Covering Tehran
bdcolen
Registered Users Posts: 3,804 Major grins
Anyone at all interested in contemporary photojournalism should be keeping an eye on the New York Times Lens Blog. Today's installment is particularly strong; some of the images are positively painterly in their composition and color pallet.
B. D.
bd@bdcolenphoto.com
B. D.
bd@bdcolenphoto.com
bd@bdcolenphoto.com
"He not busy being born is busy dying." Bob Dylan
"The more ambiguous the photograph is, the better it is..." Leonard Freed
"He not busy being born is busy dying." Bob Dylan
"The more ambiguous the photograph is, the better it is..." Leonard Freed
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Yeah, but we saw it on the Web for free.
http://ohad.smugmug.com
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Riveting BD, thanks for the post. Interesting subject matter
Now for a critique; since this is a photog site. (of the first 15)
#1 for me perfect
#3,4,8,& 15; tilting - does it do anything for the shots?
#13 Could the photog have used a different aperture to increase dof?
What say you BD?
Right you are...and here are two thoughts...
The first is that the web has made possible an explosion in documentary photography, giving a large number of essentially unknown, extremely talented people a way to get their work out to the world. Also, by having "unlimited" space on the web, newspapers are presenting a kind of extended photojournalism never possible before. Over the weekend I'll provide some links to some terrific work.
As to the 'giving it away.' Those of us old enough to remember Dear Abby may also remember that when young women would write to her saying that their boyfriends wanted to live together without getting married, she'd always respond - 'Then he'll never marry you - why pay for milk when you can get the cow for free?' (apologies in advance to the women on this list!:-) )
Newspapers made the mistake early on of giving away the milk, and now no one wants to buy the cows. Had they started out charging for online content, people would be used to that model and would willingly pay. Instead, some of the major papers have more - and better - content free online than in the papers they charge for. The big question now is whether it's possible to retrain people and start charging for the milk.
"He not busy being born is busy dying." Bob Dylan
"The more ambiguous the photograph is, the better it is..." Leonard Freed
The internet is an agile place. Newspapers will need to loosen some dead weight and build a profitable advertising-based financial model or they won't stand a chance.
More importantly, we should all expect to see offerings from Google and Yahoo and others that include intelligent analysis of content from major news sites and individually-owned blogs and forums. The Times can only speculate when it comes to suggesting the public's opinion -- offering polls of possibly several thousand people. Google, however, doesn't have to guess. They can actually go out and read opinions (I'm speculating about possible near-future technology of course) in hundreds of millions of blogs and forum posts and develop an opinion map of the entire globe. Now that is news. We are a society of "social networkers" and classic newspapers need to bring this angle into their web news.
I really hope the internet allows a journalist to tell a more complete story. Meaning "A truck crashed on I-80" becomes "A truck crashed on I-80 in Lander, WY. It was carrying a load of beef destined for Nevada. The driver was not injured however, traffic was delayed for an hour." OK, bad example but you get the idea
With so much free content floating around, how are people the news biz going to earn a living. What about the college Journalism degrees where standards are taught?
Lots of questions, few answers...
This is a problem. There are at least as many opinions on something as there are readers and very few of them are trained in observation and reporting.
And the internet, like it or not, is a place where anyone can say what they want--rightly or wrongly. To prove my point, try and figure out how to fix something. You will find several suggestions, one or two of which will be correct. But which one?
I'm pretty much religiously opposed to tilting, but I have to say that when I first looked at these none of them struck me as tilted. Yes, on looking again, I can see a touch of tilting in some, but I wonder whether it's the photographer's intent, or the reality of shooting under pressure in crowds. Whatever, it really doesn't bother me here.
As to the question about aperture and dof - a photographer always can select a different aperture to increase or decrease dof. She made a particular choice here, and I figure it's her choice to make.
"He not busy being born is busy dying." Bob Dylan
"The more ambiguous the photograph is, the better it is..." Leonard Freed
I realize the train is leaving the rails here in terms of staying on subject...but...
First, the news aggregaters such as Google and Yahoo are just that - and when real news gathering organizations disappear, there will be nothing reliable left to aggregate. I don't know about you, but I have little or no faith in "citizen journalists" and bloggers, who have idea idea of what real reporting is, who don't have the resources to do real reporting, and who don't have the protection of news organizations to bail them out when push comes to shove.
