Specializing
in Transportation and Travel
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By ERNEST H. ROBL
Copyright
©1998 Ernest H.Robl; All rights reserved
No part of this essay may be reproduced in any form without
written permission of the author.
Photography's name comes from Greek roots which together translate as "writing with light." So, one would expect a close kinship between writers and photographers. Right? Wrong.
Though writing and photography are the two processes that fill up the majority of the editorial space in publications, few journalists manage to be successful at both because the two processes are not only fundamentally different, but also place different, often conflicting, demands on the practitioner.
Can a writer be a photographer at the same time? For me, the answer has always been yes, given certain considerations.
Among things I've learned is that it's exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to do both at the same time under tight deadline pressure. The odds are also against your producing both an insightful interview and an insightful photographic portrait at the same time. (You need to concentrate either on the conversation or on looking for the revealing gesture or facial expression.)
Short of those extremes, however, the possibilities for the writer-photographer remain open.
Along the way I've learned a little about these possibilities. Let's look at them from the writer's side, as this piece is addressed chiefly to writers.
Let's look at "a dozen things every writer should know about photography" -- whether that writer wants to write with light himself or just needs to work with those that do. Taken at face value, these points are painfully obvious. Their implications, however, bear some second thoughts.
The writer can depict any scene, whether he was there when the events he describes took place or not. Recent trends on "reality" television programs notwithstanding, using recreated events in photographs is still frowned upon in journalistic circles.
There are numerous examples of editors desperately seeking photos to match a text piece -- or sending out a photographer after the fact to capture a scene that no longer exists quite the way the writer saw it.
The moral? If the text piece you're working on will require photos, the time to consider the photographic possibilities is before you get started.
In a travel piece for newspapers that looked at how construction on the Channel Tunnel is impacting Dover, England, where some things haven't changed in a thousand years, I began the text:
The salty seaport air wafts far inland, but to touch the history of the place, you have to climb to the very edge of the island country and walk along the tops of the windswept white cliffs. Yes, those cliffs. The white cliffs of Dover.
I had come to look at a hole in the ground that will become one of the technological wonders of the modern world. I was captivated instead by an undulating dirt trail, bordered by tall grass that swayed in a relentless onshore wind, echoing the patterns of the waves down below.
The piece, purchased by several papers, also brought nice words from the editors involved. And, though these editors also used illustrations that I supplied, I knew from the beginning that, while the transparencies I supplied were of professional quality, they didn't quite measure up to the text.
Why? Because, while my writing could stir several of the reader's senses, my photography could only impact one. Consider the preceding paragraphs. In them, the reader can smell, touch and perhaps even hear and taste the environment -- as well as see it through the writer's eyes. Photography is only visual.
Photography works best when it tells the viewer about colors and shapes and spatial relationships.
Photography is about seeing -- seeing things that exist or could exist. Here the photographer and writer have more in common than they may realize.
For the successful photographer, the picture exists in the mind before it exits in the camera -- just as for the writer, the words exist in the mind, before they exist on paper or the screen of the word processor.
My most widely published photograph is one that I made about 30 years ago as a very young wire service journalist, covering a racial disturbance. It showed a white highway patrolman in full riot gear tenderly carrying a black baby that had been asleep on the back seat of a car, whose occupants had been arrested at a roadblock for curfew violation.
The photo appeared in hundreds of newspapers, not only around the U.S., but all over the world. It even took top honors in a poll conducted by a German newspaper which had asked its readers to select the type of newsphoto they liked best. That newspaper ran the photo a second time, four columns wide, after the poll, with a brief description of the circumstances in which it was made.
The photo was made at the police station of a small town, with a simple single-lens reflex camera, a "normal" lens, and on-camera flash. I had one chance to see and make the photo as patrolman walked past.
That doesn't mean that you have to have a wide range of equipment. It only means that you have to know what the equipment available to you is capable of -- and what its limitations are.
The majority of the editorial (non-advertising) photographs published in newspapers and magazines can be produced by a kit consisting of one camera and two or three lenses.
