Shit Photojournalists Like

A photojournalism professor once said that in order to be a truly successful photographer (and not go insane), you worked to put food on the table, and then you needed to find something that lit your hair on fire. I think this analogy had something to do with burning passion, but I’m not sure. At the time it was moderately terrifying. I’ve mostly blocked it from my memory.

I digress.

Personal projects are what keep you going when you’ve shot nothing but building mugs for a week. Personal projects are a breath of fresh air. Personal projects are mostly bullshit.

I’ve heard tell of an age when a project was something that had some kind of ultimate long-term theme or goal (hence the term, “project”). However, as of late, a personal project is any collection of random photos you want to slap a meaningful title onto. After all, it’s…like, personal, right?

Film photos you took of trash cans and discarded mattresses? Project. Cell phone selfies you took with Hipstamatic in gas station restrooms across the midwest? Project. 25 blurry photos of you and your friends drinking PBR in sweet light? You better fucking believe that’s a project. Naked photos you took of your roommate sleeping? Maybe we should have a private chat about that one.

You may be saying, “These photos are for no one but me! I’m not trying to impress anyone! These are the photos that matter!” We disagree with you. For photos that are so deeply personal, you’ve sure dedicated a lot of your twitter feed with links directing to the new gallery on your website.

Don’t act like you haven’t done it. We all have. I have a gallery of pictures I took of my feet with a fucking e.e. cummings quote on my website for christ’s sake, and you know I linked to that shit on my Facebook.

Personal ain’t so personal after all (especially if it increases your web traffic).

Now…about those nude pictures? Hit us up with an email.

Feb 16

POYi Chatroom

The POYi chat room is a terrifying place. It might as well bear a sign proclaiming, ‘Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here,” or “Abandon All Rules of Grammar and Spelling.” Seriously, can any of you guys spell? For more fun, visit poyichatroomheroes.tumblr.com. If you look carefully, our writers make a few cameos.

We feel sorry for the poor souls watching the livestream and seeing their year of hard work fly by. It hurts even worse if it gets past the first round (and in some cases, it’s pulled in, kicked out, pulled in, then kicked out again. Melissa Lyttle has got to be weeping into her glass of Fat Tire right now).

Thanks to the miraculous interwebs, we all get to voice our opinions, because they obviously matter so much. If it’s not bad enough to hear the deputy photo editor of the NY Times digging into your work, you have to deal with ‘guest 4’ bitching about how hard you suck. Spoiler alert: you suck so hard. Even the popcorn man thinks so.

The chat room has also made many feel as though their opinions are holier than the photo gods. Chatting with the legends doesn’t make you one. Since when did ‘Will from Will and Grace’ become a photo expert? You want to define a category? Go call Rick Shaw, POYi organizer. We’re sure he would just love to hear your brilliant thoughts.

It doesn’t matter if you have a great, fucking photo that contains all of the layers (all of them), sweet light, and amazing colors. If it doesn’t involve a revolution, kiss it goodbye. Does your picture story end in death? No? OUT.

Jan 23

Camera Apps

The digital age has certainly transformed photography, but the best (and also possibly the worst) weapon in the digital world’s arsenal is the camera app. The app that finally does it all: exposes, captures, and edits… In seconds! Why would I get out my gigantic camera with all its complicated buttons when I can snap a photo, send a text or two, check my email and then tweet said photo? Boom. All done. Toning? What’s that?

Damon Winter placed in POYi for a story he shot with his Hipstamatic app, and you know what, good for him. We’re not here to talk about where the line is, and the people upset about Winter’s award were actually just pissed cause they didn’t think of it first. Hell, even the guy who called Winter out took back what he said.

The problem with these apps isn’t how they’re being used. It’s who’s using them. The photographic elite shudder to know that with the aid of Instagram, everyone thinks they are a great photographer (try asking that Instagrammer what shutter speed is). Plus, it doesn’t hurt our naturally large egos that we can see how many people like our photos. Instagratification.

Suddenly, that chick from high school that worked at Olan Mils is posting a photo on Facebook, and even though you hate to admit it, it’s actually kind of a cool photo. Sure, it’s of a half-eaten homemade dinner that’s slightly out of focus, but man, doesn’t that vignette just add something? And those colors! I didn’t know beef could be teal! We’re breaching a whole new level of art here, and maybe that’s why we love to hate camera apps.

