Award Judges: ‘The lack of strong, documentary images puzzled us.’
Written by duckrabbitAmid all our positive observations, we became concerned about the state of photojournalism in the pages we saw. We missed emotional photographs. Glossy magazines and newsprint pages with vast, luxurious expanses of space were largely devoid of powerful photojournalism.
The lack of strong, documentary images puzzled us. We wondered if this has something to do with reduced investment. The industry has lost so many positions for picture editors and others, and yet great photographs can’t be made without time, care and commitment. Perhaps in places where the work is being done, print space to showcase it is no longer available.
Having had the luxury of seeing hundreds of papers in the last few days, we’d like to raise a red flag on this issue. It’s one of print’s great powers to enable users to savor moments captured in the best photos. How can we recapture and deliver this value to readers?
Judges comment on World’s Best-Designed™ newspaper comp.
Author — duckrabbit
duckrabbit is a production company formed by radio producer/journalist Benjamin Chesterton and photographer David White. We specialize in digital storytelling.
Discussion (6 Comments)
And they thought people wouldn’t notice. I’ll help wave that flag. It’s so bloody obvious it’s not funny.
I know, let’s start paying press photographers/photojournalists the square root of fuck all, stop commissioning them and then we’ll see how that shit polishes. That’s bound to sell newspapers.
Great post. It’s so true though. Because publishers are cheapskate, the first thing they cut out is budget on images and photography. Instead of sacking useless sales people who try to force-feed adverts to readers who had enough. Now they are making journalist go out and do everything – video, photography, web coding, design etc. No wonder the stories they churn are crap, because one person is doing three jobs. One online magazine title told us they made almost zero on advertising last year. But they broke even because of subscriptions, ie. really good editorial content. Interesting, eh?
Yes you just can’t beat good editorial content… Great post… I will be flying the flag shortly over at ‘Out of the Shadows’ i promise…
A local magazine offered me a commission where the fee was 10% of what I’d get to shoot a wedding in the same style for 4hrs (and no I wouldn’t have to supply an album). To top it off they wanted the rights to re-publish the work in other titles for no extra fee and have the right to stop me selling the work elsewhere. Ever wonder why the standard of wedding photography is on an ever upward curve whilst the quality of magazines is stagnating? On the upside if you can cast your prejudices aside you can produce great work at a wedding, and you have a lot more money at the end of it to put into your personal work.
“On the upside if you can cast your prejudices aside you can produce great work at a wedding, and you have a lot more money at the end of it to put into your personal work.” Mr. Key, you are my hero today.