| Lightroom
Magazine a new magazine of photojournalism for photojournalists, travel photographers and other layabouts |
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| Last updated:
27 August, 2007 This magazine is written entirely by Jon Mitchell and is © Copyrighted content. |
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| Editorial WHY DOES PHOTOJOURNALISM SUCK? Now my career as a photojournalist is over, I thought I should update the magazine. Apologies for the June/July issue not coming out just, but not at all. Well, £7.50 from google adsense makes it hardly worth the effort. However, readers, you are lucky, as I like scribbling, so here is the new August / September edition! Actually, that is a bit of a lie. I am sort of scrapping the bi-monthly thing and making putting it on my own schedule, which is to update it when I feel like it. I thought this would add an element of surprise and make the magazine (or is it a blog now?) more interesting. Anyway, deviation, deviation, deviation - I hear someone cry, this editorial is about what a crapola business being a photojournalist has become... I started out in photojournalism in about 1990 and boy, didn't I pick the wrong career! In those days, we lived in hole-in-ground and got drunk a lot. Nowadays, if a journalist gets drunk, people write them off as an alchoholic! There was also cameraderie (which is a sort of professional fraternity for those younger photojournalists who don't understand the word) this has disappeared in most places, though in Delhi, the journalists (mostly Indian ones) will still lend you stuff when needed. Back in London, it has become a back-stabbers occupation - perhaps now journalists will start shooting each other too, as we don't seem much better than the gangs! Though it is worse than that. Spend months producing a great story and hey presto - someone has just nicked your idea! And then there are agents, oh, where would we be without agencies to support us in times of crisis? Successful is probably the answer! I have been through dozens in the past decade and all of them tend to have one main trait - they don't give an elephant turd if you live or die, rarely get you any assignment work and generally don't live up to their job description. If you are lucky, then you may get some paltry few hundred Euro off them every now and again. Hollandse Hoogte paid for a 4,000 Euro helicopter ride here in the Himalayas and then said they only sold five pics or so! Photojournalism is hard work, very time consuming and emotionally straining. You risk you life to get pics in most cases only to be confronted with indifferent editors. My last magnum opus was on climate change in the Himalayas and to be honest, I wish I never bothered (though the helicopter flight and trek were cool!). Editors told me later that there "was not enough Sherpas in the pictures" and the pics were "too landscapey" and lots of other silly things. I got the impression they wanted a Sherpa person looking worried outside their house on the glacier (where no one lives), with a large chunk of ice crashing down in the background and preferably, Mount Everest in the background and Sir Edmund Hillary. So I have thought that I won't bother anymore producing photo essays. Better me thinks to doss around and do travel photography. At least that market pays and is not populated largely by morons. It was one of the most important stories I have ever donw and the reaction to it was startling. The same story is repeated on other publications. Two in Australia first said it was brilliant and then wanted me to do four million rewrites. Editors are far too fussy and who cares anyway? If I really want to make a point, best to get some video and stick on uTube or something. Pretentions are also running at an all-time high. The amount of arse-licking involved in getting an essay published is simply staggering. Or you have to join the freemasons! In some countries it is better, in Spain for example, there is lots of space for decent pics. The major papers run lots of photo essays, though photojournalism is a nationalistic business and I am not Spanish. Gone, seemingly are the days of an efficient agent who pushed your slides around the world, now they only do that with absolute stunners (like the story about the lost Hmong rebels in Laos) and they don't happen often. It bemuses me that every other business in the world is organised, though photo news gathering and if you like the production of photo/text documentary work is haphazard and slipshod. So bye-bye photojournalism, good riddance to you. At least I can console myself that I will not have to get stones thrown at me much and can work without cursed deadlines. Also, comforting is no more idiots on picture desks to deal with! Huraah! Gone now are the days of dashing back to send a pic in time, just so it can be ignored! What bliss! |
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Nikon launches the D3 and D300 And Canon launches 40D - to confuse everyone! Two nice offerings from Nikon, who seem to be edging ahead of Canon once more in becoming the camera of choice. Both are 12MP and have lots of great features and are expensive. The D3 is about £2,500 and the D300 around £1,200. Having a quick look at the specs, they look both to be nice cameras, though the D300 is much better value for money. The D3 is full frame and perhaps a better bet for those who have a cupboard full of Nikon lenses. With a 1.5x lens factor, the D300 is a better bet for those who don't (as it saves a lot on telephotos lens costs). However, a pair of D80s or even two D40x bodies may not be a bad bet for those on a budget (aren't we all!). During the uprising in Nepal, in 2006, I saw a Polaris shooter with two D50s and thought he had good sense. While having a snazzy body is nice, better to have two like the old days when a photojournalist with one SLR was often regarded as low profile or just strange! Canon's new EOS 40D looks much like the 30D, which looked strangely like the 20D. There is a conspiracy theory that their mid-range DSLR designer has died and they are just pretending he is designing new ones! Strangely, though they are mad at Canon, they have left the 10MP CCD chip in the new model, which is pretty barking, as everyone is wanting 12MP+. Especially most photo agencies (bless 