5 ms·

Chicago Sun-Times will train reporters on ‘iPhone photography basics’

40 points by shawndumas 13y ago

kfury 13y ago
Will they teach their journalists how to take shallow depth-of-field shots and long telephoto shots with their iPhones? Probably not, since you can't. Given the 'yes and' style of derivative news reporting commonplace today, the Sun-Times might be more effective firing the writers, keeping the photographers, and teaching them actual journalism.
- cclogg 13y ago
  I wonder how you can even train someone for this... Tap to focus, now tap the shutter button, AND done. Oh, and turn on HDR and wait 5s for it to process.
- potatolicious 13y ago
  Photojournalism has never been about depth-of-field shots nor long telephoto shots. Photojournalism has always been primarily wide, deep depth of field, and more about lighting and composition than anything else. Shooting "real" photojournalism with an iPhone is more than doable. Hell, the iPhone's field of view is a 28mm equivalent, which is perfect for photojournalism. I don't disagree with the overall point about the failure of photojournalism, but photojournalism has never been about the capabilities of the camera.
  - scrumper 13y ago
    Exactly. "What settings did you use for that picture, Mr. Photojournalist?" "Easy son, F8 and be there."
  - corresation 13y ago
    but photojournalism has never been about the capabilities of the camera Fast frame rate. Very bright lens (e.g. f1.4). Large, high-sensitivity sensor. It is very much about the capabilities of the camera, because the truth is that lesser cameras miss most shots, especially in a moving situation where you get a momentary window of opportunity. The iPhone camera may get there eventually, but in that situation right now the failure rate to get a shot is going to be incredibly high (obviously a chance is better than none -- the camera you have in your hand is better than the one at home and all -- but we're comparing to ready to go photojournalists). We shall see how this decision plays out, but personally I think it is a horrible choice because it removes one of the few remaining differentiators between old media and the citizen news, which is that generally in the former you could find great, unique pictures by professionals who know what they're doing.
    - sk5t 13y ago
      You're right on target about the iPhone's unsuitability for photojournalism. There's the horrendous shutter lag, inability to control aperture/sensitivity/shutter speed to any meaningful degree--I can make all these adjustments using dedicated controls on my D3 without taking my eye out of the viewfinder. A big storage buffer, fast frame rate, and removable, redundant storage modules and replaceable batteries also remain essential. Oh, and interfacing with lighting systems, and of course proper lenses. In a dynamic/dangerous situation, you need to get on the viewfinder and crank away on continuous-high shutter, and you'll take 200x the photos of even an ambitious iPhone user. Now think that out of 1,000 frames, maybe 2 will be head-and-shoulders above the rest... these are probably frames that the iPhone user had a vanishingly small opportunity to capture at all.
      - corresation 13y ago
        It would make for an interesting (and almost certainly viral) test to concoct artificial scenarios of a "newsworthy" event, having participants armed with each type of capture device. Instructing them that something important is going to happen in a few moments (already giving them more information than they would usually have) and then having a staged shoot out go through the scene, or a pretend robbery, etc.
  - kfury 13y ago
    And my comment wasn't about photojournalism. Thinking journalists can become photojournalists by telling them to snap pictures (with their phone or with professional glass) is even more ridiculous than the Sun-Times is being. Don't conflate News Photography with Photojournalism. The second is a subset of the first. News Photography is a field that requires greater diversity than 'being there at f/8 (in daylight, with a fast lens and a ready camera)'. There are sports photographers, portrait photographers, close subject photographers, artistic photographers and, yes, photographers who need to be on the scene at breaking events, where a wide shot and being close are key. I agree with everything you said, but it doesn't negate anything I said.
    - hnriot 13y ago
      it does negate what you said, you argued that shallow depth of field and telephoto shots were what's needed, and this is wrong, as was pointed out.
      - kfury 13y ago
        Read it again, and note that not all news photography is photojournalism.
  - jonknee 13y ago
    Perhaps, but most of the iconic photos I remember aren't ones that an iPhone could take. Just take a scroll through Boston's Big Picture blog.
  - zaphar 13y ago
    The announcement said they fired all of their photographic staff. Which combined with your comment leads me to wonder about their sports section. Taking sports photography is very definitely about the capabilities of the camera and even more importantly the lens. An iPhone is not going to do very well for sports photography.
    - snogglethorpe 13y ago
      > An iPhone is not going to do very well for sports photography Though it would be amusing to see the attempts... >< [Seriously though, it sounds like they're simply going to use freelancers for photos from now on, many of whom will presumably have all the fancy kit you need for sports etc...]
