Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/08/30
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I spent a lot of time talking to several National Geographic photographers back when I was a student at Missouri from '85 to '88. Jim Stanfield took nine months to shoot the story in Israel and about a year shooting at the Vatican. Those stories both ran in 1984 and were shot a couple years before that. It was right about the mid-80s when the numbers started getting cut pretty severely. Stories were cut to several months on average. And when RIch Clarkson was the director of photography it was still taking two years to get a story from shooting to print. Of course, they want to be more timely now, so they cut that time down. I don't think that's a problem, timely is good. They just have to plan well so they don't end up a story short one month. And since then like you say they are given a month or so. A month is not nearly long enough for the comprehensive nature of the stories that they do. They were getting it right when they were taking six to nine months and shooting a thousand rolls of film. And there's no reason they still can't do that, except some bean counters don't consider quality important enough. And there's no reason why they still couldn't do stories like that. But it would seem nobody appreciates doing things right any more. But then why should they be any different than the rest of the world, where the only thing that counts is money? On Saturday, August 30, 2003, at 06:57 PM, Emanuel Lowi wrote: > Before anyone has a heart attack about some of the stats Eric has > offered about Nat > Geo photo assignments, I believe it has been a very very long time > since > photographers had 6-9 months to shoot NG stories and 2-3 years delay > before > publication. Until the late-ish '90s, an assignment could run about > 3-4 months and it > could take about a year to get into print -- the latter not an > outrageous delay, the > former clearly a bit of an indulgence. Now assignments may run a month > or so -- still > not too too stingy. > > The bigger numbers are from way back when, in the days when being an > NG shooter was > something equivalent in status to being a Mercury or Gemini astronaut > at NASA. The > world has changed a great deal since then -- not kinder and gentler, > but quicker and > dirtier. Lots of quality things have slipped in similar ways and most > people just > don't seem to care. We consume visual images in all kinds of ways, and > Nat Geo is no > longer our main window on the world. > > Emanuel Lowi > Montreal > -- > To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html > > Eric Welch Carlsbad, CA http://www.jphotog.com Always drink upstream from the herd. - Will Rogers - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html