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How had technology affected photojournalism?
Daniel Mullan, Student/Intern
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Plymouth | Devon | UK | Posted: 6:45 AM on 09.27.10 |
->> I am currently starting my research project for my final year at university.
The topic I want to concentrate on is technology within photojournalism, not specifically film vs. digital as this has been written about a lot, but more about the technological advancements in software and the internet that allows us to send pictures to editors within seconds of taking them.
So I wanted to ask the ss community, how you feel technology has affected your job? Whether you can now spend more time shooting and less time processing? Whether you spend less time in the office? How you think it has affected your relationship with your colleagues, maybe you spend more time at games/on jobs than you do with your editor?
This is quite a broad subject at the moment, but would be grateful for any insight into your experiences with the changing technology, and where you think it might lead to in the future.
Thanks in advance.
Dan |
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Colin Heyburn, Photographer
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ARMAGH | NI | United Kingdom | Posted: 7:00 AM on 09.27.10 |
->> Hi Dan
From my perspective it means I never have to be in the office as I work alone 300 odd miles away. Technology offers me the opportunity to do my business remotely without ever seeing anyone else, except on the odd occasion. That probably makes me a very sad individual. |
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Daniel Mullan, Student/Intern
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Plymouth | Devon | UK | Posted: 11:03 AM on 09.27.10 |
->> Sorry, thread title should read "How HAS technology affected photojournalism".
@Colin, thanks for the insight. |
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Thomas Boyd, Photographer
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Portland | OR | USA | Posted: 11:42 AM on 09.27.10 |
->> Last year Randy Cox printed out 20 years or so of Civil War football sports covers. It was really interesting to see exactly how technology changed the type of sports photo. The obvious difference was that you would see game winning and meaningful images from the second half as the covers came closer to present day. If it was a night game back in the day, it would be a much more generic play from the first quarter. Then, with improvements in transmission speed, we started to see celebration shots after the game was over.
That's simplistic, but a very important benefit to shooting digital and taking advantage of technology. |
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Daniel Mullan, Student/Intern
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Plymouth | Devon | UK | Posted: 11:56 AM on 09.27.10 |
| ->> Thanks for your help Thomas. |
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Ian Halperin, Photographer
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Plano(Dallas) | TX | USA | Posted: 12:01 PM on 09.27.10 |
->> To expand on what Thomas posted...
It used to be to transmit a photo you needed to:
a. process the film
b. make a print
c. type and affix a caption
c. scan and transmit
All these required knowledge, equipment, space (a darkroom or bathroom with H2O and power) and TIME.
One by one these very manual labor intensive steps were replaced by technology. The Leafax ended the need to print. The digital camera ended the processing. And wireless communications allows for transmitting from almost anywhere.
In the time it took to process and send one photo, we can now send dozens. Is that more or less work? |
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Daniel Mullan, Student/Intern
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Plymouth | Devon | UK | Posted: 1:08 PM on 09.27.10 |
->> Thanks Ian,
Do you think that the role of the photographer has taken on more production roles on top of capturing? Although it seems that the photographer now has more time to concentrate on shooting rather than production. |
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George Bridges, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Washington | DC | USA | Posted: 3:36 PM on 09.27.10 |
->> Ian,
for your last statement: not necessarily so.
Yes you can get an image in faster so in theory you get more shooting time, but now with web galleries, etc. a photographer is expected to file a lot more images in a faster time.
In the "old" days at halftime of a football game one photographer from a paper would take film back to the office for dunking or, on a remote location, dunk the film in a make-shift darkroom while the other shooter(s) went out to shoot the second half.
Now, photographers must come into the work room, ingest their disks and get a few images out at halftime for early web use and then head back out to shoot.
Same at the end of the game, rather than waiting for film to be processed some photographers are filing 10, 20, 30 or more images for the web gallery. This replaces sending maybe 5 images in the past. |
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David A. Cantor, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Jesse Beals, Photographer
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Tracyton | WA | USA | Posted: 1:11 AM on 09.28.10 |
->> Technology crushed photojournalism. Plain and simple, when we all shot with film you might see one maybe two photographers at a high school sporting event or weekend sports tournament.
As a freelancer you made a great living. Speed forward 10 years and now everybody with a digital camera feels they are a photographer. I went to a high school game the other night and had 9 parents to deal with who had really no clue how to cover high school sports at night let along work a camera. It was funny watching them all try to get their photos in focus. One individual even asked me what setting I was shooting and I responded 2.8. I then watched for 10 minutes as this wanna be photographer searched high and low on his camera custom functions for the 2.8 setting. Good lord, hello thats the lens not the camera.
