| Sign in: |
| Members log in here with your user name and password to access the your admin page and other special features. |
|
|
|
|
|| SportsShooter.com: Member Message Board
Is photojournalism necessary?
Joshua Trujillo, Photographer
 |
Seattle | WA | usa | Posted: 2:02 AM on 06.17.09 |
->> That is the question that will be posed by a number of news bloggers here in Seattle during a panel discussion next week.
And I have been asked to defend and explain our profession to the new media crowd. I have my strong opinions but I need your help!
We all know how images can sometimes tell stories in more effective ways that words. And obviously some powerful images can effect change and capture humanity at it best and worst. But to many news blogs visuals are merely illustrative elements to break up long blocks of text. It seems as if the sole purpose is often to only show what something in a story looks like, not to elevate the storytelling process to the next level or to add content. Flikr, iStockphoto and horrible iphone photos seem to be sufficient for most blogs. If this is the future then our craft is fading.
So what do professional photojournalists (and video journalists) offer blogs and news sites? What is so different from a 500 pixel wide photo online and a 5 column photo in a newspaper? Why are we necessary?
Share your ideas to help me form a stronger argument!
If you are in Seattle and care to attend the discussion it is:
June 23
Lucid Jazz Club
5241 University Way NE
Seattle
7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.
*As many know the media landscape here in Seattle was shaken up when my former employer the Seattle Post-Intelligencer closed, forcing some incredibly talented photojournalists out of the business. I stayed onboard with seattlepi.com, operating in an online-only world. Many local news sites are popping up to take up some of the slack in reporting left by the demise of the print paper. I often find myself defending our profession in this new world. |
|
Matthew Bush, Photographer
|
Hattiesburg | MS | USA | Posted: 10:55 AM on 06.17.09 |
->> "It seems as if the sole purpose is often to only show what something in a story looks like, not to elevate the storytelling process to the next level or to add content. Flikr, iStockphoto and horrible iphone photos seem to be sufficient for most blogs."
What affected people more in Vietnam ? stories with numbers about casualties or photographs of 18 year old medics working to save their buddies?
What about 9/11? can you name one line of copy from a story ? Probably not but almost everyone will remember the photos
Sounds like the same old newsroom fight in a different area. A percentage of reporters think we just provide eyecandy... a percentage of photographers think reporters just clutter up they layout with text when they should be working together.
Our jobs are both to tell stories.
PJ preforms a vital service to the community by being their eyes and more recently their ears. |
|
Alan Look, Photographer
|
Bloomington | IL | United States | Posted: 11:00 AM on 06.17.09 |
->> Ask them what they look at first when they pick up the morning paper or hit the news website. It will be either the photo's or the headlines... doubt anyone will say the first thing they do is to start reading a story.
If it's photo's, they just answered their own question. If it's headlines, ask them to define Headline - which is really a SNAPSHOT of the article it represents and is used to grab a readers attention. Much the same as a photograph or graphic. |
|
Jeff Brehm, Photographer, Photo Editor
|
Charlotte | NC | USA | Posted: 11:17 AM on 06.17.09 |
| ->> Ask them if they've ever seen the photos of the children running from a napalm attack in Vietnam, Earthrise from the moon, or the man standing in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square. |
|
William Maner, Photographer
|
Biloxi | MS | USA | Posted: 12:01 PM on 06.17.09 |
->> Matthew Bush makes some good points..
The truth is that there's a certain amount of slant (or bias)--intended or unintended--to what we write. The words we write can be influenced by how we see things..
A photo is a true representation of a moment in time.. It's subject to individual interpretation and bias, but it's more representative in general than a description of the same event.
People will say photos can be altered, but words can be altered with even more ease.
Take the shooting of the alleged JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.. If you were to compare just a newspaper account to one of the award winning photos of the event, would you have the same sense of the situation? Factor in the film of the shooting.. Words may miss certain details or not stress certain aspects well enough, but seeing a photo--or series of photos--seems to give you a better prospective of the event..
