The Sad State of Newspaper Photojournalism

Well the mighty misguided ax of management fell once again on our lowly photography department at The Capital newspaper. My wonderful colleague Colleen Dugan was called to the managing editor's office right as she was about to start her shift yesterday. At the same time our chief photographer/photo editor told fellow shooter Joshua McKerrow and myself that Colleen was being let go. The bean counters strike again.

This has been a tough year for our little photo department. We went from having a staff of six, one Photo Editor, four Capital Photographers and one Maryland Gazette Photographer, to a staff of three, a chief photog, who is basically strapped to a desk all day and can't go out and shoot, Joshua and myself. So the paper now, basically, has two full time shooters to cover an entire county and a seven day week. We are a 41,000 circulation paper, having just two shooters is ridiculous.

How this will be accomplished, at least so I am told, is that we will be shooting less mundane assignments, leaving them to reporters with point and shoot cameras. We have to train them in the basics of composition and what makes a good picture. I guess that is when they will be able to cut Josh and myself loose.

OK, so Josh and I will be doing the good stuff, I'll believe it when I see it. That does not tell me how we are going to cover a seven day work week and have someone available in both the morning and evenings. The way we think it will work now is one shooter will have Friday and Saturday off, leaving one shooter those days. We used to have four shooters on Friday and two on Saturday. The other shooter will be off Sunday and Monday. Sunday, always had only one shooter and there was two on Monday. There are a lot of gaps in this plan. I am not sure how they will fill them, I guess with reporters with cameras.

The people that run papers across the country are cutting them to the bone and then some to keep the paper profitable or god forbid from losing some money during a recession. We have lost staff like crazy in the last two years. Sure the web has a large part in the newspapers demise, but it also short sighted management. They must realize that cutting staff, pages, local news content and other things from our product, they are giving people a reason not to buy the paper. Why would someone pay more for less? We need to keep our staffs so we can be in the local area, gathering the local news, that our readers want. And you can't tell me that with all the cuts we can keep up the same level of coverage for very long. We are getting burned out and morale is shot.

This brings me to my point for this post. If you care about quality photojournalism in you local papers, and I am not just talking about The Capital, make your concerns known to the management. Write letters and make phone calls telling them the pictures are just as important as the words. Tell them that you don't want reporters shooting bad photos, just to have a photo with their story. Reporters that can shoot are few and far between and just like I don't want to write a bad story, they don't want to shoot bad photos. Finally, don't cancel that newspaper subscription just because you can get it for free on the web. Without the printed paper, we can't pay for the web.

Photo Monkey's - The Get Together?

Plans are in the works for a Photo Monkeys Get Together in March. I am still working out the details. If anyone can suggest a topic or guest speaker please contact me. I am thinnking about possibly having it at Elle's Place in Millersville. They have a room that looks like it would be good for a group meeting and they have wings and beer. I have not contacted them yet so we will see. If not there we may have it at my house.

Anyone interested in possibly attending drop me an email.

Paul

Furlough Day?

I spent three hours of my first nonpaid furlough day editing sound for an audio slideshow that probably will run Thursday. While I know that I am a sucker for doing Capital work at home on a nonpaid furlough day, I really wanted to get this slideshow done and done well.

The story is about a black church service I shot on Sunday. I made some really nice images and recorded some sound while I was at it. The audio is not mandatory for the paper, but I wanted to use it to tell more of the story. So that is why I did the editing today.

There just is not enough time to get this kind of thing done in a normal amount of lab time. It took me an extra hour Sunday just to get the images prepped. I told myself that I would use my furlough days to work on bettering my craft, whether it be working on a new portfolio, researching potential freelance clients, looking for other staff opportunities or in this case, editing audio for a slideshow. I figure that if I am learning sound editing as I go, it will make me a more versatile photojournalist.

I will post a link to the finished product once it runs in the paper and online. Stay tuned.

The Obama Quilt.

You never know when a quick hit-and-run assignment can turn into a nice little story. I was assigned to shoot people sewing a quilt that had scenes from Barack Obama’s rise to power. It was scheduled at 3:15 p.m. for a community news assignment, meaning that it had no story to go with it and most likely would be one picture, used inside the paper, black and white.

I went into the job thinking it would rank just above a grip-and-grin assignment, but as soon as I walked in, I had a feeling it was going to be more. The first thing I noticed was the beautiful natural light coming in from the large windows. This got my creative blood heated up. I then saw that there was a large group of women sitting around a colorful quilt. Now my creative blood was boiling.

I started shooting and was told that if I wanted to I could go up into the loft for an aerial shot. I did, and it was a nice scene setter. I then started to make some nice shots of the people sewing and some tight shots of just hands and portions of the quilt.