The freelance market is squashed, the newspapers feel it, the stock agencies feel it and the freelancers feel it. Go on craigslist and see hundreds of weekend warrior photographers who have M-F jobs listing wedding packages for $400 or senior portraits for $50.00. Their work is all photoshop created photos yet they sport that they are professionals. Sure they might get 5-7 good photos, but what about the other 400 wedding photos?
10 years ago these so called professional photographers were in the seats watching the games and oh yeah, buying our photos. |
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Chris Pietsch, Photographer
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Eugene | OR | USA | Posted: 2:32 AM on 09.28.10 |
->> The ability to more easily transmit photos while still in the field has had a profound effect on the news gathering and publishing industry I think. Some of these advances are taken for granted now, but it was not long ago that photo coverage was much more limited and logistical.
Even as technology has shortened the time from image capture to transmission and publication, however, expansion of products, i.e. website content, the creation of niche publication, combined with the shrinking of staffs has gobbled up much of the time that used to be spent in the darkroom or waiting for a transmission.
So, while I think that the public is much better served with timely and meaningful images from events, I don't think the the job of the photographer has necessarily gotten any easier.
As far as relationships with colleagues and editors are concerned, I would say that increases in workload, shrinking staffs and reduction in newsprint space have had more of a negative impact than other factors. That these short comings are not more evident to consumers is probably do in part to increases in efficiency that technology allows.
At my paper at least, the collaborative process is still alive and well, but may be happening more via cell phone or email than informally around the water cooler these days.
I do have to say that I am generally grateful for the improvements in equipment, software and bandwidth. It is an exciting time to be a photojournalist despite the inevitable frustrations that change can bring. |
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Thomas Boyd, Photographer
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Portland | OR | USA | Posted: 2:37 AM on 09.28.10 |
->> I was watching a pretty lame movie called Triage that starred Colin Farrell. He was a photojournalist in the 80's. Of course, it showed him shooting film. He was a war photographer covering the war between the Kurds and Iran.
It showed him after he returned to London and he went home rested up. The next day, went down and turned his film in at the lab. The day after that he went met with this editor at some agency.
It struck me that this was probably a pretty accurate depiction of how that would go down for an editorial war photographer.
In this scenario, the photographer would actually have much more time to shoot because they wouldn't be tasked with downloading cards, backing up hard drives, captioning, sending, finding a way to get internet, etc. They would just shoot and deal with the film on their return. Or, they shipped it from wherever they were.
So, in some cases, the technology has probably decreased the amount of time left for shooting. It just depends what kind of photojournalism you do. |
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Butch Miller, Photographer
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Lock Haven | PA | USA | Posted: 10:09 AM on 09.28.10 |
->> Well, some may have had more time for shooting ... but I recall the first time I saw digital used at a big event ... in 1999 Penn State hosted the NCAA D1 wrestling championships ... I shot the finals next to AP's George Widman ... he was testing out using a laptop/cellphone combo to transmit images back to the Philly AP office ... from mat side ....
George would load and transmit the images from the first weight class, while shooting the second weight class ... and so on ...
When I returned to my office with about a dozen rolls of film to process and scan, George's images were already in our system .... and I hadn't even set my bag down yet ...
So in this case, I don't think there was less time for shooting ... just more efficient process of getting the images where they need to be ...
I know digital brings it own set of details to cover ... but the ease of the process from capture to actual use of the image is by far much more preferable over shooting film .... |
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George Bridges, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Washington | DC | USA | Posted: 10:10 AM on 09.28.10 |
->> But Thomas, don't forget that a photographer had to stop and change film every 36 frames, not change a disk every 600 frames. And you were limited to the number of rolls you were carrying.
So while you may have had more time to shoot, you had to be more selective so actually shot less.
Also for the photographer who had to soup film on the road, you were limited by the number of reels you could put in one tank. On deadline no one wanted to end up with 10 rolls of film and an 8-reel tank. That meant either two rounds of processing or simply not processing two rolls.
And as someone who dunked thousands of rolls of film for the AP at big events I have too add, the wrath of God would be called down upon the photographer who rolled the leaders back into the can! |
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Chris Pietsch, Photographer
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Eugene | OR | USA | Posted: 11:03 AM on 09.28.10 |
->> Am I the only one who double rolled reels? Sixteen rolls to a tank, 18 in the ol' WingLynch! If I had more than that I would not admit it.
It seemed to me a cruel rule that the best visuals began to unfold the closer the counter got to the 36th exposure.
Oh, and I pulled out some old negatives the other day shot in available darkness on 1600 Extapress. Oh boy, did that look like sh#t.