The old saying is that "a photograph is worth a thousand words.".. But ask yourself, how effectively can you convey the emotion, the mood, and the setting of the Oswald shooting if given just 1,000 words? Then try to get an accurate sense of the scene reading through the 1,000 word accounts of 10 different bloggers.. |
|
Ashley Landis, Photographer
|
Kyle | TX | USA | Posted: 12:54 PM on 06.17.09 |
->> Not only all of that, but people who take photos and load them to their flikr page and their istockphoto, they get photos when they happen to be at the scene of whatever the story is, but professional photojournalists are in the business of capturing a situation. It's their job to be there.
Professionals have a code of ethics and well, know what they're doing when they capture a situation. Not that amateur photographers don't get good shots, but let's put it this way - anyone can learn how to build a building, but you wouldn't trust an amateur to build a skyscraper. The professional is going to get the job done effectively, safely, efficiently and do it (most likely) with better quality.
My more broad opinion is that yes, photojournalism is necessary, whether professional or amateur. In 50 years, a description of an event would be fine, but a photo more accurately portrays every detail. Photojournalists capture the daily history of the world in a way that no one else can. |
|
Joshua Trujillo, Photographer
|
Seattle | WA | USA | Posted: 1:01 PM on 06.17.09 |
->> I agree with all of the above! Those are the basic arguments we all have stockpiled to prove our worth as visual story tellers. They are good and important ones but what do we bring to the table on a local and daily basis in the online world?
(I am playing devils advocate here because I think many of the arguments we have convinced ourselves of over the years are not as valued in the emerging landscape for local online news sites (note the title of the panel I am part of). We are all passionate about what we do as photojournalists but passion is a tough sell.) |
|
Michael Pommier, Photographer
|
Fort Scott | KS | USA | Posted: 1:40 PM on 06.17.09 |
| ->> Any one can take a picture. Photojournalists capture moments in a photograph. |
|
Ron Hawkes, Photographer, Photo Editor
|
Rockland | ME | USA | Posted: 2:05 PM on 06.17.09 |
->> "They are good and important ones but what do we bring to the table on a local and daily basis in the online world?"
Joshua, the key word here is local. People love to see photos of and read about what is happening locally. Having spent the past few years working online as my primary job, I hear over and over about the photos. "Did you see that photo of Jimmy on line,it was in the story about yesterday's game"
People want to see the people and things around them that matter. Who is doing what, where, when and how and to see it in a photograph is looked at as real while a story is often looked at as an opinion.
When you put the two together online you have what the majority of local people want and care about.
I believe that in the online world the photojournalist and the writer go hand in hand at creating effective online content.
Neither alone is acceptable to the mass readers. |
|
Rich Cruse, Photographer
|
Laguna Niguel | CA | USA | Posted: 2:07 PM on 06.17.09 |
->> Photojournalists are more than just photographers. They (we) are bound by the same ethics as journalists. The public places their trust in us. If you betray that trust, all credibility is lost. We must be fair, honest and concise with our portrayal of events. NPPA has pages devoted to ethics. This is what makes us so valuable as photojournalists; that we can be trusted to be the eyes for many and our images will be truthful.
Citizen journalism has its place, but unmonitored it cannot be trusted. |
|
John Germ, Photographer
|
Wadsworth | Oh | USA | Posted: 2:55 PM on 06.17.09 |
->> Here are my thoughts. You want to demonstrate the usefuleness of photojournalism in Seatle. To my mind your success depends on showing the results of Seattle based photojournalism. You are arguing a visual medium is essential. Any presentation I'm at that is going to convince me that assertion is true will begin and end with the photos you show me. You should be able to prove or lose your point with a slideshow. The basic premise here is photos can do things words can't. So, at least a portion of the debate should center around showing those images and letting them speak for themselves.
Here's the challenge though - it has to be local. Showing photos of Vietnam are not going to convince bloggers in Seattle that photojournalism is necessary for the types of work they do. You have to taylor your message to your audience. What do they blog about? Don't dig back 30 years for photos - use photos from recent (last 5 years) history - so the audience will have lived through that time.