After all, it’s the solution to all of our problems as photographers. Every filter in Hipstamatic or Instagram is the long-desired “unsuck filter”. It allows us to take a photo on an assignment that we think is good but would never legitimately turn into our editor. We can just blog/tweet/facebook/tumble it later.

By all means, Instagram to your heart’s content. Just keep the fake Polaroid photos of your cat to a minimum.

Dec 09

Funemployment

Well, this sucks. You didn’t get that job/internship/grant, or you got laid off and are looking at a lot of changes. You have a few months of uncertainty on your hands, and luckily for you, Shit Photojournalists Like is here to make it all better. We have plenty of suggestions for how to handle your downtime.

1. Give up.

2. Just kidding, don’t do that. That would be stupid.

3. Don’t give up, suck it up. You are allowed one week or less to mope around and annoy your friends with “woe is me” bullshit. After that, get over it. As the great Jay-Z says, “99 problems but a bitch ain’t one.” Wait, wrong quote, I think we’re actually looking for something along the lines of “Onto the next one.”

4. Change your Facebook job status to “So-and-So works at Freelance Photography”, and then sit on your ass until someone calls you for work.

5. Draft a business plan, call some possible clients, get your name out there and actually get some shit done.

6. Don’t use social media as your pity party. Nobody likes a whiner. Maybe some charming self-deprecation, but no bitching allowed.

7. Designate targets for positive feedback, aka, your dear mother. This is, of course, assuming that your mother loves you. (“Dear, I saw your photos of that parade, they were so lovely!” “THANKS MA”)

8. Make up a really vague job opportunity that’s a few months in the future so people will stop asking you if you’re still doing that whole “picture taking thing.” Make sure it’s somewhere exotic and involves several sexy assistants.

9. Shoot events for fun and and silently judge the professional photographer who’s actually getting paid, because after all, you’re clearly the better choice.

10. Pursue that personal project you’ve always wanted to do. If you take one Hipstamatic photo of yourself in a gas station bathroom, it’s vanity, but if you take one in every state, it’s art, right?

Seriously though, this is your time to kick some ass in your own way. Do it.

Nov 09

Cigarettes

This may not be applicable to every photographer out there, but I’ll be damned if there isn’t a photog out there who hasn’t been sitting around waiting for a subject and thought, “I would look so fucking cool if I were smoking a cigarette right now.” If Dennis Hopper could do it, so can I.

Journalism and cigarettes were once synonymous with each other, and a glorious time it was. Everyone in the newsroom smelled like cigarette butts, scotch and freedom of the press. How else do you think photo editors make it through a shift? All these kids with their bullshit and lust for life. One day they’ll realize just how shitty the world is, and they’ll be sucking down Marlboro reds like the rest of us.

What else is a photographer to do when killing time? The high school football game doesn’t start for another 45 minutes and you’re too broke to afford a smartphone. So do like you did when YOU were in high school: sneak out to your car and light up that American-grown goodness like the principal isn’t watching. Feel the burn. All is well.

Despite all the horrible things that cigarettes do to the human body (and we’re completely aware of those things), it just seems like the right thing to do. What better way to get quick access to a homeless population than by showing up with a carton of the heaviest cigarettes legally sold in America? Whether you’re racing across town chasing a goddamn hot air balloon because there is literally nothing else to shoot for the space on 5A; or if you’re just looking for an excuse to get out of the newsroom while the design desk crops your image more and more to fit the page, cigarettes are a staple for photojournalists.

AND, if they aren’t your bag… Well get on board, you’re missing out dude.

Note: This isn’t an intentional advertisement for cigarettes, but if Camel were to stumble across this post, I wouldn’t be upset if they sent a few complimentary cartons my way.

Oct 03

The ‘Death’ of Photojournalism

This will prove to be a slight departure from our usual programming, because WE’RE MAD AS HELL AND WE’RE NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE

To be completely blunt, photographers have a tendency to freak out over the slightest developments in the industry, whether it be for better or for worse. What can we say? We’re just a passionate bunch. Whether it’s a Hipstamatic photo story placing in POYi, or Adobe Photoshop CS5 having content-aware-fill, somewhere out there is an asshole, cowering in defeat, or perhaps trolling on the Internet with those three dreaded words:

“Photojournalism is dead.”