The good old days weren't always that good. |
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Ian Halperin, Photographer
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Plano(Dallas) | TX | USA | Posted: 5:16 PM on 09.28.10 |
->> George---surely you processed two rolls, back to back, on one reel!!!
We regards to the more work/less work, you're correct. I think it has just shifted. I have a client who would hand me a 100 rolls of film, I'd shoot for a week, give them the film back and be done. Now I shot a day, edit and upload, repeat six more times. I may actually be working more than before. |
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Ian Halperin, Photographer
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Plano(Dallas) | TX | USA | Posted: 5:20 PM on 09.28.10 |
->> No Chris...you're not. On game days, we would fight for the newer, easier to load metal reels.
The plastic ones were harder, but our color dip & dunk machine only used those. |
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G.J. McCarthy, Photographer
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Dallas | TX | US | Posted: 7:27 PM on 09.28.10 |
->> Hey Daniel:
I've been doing this job just long enough to remember shooting film on deadline, but nothing like the old farts such as George, David and Ian, who all also used to walk to school barefoot for miles in snow and broken glass.
The insight they've given you is priceless -- I always love hearing those kinds of "war stories," and I'm always amazed they did so much with so little … compared to what's available today.
Anyway, all I can add to what they said has been my experiences over the last eight-plus years -- basically how long I've been making pictures, at college or professionally -- with me now being a 31-year-old shooter.
Lenses and sensors
The technological advancements I've seen in less than a decade have been nothing short of mind-blowing. The glass is sharper, faster; the sensors bigger and better … and that's been in just the last couple of years. I can actually remember on several occasions at my first job out of college shooting film on my EOS-3 rather than my company supplied D-30 because I needed faster shutter speeds and what not, and got better results with 1600 ASA film pushed a stop or so.
Between the latest couple of Canon's I've used -- a 5d MkII and 1D MkIV -- I can honestly say that digital is better than I remember film being (at least 35mm). The files these things put out in low light and high ISO's is simply amazing.
So between that and the glass, I find that I'm getting a higher number of usable images in low-light situations and such than I did back in college or my early career. Of course the problem with that is I've always sucked at flash and rarely use them, but still -- the ability of these newer cameras to let us not worry about all the other silly shit and just worry about composition and content is bar none.
And I honestly can't imagine how much better it gets.
So that's all the good. The bad -- if you want to call it that -- is that the improvements (and the price reductions) have opened up the craft to a whole lot more people. I see good and bad in that, but I prefer to focus more on the good. While I still hope people focus on the purity and beauty of photography as an art form, and all the hard work that goes into it, I don't begrudge mom or dad on the sidelines getting pretty damned good shots of their kids. But then I don't make my money in youth sports, so they don't impact my livelihood like they might many others on this site.
Photoshop and computers
I started out shooting chrome that I didn't run or print, then over to B&W that I did develop and print. Knew how to develop color neg but never learned to print, which I totally regret.
I don't remember what the first version of Photoshop I used was -- whatever was around 2002/2003 -- but I know it was limited and slow. Same goes for the computers -- Mac or PC -- that were available then, too.
I've switched back and forth on what flavor of computers I've used since -- basically whatever work had -- but it's been fun to watch toning/editing via a computer grow in the last several years. The basics are all the same -- crop and resize, color correct, dodge/burn, and sharpen -- but things have gotten a lot better … faster.
The funny thing for me is, though, that as I've done this longer, I do less in Photoshop, not more. It used to be that I'd spends upwards of tens of minutes on a single photo, dodging burning, history brush, layer masks, etc., etc. Not so much any more. I'm a lot more deadline oriented these days, and I don't see the value in polishing every turd, but moreover, I think that the improvements in the files coming out of camera have caused me to need to do less in post. Make sense?
And the bad, of course, is that it's a LOT easier to f*ck with an image these days. A lot. Scary. All we can do is police ourselves, in my humble opinion. I don't f*ck with my images, and I can only hope the guy or girl next to me isn't either.
Other things
I think social networking is slowly becoming one of the best things to happen to our craft in a while. It is so, so much easier to share work (yours or others) with a set of friends, who share with another set of friends, and so on. It's easier to get news out and receive news. It's easier to try and find potential subjects for a story or project. Think Craigslist, online forums, etc. Possibilities are endless.
And then there's mobile technology, which is making it possible to shoot and file an image or video, and email back to the desk. We've been experimenting with this at the DMN for a few months now and the results are pretty stellar. If there's breaking news of any sort, we can have visual content on our website basically within minutes of arriving on-scene. Pretty crazy.
