Okay, I Know It’s for Charity …

But, still, this just doesn’t seem right – Harper’s Bazaar is auctioning off a one-month internship at the magazine. It’s bad enough so many places aren’t paying interns, but to have to pay for one …

"Photoshopping the Red Sox"

Most of you know of my affection for the Red Sox (GO SOX!!), but the hometown Boston Globe has a contest going on that, well, just makes me really queasy – “Photoshopping the Red Sox.” Fans and readers can send in their Photoshopped illustrations of the Beantown Boys and their posting them online.

The problem? They’re using copyrighted images as the basis for these illustrations. Some are going far enough with the illustrations that there may not be an issue, but some are … well, go look for yourself.

I’m sure – sure – the Globe talked with their lawyers about this, right? And I believe the Digital Millennium Copyright Act says it’s okay for site users to post this stuff, but if anyone complains they need to take it down … which makes this even more annoying, that a major media company may be flaunting the DMCA which was designed to protect their copyright interests.

The Error of Our Ways?

I took a cognitive psychology class years ago (with a brilliant professor who’s moved on from Syracuse) who had us analyze science stories in mass media publications and then compare them to the original research. So when this Editor & Publisher story about research comparing “user” sites and traditional media came along, I was, well .. shocked.

“Mass media” means it’s for the masses, you know? The News Coverage Index looks at general subscription news papers, yet the three web sites they targeted (Digg, del.icio.us and Reddit) are mostly technology oriented sites. The users are all geeks, not mainstream news consumers.

So … uh, hello? Of course they’re going to be vastly different. Geez …

Some Days, It Pays to be a Pack Rat

Not many, but some. While rooting around for something else I found a yellowed sheet of paper I must have been handed in grad school by my mentor, Prof. David Sutherland. And so I share it with you …

ARE YOU THINKING PICTURES?
Questions to keep in mind:

1. Does the photo communicate quicker, stronger, better or more eloquently than a simple sentence could describe?
2. Does the photo have visual content or stop short at story elevation?
3. Does the photo go beyond the trite and the obvious?
4. Does the photo contain essential information to help the reader understand the story?
5. Does the photo have enough impact to move the reader?
6. Is the photo clean, interesting and well-composed enough to stand on its own?
7. Does the caption information answer who, what, when, where and why, along with other required information (e.g. age and hometown)?
8. Are both the photo and the caption information objective and accurate accounts of what happened?
9. Is the photo mindless documentation?
10. Does the photo communicate effectively? Photos should either move, excite, entertain, inform or help the reader understand a story.

(Adapted from The Columbus Dispatch)

There’s some very good stuff in there, things we don’t think about as much as we should some days. And this isn’t just for shooters – editors and managers should pay attention to the “mindless documentation” that’s being heralded as “citizen journalism.” Information is good, context is better.

So Totally Off Topic, It’s Funny

Okay, so this probably isn’t appropriate, but one of my former students was declared the winner of a video contest, and a loser complained that the rules weren’t followed to the letter, so they took away her prize and opened up the voting again.

So, head over to Hall and Oates’ web site (yes, that Hall and Oates) and help her out if you like VIDEO NUMBER 3. It’s a multi-step process (click, enter an email address, check email, click to confirm), but it’s worth it for a little justice.

Pretensious Pretentions

I have often read the Leica-infused writings of Erwin Puts but a recent post on his site has me thinking I’m done there. He argues that because the workflow in digital is different from the processes involved in silver halide films that digital is not photography.

Baloney.

If that’s true, then all those Tri-X shooting masters who switched to Kodachromes stopped being photographers, too, since no one ever did a K-14 process in their cellar.

Call it art, call it journalism, call it precision technical writing, but photography is, at its core, the capturing of a moment and the sharing of it with others. Regardless of the processes involved, a great photograph lets someone who wasn’t somewhere experience that moment in some (limited) way. That’s it.

The boxes of my father’s slides which surround me in my office, waiting to be scanned, are photography as much as the leftover prints from my college newspaper days and the digitized images of my step-kids’ first day of school.

How do I know the latter is true? Because I sent them to their grandfather and his one word response was, “Priceless!”

Newsweek and the Bad Photo Editor

Every magazine photo editor (and newspaper and wire service editor, too) makes a mistake at some point in their life. At the bad end of the scale are the days when you doctor someone’s teeth or move a pyramid to fit a cover. But the other end of the scale can be just as damaging at times, when it’s minor picture selections that mislead your readers.

In the July 2/July 9 issue of Newsweek is an article titled, “The Fading Forests of the Sea (different photos used online than in print).” In it, the author (Matthew Phillips) talks about how a one degree Celsius change in ocean temperature can have a dramatic – and disastrous – effect on sea life. As an example, he talks about the changes to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. When the temperature rises, “coral polyps become stressed and expel the (vibrantly colored) algae, causing the coral to bleach and eventually die.”

