many of shudder at the idea of “selling our pj souls” to shoot commercial work, in my opinion that is a better way of paying the bills than selling pictures to the local rag. You have the opportunity for better work, better pay, more control over copyright, etc. Plus, if we exist by selling journalistic work, as freelancers, it seems like we are just a very small version of a newspaper, which keeps its lights on by selling journalism. Commercial work isn’t the answer to all pj ills, it’s just the best example I have off the top of my head. To kick start our own journey away from newspapers and to stop our depending on selling journalism my wife and I because cross-country truck drivers. This sucks. But in a few months we will have enough saved to get on our feet freelancing non newspaper work and can concentrate on just telling stories when we shoot our personal work, not how we are going to pay the bills when we get done.

Anyway, it is my stance that the need for or the importance of the still image is not dead nor will it ever die. In this emerging era of photojournalism we simply have more tools available to do what we do best, tell stories that matter. As traditional news outlets are gobbled up by for-profit conglomerates the traditional sense of fulfillment we received in working for these outlets will diminish, yet they will also continue to decline in relevance as they focus more on the bottom line than on strong journalism. While unsettling this “shake” up of photojournalism gives us the opportunity to focus on our own independence. Hence it is the mission of the American Diversity Project to produce strong documentary work completely independent of anyone’s support. While it is strongly grounded on the still image we will continue to develop and pursue multimedia stories in keep with our commitment to fully documenting the areas of the country we visit.

Sorry for this rambling document, I know that there has been a lot of discussion on this topic on LS lately and to be honest I’m a bit behind with keeping up on it here. I hope that this hasn’t been overly boring/redundant…

jim

“The 35mm camera, color film, electronic flashguns and even wireless radio telegraphy (the first photograph was ‘wired’ in 1905) were jumped upon by photographers, but for some reason, over the last decades we’ve become stuck in a rut of our own making – witness the witch finder howls that accompanied photographers using HDV video cameras to frame grab stills. —Sion Touhig”

It is my humble opinion that this “rut” that so many of us cling to is a type of self-preservation, not necessarily an honest aversion to “new media” and video stills. I think for the most part the new media that we interact with, or know of, on a daily basis is that created by newspapers, for newspapers. Their philosophy on new media seems to mirror that of convergence from a few years ago: get as much as you can for as little and generate as much revenue possible.

This, obviously, is a bad formula for photographers and it is that formula that NEW MEDIA has come to represent for most of us. There ARE exceptions, but for the most part newspapers are the bottom feeders of the newspaper world, and so is the multimedia that they produce. It generally lacks content, is unsatisfying to produce and work for, and generates a lot of unhappy and frustrated photojournalists. I think most of the aversion we feel is because we fear having to produce enormous amounts of mediocre content for the web. In contrast with most newspaper multimedia, there is the work produced by the likes of VII, Mediastorm, MSNBC.com, Mountainworkshops, and in my humble opinion The American Diversity Project. I think the philosophy to run with is to emphasize function over fashion, using the best tools necessary to tell the story that we want to convey. In the case of the American Diversity Project we are completely based on the still image, as far as the photographers go. From there we take the strongest stories that could also benefit from the application of sound, video or anything else and then develop it as a multimedia piece. We do not, however, have the photographers gather any multimedia content unless that is something that they choose to do. Carla and I feel that this is vital. The ADP staff includes photojournalists who eat, breathe and sleep and love multimedia and it is those people who gather the additional content and later produce the multimedia pieces.

It is probably important for “still” photographers to be versed in the growing technology, because it is important to at least know what tools are available to best tell the story, even if they aren’t the ones wielding those tools when the new media story is produced. Personally, I love GOOD multimedia. I HATE the bad. I like dabbling in new media for my own stories, but I know there are those who love it more and are better at it than I am. This is why my wife and I are proud to collaborate with the Gonzo Photojournalism Collective and Patrick yen whenever possible. We have a personal project that will be taking place in Guatemala in early 2008 and it is for that reason that we chose Patrick Yen to accompany us in both documenting and publishing, on the web, the piece we produce down there. I cannot repeat enough how big a fan I am of collaborating with other creative types in producing well rounded work.

