The Aftermath Project – War Is Only Half The Story

The Aftermath Project was the winner of the humanitarian award at last year’s Lucie Awards (here). I was there that night live blogging the event for fun and Sara Terry’s speech was certainly one of the highlights for me. Not only because of the gravitas of the Aftermath Project but also how well she conveyed the importance of photography and projects like this.

“I was a writer but had a personal crisis and words failed me for the first time in my life so I picked up a camera to communicate…”

“… the stories we hold up define who we are as a society.”

The book from last year’s project is out now (here):
book-vol2-cover

In addition to that they are now accepting applications for their fourth year of granting (2010); and will be giving out two grants, for $20,000 each. The application deadline is Nov 2nd (here).

How to Compete

It’s a dodgy game to compete on price. It’s always a race to the bottom. It’s never fun to compete by name-calling or bragging over your competitors. Instead, really earn it with us by competing in ways that will empower both you and us.

via How to Compete.

The Future Of Accountability Journalism In A World Of Declining Newspapers

Clay Shirky is fast becoming one of the top thinkers on the future of journalism and if you listen to a talk he gave at the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, you will understand why. The Nieman Journalism Lab has an mp3 (here) and the transcript (here).

Some of the major points he makes if any of you want to discuss:

The marriage of advertising and accountability journalism was an accident – “There was a set of forces that made that possible. And they weren’t deep truths — the commercial success of newspapers and their linking of that to accountability journalism wasn’t a deep truth about reality. Best Buy was not willing to support the Baghdad bureau because Best Buy cared about news from Baghdad. They just didn’t have any other good choices.”

Advertisers were overcharged and undeserved– “Not only did they have to deliver more money to the newspapers than they would have wanted, they didn’t even get to say: ‘And don’t report on my industry, please.’”

Consumers want to aggregate their own daily media lineup – “he New York Times is being torn apart right now by its own readers. The number of people who go to the Times’ homepage as a percentage of total readership falls every year — because you don’t go to the Times, you go to the story, because someone Twittered it or put it on Facebook or sent it to you in email. So the audience is now being assembled not by the paper, but by other members of the audience.”

The immediate future is not good -“Every town in this country of 500,000 or less just sinks into casual, endemic, civic corruption — that without somebody going down to the city council again today, just in case, that those places will simply revert to self-dealing. Not of epic, catastrophic sorts, but the sort that just takes five percent off the top.”

Newspapers will not survive – “So I think we are headed into a long trough of decline in accountability journalism, because the old models are breaking faster than the new models can be put into place.”

The solution or at least his thoughts on what the future holds for journalism is that the bulk of what newspapers do in regards to the public good will be taken up by a multitude of smaller entities that are crowdsourced, commercially funded or non-profits. Basically all media will be broken up into many vertical channels with all kinds of different business models. The idea that an advertiser has no influence over a media company that reports on their industry is total BS so much of the accountability journalism will shift to crowdsourced and non-profit business models. Commercial works as long as the advertiser is in a different industry than the media company is reporting on and so it works really well in the smaller vertical channels. Overall–I’ve said this many times before–content providers are not in trouble it’s the content packagers who are going down.

Nothing Is More Common Than Unsuccessful People With Talent

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.– Calvin Coolidge

via swissmiss

Terry Richardson Talks About The “Snapshot” And Connecting With People

I don’t remember seeing these videos when the big Terry Richardson, Belvedere Campaign came out several years ago so I’m posting them now. Even though I know there are plenty of haters out there I still think it’s fascinating when any photographer at the top of their game talks about their craft.



Hiroshi Sugimoto Shout Out at U2 Concert

…when was the last time the biggest rock star on the planet interrupted one of his signature songs in a stadium full of screaming people to give a shout out to a fine art photographer? There can’t be any equivalent moment in the entire history of photography.

via DLK COLLECTION.

2009 Photographer Social Media Survey

Photographer Jim M. Goldstein is looking to compile data on how photographers are currently using and receiving benefit from social media web sites such as Twitter, Facebook and others. Won’t you help him out by filling out his survey:
2009 Photographer Social Media Survey

Data from this survey will be shared by Jim M. Goldstein (www.JMG-Galleries.com) October 22 at PDN PhotoPlus Expo in NYC as part of the “Twitter Revolution: Changing the Photographic World, 140 Characters at a Time” (http://bit.ly/3FHUl) discussion panel with Seshu Badrinath, Jack Hollingsworth, and Rosh Sillars. The data from this survey will also be made available later to all who are interested.

1 Stop Multimedia Shop

The Multimedia Muse is still going strong (here) and I’m really enjoying the pithy summary that goes with each highlighted piece.
MultiMediaMuse

Example:

Hall Of Lame: Politico’s Click
Politico
Do you want to know how to make a grown photographer cry? Open his laptop and launch Click, the new gossip/photo/video page from Politico, a publication whose terrific photographic potential (DC politics! Jim Vandehei and John Harris! A budget!) is apparently suffocating beneath an even greater level of creative impotence.

