professional photographers

Start here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-19208480

The story is about Usain Bolt and the snapshots he has taken using a camera borrowed from one of the sports photographers following the Olympics. But this is not about Bolt, it’s about these ‘professional photographers’ that you see in this shot.

Even if some time has passed from the last Olympics, everybody remembers the scene: Bolt runs, Bolt wins, then he goes on to perform the self-celebratory track walk, closely followed by a pack of photographers shooting full-speed their big professional Nikon and Canon rigs.

And this made me wonder: is this the only kind of photography that gets paid? Shooting exactly the same image, featuring the same athlete, shooting at 8 frames per second, no personal touch to be seen anywhere — except when it’s the athlete that picks up the camera and takes some snapshots?

Wait, there’s also wedding photography apparently, but it’s very often so cheesy that I don’t really count that as a way to make a living out of photography. And there’s fashion and product photography, too, but I am completely uninterested in those.

So what’s the point here that I want to make? Well I’m still thinking about it but for the moment I wanted to put out my deeply unsettling feelings about photography in general, and more specifically professional photography (i.e., the one that allows you to make a living); about the quality threshold that the non-expert deems acceptable for pictures; about how so often the real artists are those that do photography as a hobby.

I also wanted to say something about internet forums and discussions where the only conversations are about expensive 70-200 f/2.8 and minute details on color fringing; about learning from the same old guys (Adams, Arbus, Capa, Cartier Bresson).

I wanted to point the attention to the uninspiring street photography trend, where anybody that is able to walk down the streets of a big city snapping in the crowd and coats his/her images with some black and white calls himself an artist (see also this other post I wrote).

I wanted to say something about the appalling quality of the photographs that are put out there on some pretty important news hubs like the italian Corriere.

Which takes me back to the issue of professional photography, and the fact that very recently another local newspaper took some photographs I shot in Parma and put them out on their website without any sort of attribution. What happened is that I sent these small jpegs to the newspaper, specifically saying that I was willing to give them full-res images pending proper attribution¹. I didn’t get any reply, and then I discovered my small jpegs on the website. It’s kind of hopeless and sad and infuriating at the same time. The reason I didn’t do anything with this is that I am not making a living out of photography, there wasn’t much soul in these photographs as they were simply documenting a small event in a small town, but still this is:

1. disconcerting for the well-behaved and enthusiast photographer, somebody who wants to actually help a small-city newspaper, allowing them to use for free his work and get the high-res images in return for simple and honest attribution;
2. sad for the state in which these newspapers are run; not even a reply to my email but grab the low-quality jpgs and put them out on the website? really?
3. infuriating to see the poor taste that the curator of these websites have, striving to just slap whatever comes to your desk just to put out some ‘news’; and by extension I assume that the same kind of approach and attitude are shared also by photographers and editors — so what I’m saying is: are these ‘professionals’ the ones I should envy?

And the answer to #3 is “no”. I should consider myself fortunate for I work in a rather specialistic environment doing a rather specialistic job. I have no pressure to do something that I would consider dishonest (e.g., stealing other people’s work). And I am getting paid to do this work, and even if it’s not a stellar pay, I can still carry on an easy life with no fears of gettind sacked or losing my job. I have the economic means to have a family, a house, and funding all my other interests, and I don’t owe anything to anyone because I haven’t been helped by anyone in reaching this position.

Yes, I do feel sometimes constrained and would love to do something more creative 24/7 especially when the time for myself is so little as in this period, so that’s why sometimes I think about professional photography.

But if that’s the state of things maybe I’d rather keep my job and continue exploring photography in the fragments of the day that are left at the end.