- pkulak 13y ago
  F/8 and be there. That still works with an iPhone. EDIT: Okay, so an iPhone can never actually do f/8, but I think my point still stands...
  - kfury 13y ago
    Take someone with a DSLR on their hip and someone with an iPhone in their pocket and see who can get the shots you want. Subjects don't stand still and they won't wait for you to be ready.
    - hnriot 13y ago
      It's hard to know which side you're arguing for. The iPhone is likely faster, there are a plethora of apps that burst shoot, it can switch to video in a moment and it's faster to start taking photos. By the time the SLR has been set to P mode and auto iso etc e iPhone would have already shot the photos and uploaded them to the server. The wifi/cell part of the photo is not to be ignored, GPS stamped images uploaded in seconds. The SLR can't compete yet. In a year or two when wifi is prevalent on SLR cameras, maybe, but for the moment is speed counts the iPhone will win for photos and video.
      - Tloewald 13y ago
        At least for stills there's simply no way the iPhone is faster, burst mode apps or not. (I speak as a frequent user of both DSLRs and iphones.) The ability to zoom and crop means you can get shots with a DSLR than an iPhone could almost never get (barring ungainly tricks like shooting through binoculars) and you can't freeze action.
      - kfury 13y ago
        An iPhone is never faster than a pro DSLR. From hip to eye, power on and shooting in under a second. There's a reason the power switch is part of the shutter.
      - sk5t 13y ago
        Nooope, it's not even close--the iPhone is slow, inflexible, and poor-performing compared to a pro DSLR hooked to a 24-70 f/2.8 or 70-200 f/2.8 zoom. Consumer DSLRs are kind of pokey, but the pro models go from "off" to "shoot" in a fraction of a second, with no perceptible delay between hitting the shutter button and an exposure. There is no faffing about with P mode or the like (only someone who doesn't know how to use his camera would be caught out doing this). The iPhone does have an advantage in network connectivity, but it's comparatively unlikely to capture the couple of moments worth saving.
- blhack 13y ago
  >the Sun-Times might be more effective firing the writers, keeping the photographers, and teaching them actual journalism. I think you joke, but you might have accidentally made an excellent point. My girlfriend, to pay her bills, is a journalist. One of the things that she's talked about a lot (I'm paraphrasing here, these aren't her words) is that contemporary journalists don't have any balls anymore. The joke is: a journalism professor, on the first day, stages a siren to play outside of the classroom. When it goes off, anybody who doesn't immediately run out with a pen and a pad in hand is dropped from the class. Lately, a journalist can do their job without getting up from their desk. A photojournalist, however, can't. They're the ones running into "the action" necessarily. A words-journalist isn't anymore, so much.
  - kfury 13y ago
    I do joke, but with truth. As Al Franken popularized it, I was 'kidding on the square'.
    - Tloewald 13y ago
      Kidding on the square is a very useful (and insightful) phrase.
  - SilasX 13y ago
    >My girlfriend, to pay her bills, is a journalist. I'm glad she can make that work!
- iharris 13y ago
  My thoughts exactly. For controlled situations where the photographer can dictate the subject's distance, pose, and lighting, I'm sure an iPhone would do just fine. But often, a photojournalist finds themselves in a situation where the environment is beyond their control: a concert with a laser light show, fast-moving athletes in action, or coverage of a natural disaster where your distance requires a telephoto shot. Don't get me wrong - I use my iPhone's camera frequently and I think it's great. But as a photojournalist where your story (and your livelihood) depends on "getting the shot", you need to be knowledgeable and prepared to shoot in the worst conditions possible. The iPhone can do some awesome things, but you just can't fake good glass with software. Full disclosure: I sell event photos to my local newspaper that I could not have gotten at all if I had used my smartphone.
jrochkind1 13y ago
They're just going to have really bad photos, with bad composition etc. Will it hurt their sales at all? Maybe not, so maybe they don't care? It will hurt their journalists self-respect, and, I'd suggest, in the long term, hurt the credibility and respectability of their newspaper. To have unprofessional looking photos.
bruceb 13y ago
I wonder how many HN readers actually pick up a physical copy of CST? almost none. There will still be some pro freelancers. Sad for newspapers and for those who lost their job but I doubt this will have an effect on readership.
danso 13y ago
It's not quality of photo that will be lost, it will be the ability to focus on reporting. Even if taking a photo is easy as Instagram, you still have to take time to edit the photo and prep it for print/production. More problematic is the awkwardness of trying to photograph and interview at the same time. "I'm so sorry for the lost off your children, Mrs. Smith. Now can you look at my iPhone?" That kind of breaks the rhythm.
- kfury 13y ago