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Anyway, that's about all I can think of at the moment; there's tons more of course. And I hope I didn't overlap too much with what others said.
Good luck with your research project. I can probably give you other stuff too -- changes in editing, archiving, etc. -- so just hit me up off list. I can try to pen out better stuff rather than just post to some message board.
Cheers,
- gerry - |
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George Bridges, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Washington | DC | USA | Posted: 9:01 PM on 09.28.10 |
->> Gerry,
I did not have to walk to school through snow and broken glass. I had to walk miles through snow and broken glass to carry camera plates for Matthew Brady. |
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Chuck Liddy, Photographer
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Durham | NC | USA | Posted: 10:18 PM on 09.28.10 |
| ->> crap george, what a sissy, I walked through four feet of snow, with broken glass UPHILL both ways! IN FLORIDA! you guys were much harder workers than me. I carried four reel tanks on the road and was deathly afraid of double loading (did it once and actually puked because I was so worried it would be screwed up) anyway I was very careful of what I shot during a game. I once shot four days of an ACC basketball tournament on ONE roll of film. but all kidding aside I love the challenge of the "new" digital age. instead of going to a game and having to get one, two or at the most three good photos we have to do galleries and hardly anyone I know wants their name under a crappy photo. so you concentrate more to get MORE good frames. I don't think photojournalism is dead. I think there are a lot of folks who have the equipment but not the skills. they have always been there it's just now their numbers are much greater. |
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Thomas Boyd, Photographer
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Portland | OR | USA | Posted: 12:48 AM on 09.29.10 |
->> This all brings up so many good and bad memories. Chris Pietsch (along with Brian Davies and Kevin Clark) shot film for daily assignments all the way until Jan. of 2005. I'm pretty sure we were one of the last daily papers to go digital.
We did have two Nikon D1's we used for deadline stuff the last few years of that film run but we avoided them like the plague.
I started in 1992 at The Columbian in Vancouver, Wash., shooting chrome and black and white film with two cameras and hand processing both and making prints of the black and white. We then moved to color neg like everyone else. It's really interesting to go back and look at that film. I rarely shot more two rolls on an assignment and never over eight rolls unless it was a really big deal with lots of time.
One thing for sure, is that the new digital technology along with much more accessible high speed internet and super fast laptops, allows us to be way more productive and responsive. I think, in the end, there are better photos being made now than ever before by many many more people.
I recently read that youtube has 24 hours of video uploaded every minute of the day. I haven't seen what Flickr and Facebook do, but I bet the numbers are every bit as astounding and incomprehensible.
There's a funpix photo that Chuck Liddy posted a few days ago of Sara Davis sitting a field transmitting as the lights are turned out the mower approaches her. This photo stopped me in my tracks. This is uniquely the digital age. We've gone from processing film in a darkroom at the stadium or paper to plugging into the dialup in press box to not even leaving the field to transmit.
http://www.sportsshooter.com/funpix_view.html?id=9423
There's talk around my office in having the photographer's in the field build the online galleries and upload them on deadline. I was trying to explain that sometimes they are turning out the lights and locking the doors very soon after a high school basketball game and I've even had janitors sweep around me on the court as I'm sending. This photo really struck a cord with me and seems really applicable to this conversation. |
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Thomas Boyd, Photographer
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Portland | OR | USA | Posted: 12:57 AM on 09.29.10 |
->> I just thought of a war story:
Greg Scott and I went to Seattle to shoot a college football game. We called ahead to the Seattle P-I to arrange processing. They were very accommodating and invited us to come in and process after the game. We got there after business hours only to find out no one told the lab tech who had their machine torn apart for cleaning.
With deadline approaching we scrambled and found a one hour lab open. It took forever to process about 20 rolls. We finally got to hour room and started scanning and sending on super slow and unreliable dialup.
We barely made our 11:30 p.m. deadline from a 12:30 p.m. game.
We were not terribly popular back at the office with the DOP George Millener. Actually, that's a bit of an understatement. He was seriously pissed off. |
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Yamil Sued, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Peoria | AZ | USA | Posted: 1:21 AM on 09.29.10 |
->> As a Commercial Photographer technology has saved me a ton of money,made me faster and more efficient!!
Money savings:
1- E-6 Film
2- E-6 Processing
3- Polaroid Film
4- General Overhead (Gas, Time to hit the lab)
5-Rent, (I don't need to rent a studio, I work out of my house and 99% of my commercial work gets e-mailed)
6- I can do more for less and keep my day rate competitive
Efficiency and Convenience:
1- I can work from Home, I don't need to rent a studio, Most of my clients don't care where I work as long as I deliver the goods. I E-mail samples and my clients approve them from thousands of miles away. In a pinch, I can do a full commercial shoot and deliver a final shot to the client in a matter of hours, what used to take days to complete in the film days.