'em), which, erm, brings me to the next article... Megapixel fascists! Famed Magnum photographer Eve Arnold said recently and - quite rightly - that old, but true cliche; "it is not the camera the photographer uses, though the person behind it" (not an exact quote, though you can find that on the BBC Radio 3 web site). Here, here, I said when I heard it and stamped my foot on the floor a few times in agreement. However, Ms Arnold is out of step with industry opinion. Oh yes, approach most agencies nowadays and you'll be asked for 40-50MB files, which are around 12MP. So what would happen to a modern day Henri Cartier Bresson, sharing his Leica with George Roger and Chim Seymour on Paris' Left Bank in the 1930s. They would be told to sling their hook. No 12MP camera, then get lost, is the new attitude. This is very sad as when I took my first drunken steps on the road of journalism, you could theoretically shoot with a Box Brownie if you got good pictures. Now it seems, the camera is your main rep. I'm no good, but I do have a 22MP DSLR! "The job is yours," says the editor. Another awful thing about this - and it comes from clients who must be worse than babies - is that is means you are very limited in your selection of cameras. However, Lightroom Magazine has found a way to get around this. Well, sometimes, anyway. Can't afford a 12MP DSLR? Want to shoot something sensitive with a more descreet camera and the bank said "no" when you asked for a loan to buy a Leica M8? Well, there is a way, as they say. Most 6MP, 8MP and 10MP cameras shoot RAW format. Usually, if you look around in the software, then you can DOUBLE the resolution, with little loss of quality, when you convert it into a TIFF or whatever. So, a humble 6MP becomes a 12MP and so on. Only problem is you may need more memory cards, though it does at least open up more possibilities on what types of cameras you can use. This is the best way to beat Megapixel fascism from agencies and editors. Only problem is that you may have just shot that great photo essay on JPEG Fine. Well, that is photojournalism these days... BBC Radio 3 Photographer Interviews Although it is right at the bottom of the page of celebs, BBC Radio 3 have done a whopping two interviews with famous photojournalists. These are well-choosen though, the legendary Don McCullin and Eve Arnold are both treated to John Tusa's well thought out questioning. Don McCullin's interview is here and Eve Arnold's here. If you read this Mr Tusa, more please! And how about a little slideshow to go with them? And how about interviewing someone who is not obvious like Martin Parr? There are also lots of other interesting interviews which you can listen to anytime on the Internet. Aside from that, Radio 3 has lots of great - and sometimes downright strange - tunes and sounds. Jump on the Digital Railroad! Choo-choo! I have always liked trains, you don't have to drive them, they have bigger seats than stupid long-distance buses (who invented them? why?) and you can walk up and down them when your bored. Funny then - as Americans are not so fond of trains (or at least their governments aren't!) - that they call the site Digital Railroad. Initially, the service was mostly a database one for agencies and photographers. Now they have "Marketplace" - which as the name suggests, is a portal sales system. It does cost £25 (US$50) a month though and you have to pay if you want them to upload a DVD of material from their offices. So you have to send everything through the Internet! Though they have good software for this. Nevertheless, the portal has so far attracted a lot of talent, with lots of well-known names loading there work on there. These include Jeremy Sutton Hibbert, Scott Dalton, Tomas van Houtryve, Arte Wolfe, Jeremy Horner and yours truly! This is just to name but a few. The system is fairly intuitive and allows work to be kept off the market and you can deliver high res file to other agencies and you get your own sub-domain database, which is easy to link into your site. This also comes with a mini homepage, so you could dispose with your site altogether, or at least enjoy another ranking on google! If you are interested in an account with Digital Railroad, then please follow this link. For those who license pictures, best to visit http://marketplace.digitalrailroad.net/ Ironically, the "digital railroad" is cheaper per month than most British Rail tickets, so not a bad deal when you think about it. This gets 20GB of space (which is lots of JPEGs) and you can buy a lot more for a little more every month. Well, that is about all for this thrilling edition of Lightroom Magazine, I hope you find some of it interesting or at least amusing! Check back soon for more news from the whacky world of photojourmalism and don't forget to click on those google links, or the hacker that nicks my cash from them will not be amused (just kidding, though you never know on the Internet nowadays!). About the author: Jon Mitchell is a recently resigned photojournalist with 17 years experience (most of it miserable, though some of it memorable) in news and feature photography. He now specialises in travel photography. You can find his work available for licensing on the Digital Railroad Photo Portal. He has had the misfortune to once be a correspondent for The Economist, The Guardian and some other awful newspapers. He has also suffered at the hands of editors from various press photo agencies, including Sipa Press, Gamma, Panos Pictures and many other dubious organisations. He recently resigned from Hollandse Hoogte Photo Agency in disgust. FEATURES Are we all video-photo-journalists now? Bagging a new bag ON THE ROAD Battery flat in the middle of nowhere? Then you may need one one of these... The satellite phone option CAMERAS & LENSES New HDV cameras "Alternative" DSLRs Digital oldies Leica / Lumix compacts Letters to the Editor My email is so dodgy, that you may as well not bother sending any! |
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| Lightroom
Magazine Archive February / March 2007 - Issue 1 April / May 2007 - Issue 2 June / July 2007 - Issue 2 & 3 (well for £7.50 from google adsense - what do you expect!) |
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| Lightroom Magazine is published and edited by Jonathan Mitchell © 2007 All rights reserved. | ||||||