  This is a superb point. When the photo is supposed to document the interview the photographer can't be the interviewer. It would be like a news reporter filming themselves.
ctdonath 13y ago
To abandon skilled photographers with quality equipment because of a few great photos by unskilled people using poor equipment is to miss a salient point: We notice great photos taken with poor cameras by unskilled photographers because sheer volume will produce a few worth noting; what isn't noticed is the many great photos which don't exist because equipment and/or user was unable to make the picture happen.
- kevinmchugh 13y ago
  This is known as the survivorship bias. More about that here: http://youarenotsosmart.com/2013/05/23/survivorship-bias/ http://youarenotsosmart.com/2013/05/23/survivorship-bias/
  - Tloewald 13y ago
    Really it's the Availabilih Heuristic, of which survivor bias is merely a specific case. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic
cantgetnode 13y ago
R.I.P. photojournalism, hopefully we can share some humor to brighten the mood. Canon 5D Vs 1D http://youtu.be/bEwUnENlc9M http://youtu.be/bEwUnENlc9M
FactoryFactory 13y ago
I hope they at least use better point and shoot cameras or smartphones with better cameras like the Nokia 808.
bluetidepro 13y ago
As pointed out in another comment in here, how do they expect to actually get decent night photos then? At least with a camera, you can change the exposure and shutter speeds to help with night photos. That's not something really all that possible with an iPhone, if I'm correct. Also things in motion, the iPhone tends to be very easily blurred, again, something that wouldn't be a big issue with a nice (or even decent) DSLR. This seems like a very dumb move on there part, but I also grew up doing/loving photojournalism, so maybe I'm taking it a bit personal. I just feel like it's going to make their photos look very amateur, which will inevitably hurt their credibility even more so.
mcphilip 13y ago
Playing the devil's advocate here. What is wrong with the Sun-Times making this decision if it is shown that having a staff trained in 'iPhone photography basics' allows the ST to cut costs without hurting revenue? An iconic photo (e.g. Tank Man photo [1]) opportunity is a black swan event, after all. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man
- astrodust 13y ago
  Why not go one further and train their staff to search Flickr and Twitter for images instead? What about firing all the editors and teaching the writers to do that themselves? Get rid of all the janitorial staff and mandate everyone spend more time cleaning up.
  - parsnips 13y ago
    Well...
  - kfury 13y ago
    You think you're using hyperbole but many articles going out nowadays never get read by an editor who actually edits for tone, readability, spelling, or even accuracy. And the janitorial staff? You might be surprised to know how many of the actual journalistic sites you read don't even have offices, or at least not ones with desks for writers. Most of these people work at home.
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  An iconic photo (e.g. Tank Man photo [1]) opportunity is a black swan event, after all. The photo opportunity is, but the ability to exploit the opportunity and get a good photo is not.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    Whoah, you're back. Come down to MTV this week to see me and Patrick (and whoever else shows up). Good to see you here again. (Apologies for off-topic comment).
mathattack 13y ago
Could this just be outsourcing the photography to professionals? Or could it be crowdsourcing "Pick the 100 best amateur photos rather than 1 good pro?" The Sun Times isn't the New York Times. It's the lowbrow of two daily newspapers in Chicago, and already leading the charge to the bottom.
lmarinho 13y ago
I don't know, I can find plenty of iPhone quality photography on the Web already. I expect professional quality content from dedicated news outlets.
ShabbyDoo 13y ago
Via eBay, I bought some 50's thru 70's era Chicago SunTimes vintage 8x10 file prints. Apparently, someone acquired their physical archives? The skill of photo journalists in those days was astounding. There were beautifully composed photos of the 1968 riots -- while people were rioting! I'm not suggesting that today's PJ's aren't as skilled, but it's certainly easier with a DSLR.
- zmitri 13y ago
  I very much agree. Photojournalism was it at peak in that era. There were tons of photoessay magazines around but they couldn't compete for ads with other forms of media and most of them shut down.
- snogglethorpe 13y ago
  I saw a museum exhibition a few years back of a famous Japanese war photographer in Vietnam (who was killed there). In addition to the usual blown up prints of his most famous images, they had contact sheets from his film rolls, and they really showed how incredibly skilled he was. From looking at the contact sheets, and comparing with the blown-up images, you could see that 95% of his shots were perfectly composed, well exposed, in focus, and there were almost no wasted shots at all—none of this "take multiple exposures and choose the best one" business, he just got it right the first time and moved on. While being shot at. I liked his work before seeing that exhibition, but I was in awe after it... [and of course while the equipment of the time (from the contact sheets, you could see it was 35mm film) wasn't all that bad, it was a bit primitive compared to what we have now....]