I think Jon Anderson in his earlier post made a really good point when he said: “At the moment the Dominican sugar industry is aghast because France recently hosted a colloquium on sugar which featured a film, The Price of Sugar, that has all the industry captains pissed off as hell. One single movie has done more to provoke discussion than all the (excellent) PJ work that has been done down here in the last five, no seven, years. —Jon Anderson”
The interesting this about this whole new media adventure is that not only are there more tools for us, as storytellers, to convey what we’re documenting, but that there are now an infinite amount of ways to publish this work and also receive work in turn. How many of you have received assignments as a result of having a portfolio online, or being listed in a directory such as PhotoServe?? You have outlets such as MySpace, LIGHTSTALKERS, nppa’s multimedia clip contest, Flickr, your own web space to self publish your own work. Not only that, but there are outlets like Digital Railroad and Photoshelter that not only allow you to publish your work and contact info on the web, but you can send lightboxes to any magazine or agency that you can find an email address for. You now have the opportunity to be you own one-man agency. Right now ADP is published exclusively on the web solely because of budget. ADP does not receive the grant necessary, nor do Carla and I have the savings, to publish a book version of ADP. So it stays on the web.

I think the greatest advantage of the web and new media is that we now are offered the opportunity to have independence. We don’t need traditional outlets to have people see our work unless we choose to rely on them. I understand that this is a bit idealistic, but I think the goal of breaking free of newspapers is something we all as photographers, still or otherwise, should fight tooth and nail for. I like Jon Anderson’s post where he said of Homer: “In other words, he energetically took command of distributing his own work. we can no longer be content to allow our agencies and our magazine editors to control this essential half of the communication equation.”

If this means delving more into the commercial realm with our photography or exploring new outlets then so much the better. While many of shudder at the idea of “selling our pj souls” to shoot commercial work, in my opinion that is a better way of paying the bills than selling pictures to the local rag. You have the opportunity for better work, better pay, more control over copyright, etc. Plus, if we exist by selling journalistic work, as freelancers, it seems like we are just a very small version of a newspaper, which keeps its lights on by selling journalism. Commercial work isn’t the answer to all pj ills, it’s just the best example I have off the top of my head. To kick start our own journey away from newspapers and to stop our depending on selling journalism my wife and I because cross-country truck drivers. This sucks. But in a few months we will have enough saved to get on our feet freelancing non newspaper work and can concentrate on just telling stories when we shoot our personal work, not how we are going to pay the bills when we get done.

Anyway, it is my stance that the need for or the importance of the still image is not dead nor will it ever die. In this emerging era of photojournalism we simply have more tools available to do what we do best, tell stories that matter. As traditional news outlets are gobbled up by for-profit conglomerates the traditional sense of fulfillment we received in working for these outlets will diminish, yet they will also continue to decline in relevance as they focus more on the bottom line than on strong journalism. While unsettling this “shake” up of photojournalism gives us the opportunity to focus on our own independence. Hence it is the mission of the American Diversity Project to produce strong documentary work completely independent of anyone’s support. While it is strongly grounded on the still image we will continue to develop and pursue multimedia stories in keep with our commitment to fully documenting the areas of the country we visit.

Sorry for this rambling document, I know that there has been a lot of discussion on this topic on LS lately and to be honest I’m a bit behind with keeping up on it here. I hope that this hasn’t been overly boring/redundant…

jim

shit, sorry everyone for the double post.

Many photographers (including myself) have good reason to be wary of the changes which have taken place in recent years, as the internet has become more and more the dominant media form. The reason why a lot of photographers got screwed in past years and continue to be fleeced, is because of our engrained habit of thinking in terms of the paradigm that was most familiar to us – print.

A lot of us didnt see it coming because we were thinking in terms of a print based distribution model, and images which existed physically (prints, transparencies) whose movement and use could be monitored and policed. We didnt see how holding a huge amount of imagery which could be pushed and pulled easily round the Web was a key to large profits – but for the image aggregator, not the creator.

