Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2013/06/02
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]On Jun 2, 2013, at 1:26 AM, Nathan Wajsman wrote: > Here are some reflections on this, from the perspective of someone who > cares about quality journalism but also recognizes that the industry is > changing: > > http://nathansmusings.wordpress.com/2013/06/02/chicago-sun-times/ yes. the times they are chang'n' and have been changing steadily for quite some time One could make a case for "television" shifting "demand" for picture news media like Life and Look magazines. Legendary, high quality news photography appearing in daily papers like The Detroit Free Press, The Milwaukee Journal, and many more has also declined steadily since Life and Look closed their doors in the '70s. And the decline began almost a decade before the "two big ones" closed their doors. One could almost say that the "market for fine still photo journalism" is us - photographers; This is very different from the days when still photographs, delivered in newspapers and magazines, was the only way one could get a "picture" of what was going on in the world; unless you could afford the time and a ticket to the picture show to watch a couple news reels. The very real costs and skills required to get darkroom prints and/or slides in your hands also kept people going to professionals for pictures of their community and personal lives. No more. Not since your phone can deliver pictures, movies, and music. and Damn good ones at that (as long as you don't need a big print or show them in a theatre). This basically means that a "professional" needs to deliver truly extraordinary "material" to significantly out do the camera in virtually everyone's pocket. One of the most important requirements of professional news gatherers is ACCESS. Access to the events, the people, the documents, the offices, THE NEWS. So the video shot by a bar tender at a fund raising event becomes the hottest news film of a presidential election. "The Zapruder film" foreshadowed all of this. Gone are the: drawing boards and layout artists linotype machine and type setters light tables and film strippers and color separators moviolas and film cutters And all within a couple decades of my life Regards, George Lottermoser george at imagist.com http://www.imagist.com http://www.imagist.com/blog http://www.linkedin.com/in/imagist