40 points by shawndumas 13y ago

kfury 13y ago

Will they teach their journalists how to take shallow depth-of-field shots and long telephoto shots with their iPhones? Probably not, since you can't. Given the 'yes and' style of derivative news reporting commonplace today, the Sun-Times might be more effective firing the writers, keeping the photographers, and teaching them actual journalism.

cclogg 13y ago
I wonder how you can even train someone for this... Tap to focus, now tap the shutter button, AND done. Oh, and turn on HDR and wait 5s for it to process.
potatolicious 13y ago
Photojournalism has never been about depth-of-field shots nor long telephoto shots. Photojournalism has always been primarily wide, deep depth of field, and more about lighting and composition than anything else. Shooting "real" photojournalism with an iPhone is more than doable. Hell, the iPhone's field of view is a 28mm equivalent, which is perfect for photojournalism. I don't disagree with the overall point about the failure of photojournalism, but photojournalism has never been about the capabilities of the camera.
- scrumper 13y ago
  Exactly. "What settings did you use for that picture, Mr. Photojournalist?" "Easy son, F8 and be there."
- corresation 13y ago
  but photojournalism has never been about the capabilities of the camera Fast frame rate. Very bright lens (e.g. f1.4). Large, high-sensitivity sensor. It is very much about the capabilities of the camera, because the truth is that lesser cameras miss most shots, especially in a moving situation where you get a momentary window of opportunity. The iPhone camera may get there eventually, but in that situation right now the failure rate to get a shot is going to be incredibly high (obviously a chance is better than none -- the camera you have in your hand is better than the one at home and all -- but we're comparing to ready to go photojournalists). We shall see how this decision plays out, but personally I think it is a horrible choice because it removes one of the few remaining differentiators between old media and the citizen news, which is that generally in the former you could find great, unique pictures by professionals who know what they're doing.
  - sk5t 13y ago
    You're right on target about the iPhone's unsuitability for photojournalism. There's the horrendous shutter lag, inability to control aperture/sensitivity/shutter speed to any meaningful degree--I can make all these adjustments using dedicated controls on my D3 without taking my eye out of the viewfinder. A big storage buffer, fast frame rate, and removable, redundant storage modules and replaceable batteries also remain essential. Oh, and interfacing with lighting systems, and of course proper lenses. In a dynamic/dangerous situation, you need to get on the viewfinder and crank away on continuous-high shutter, and you'll take 200x the photos of even an ambitious iPhone user. Now think that out of 1,000 frames, maybe 2 will be head-and-shoulders above the rest... these are probably frames that the iPhone user had a vanishingly small opportunity to capture at all.
    - corresation 13y ago
      It would make for an interesting (and almost certainly viral) test to concoct artificial scenarios of a "newsworthy" event, having participants armed with each type of capture device. Instructing them that something important is going to happen in a few moments (already giving them more information than they would usually have) and then having a staged shoot out go through the scene, or a pretend robbery, etc.
- kfury 13y ago
  And my comment wasn't about photojournalism. Thinking journalists can become photojournalists by telling them to snap pictures (with their phone or with professional glass) is even more ridiculous than the Sun-Times is being. Don't conflate News Photography with Photojournalism. The second is a subset of the first. News Photography is a field that requires greater diversity than 'being there at f/8 (in daylight, with a fast lens and a ready camera)'. There are sports photographers, portrait photographers, close subject photographers, artistic photographers and, yes, photographers who need to be on the scene at breaking events, where a wide shot and being close are key. I agree with everything you said, but it doesn't negate anything I said.
  - hnriot 13y ago
    it does negate what you said, you argued that shallow depth of field and telephoto shots were what's needed, and this is wrong, as was pointed out.
    - kfury 13y ago
      Read it again, and note that not all news photography is photojournalism.
- jonknee 13y ago
  Perhaps, but most of the iconic photos I remember aren't ones that an iPhone could take. Just take a scroll through Boston's Big Picture blog.
- zaphar 13y ago
