by Editor on August 16, 2010
in News
It’s no secret that there has been an ongoing debate on the survivability of journalism as an industry. It would seem that every day we are reading about the death of yet another magazine or a photographer who strategically decided now was the moment to rest on his laurels and retire.
No doubt it’s a tough world out there right now.
Jeremy Nicholl, author of The Russian Photos Blog, has focused his work on Russia for roughly twenty years and displays a fascinating array of imagery on the blog. On a post dated today, 16 August 2010, Jeremy discusses the status of photojournalism as an industry. He cites many comments, editorials, and opinions of top industry leaders, including some of the top photographic agencies in the world.
A video link featuring VII’s Stephen Mayes talks about the coming importance of photographers self-publishing and getting their work seen by the general public as well as by magazine editors and other media professionals. Mayes talks about how we need to separate photographers from the media “mass package” – large magazine staffs, marketing agencies, etc. Photographers must seek out a specialized market but also be willing to expand their skills and cover different photographic needs.
The beauty of the “new world” we are seeing being born in photojournalism is that we now have several platforms to spread our work. Traditionally photojournalists were limited to print media – magazines and newspapers. Now, with the advent of the internet era, we have websites. We have blogs. We have twitter, Facebook, Flickr – social media. The opportunity to spread our work is perhaps higher than ever. The downside? It becomes harder to make our work stand out. Suddenly there are several thousand images of roughly the same object viewable online. An oversupply occurs.
Creativity comes in. How do we separate our work? Make it jump out? Imagination comes into play and becomes key to the business strategy. Suddenly being professional must be balanced with begin willing to take a few risks.
It boils down to this: the key to survival is a willingness to be versatile.
Sometimes it seems like the image you set out to get is most certainly not the image you ended up with. The light took a change for the worse, the subject matter did not come together, you got chased away from your photography location (yes, it happens). Other times the evolution is more fun; you see an image to be that captures your imagination and you run with it. Those images, for me at any rate, tend to be the most rewarding.
I was out shooting after an evening thunderstorm two nights ago, bemoaning the severe lack of public land in Texas and not quite sure what I was after. I had some ideas but did not know the area well enough to have a concrete plan. I just know I needed to get out and capture images. The storm had just cleared; leaving behind humidity so fierce it clouded all the windows in my car, beads of water running down the glass. One step out of the car and I was drenched. After some time spent in the middle of a roadway, lying flat and shooting sunset images over a bridge, I wanted something more.
And then I saw this place. Decrepit didn’t begin to describe it… buildings collapsing, doorways growing moss, critters scrambling all over the place. The light was quickly waning so I ran over and shot what images I could. The results just make me want to go back and spend a whole evening there.
I’ll preface this post by admitting that I have not taken the time to sit down and watch a movie in full in over a month, save for one exception in the theatre (and I sat the whole time thinking about photo projects that needed to be finished). After going though Photojojo’s list of the top fifty movies for photo lovers, however, I may just have to start!
Photojojo, a creative website featuring the best in creative gear, tips, and so-it-yourself photography projects, is definitely one of the websites I visit daily. (Last week, for example, the team was talking about how to budget build your own tilt-shift lens – this is valuable information, folks.) Photojojo’s top fifty list features good oldies such as Rear Window starring Jimmy Stewart, whose photographic sleuthing skills lead him into a murder mystery. Here’s a tip for history buffs – apparently Stewart’s character was based on real life war photographer Robert Capa.
The list does not exclude more recent films, as the inclusion of Memento, starring Guy Pearce, and Closer, a film featuring Julia Roberts as an art photographer proves. However, good oldies seem to pervade the list, and names such as Audrey Hepburn, Fred Astaire, Paul Newman, and Marlon Brando seem to stick out above their modern counterparts.
Rather your movie taste leans toward the old or new, Photojojo’s list has a photography movie that will draw your attention. My goal is to watch all fifty within the year – those readers who would like to join me, let me know!
Short post today; I am up and running off to do some real work (a.k.a. photo work) and then off to the day job in a few hours. Just wanted to spread the word that a new collection has been added to the Fire Girl Photography portfolio!
‘Texas Life’ covers everything from city to river, tanker to street art. This folder is a brief cover of my time thus far in Texas; like all collections in my portfolio look for it to be undated periodically as time goes on. This state is rather diverse and is offering up some surprising photography opportunities – I just need to go seek them out!
Sometimes a picture just needs a little more. Something to add mood, add feeling; something to help the viewer feel the emotion of the image. Something to help focus the viewer onto one particular object in the image, to direct focus.
Enter the humble vignette.
By simply darkening or lightening the edges of an image, the whole mood of the photograph can change. Dark vignettes help colors to pop. Light vignettes brighten the image and give a slightly more “cheery feel”. It doesn’t have to be much. A subtle darkening or lightening, so subtle it can’t be seen unless specifically looked for, often proves to simply polish an image. Other times a stronger effect is used to create more of a mood of feeling within the shot, or to simply focus view.
This image was taken at a summer rodeo in Gardiner, Montana, the week before I left. Evening thunderstorms made lighting a challenge – there were moments of glorious warm filtered light mixed in with hours of rain and drab skies. In this shot, bull riding was just about to begin and the rodeo was almost over. Many people don’t realize the hard work behind the scenes it takes to put on an event like this, and I loved the juxtaposition between the rough stock event judge and the cowboys getting ready in the shoots. All night they had been working side by side, but suddenly one became the judge, the other the competitor. Jokes ceased. Work began.
A slight darkening of the frame along the top helps focus the viewer to the warmth of the arena dirt and the action in the shoots. Lightening along the bottom of the frame helps achieve the same effect but keeps the arena light and the ground in focus. This is the only shot in my records where I use split vignetting, and for this image, it works.
