[Leica] The Death of Photojournalism - Pictures at midnight.

[dmorton@journalist.co.uk (David Morton)]

I was hoping to have time over the weekend to bash this idea into better
shape, but - deadlines being what they are - time seems to have vanished.

However I'd like people's opinion of this as an idea, and - if people feel
they like it - to get some feel for the number of volunteers.

As a relative newcomer to the LUG list, I've taken the liberty of
discussing this with a couple of long term members, just to make sure I'm
not barking up the wrong tree. This is an edited version of the mail I
sent them:

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Now, on another topic, namely "the death of PJ". I've been preparing a
longish (and not very optimistic) posting on this, since PJ is in a much
worse state in the UK than the US. However while pondering the response, I
thought of something positive we could do.

We have - in the LUG - a rather unique resource, a collection of amateur
and professional PJs spread across quite a large chunk of the world. Many
(if not all) are more-or-less committed to the PJ ideal, or they wouldn't
have invested a considerable amount of money in the type of tools they
use.

We also have an up-coming event which of global significance (the
millennium), and the means to 'publish' (albeit at low-res) via the web
(between us we must have *loads* of free space, I've got 20MB).

So I wondered about a LUG millennium PJ project.

We'd need to organise the space (perhaps a little tricky, if it's
distributed across many sites, but I could make enquiries about a large
chunk of sponsored space), and organise people to scan the slides (I could
do Europe), and choose/edit the content (I don't consider myself qualified
to do that, but I know people who are).

There would also be a bit of admin to do, but I'm sure we have the people.

We would do it in a co-operative way (contributors retain copyright, for
example), the aim being to promote PJ as a form of communication, with
promotion of the Leica being a barely concealed sub-text.

I had two possibilities in mind (we could do one or both): the preparation
for the Millennium celebrations (a long term PJ thing), and the day
before/the big day.

The latter could be really *amazing* as perhaps 100 people contribute
from 20 countries, but concentrate on just 48 hours...but the same 48
hours all over the world.

The down-sides I can see are:

1) The organisation & motivation could be difficult.

2) The Millennium is a long way off: could be an advantage or disadvantage
depending on how you look at it. Perhaps we should consider some other
event as a 'dry run'?

3) The web publishing doesn't really show the images very well at all.
However having assembled such a diverse collection, I can see every
opportunity to approach a book publisher with it, provided we could get
copyright consent from the contributors. In that sense the web wouldn't
detract from the book, it would be publicity for it.

4) (this is the nasty one) I can see others having the same idea, and this
not being nearly unique enough to attract significant interest. OTOH the
Leica angle would make it unique, whatever anyone else did. I can see
Solms being interested, though in their current financial state 'interest'
is probably all we can expect.

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So, go on, tell me it can't be done, shoot me down in flames...


            David Morton | "I've finally figured out what's wrong with
dmorton@journalist.co.uk | photography. It's a one-eyed man looking
   Islington, London, UK | through a little 'ole. Now, how much reality
      (+44) 171 272 8908 | can there be in that?" (David Hockney)