  The announcement said they fired all of their photographic staff. Which combined with your comment leads me to wonder about their sports section. Taking sports photography is very definitely about the capabilities of the camera and even more importantly the lens. An iPhone is not going to do very well for sports photography.
  - snogglethorpe 13y ago
    > An iPhone is not going to do very well for sports photography Though it would be amusing to see the attempts... >< [Seriously though, it sounds like they're simply going to use freelancers for photos from now on, many of whom will presumably have all the fancy kit you need for sports etc...]
pkulak 13y ago
F/8 and be there. That still works with an iPhone. EDIT: Okay, so an iPhone can never actually do f/8, but I think my point still stands...
- kfury 13y ago
  Take someone with a DSLR on their hip and someone with an iPhone in their pocket and see who can get the shots you want. Subjects don't stand still and they won't wait for you to be ready.
  - hnriot 13y ago
    It's hard to know which side you're arguing for. The iPhone is likely faster, there are a plethora of apps that burst shoot, it can switch to video in a moment and it's faster to start taking photos. By the time the SLR has been set to P mode and auto iso etc e iPhone would have already shot the photos and uploaded them to the server. The wifi/cell part of the photo is not to be ignored, GPS stamped images uploaded in seconds. The SLR can't compete yet. In a year or two when wifi is prevalent on SLR cameras, maybe, but for the moment is speed counts the iPhone will win for photos and video.
    - Tloewald 13y ago
      At least for stills there's simply no way the iPhone is faster, burst mode apps or not. (I speak as a frequent user of both DSLRs and iphones.) The ability to zoom and crop means you can get shots with a DSLR than an iPhone could almost never get (barring ungainly tricks like shooting through binoculars) and you can't freeze action.
    - kfury 13y ago
      An iPhone is never faster than a pro DSLR. From hip to eye, power on and shooting in under a second. There's a reason the power switch is part of the shutter.
    - sk5t 13y ago
      Nooope, it's not even close--the iPhone is slow, inflexible, and poor-performing compared to a pro DSLR hooked to a 24-70 f/2.8 or 70-200 f/2.8 zoom. Consumer DSLRs are kind of pokey, but the pro models go from "off" to "shoot" in a fraction of a second, with no perceptible delay between hitting the shutter button and an exposure. There is no faffing about with P mode or the like (only someone who doesn't know how to use his camera would be caught out doing this). The iPhone does have an advantage in network connectivity, but it's comparatively unlikely to capture the couple of moments worth saving.
blhack 13y ago
>the Sun-Times might be more effective firing the writers, keeping the photographers, and teaching them actual journalism. I think you joke, but you might have accidentally made an excellent point. My girlfriend, to pay her bills, is a journalist. One of the things that she's talked about a lot (I'm paraphrasing here, these aren't her words) is that contemporary journalists don't have any balls anymore. The joke is: a journalism professor, on the first day, stages a siren to play outside of the classroom. When it goes off, anybody who doesn't immediately run out with a pen and a pad in hand is dropped from the class. Lately, a journalist can do their job without getting up from their desk. A photojournalist, however, can't. They're the ones running into "the action" necessarily. A words-journalist isn't anymore, so much.
- kfury 13y ago
  I do joke, but with truth. As Al Franken popularized it, I was 'kidding on the square'.
  - Tloewald 13y ago
    Kidding on the square is a very useful (and insightful) phrase.
- SilasX 13y ago
  >My girlfriend, to pay her bills, is a journalist. I'm glad she can make that work!
iharris 13y ago
My thoughts exactly. For controlled situations where the photographer can dictate the subject's distance, pose, and lighting, I'm sure an iPhone would do just fine. But often, a photojournalist finds themselves in a situation where the environment is beyond their control: a concert with a laser light show, fast-moving athletes in action, or coverage of a natural disaster where your distance requires a telephoto shot. Don't get me wrong - I use my iPhone's camera frequently and I think it's great. But as a photojournalist where your story (and your livelihood) depends on "getting the shot", you need to be knowledgeable and prepared to shoot in the worst conditions possible. The iPhone can do some awesome things, but you just can't fake good glass with software. Full disclosure: I sell event photos to my local newspaper that I could not have gotten at all if I had used my smartphone.