Click’s videos (which include White House Deputy Press Secretary Jen Psaki revealing what’s in her purse) have the too close, too jittery look of amateur porn. And their “latest slideshows” are perhaps the first in news history to include close-ups of carpeting. And crown molding.

I like gossip as much as the next guy. But does it really have to appear so slapdash?
—mondo

Reporter’s Guide to Multimedia Proficiency

I discovered this guide book for journalists–compiled from a series of blog posts by Mindy McAdams, Professor of Journalism at the University of Florida–that teaches reporters how to become more multimedia proficient (download here or visit the download page). I’m sure the section on “How to Shoot Decent Photos” will draw plenty of snickering but there’s good stuff for photographers on audio, video and blogging. Certainly this is a look into the future of journalism as many reporters in small to medium markets will find themselves writing, shooting stills, shooting video, recording audio and then putting it all together on the computer back home and this is what’s being taught in journalism school apparently.

The Paparazzi Laser Shield

The boat’s most unusual feature is perhaps the anti-paparazzi “shield”:

Infrared lasers detect the electronic light sensors in nearby cameras, known as charge-coupled devices. When the system detects such a device, it fires a focused beam of light at the camera, disrupting its ability to record a digital image.

via Times Online .

Justice Department urges court to reject Google book deal

In a highly anticipated announcement, Justice Department attorneys cited “class action, copyright, and antitrust” concerns in asking U.S. District Court Judge Denny Chin in New York to reject the currently constructed class action settlement between Google and the Authors Guild, which had sued them.

via CNN.com.

The Value Of Behind The Scenes Videos

Heather Morton Art buyer blog seems to be in full swing again and she’s talking about Behind-the-Scenes-Videos today (here). Basically an Art Buyer was asking the rest of the art buyer group if they all liked it when photographers had behind the scenes videos and they all were enthusiastically endorsing them as a great way to gain a little insight into the personality of the photographer and how they behave on set. It seems like we’ve come a long way in this regard because I remember sitting on a panel in San Francisco, not long after I quit photo editing, endorsing all the great tools available to photographers and talking about all the other parts of a website that I used to check out when making a hiring decision and next to me was the photo editor from a locally based National Magazine who not only didn’t look at photographers websites but didn’t read any marketing emails. On the other side of me was a locally based Art Buyer for a National Advertising Company who regarded anything but the portfolio section of the website as a complete waste of time. Needless to say that was a huge reality check for me as I realize many people don’t view the web with as much enthusiasm as I do. It’s good to see thats changed a bit.

Now, I’m sure there’s a group of you who will see this as a sign the apocalypse has arrived, but I do think there are tasteful ways to do behind the scenes videos and subtly suggest you have the skills and temperament to handle big productions. Just don’t be the person who’s better on camera than behind the camera.

Of course it’s always better if your client makes the video:

Who Is Going To Cover All Expenses On A Car Shoot?

Seriously. I’ve heard a rumor that Campbell-Ewald Art Buyers are asking agents and photographers to cover all the expenses on car shoots they’re shopping around.

Here are the terms they’re sending to everyone:

The new terms are as follows:

Payment on a Sequential Liability basis (agency shall pay vendor once paid by General Motors)

No upfront advance on photo shoots.

I’ve heard people are turning them down. Might be tempting to cover the expenses knowing that will give you a leg up on the competition… would be a very bad precedent to set.

Photojournalism That Required An Editorial Paymaster Was In Trouble Long Before The Internet

A must read series of posts on Revolutions in the media economy by David Campbell (here) tackles photojournalism today:

We can’t approach this issue via some misplaced nostalgia for a golden age that if it did actually exist certainly no longer survives. Photographic stories or documentary have always been difficult to fund directly. If there was a time when the majority of photojournalists simply waited for well-paid commissions to produce important work, that time is no more. We have to doubt though whether the past was like that, because in reality few if any photographers have been able to sustain a career entirely through editorial projects they chose to do. Even Sebastião Salgado had to do corporate and advertising work to cross-subsidise work on the social issues he wanted to explore, and Simon Norfolk sells his prints to a wealthy clientèle through a fine art gallery in order to support his visual critique of the US military.

[..] If some of the great photojournalists had adhered to [journalism dies the moment one enters into a partnership with the subject] we would have been deprived of great pictures – think, for example of how a Larry Burrows needed the US military to get around Vietnam, or a Tom Stoddart required assistance from MSF to travel in Sudan. Of course partnerships vary and anyone concerned about integrity will have to work hard to maintain independence, but that applies in all situations. Aside from the fact the old editorial paymaster model is all but gone, the idea that taking money from corporate media funded by advertising, so that one can create content which will attract more viewers for that advertising, is free from all moral issues is…well, rather daft.

More (here).