While we were all getting obsessed with new digital cameras, ‘early adopting’ Web-based image businesses siezed upon the potential of digital distribution and skewed that new market largely for their benefit. Photographs became commodified and photographers were reduced to ‘content provider’ status.

Yet again I can see a similar process happening (as Jim Winn suggests) with newspapers expecting their photographers and staff to produce video ‘content’ (God how I hate that term) with no additional fees, training or funding. The video/multimedia ends up being not very good, mostly due to a near total absence (in some papers) of much supporting infastructure to produce it.

I suspect some of this is because newspaper companies are cannibalising and starving their print outlets, squeezing as much juice out of that shrinking medium as they can, before they either close the paper, expand their web presence by other means, or invest in a different kind of business altogether.

Many photographers haven’t even begun to grasp the huge shifts which are migrating billions of advertising dollars away from print, to the Web. That money is the backbone and lifeblood of the entire print media infrastructure, it’s vanishing and will not return.

Self-preservation is a sensible instinct, but one has to ask what use is self preservation, if the medium which you hoped to support you no longer exists. Even a parachute needs air to fill it, or you just drop like a stone.

Economic squeezes are already devastating newspaper journalism jobs simply because one distribution structure – print – which has been developed and honed over decades is dying and isn’t being replaced by another which is viable…yet.

People like Patrick (probably because he’s not an old fart stuck in a rut like me) instinctively understands the Web – they are not hidebound by a paradigm which is vanishing. This is one of the reasons – apart from his obvious talent – that he’s able to produce quality storytelling projects for the ADP, using the advantages that the Web can bring for photographers using yes, stills.

People might have not understood what I was getting at – I think stills have a fantastic future on the Internet, as long as we understand it’s NOT a print medium. It has different rules, from the way its created, to the way its distributed and consumed.

The traditonal print media was always a gatekeeper as well as an outlet, and a rather restrictive gatekeeper at that. As Jim says there are now inceasing opportunities for photographers to bypass those gatekeepers and approach an audience directly.

The quicker we sieze that opportunity and develop a critical mass, the likelier it is that a viable independent business model will come out of it, which needn’t necessarily entail having to do commercial work as a subsidy.

Perhaps you could argue that the cushion and buffer zone provided by commercial work has stopped many photojournalists from figuring out how to make a viable living from their core function, because they havent been forced to do so.

Whether we like it or not, it looks like now is the time we’re all gonna have to figure that one out.

The problem though, and the thing which will slow this positive (IMO) leap of faith for many, is the deeply engrained print-centric mindset which so many photographers still have – for example, the stubbornly popular notion that the future of photojournalism in the digital age now lies on the gallery wall, in books or in niche magazines.

That idea seems to me to be largely giving up on photojournalisms traditional commitment and ambition to reach large audiences.

sorry I have just woke up so this is going off on a tangent,
but i have to ask.

1st QU

How long will it be in your opinion before manufactures of cameras stop making still cameras.
Surely it won’t be long before the professional still camera is dead.
Infact surely the manufactures are stalling for time so they can make as much money out of still cameras as they can.

2ND QU

How long will it be before most people dont bother buying buying newspapers because they can get the news on their phone computer or even watch via the internet?

3rd QU

When is 3d tv coming out? I only ask because the future might be more complex photographically than we think.

photography is dead long live photography.

I suppose this thread is going off on a tangent. My fault, sorry. I couldnt help being struck though, by the ADP using current technology to leverage the oldest (and most powerful) game in town – oral storytelling – while multimedia and web based photojournalism still tends to be looked down upon by a lot of the photographic ‘establishment’ (for want of a better term) as being a bit of a newfangled geeky tangent.

For example, there are very few major (if any) prestigious major awards which recognise this stuff, but plenty of awards for images which sadly, sometimes aren’t even published…until they win an award.

In terms of your questions:

1/ Manufactureres will make still cameras for a long time yet. They just won’t make film cameras. Digital stills camera sales are very healthy and people love using ’em. They just dont use them in the way we do.

Sharing digital images is the norm, and this perfectly legitimate use of their cameras is devastating our sector. Theres a lot to be said for arguing against that, but only in terms of dodgy rights grabbing business models exploiting the sharing culture.