jrochkind1 13y ago

They're just going to have really bad photos, with bad composition etc. Will it hurt their sales at all? Maybe not, so maybe they don't care? It will hurt their journalists self-respect, and, I'd suggest, in the long term, hurt the credibility and respectability of their newspaper. To have unprofessional looking photos.

bruceb 13y ago

I wonder how many HN readers actually pick up a physical copy of CST? almost none. There will still be some pro freelancers. Sad for newspapers and for those who lost their job but I doubt this will have an effect on readership.

danso 13y ago

It's not quality of photo that will be lost, it will be the ability to focus on reporting. Even if taking a photo is easy as Instagram, you still have to take time to edit the photo and prep it for print/production. More problematic is the awkwardness of trying to photograph and interview at the same time. "I'm so sorry for the lost off your children, Mrs. Smith. Now can you look at my iPhone?" That kind of breaks the rhythm.

kfury 13y ago
This is a superb point. When the photo is supposed to document the interview the photographer can't be the interviewer. It would be like a news reporter filming themselves.

ctdonath 13y ago

To abandon skilled photographers with quality equipment because of a few great photos by unskilled people using poor equipment is to miss a salient point: We notice great photos taken with poor cameras by unskilled photographers because sheer volume will produce a few worth noting; what isn't noticed is the many great photos which don't exist because equipment and/or user was unable to make the picture happen.

kevinmchugh 13y ago
This is known as the survivorship bias. More about that here: http://youarenotsosmart.com/2013/05/23/survivorship-bias/ http://youarenotsosmart.com/2013/05/23/survivorship-bias/
- Tloewald 13y ago
  Really it's the Availabilih Heuristic, of which survivor bias is merely a specific case. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic

cantgetnode 13y ago

R.I.P. photojournalism, hopefully we can share some humor to brighten the mood. Canon 5D Vs 1D http://youtu.be/bEwUnENlc9M http://youtu.be/bEwUnENlc9M