Two photos accompany the article, cropped to the same dimensions and shown side-by-side. The first is of the Great Barrier Reef in 1996:

The second shows the Great Barrier Reed in 1998, just two years later:

Pretty dramatic, eh? Look at all that vibrant color that Gary Bell (from Oceanwideimages) has captured, and then look at how little there is in the second photo. We must do something or this is what will happen.

But look again. Where is the color coming from in the first image? It’s coming from the fish – not the coral. If you look closely, you’ll see the coral is fairly monochromatic – just as it is in the second image.

So how did this happen? Photographer Bell did nothing unethical here – his agency provided images of the reef. The photo editor probably didn’t have any malicious intent, either – they needed a pair of images to show before and after effects. But the editing is dishonest – the dramatic tension is false.

As editors, we owe it to our readers to tell them the truth, to show them the facts and let them judge for themselves. Newsweek has failed its readers – not through a manipulation of an image, but through the selection of images. Photo editors can mislead as much as photographers.

P.S. – The online site gets worse, making reference to “Ford Hummers” in a caption. Hummer is a brand, not a vehicle line. And it’s owned by General Motors, not Ford. Ugh.

The YouTube Aesthetic

Khoi Vinh has a short post on the YouTube Aesthetic – how television commercials are now trying to look more amateurish. 

In a few days, I’ll be set up to start scanning old slides again. I’ve finished my grandfather’s collection (well over 6,000 photos) and am about to start my father’s. Most of these photos have a lot of family value to them, but I expect to see a marked technical difference. My grandfather shot photos to record his life, as did my dad. But my father was a more technical person – he had a greater level of control over the mechanics of photography, though I’ll be interested in studying the aesthetics of his imagery.

Why do I point this out? It used to be that “amateurs” strived to create “professional” type images, whether in stills or home movies. Now, it feels that the general public has given up on exerting a higher level of control over their work and will accept whatever comes out of their cell phones. And the “professionals” are now down-grading their work to match the “user generated” content they see on web sites like YouTube and Google Video.

Is this all about content trumping control? I don’t know. If it’s a great moment, it’s a great moment and you accept the limitations of the photographer or their equipment. But when we have the option to produce high quality content and choose not to … well, that bugs me a little. 

Open to thoughts.

Why Newspapers are in Trouble

First, go read this.

Now, think about it.

Does it hurt yet? Because I keep looking at the date to see if it’s April 1 or something … is there any actual news here?

If I call up the paper and say, oh, I don’t know … “I’m creating a new automobile company, based in Bogart, and if we get the investors lined up, we could employ about 100 people.” And then we could get my friend Scott Schamp to say, “If you want to produce professional cars, it’s going to be a very expensive endeavor. But why even do it out of Bogart? There’s no talent base there. Most car companies are based out of Detroit, Maranello and Tokyo for a reason, because that’s where all the talent pools are,”

Whatever happened to, “GET ME REWRITE!”

Oh, the Email I Get

Across the transom this morning came this …

I am a graduate student at UGA, and have an impending wedding on July 29th. Due to the budgetary constraints I face, I am unable to hire a professional photographer for the wedding. I talked to a few of my friends who went through Grady for their undergrad and they suggested that I contact you to see if you know of any students who would be willing to take pictures for us. We’re not able to offer a huge amount of money, but could spare around $200, plus plenty of food at the reception. If you know of any students who would be interested, please let them know about this offer. I can be reached at this email, or by phone.

Thank you, and I apologize if this email has proven to be an
inconvenience to you.

So I sat and let my blood pressure come back down to a less-than-apoplectic level and sent the following reply:

Most of my students are off on internships and jobs at this point so I don’t believe I’ll be able to help you out.

As an aside, I recommend you think very carefully about your budget – the photographs are the only things from your wedding that will exist beyond the end of the day. I am approached on a routine basis by people who are looking to spend whatever they can “spare” – and they are always disappointed in the end result. Anyone that you could hire for that price is, in all likeliness, not going to produce anything of value.

A “good” – not great, good – wedding photographer is going to need approximately $10,000 worth of equipment. If hired by couples at $200 a wedding, she’s looking at doing a years worth of weddings just to pay off the equipment (assuming she can book a wedding every Saturday).

Your email hasn’t be an inconvenience, but I hope you will re-evaluate your budget. A “good” wedding photographer will run you around $1500-2000 here in Athens, I suspect, for a basic package – a package you’ll have for the rest of your life.

Snotty, aren’t I?

But the point is this – your flowers will wilt, your food will be consumed. No one will remember the wise words of your pastor. The tux will be returned, the dress packed away.

And, for $200, you’ll have an out of focus, poorly lit, uncontrolled photo to hang in your hallway.

Where you’ll have to stare at it, every day, for the rest of your (married) life.

Think long term.

Though, in the age of Divorce Wizards, maybe you should spend more on your limo rental.