The real point we need to aim for is to cast aside those business models and make our own, which is both compatible with our aims and compatible with the porous nature of the Web.

2/ That’s already happening. Indeed its so much the norm now that the only newspapers experiencing decent growth are ones which copy internet business models and practice, which is the free papers you get on the tubes and buses in our major cities.

The papers are basically placed wherever people find it convenient to grab ’em. The print and distribution costs are payed by the advertisers knowing those peoples eyeballs will look at their ads.

This is how the internet works – chucking up info that can be had when you want it, not at 9am or 6pm, or when your paper is delivered in the morning, or even when you buy the paper.

Even buying a paper is too big a hassle for a lot of people because they’re so used to getting news on demand, for ‘nothing’, at their office computer, on their phone or Blackberry, or when they check their e-mail at home.

So the free papers give them that news, thrust in their hand. Its a no-brainer, they read the paper, the advertisers get the audience.

And what do they do when they’ve finished with the ‘free’ paper? Either throw it away, or leave on the bus/train seat for the next person to read.

In other words, they share the ‘content’…just like they do on the Web.

Lets be honest here – I’d hazard a guess that the overwhelming amount of photojournalism we tend to consume comes at us via the internet already, and we dont pay for it, because it’s a damn sight easier to browse the websites of our favourite agencies or photographers, than wait for their images to hit the paper or mag.

And when they do hit the paper/mag, chances are the photo-essays are butchered or truncated anyway.

Which is another reason why its odd that print still holds a hallowed place in our mindset.

3/ 3DTV? Mate, this stuff is always closer than you think :)

http://www.cnet.com.au/software/internet/0,239029524,240091581,00.htm

I’ve just stumbled upon this one….but, as ever, Sion hit’s things on the head….!….My favourite here – " And when they do hit the paper/mag, chances are the photo-essays are butchered or truncated anyway." – how so very true, every time – for about 6-7 years ?!….point me towards the last good one…?…I wonder why books are the ‘last bastion’, and I’m even uncomfortable with them, I mean, 2500 print run ?!!………it’s only the true ‘public’ photo exhibits which may, may, reach a wider audience….and then the net…….

3D ? If U2 are doing a concert film, we’ll be watching and viewing 3D content so very soon……!

S

THANKS SION I ONLY ASKED THE QUESTION BECAUSE I KNEW YOU COULD EXPRESS IT OH SO MUCH BETTER THAN I.

As for point No3 Panasonic are working on a 3d tv which will be out in the next few years (within 5 potentially) as long as they don’t sit on it and milk the profits out of HD for as long as possible.

I can see it now “final Cut PRO 3D”

oh and still cameras they are doomed whats the point in having a still camera when your phone camera is just as good (for jo public).
HD Video cameras in the near furture will have the quality for the still image for professional photographers which has to be the nail in the coffin for mass produce still SLR cameras. Saying that the quality for still image surely doesn’t have to be that high for the web anyway. Oh I know we all like to have a nice print but if your thinking of showing your work in a gallery or even just at home I foresee Galleries showing work on video type picture screens as we are seeing coming out on to the market at the moment. If you live in the UK check out the Photographers gallery in London now and then, more and more of the work is shown on digital screens or projected and then it’s not even “still work” The Photographers Gallery will have to change its name to the “Mulit Media Gallery” very soon I feel.

Also as photojournalist our prime motivation surely is to get the message across whatever it may be, surely the general public are more interested or at least aware and take notice of the moving image these days. I know how could I say such a thing total Sacrilege. But I am right aren’t I ?

Anyway we have to ask ourselves is it time to retrain, just as I see you are Sion.
By the way how hard is it to learn final cut pro?
From a financial point of view Sion surely say 5 years you will be selling all your still cameras to buy more moving image cameras as it’s just not financial viable to keep kit you don’t use.

I know its hard to contemplate for most on lightstalkers — I am I regret to say one of those people who still keeps hold of his mamiya 7 kit thinking one day I will use them again but it really doesn’t look likely. “Film its just so yesterday man” thats what I heard a young lad say to his friend in an apple shop the other day I have to say my heart sank for I Know it’s true.

