[Leica] Re: Editorializing

[LRZeitlin@aol.com]

<<Larry Z told us:

The extreme case:


As a young photojournalist, I worked for a photo editor who told me he

would never publish a picture taken with anything but a "normal" lens unless 
it

was absolutely necessary.  He believed that the role of the photographer

was to transport the reader to the location in which the event occured and

present the scene as if it could be directly viewed. The camera was the 
reader's

eyeball surrogate. Any perspective distortion was editorializing, an 
unforgivable

sin in newspaper work.<<<


First re-action..... Bull s!


WOW! sure a strange perspective for a photo-editor!


I've worked for some weird photo editors in my day but this guy sounds like

an over educated art school college boy. So what did the football pictures

look like on the published pages?  Ants over grass?


I mean there are so many situations where a wider angle or tele is required

to allow the reader to see the scene as it existed a 50 mm lens just can't

do. Must have been a strange looking picture paper 

ted.>>

With all due respect Ted, that's the way it was in the '50s. It wasn't a 
picture paper but a big city newspaper. You know the kind, mostly print, no 
pictures other than the second coming on the front page. I worked for the news 
department, not the sports department. Leicas were almost unknown in newspaper 
work. We carried and used 4x5 Speed Graphics with a Heiland flash gun and a 
solenoid sync shutter. Just the same equipment as Weegee used and you never saw him 
use a telephoto or wide angle either. Remember that a 6x9 cm camera, i.e. the 
wonderful Kodak Medalist, was still classified as a "miniature" camera. The 
sports guys used Graflexes with lenses the size of cannon barrels. 

Magazine photographers mostly used Rolleis with their 6x6 cm film size. 
European photographers used Leicas and Contaxes but US editors wanted wire sharp, 
flashlit, high contrast photos that would reproduce well on newsprint with a 65 
line screen, not that impressionistic stuff that HCB shot.

Surely some of you old timers have memories that go back that long.

Larry Z

- --
To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html