During my time shooting I was listening to Dr. Joan Gaither, the woman who started the project. She was talking about the different sections of the quilt and what they meant. I made some shots of her speaking and then she told me about the journal that people wrote in who worked on the quilt. The journal would travel with the quilt and people wrote what the election of Obama meant to them and how they felt on election night.

The Internet department has been pushing us to work on more multimedia projects at work, and this was a good candidate for an audio slideshow. I asked Dr. Gaither if she would sit for a quick interview and she agreed. We found a quiet room and started recording. The Capital does not provide audio recorders for the photographers to keep with them, so I use the back of my camera and the built-in memo recorder. It is rather limiting since it is not made for interviewing people. The built-in microphone is less than perfect and I am limited to one minute of recording at a time, but I made it work. She talked a little about herself and her project and read a couple of journal entries.

I went back to the office and put together a nice audio slideshow. After the editors saw the shots and heard of the slideshow, they assigned a reporter to write a story. It ran on a Saturday as the lead story and got played nicely.

So have a look:

http://www.hometownannapolis.com/slideshow/1232032712TheObamastoryquilt

I also stitched the letter P for Paul in the quilt.

Photo Talk #3 - The Anne Arundel County Genealogical Society.

This blog started a few years ago when I was preparing to give my first photography talk to a large group of people, the Digital Photography Club of Annapolis, and I was nervous. The day came, I gave my talk, and it went great, from what I was told. It was a little stream of consciousness, but still entertaining.

Then the following year, I was asked to speak to a local Boy Scout Troop. Again, I was a little nervous and not as prepared as I should have been. I even forgot the power cord to my digital projector. Nothing like 20 kids crowded around a 15-inch laptop, but again, it went well.

This brings me to this year and another group who asked me to speak to them about photography. Tina Simmons from the Anne Arundel County Genealogical Society emailed me last year and asked if I could give a talk to the club about using photography in their work researching genealogy. Sure, I love telling people what they are doing wrong and how they should be taking pictures - just ask some of my co-workers - but does it relate to genealogy?

I told her that I would do it if she wants me to and that I would get back to her soon with one of the dates she said she could use me. Then in typical Paul W. Gillespie style I forgot about it. That is until the week before the event, when she emailed me just to check in.

So now I was a little nervous and scrambling to think of what I was going to say. I decided that I would just wing it again and show the presentation that I used the last two times. I show 20 of my portfolio images and talk about the stories behind the images, taking questions when they come up. This gets a good reaction and many laughs since some of the stories are pretty colorful and funny. I then show about 20 images from a recent Army Navy Football Game and finish with a photo story about flying in a helicopter with the Maryland State Police Aviation Command (Medevac). I finish by answering any photography questions they may have.

It is funny about how nervous I get before the event, but once I get going it is hard to get me to shut up. The time seems to fly when I am talking about myself and how great I am, and the next thing you know we are running late and they have to pull me off with the big hook.

As a photojournalist, I get to do a lot of really cool things and I am glad that people seem to like to hear about it. It is a real ego trip to have a room full of 40 people, all there to hear you speak, looking at you like you have all the answers. I guess I can do this photojournalism/photographer thing well. After all, people keep asking me to speak.

Here is a link to the genealogy society’s website: http://www.aagensoc.org/

Write Congress To Stop The Orphan Works Bill.

While Congress has a lot on its mind, having managed to screw up The Wall Street Rescue Plan, it has also been working on making it easier for people to steal our copyrights to photos we produce. The Orphan Works Bill says that if a person makes a good faith effort to find the owner of a copyrighted image and they cannot, then he or she can use it without fear of being hit with a large lawsuit.

Today, if a person steals a copyrighted image, which is registered with the US Copyright Office, then he or she can be sued for damages of $150,000 per copyright infringement. All images are automatically copyrighted the moment the shutter clicks, but you can only get the big bucks if it is registered.

I am no copyright expert, but there is plenty of info out there - just Google “Orphan Works”

Here is a link to send a letter to your local congressmen. http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/issues/alert/?alertid=11980321

It only takes a minute and you really don’t have to write much. The Senate has already voted to pass the bill and it is now in a conference committee, but it can't hurt to write your local Senator too.

Thanks
Paul

Still Going, Not!

The score is 24-19. The winning point in the volleyball game I am shooting is about to be served. I take off my 70-200 and put on my wide angle lens for the celebration shot. The serve goes over the net, is returned and then back over for the score. Old Mill wins. The girls are jumping for joy. I press my shutter button for the awesome jubilation shot and then, NOTHING. My battery was dead.

This is just a friendly reminder to double check your battery before it is time for the money shot. Back in the film days, I would kill a roll of film with a few frames left so I would not miss something. You should check your battery and change it if you are even close to it running out. Don't let this happen to you.

And on the subject of batteries, remember to replace the batteries in your smoke detectors. Smoke detectors save lives, and that is "One to Grow On."