MOVE WITH THE TIMES OR BE LEFT BEHIND

Thanks to everyone for their feedback, kind words, and encouragement.

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Muchos gracias!

See? While we’re all gassing, Patrick is busy just getting on with it.

Speaking of 3D telly, apparently one of the visual sectors which has driven the development of recently released HDV cameras is ahem, the porn movie industry, and it’s demand for light, portable, small high quality cameras!

Photojournalists ain’t the only ones obsessed with visual quality ya know – I would imagine getting good skintones is pretty important for those snappers…

Erm, moving swiftly on…I think most human beings have an upper limit for the amount of moving images they can take in, as well as a finite time to view it. Moving images requires sustained attention wheras stills have the ability to ‘mainline’ right into our heads in seconds.

On some tube stations they now have video advertising boards on the escalator and its an annoying distraction rather than something to concentrate on.

And stills really, really look incredible on a big TV screen, so even if the machine generating the still changes, I think the still image will continue to be compelling. I’d love to see the ADP stuff on a big screen HDTV, with the sound booming out of some speakers.

See, I wouldnt say I’m retraining. When I stopped using film and started using digital cameras I didnt see it as ‘retraining’…it’s just getting the job done in the most efficient way, in the format which is most likely to get out there. I don’t plan on getting rid of stills cameras for years, if ever, but chances are I’ll be increasingly using FCP to present them.

Like a lot of stuff, it doesnt take too long to grasp FCP, but takes an awful long time to get good with it. I’m not :(

Use film cameras if ya want to, I honestly dont mind. It’s just that those cameras are going to be less and less useful in getting you the result you’re after, not because still photography is dead, or because film is rubbish, but because the infrastructure which surrounds it will be gone.

I dont believe still cameras are going to disappear any time soon, too many people the world over like their Kodak moments, and the gap between the Pro and Amateur models will probably close as more cameras like Sigma’s imminent DP1 make their appearance. The technology will become cheaper, easier and more standardized as usual.

An addition to Sion’s comments on point two re: newspapers above: This has already happened here in DR, and I find it funny that in some ways developing nations are often where one finds the cutting edge changes in full bloom (for example, we are entirely cellular here, very few telefonic landlines exist except for those wealthy people who want one in order to have DSL in the house). There has been an literal explosion of such newspapers and online media outlets here, and I consider it a very important development. I myself work occasionally for one such enterprise, Clave Digital — and the good news is that they are in fact a responsible and relatively high quality outfit. Many of the others do no more than prepare digests of the news that a small staff in the office collects together and translates. They are not genuine journalistic enterprises in my opinion, but the fact is this is how most people here get their news now and the public likes them. Course, it is quick and easy and you can swallow the basic ideas in a gulp. The bad news is that photos play almost no part in all this. At Clave I get one photo at the head of an article; they save the essay for their printed version, which doesnt reach as many people and is really not the central concern of the enterprise.

As Sion points out, it is the infrastructure which acts as the ultimate determinant in these matters. Any glance at the history of 20th century technology will confirm that — but remember that these processes are not clean and streamlined, like a Ford Factory assembly line; on the contrary, they are contradictory and composed of many layers, like a geological process only faster. I really dont think that cell phones will replace still cameras, because the consumer desire for both is so strong that companies will continue to provide both. But maybe in the end we will have instruments that combine it all so well (like Apple’s new iphone) that Rupert is right – we will just have to wait and see.

Meanwhile we can be more active in working to shape our own future and ensure that the Web pays off for us. Again, while focussing on the distribution end is key to this, I dont mean to imply that content is negligible. A strong image commands respect, regardless of the means of its making; and distinctive approaches to image making will always be appreciated. Sure, the mass of shooters may opt for digital color and provide wonderful content, but there is nothing wrong with striking out on your own and making use of other formats if such independence helps to make your work stand out from the crowd. Some of the best PJ work I have seen over the past couple years has exploited a variety of unorthodox formats and managed to get published and even win awards. And there is plenty of innovative digital work being done too — just look at what Eros Hoagland is doing for Time. I think the ideas behind the machine ultimately count for more than the machine itself.