What the hell does that mean anyway? Should we hold a wake? Is there going to be a rebirth? Does this mean there are no more stories to tell? Where have all the cowboys gone?

Alex Garcia wrote a great little piece about photojournalism’s stinking, rotting corpse on the esteemed Chicago Tribune’s photo blog just a few days ago.

Therefore, it’s fitting that shortly after Garcia’s post, the NPPA’s Visual Student Blog posted “Advice for a Freshman”, a column of advice from graduates and students about how to stay above the negativity and figure out whether or not this career path is for them. Short and sweet. Granted, some advice is a little twee, but not everyone can be as hardcore and jaded as we are here at SPL. Anyway, pretty inoffensive, right?

Then this happened on the Facebook page of the aforementioned blog post’s author:

Thanks, man. We’ve been so sheltered. Whatever would we do without the logic of your cold, twisted heart? Time to give up before we even start.

We’re not idiots. We know the industry is in trouble. We know there’s a good chance that we’ll be baristas before we’ll be award-winning photographers. But hell if we aren’t going to try.

We respect older photographers, but we don’t appreciate the negativity that comes with so many years in the field. They paved the way for us, but that doesn’t mean the road is finished.

We’re going to stop talking before we hazard into schmaltzy after school special bullshit. We’ll end with some of Garcia’s words from his aforementioned blog post, because he said it best:

“In looking for constructive criticism, you will have to avoid the toxic people - the ones who constantly accuse you of weaknesses, failings or the futility of your aspirations. “

Preach.

Sep 16

This blog post from the Chicago Tribune has been making the rounds lately, for good reason.

Sep 06

Gear

I was recently informed by a fine art photography student that having expensive gear means that you’ve lost sight of the true “art” of photography. This managed to make me laugh condescendingly and get extremely pissed at the same time.

I’ve determined that when it comes to gear, there are three types of photojs (because lumping people into broad categories is fun). Let’s discuss, shall we?

Editor’s note: ‘hooking’ is not in reference to fishing, which is what I thought. THE MORE YOU KNOW!

Aug 09

Grain

Sure, we love owning that full frame tack sharp beast that cost us $2500+ - because that badass baby can shoot at ISO 32,000! No wait, it goes up to 64,000! Time to crank up the grain for that “I was there for real and it was gritty man, totally gritty” feeling. Doesn’t matter if the light is decent, we are going all the way for 64k.

Why stop there?

Can it go up to ISO 128,000?

Why yes, it can!

Quickly, please find me some orphans smoking cigarettes in a graveyard in war-torn country X with zero available light (sans the glowing cigarettes), and we can go to ISO 128,000 for the PJ win!

Then we’ll post in black and white (because you really weren’t THERE unless it’s in black and white), and we’ll drop it into Photoshop to add even more noise grain! If they can’t count the individual pixels when it goes to print, you have failed.

//Apologies to warn-torn cigarette smoking orphans everywhere, we do love you.

Aug 05

Bios in Third Person

We all know that having a website is vital to staying afloat as a photographer. It’s also very important to have a bio page on your website, just to give your potential clients a little taste of what kind of photographer they’re hiring. The greatest thing about the bio page is that even though we so carefully craft that page (and search through a thesaurus for hours for adjectives that can replace “awesome” and “bonerific”) they still exactly express our personalities and what kind of photographer we are.

Now, I’m not saying this is always a good thing. Some of us are douche bags. Without question, the funniest “about me” pages are the ones in third person. “So-and-so is a freelance photographer based in Doucheville who is passionate about his craft. All his life, he has found beauty in shapes and light, and has attempted to document what he sees for the rest of the world to view it with him.”

Alongside the fluffy text that would make the photographer’s own mother say, “Eeeh, pushing it,” is of course some horrifically dramatic photo of the photographer staring deeply into the camera that he set up by himself on a Saturday night. If you can’t have fun with your own bio page, you’re doing something wrong.

That being said, check out our new “about us” page! It’s in third person and everything!

Note: If your bio page is in third person and talks about how you viewed the world as a child, no offense was meant. But we’ll still giggle at it when we see it.