That's why you'll find most working professionals carrying more than just the one camera and two or three lenses mentioned above. The more adverse the conditions -- rain, snow, cold, extreme heat, blowing sand, etc. -- the more likely you are to encounter problems.
The major distinction between more expensive professional quality equipment and amateur equipment is not that the professional equipment is more versatile (though it often is), nor that the professional equipment can produce better photographs. It's that the professional equipment is more ruggedly built to handle the heavy use (and abuse) that it's likely to get.
I'm always amazed at the number of people who will spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars to travel to a destination and who then come back with only a handful of photos, complaining that film is expensive. Of course, no one has to record their travels on photographs -- unless you're doing this on assignment for a client. But for the most part, these are people who claim they're serious about photography.
On the other hand, unless you're trying to produce in-camera duplicates for multiple submissions, shooting an entire roll of the same subject at the same camera settings also isn't going to do anything for you.
Use enough film to explore the possibilities of a subject. If a few of those attempts don't work out, you can always discard them. But, you can't send your client something that you never captured on film.
Although the identical subject may provide a quite different message when rendered in black and white than when depicted in color, a color original can always be reproduced in black and white if necessary. If you start with a black and white original, it can only be reproduced in black and white -- something which may severely limit its use in certain markets.
With the exception of static scenes, trying to shoot both black and white and color photos of the same subject will only lead to lots of complications.
In addition, unless you are willing to do your own processing -- something that takes both experience and time if it is to be done well -- you will generally find professional quality processing more readily available for color transparencies than for black and white.
Unless you are either dealing with news subjects, where being able to produce a usable image on a deadline mandates doing your own processing, or you absolutely have to have the additional creative controls only available in making your own photographic prints, such processing is at best a questionable allocation of your resources.
Unlike photographic prints, which can be re-generated in infinite numbers from a negative (which is the original product of the photographic process), transparencies are themselves the originals. While it is possible to duplicate transparencies, there is almost always some loss of quality. So-called "reproduction-grade" duplicate transparencies, virtually indistinguishable from the original (and sometimes even a slight improvement on the original) are difficult to produce and therefore usually very expensive.
While some clients are willing to make initial selections from duplicate transparencies, they will almost always want the original for final reproduction in print -- particularly since there is always some loss of quality in preparing the separations that are used for printing.
Since photographs, like text pieces, can be sold over and over again, the actual value of an original transparency can be many times what a single use for publication can bring.
Though the full range of implications of this is far broader than can be covered in a single article, you need to safeguard your original photographs -- and make sure that you deal only with clients who will do the same. And, you need to assure that should an original transparency be damaged, you will be compensated for its potential future income.
There are standard forms used by photographers -- consignment sheets -- which, when accepted by both parties, have legal standing as a contract covering such eventualities.
For that same reason, if you are a writer using photographs from a variety of sources for an article or book, it's best to let the publisher or an experienced freelance picture researcher handle the photographic material. Reputable publishers have procedures set up for carefully logging-in and safeguarding photographic materials consigned to them.
Remember, test cases have established that publishers are liable for $1,500 or more per lost or damaged transparency. Consider what such a judgment against you could do to your financial situation.
(Many suppliers of photo images in print form -- black and white material -- will also expect to have their prints returned after use, though the penalties for damage are usually much less severe.)
Light has quality. It can be warm or soft, cold or harsh. It varies throughout the day and from season to season. It varies by geographic location; and it will even vary from place to place within a room.
Experienced photographers understand the quality of light -- and how it can be used to say different things to the viewer -- and they value that understanding far more than any of their equipment.
You can only learn about light by looking -- and seeing.
Even though you have more control over artificial lighting, it's much more difficult to handle than natural lighting. The seemingly natural lighting in some slick advertising photos is often the result of hundreds of pounds of lighting equipment.
The eye is marvelously adaptable. It can scan a scene, registering information from deep shadows, then automatically compensate to view a much more brightly lit area. Film is much less tolerant.