FactoryFactory 13y ago

I hope they at least use better point and shoot cameras or smartphones with better cameras like the Nokia 808.

bluetidepro 13y ago

As pointed out in another comment in here, how do they expect to actually get decent night photos then? At least with a camera, you can change the exposure and shutter speeds to help with night photos. That's not something really all that possible with an iPhone, if I'm correct. Also things in motion, the iPhone tends to be very easily blurred, again, something that wouldn't be a big issue with a nice (or even decent) DSLR. This seems like a very dumb move on there part, but I also grew up doing/loving photojournalism, so maybe I'm taking it a bit personal. I just feel like it's going to make their photos look very amateur, which will inevitably hurt their credibility even more so.

mcphilip 13y ago

Playing the devil's advocate here. What is wrong with the Sun-Times making this decision if it is shown that having a staff trained in 'iPhone photography basics' allows the ST to cut costs without hurting revenue? An iconic photo (e.g. Tank Man photo [1]) opportunity is a black swan event, after all. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man

astrodust 13y ago
Why not go one further and train their staff to search Flickr and Twitter for images instead? What about firing all the editors and teaching the writers to do that themselves? Get rid of all the janitorial staff and mandate everyone spend more time cleaning up.
- parsnips 13y ago
  Well...
- kfury 13y ago
  You think you're using hyperbole but many articles going out nowadays never get read by an editor who actually edits for tone, readability, spelling, or even accuracy. And the janitorial staff? You might be surprised to know how many of the actual journalistic sites you read don't even have offices, or at least not ones with desks for writers. Most of these people work at home.
anigbrowl 13y ago
An iconic photo (e.g. Tank Man photo [1]) opportunity is a black swan event, after all. The photo opportunity is, but the ability to exploit the opportunity and get a good photo is not.
- tptacek 13y ago
  Whoah, you're back. Come down to MTV this week to see me and Patrick (and whoever else shows up). Good to see you here again. (Apologies for off-topic comment).

mathattack 13y ago

Could this just be outsourcing the photography to professionals? Or could it be crowdsourcing "Pick the 100 best amateur photos rather than 1 good pro?" The Sun Times isn't the New York Times. It's the lowbrow of two daily newspapers in Chicago, and already leading the charge to the bottom.

lmarinho 13y ago

I don't know, I can find plenty of iPhone quality photography on the Web already. I expect professional quality content from dedicated news outlets.

ShabbyDoo 13y ago

Via eBay, I bought some 50's thru 70's era Chicago SunTimes vintage 8x10 file prints. Apparently, someone acquired their physical archives? The skill of photo journalists in those days was astounding. There were beautifully composed photos of the 1968 riots -- while people were rioting! I'm not suggesting that today's PJ's aren't as skilled, but it's certainly easier with a DSLR.

zmitri 13y ago
I very much agree. Photojournalism was it at peak in that era. There were tons of photoessay magazines around but they couldn't compete for ads with other forms of media and most of them shut down.
snogglethorpe 13y ago
I saw a museum exhibition a few years back of a famous Japanese war photographer in Vietnam (who was killed there). In addition to the usual blown up prints of his most famous images, they had contact sheets from his film rolls, and they really showed how incredibly skilled he was. From looking at the contact sheets, and comparing with the blown-up images, you could see that 95% of his shots were perfectly composed, well exposed, in focus, and there were almost no wasted shots at all—none of this "take multiple exposures and choose the best one" business, he just got it right the first time and moved on. While being shot at. I liked his work before seeing that exhibition, but I was in awe after it... [and of course while the equipment of the time (from the contact sheets, you could see it was 35mm film) wasn't all that bad, it was a bit primitive compared to what we have now....]