Other things to do - include local stories with and without accompanying photos.
Ideally you'd like to do market research and do independent studies of blog readers in the area to measure the impact TO THEM of the inclusion or exclusion of the photos. That's the real selling point. Both you and the bloggers have natural bias. What really matters is the end consumer. Having research that demonstrates photos matter to them is what helps win this debate.
In essence what you're talking about here is a sales pitch. You need to think of it as such and sell your product, photojournalism, to the 'customer'. |
|
David Harpe, Photographer
|
Louisville | KY | USA | Posted: 6:40 PM on 06.17.09 |
->> Is photojournalism "necessary"?
The question is very similar to the "do you need a pro camera to take great pictures" question. The answer to that question is - yeah, sometimes. If you need a specific shot with specific requirements (low light action in rainy conditions, for example), you really need a pro camera. If the assignment is "make a meaningful picture", of course you can do that with just about any camera.
It's the same for photojournalism. If the goal is to have some sort of related visual element occupying space on a page, you don't need a photojournalist. Just type in a few keywords into your favorite stock photo site and away you go - or toss a camera to a reporter.
If you need a photo that truly tells a 1,000 word story in a standalone image, you really need a photojournalist. Or if you need photos captured in diverse conditions - environmental, social and political - you need a photojournalist. If you really, have to get it right the first time with no do-overs, you need a professional photojournalist.
It's pretty much the same with any type of problem you're trying to solve - there are different professionals you bring into the mix based on the requirements. Tacking up some quarter-round? Do it yourself. Making custom crown molding to match a 100-year-old pattern? Probably need a pro carpenter. Tearing out a wall so you don't have to match 100-year-old crown molding? Probably need some architectural help. |
|
Jeff Martin, Photographer
|
Samuel Lewis, Photographer
|
Miami | FL | USA | Posted: 9:26 PM on 06.17.09 |
->> Is photojournalism necessary? What could be more necessary?
Matthew has the right idea, although it goes well beyond that. For more than a hundred years, photojournalists have educated and informed us, not with words but with powerful images. Vietnam and 9/11 are only recent examples.
The truth is that video has attempted, and failed, to do what photojournalism has done. What has been lost in translation, however, is the permanency only available in a still photograph. While there are certain moments, emotions and stories that video can capture, video falters when it comes to generating one, lasting image that can be studied, debated, and burned into our consciousness; that can be a catalyst for issues and causes; that can mobilize and energize a nation.
If you want an interesting read providing provide an example of the catalytic power a photograph can have, look at "The Soiling of Old Glory: The Story of the Photograph That Shocked America" by Louis Masur. The book addresses Stanley Forman's Pulitzer prize winning photograph of a protester wielding an American flag as a speak and lunging at an Afican-American.
The ability to alter photographs is a red herring. The fact is that news reports can be falsified, and even video can be altered. There's a difference between trust--the responsibility that news organizations have and what they risk losing when they disseminate reports and images that later turn out to be false--and the ability to manipulate media. However, the lesson for the new media and blogger types is that photojournalists (hopefully) maintain the ethics necessary to preserve the public trust, while the average person with a camera phone may not; it will only be a matter of time before the new media and blogger types lose credibility.
What do photojournalists offer blogs and news sites? The same thing that photojournalists have for over a hundred years: iconic images with the power to tell stories more completely and more immediately than is capable with the written word. |
|
Grant Blankenship, Photographer
|
Macon | GA | USA | Posted: 2:56 PM on 06.19.09 |
->> If people do not take pleasure or find delight in a well captured image, then maybe for them there is no purpose for photojournalism.
I think the bloggers and independent media people are chomping at the bit to eradicate "the establishment". Kind of punk rock, that, so kind of cool I guess. Thing is, I think a lot of intelligent people DO take pleasure and delight in a well captured image. For that reason, photojournalism as a craft will persist.
I guess the best defense for a photojournalist in that hostile environment would be to start a hardcore news photography blog and stick it to the hipsters. |
|
Return to --> Message Board Main Index
|