Not only can film record much less of a contrast range, but also different films will reproduce colors differently. And, though it's not really a function of film, but rather of optics in the camera, focus is also a consideration. The eye automatically refocuses as it scans objects near and far. The camera is more selective.
Of course, these limitations can work for you as well as against you, allowing you to emphasize specific aspects of your subject.
Modern electronics have added all sorts of features to cameras, but they still can't make the key decisions, like selection of subject matter, composition, and other picture content for you.
If you've worked with computers, you know that automation doesn't make things simpler. Automation lets you do things faster and lets you do things you couldn't do otherwise -- but, as anyone who has spent hours digging through computer manuals can testify, it doesn't make things simpler.
Take the two camera bodies that I currently use for most of my photography -- Nikon N8008s [Applicable at the time that I first wrote this essay; I now use two Nikon N90s camera bodies as my primary cameras.]. They have literally hundreds of different combinations of modes that can be used.
For exposure alone, metering can be done in either center-weighted or pattern mode. The exposure, in addition to being able to be set manually, can be determined by three program modes and with either shutter or aperture priority.
Film advance offers two continuous and one manual mode. There are two autofocus modes, which can be further modified by being set for either full range or limited range (close-up or distant).
Then, there are all sorts of compensations that can be dialed in for special situations. And I haven't even gotten to the possibilities for using flash yet.
I've used all of these options at one time or another, yet, for most of the photographs I make, I leave at least some of the automation features turned off.
Automation on a camera is like an auto-pilot on an airplane. It can free you up to concentrate on other things, but it can't handle all your problems. It can't get you out of many tricky situations.
As with an auto-pilot, camera automation isn't the place to start if you want to become skilled. Learn the basics first, then you'll know when it's safe to fly on auto-pilot -- and when it's not.
I'll let you in on one more secret:
In that same travel piece on Dover, I describe a walk through the town:
Soon you'll come to a small cottage where a hand-lettered wooden sign hangs on the picket fence.
It reads: "In 1940-41 this piece of land was a dug-out machine gun post with two guns covering the beach south and east. A searchlight post was over in the corner at the first turning of the beach steps."
Pointing out that a German shell fragment is on display in the window, it adds the quotation, "'Ye that live on midst English pastures green, remember us and think what might have been.'" At the bottom, there's a postscript: "Will anybody who served here re-visiting the place please knock. Tea is brewing for you."
In its few lines, the simple sign says far more than any great monument could.
The reason I was able to quote the words exactly as they had been written, was not because I had taken careful notes, but because I had photographed the sign. For a variety of reasons, including the fact that legibility would be poor unless the photo is reproduced quite large, the photo is unlikely to ever see publication.
Yet, it was one of the most useful photos I made that day.
Similarly I have used photos of places to refresh my memory to write descriptive text. Yes, the photos only preserved the look of the place, but looking at the scene again also reminded me of the feel and smell of the place.
Am I primarily a writer who also happens to also make photographs, or a photographer who also writes? The answer probably depends on what I'm doing at the moment.
Sometimes my text pieces have appeared without my photos -- either totally without photos or with illustrations from another source. At other times, clients have bought just my photos. And, then there are times when a publication has used a text and photo package -- perhaps because the editor saw that the images and text, both created from the same point of view, worked well together.
Which of the above situations has been the most satisfying? No, it's not the latter. It's any of the above where I've succeeded in telling my audience something -- sharing new information, an insight, or just what it was like to be in a particular place at a particular time.
The satisfaction is equal regardless of whether I shared that information through pictures, text, or a combination of the two.
Am I primarily a writer or primarily a photographer? Does it matter? I prefer to think that I'm someone who can communicate with an audience in more than one way.
Photography and writing are different, but in the final analysis, they're not that different.
To learn more about Ernest H. Robl's philosophy of photography, you may want to read his book, Getting Serious About Photography: A Self-Paced Workshop for Expanding Your Photographic Skills and Vision. The link in the preceding sentence takes you to several pages describing the book, including one with a detailed table of contents.
To read the full text of the Dover travel piece mentioned in the above essay, click on the link in this sentence.
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