A Virtual “Re-boot” Of The Industry

I have long felt that the second people start making serious money online the competition will get fierce and we’re back to where we were before. My only fear is that some of these codgers who run the media companies will not get punished enough to either rethink their relationship with content providers or lose their shorts to someone who understands the value of high quality content.

Most Internet companies are alive only because they are propped up by cheap venture capital financing that is in the process of drying up. On a straight up basis, a traditional media company with a strong brand and digital product should be able to out-compete all but the best Internet-only companies. In the past, traditional media companies were weak online out of fear of cannibalizing the offline revenue and cash flow that sustained their valuations and debt loads. They will soon have a great deal less to lose, likely under fresh ownership and management. It’s time for traditional media to rise up and exact its revenge.

via Forbes.com.

One important thing to point out as well and this is where I disagree with the author on “re-booting” of media, is that owning media companies may not be as profitable as it once was. That doesn’t have to mean the contributors and employees get paid less either. It’s just that the owners need to love the product more than the greenbacks it delivers. That’s more of a re-booting of corporations which it feels like we may be in the midst of.

Art Speak Generator

I’m troubled by how the internal dynamic of the biomorphic forms verges on codifying the accessibility of the work.

…never again feel at a loss for pithy commentary or savvy “insights.” (here). Thx Mark.

Is Photo Manipulation Bad For Photography?

Grayson and Mike at Outside Magazine asked me to write an essay for their photography issue and we settled on the topic of photo manipulation. It’s certainly a hot button issue these days not only because of how easy it’s gotten to make realistic fakes but also because it’s gotten easier to publicly debate it and uncover forgeries that are passed off as real. I personally think we’ve reached the point where media organizations need to air out and in most cases simply create guidelines for what they believe is acceptable. Additionally they need to start informing their readers on the where’s, why’s and how’s of these policies. As many astute observers of media have pointed out, transparency in journalism will be a critical part of how media works in the future and the credibility of brands will hang on our belief that their intention is delivering some version of the truth.

You can read the full essay I wrote (here) and a response from Ed Freeman (here) but I wanted to discuss the conclusion I arrived at after interviewing dozens of people for the story. Photos that are faked are intrinsically tied to photos that are real. They draw much of their power from the public’s belief that photos never lie. Of course all of us know “the camera always lies” and the second you pick a lens or a place to stand you’re influencing the reality of the picture in some way. But, we can’t escape that the public still wants to believe in a photograph’s ability to tell the truth. So, people who take images that appear to be truthful but are really altered beyond reality are at some level destroying this bond.

What amounts to a forgery in photography is incredibly subjective and grey. And, like I said above I think it’s up to the media organizations to define and their audience to accept or reject. And really anything is possible now, so the “old darkroom techniques” aren’t really good anymore for guidelines. I believe very strongly that the intentions of whatever is done to the image, whether it is to represent what actually happened in front of the camera or to make what happened seem better than it actually was, help define what’s acceptable. One way organizations are starting to do that is to require photographers to submit RAW files to compare the finished images with (or what about just shooting film).

It seems helpful when thinking about this to look at writing because the same techniques that writers use to take research, raw dialogue and observation and then turn that into a story is no different than what photographers need to do when approaching a subject. So, why don’t we have fiction and non-fiction photography (I think photo-illustrations are different)? And why do we mix non-fiction stories with fiction photography. This seems like part of the solution and something other people have been indicating is a problem with the NY Times Magazine, because they appear to want it both ways. But, let’s be honest with ourselves writers stretch the boundary of non-fiction to it’s breaking point all the time. So, again it’s up to the publication to become more transparent about their guidelines and to not start blaming contributors when the readers show up with torches.

I think the place where I found this practice of photo fakery most troubling was in wildlife photography. Photographers in that genre will simply tack a “fine art” sign to their back and claim exemption from any need to replicate reality. The problem with this is that they more than anyone are benefiting from the public’s misguided belief that all pictures are real. My first interview for the piece was with Art Wolfe who way back in 1994 ignited a firestorm when he published a wildlife book entitled Migrations where a third of the images were fakes. Art was careful to point out that he didn’t misrepresent natural history and he called the pictures photo-illustrations. This was similar to a response I kept hearing from Steve Bloom when I tried to pin him down about a charge many people made to me that his wildlife images are mostly composites and extreme digital enhancements. Steve gave me incredibly evasive email answers in the vein of what Edgar Martins had to say about his dust up with the NY Times Magazine. Why can’t we just be honest and say “I did it because I wanted to make my photos look better than anyone elses”

And look, I’m not claiming I’m any sort of knight-riding-a-white-stallion either I’m just saying it’s time to start policing ourselves (starting with magazines) or else we’ll end up like the fashion industry and congress will soon be considering anti-photoshopping laws (I used to wish each month there was such a law when the owner’s of both magazines I worked at insisted we heinously paint the sky blue on the cover).

When people see an amazing photograph for the first time they usually ask, “is it real?” The answer should be yes.