Further, when Stephen Colbert can get a bridge in Hungry named after him by having his viewers skew a poll - (and I love Stephen Colbert ;-) ) - you should know how useless Yahoo or Google on-line polling is. I'll take the 940 or 1112 or whatever number of people are counted in a scientifically designed opinion survey any day.
But I'm getting old. End of discussion for me.
"He not busy being born is busy dying." Bob Dylan
"The more ambiguous the photograph is, the better it is..." Leonard Freed
The aggregation of news should see some marked improvements over the next decade. Natural language processing (Wolfram Alpha for example), when it evolves past its current infancy, should allow aggregaters to intelligently find newsworthy content on the web. Today's aggregation is nothing more than pooling content based upon keywords and, as we all know, lacks obvious authenticity or reliability. NLP could very well change that by using searchable concepts rather than meaningless keywords. I'm not speaking of simple opinion-polling here but, rather, a sophisticated mechanism for polling reliable opinions from existing web authors.
Larger news agencies, then, must begin to rely on these same tools for developing their content. I think that what we'll see is blog owners being paid for their content by aggregaters (I'm lumping news agencies into "aggregaters" at this point) for usage (think Google AdSense) and aggregaters earning revenue exclusively from ad placement.
Journalists, and photojournalists, will still have a place in this market. Whether contracted through individually-owned web resources, or hired directly by aggregaters looking to showcase some quality, there will always be a need for the skills these professionals possess.
That's my take, anyway. I apologize for aiding in the derailment here but this is too interesting a subject to pass up.
yet you must acknowledge that there are stories and images that the citizens are getting to us that the "real" news agencies aren't. From what I hear, "real" agencies are being locked in their hotel rooms, yet we get images like these from brave individuals with cameraphones and a twitter account. When push comes to shove, some of the citizens are putting their life on the line to get the word out.
my words, my "pro"pictures, my "fun" pictures, my videos.
Very true.
But step back and look at this from a photographer or videographers point of view:
The degradation of image quality is incredible and has happened so quickly, it's truly amazing. The use of free imagery, solicited for by the major networks certainly impacts the livelihood of "image professionals".
I think the associated press (which can be termed an aggregater) will be the last legacy newspaper organization left standing, with CNN and some network resources.
I think the photos posted were appropriate warts and all. There seems to be a crude style (found in some movies & TV) that is attractive for some situations and this is one of them.
Just my .02
Cameras are everywhere. I read an article a while back in which the interviewee (some techy fella) predicted that children would be buying web cam stickers, within a dozen years, for the price of a stick of gum. The world will be recorded everywhere and from every angle; the news will no longer need photographers. News aggregaters looking for an artistic twist will still hire them, but they will be a minority.
The real loss will be the incredibly imagery that springs from the world of news reporting. It is unfortunate but professional photography will, eventually, be no different than a movie or a Broadway musical -- antiquated (technologically), yet still appreciated, art.
Where are all the blacksmiths anyway?
Evolution has it's collateral damage...
The news gathering business is evolving as well. Sure the "man in the street" is important. But there's no way the average Joe will be able to do much in-depth reporting. And if the "man in the street" is a participant, his perspective will be skewed.
Will there be room for "real" journalists? Sure there will. Same with photographers. Will they be the same as they are today? Probably not.
Journalists are human beings, too, and as such have their perspective.
Same with editors.
Same with photographers.
if J-School is teaching differently, they're deluding themselves and their students.
Even reporting or photographing "simple facts" can be done with a slant.
Example: Does "the man shouted" = "the man screamed" = "the man called" = "the man yelled"? They're all words for communicating at a louder-than-normal volume, though to the reader they probably have different emotional impact. One writer/editor will use one combination of words, another will use a different one. On purpose? To influence the reader's position? Who knows. But in any case, I don't believe that there is any such thing as completely objective reporting.
Photographic example: Take a photo of a person speaking, mid-sentence. Take a photo of that same person when they pause between thoughts. Take a photo from a position higher than the speaker, looking down at them. Take a photo from ground-level, looking up at them. Then choose which to submit to the editor. You've just made a choice on how to present the person. Submit them all and the editor makes the choice. In any case, a choice is made to show the speaker in a good light or not.
my words, my "pro"pictures, my "fun" pictures, my videos.
Arash Khamoushi/ISNA, via Associated Press
I agree that journalists are humans. I also believe that each media outlet has it's own journalistic bias and style of writing. I can use that to gauge what I am reading. A really simple example of that is movie reviews. I read one and the reviewer hates it--based on the reviewer, I know I will like it. Obviously, it's more difficult with news but you get the idea.