The Gulf of Mexico has been making headlines for some months now. Some say it’s the end of the Gulf ecosystem, others argue that the oil spill will spread into oceans around the world. Yes, this has been a tragic event. Yes, thousands of people have fought to help contain the spill and the damage it has created.
But it’s not the end of the world, folks. Or the end of the Gulf.
Yes, thousands of birds have been killed. Fish and other sea life have died. Some Gulf residents have lost jobs. This has been a terrible event – I am in no way glossing that over.
But the world will move on. The oil will be dealt with. Life comes back.
Spending several days on the Gulf coast last weekend, I was shocked and thrilled by the array of sea life I could view simply standing on the sea wall. Crabs. Little fish. Big fish. Man o’ Wars. Cabbage head jellyfish. Dolphins. The list goes on and on. As does life.
So ignore the doom-and-gloomers on this one. The Gulf coast houses a surprisingly hardy ecosystem that knows how to bounce back. Maybe some people could learn a lesson from that.
After spending the weekend down on the coast with the Dry Fly Media team (a little work, a little play…) I’m stationed back in San Marcos again. This was my first photo trip down to the Gulf where I had more than five minutes on the beach and it was an eye opener. Suffice to say that coastal light and “photo feel” differs rather strongly from the high-altitude work I am used to shooting.
We fished into the early morning hours and then were up four hours later and at it again. Dawn on the coast truly is one of my favorite times and this trip produced some fun images. Surprisingly a heron joined us later in the morning and hung out for several hours, eventually closing in to a distance of about three yards as he enjoyed the small fish the boys caught.
This ship, the Eagle Turin, was making her way to the port of Corpus Christi. The morning light was just beginning to strengthen and the little fisherman seemed to completely ignore the presence of the tanker. Dolphins were leaping along the bow, just barely visible in the dim light. The Eagle Turin is a Singapore-flagged ship; I do love the culture of a port town!
I’ll be making the trek down to the coast as often as possible; chasing a few stories and doing some free shooting. Bit of a change from Yellowstone.
It’s been a busy week down here in San Marcos. The day job has been keeping me busy 9-5; photography happens in the early morning, late evenings, and at lunchtime. Nothing like learning how to multitask and keep multiple projects moving forward. Life’s short at any rate – I most definitely stay much happier when I am scrambling to keep up with myself. Who wants excess time on their hands anyway?
Shot a small commercial project this week for a new housing project on the banks of the San Marcos, Riverbend. Riverbend is a unique concept – offering quiet, country living outside of town in a new, cute complex. Individual units offer privacy, trees offer much-welcomed shade, and the river is only a shot walk away. So nice to escape out of town; something I have been missing severely since leaving Montana.
In Austin at the moment meeting with part of the Dry Fly Media team. We are picking up another member in San Antonio tonight and then heading down to the Rockport area for a few days of fishing, videography, and photography. The Dry Fly guys were kind enough to feature me in a couple blog posts of late and I am looking forward to a weekend on the water with them.
Hope everyone out there has plans for an adventuresome weekend. Hard to believe August is almost here already – where has the summer gone?
by Editor on July 28, 2010
in Reviews
A fishing pack can serve as a surprisingly efficient home for a small camera.
I fully confess to being a bit of a gear hound. Not necessarily in the sense that I buy one of everything, but in the sense that I research every aspect of a piece of equipment before I buy it. I am hard on my gear and want it to last. I’d prefer not to worry about whether the straps on my camera bag will hold when I am four miles up a mountain during a blizzard. At that point, there are other priorities.
There are only two camera bags in my kit and for the moment that’s sufficient. A Lowepro Stealth Reporter D650 makes the cut for storage, travel, and studio work. This bag is amazing – I’ve taken out the camera padding and used it as a duffel for week-long trips. The various pockets and sections work beautifully for storage and provide a secure home for everything. It looks like a business case when I am working in crowds and is inconspicuous enough not to alarm the natives.
My other bag, the “field bag” is a small National Geographic photography backpack. Just large enough to hold my camera body, two lenses, and a cleaning kit, this bag is currently sitting on the floor beside me covered in mud and clay from a trip to the river. The canvas exterior is hardy, low-profile, and takes serious punishment. Nifty side pockets are easy to access when the pack is on and adjustable straps let me play with the load if I am hiking or scrambling. This pack was my first camera bag and is still a favorite – it’s taken me from backstage at Spruce Meadows to working ranches and still continues to truck along.
It doesn’t really matter what brand or style bag you have. Make sure the camera bag will comfortably carry all you need it to. Make sure its durable enough for the intended use. And perhaps most importantly, make absolutely certain that it’s comfortable! Four hours into a working assignment that alone will be top priority. No one can concentrate on getting the shot if their camera bag is sliding around.
Much of yesterday was spent clambering around the south-central Texas brush and rivers with Jake from Dry Fly Media. Some river pictures were in order and Jake graciously agreed to be my model for the day. Once we found our way down to the Blanco River right below its confluence with the San Marcos River, Jake hauled out the four-weight and began working the banks. Heavy floater traffic prevented much fishing in the main body of the river and along the opposite shore but he had great success along the near shore.
For my part, I slid down a clay embankment and plopped down on a river shelf, enjoying the cool water as I snapped some images. It must be my mountain roots, but these images look rather… tropical to my eyes. The water was a milky, almost chalky green, the sky was blue, and the foliage – and there was an abundance of it – was startlingly green.
Several camera cleaning sessions were in order throughout the day, as water, dirt, and humidity do not mix well with sensitive electronics. We saw several species of fish, a black-and-yellow spider the size of my outstretched palm, and a surprisingly wide assortment of insects. The soused men and women floating by us on the river were perhaps the most interesting wildlife we saw, however!