2007 is not even a week old and already there is harsh news in the photo/creative world. Saddam Hussein was executed and the images of the execution were captured by cell phone and released by a non-photographer. PDN has the story and in it they lightly discuss how so-called “citizen (photo-) journalists” are changing how the media acquires its images.
Ironic that PDN should be discussing a treat to photographers when its parent company, VNU, has recently issued a rights-grabbing contract, at least according to a thread on the Editorial Photographers forum (membership required).
[By the way, if you shoot editorial, you need to be a member of EP. Join now.]
Photographer Sion Tourig (blog) has a very interesting article on the “citizen (photo) journalist” threat and reality. It’s on The Register (UK). He’s pretty savvy on these issues and is willing to say some things that many American photographers have been nervous or unwilling to admit. Pleasant? No. But the points he brings up are vital to the creative industries and should be seriously examined.
I’m particularly in agreement with what he has to say about Creative Commons & Copyleft at the end of the piece. Bravo.
And then there’s a thread on the HOW design forum that ticked me off. A designer posted looking for free fonts and I posted that as a creative professionals we should not seek the free or cheap from other creatives. It lowers the bar for everyone. I, unfortunately, then got my ass handed to me. The rationale of “everyone does it” was used, and that, frankly, just proves my point.
Sigh.
In all this bad news, we can choose to moan and wallow, or we can get up and make things better. This is our business, our financial life, we’re talking about here. Can we change how the media giants are getting free images from people with cellphones? No. But photographers can work to make outstanding images that amateurs with cell phones can’t make and these photographers MUST license those images and for a fair price. We should also all eschew the Creative Commons and Copyleft good-intentioned paths to ruin. We should all try to buy/license the best creative products we can and pay fairly for them.
We have to walk the path.
Those of you who regularly read this blog know that I am a big believer in facing reality but keeping a positive attitude. This year looks already like it is going to try us, but together we can not only stop things from getting worse, we can make some things better. All? No, not all. I think journalism in all its forms is so significantly infiltrated by money, greed, and power that photo-journalism may indeed be a dying profession. But it’s definitely not to late in other realms. We can’t sit on our hands any longer, though. Get up and make a difference today.
Strange to read about photo-journalism dying. In France they said : Le Roi est mort, vive le roi (the king is dead, long life to the king), when their king died and a new one was presented. Probably photo-journalism is dying, but, like a phoenix, it will come back, better and more powerful than ever. How and when, we don’t know. But it will come back.
Same for other photo specialities. Think about photo-stories (magazines with a story told by pictures with text added on them). 10 years ago, you could still buy them. Now they totally disappeared. A few weeks ago, I read somewhere that the market seems again to be ready for this kind of publication. There seems to be demand. There are already softwares you can buy to build photo-stories with your family photos. Soon you will find photo-stories with celebrities.
Think about a photographer paid to live with a celebrity, take pictures of her, editing them with her and building up a story with text, out of the whole stuff. Perhaps, people such as Paris Hilton will begin. Or will it be Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt with their kids. Photo-stories about the life and adventures of celebrities could sell as high as tabloids. Photo-stories are dead, long life to photo-stories !