My overhead has gone down dramatically since I went Digital in 2001. All this adds up to less expenses and in turn, more profit. |
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Rodrigo Pena, Photographer
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Beaumont | CA | USA | Posted: 3:09 AM on 09.30.10 |
->> Hi Daniel, I've been shooting for a long time too. I started shooting for newspapers in 1985. Not as long as some of the others, but long enough. As you can imagine, the digital vs. film is a huge difference, but I know that is not what your topic involves. However I just wanted to make a quick comparison so you can understand the breadth of the changes.
In 1985 I was shooting black & white film for an 8:30pm deadline for Friday night football. I remember driving to a high school that was 20 minutes away from the office, photographing the coin flip, staying for the first series of plays (4 downs and then split), running to my car, rushing to the office, processing film by hand, drying the negatives quickly and turning in a photo with a printed caption on the side of the photo by 8:30pm. Luckily the deadline was pushed back to 9pm after a few weeks of this. Keep in mind the games started at 7pm and sometimes 7:30pm.
Flash forward to today where I don't go into the office at all. I show up to my game not just a few minutes from the office, but sometimes over a 45-minute drive away. I ready my laptop for the files I'm about to download and pre-write a general caption which just tells where the game is taking place, the date, byline and slug. The details of the caption will follow.
I start early and look for features for the web gallery. I shoot the first half and run back to my car. Or if the car is too far away, I work on my laptop right there on the field. Turn in 3-4 images for print and web and start working on my photo gallery. I go back out and shoot the second half and after shooting more action, place emphasis on jubilation or rejection at the end of the game. That could never have been done in the old days. Next, I submit an additional 3-4 photos for print and/or web updates. Then work on the photo gallery and try to make the 10:30pm deadline. The photo gallery has about 15-25 images.
The bottom line, more work and more coverage. A LOT more coverage. Our newspaper also has a live internet show where people can call up and talk while viewing it on the web. The scores of 30 or more high schools are updated frequently. The show transmits video footage from the games as soon as the footage is ready, often before the game is even over. In the old days we would take turns featuring one or two high schools, not cover multiple high schools in one night.
Here is an example of technology making it work for our newspaper. This past weekend I photographed the Epicenter 2010 Music Festival in Fontana, CA. Our newspaper wanted to have the headlining band on the A-1 cover. The deadline was 10pm. The headlining band went on at 9:45pm, I photographed the first three songs and then ran to the press box where I downloaded my images. Used Photo Mechanic to edit quickly. Selected one horizontal and one vertical photo for A-1 and typed captions. Gave it a quick toning using Adobe Photoshop, and sent the photo back to the main office using our newspaper's FTP system. The wireless internet in the press box was not working so I used my personal wireless card. The newspaper had their photo on time and ran it on Sunday's A-1.
That simply could not have been achieved in the old days. We would have run a photo from earlier in the day and maybe a file photo of the band as a secondary if needed.
To answer some of your questions:
1) How you feel technology has affected your job?
Everything is quicker. There is a high value placed on speed. Quality sometimes comes in second place. During a spot news event, we are expected to take a few shots, then stop and transmit for early web coverage and then go back for some more quality photos for print. I can shoot a fire and transmit photos from my car. Then go out and shoot some more photos multiple times until deadline has come and gone.
2) Whether you can now spend more time shooting and less time processing?
Yes, more time is spent shooting rather than traveling. Processing is faster, but still takes time to do it right. When I was shooting film in the beginning, I could process film and have a print in 20 minutes. These days I can have a photo sent back to the main office in 10 minutes from the start of the download through the end transmission.
3) Whether you spend less time in the office?
Yes, less time is spent in the office and more time on remote location.
4) How you think it has affected your relationship with your colleagues, maybe you spend more time at games/on jobs than you do with your editor?
Yes, I see photo editors less compared to the old days. More time with reporters or competing photographers on the job these days. I spend more time in my car or transmitting from a restaurant.
5) How does it affect the relationships?
I see less of the photo editors and fellow photographers. I make more of an effort to have lunch or dinner with fellow photographers in between assignments. Lots of talk time with editors on the telephone and less in person. |
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Daniel Mullan, Student/Intern
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Plymouth | Devon | UK | Posted: 3:30 AM on 09.30.10 |
->> Thanks very much to everyone that has contributed to this thread. It has provided me with a wealth on information to build my research on.
Thanks again. |
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