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.

-submitted by Christian DeBaun

Sure, we like the metaphoric and compositional contrast and all that bullshit, but nothing gets us going like a photo where the histogram looks like a football goalpost. What’s that you say? There’s no detail in the shadows? Who cares? Those inky blacks and hyper-saturated tones look bad-ass. That guy’s face has turned into a black blob? Well, that’s just my artistic nature coming out to abstract the human form to fit whatever philosophical bullshit I’m trying to convey.

While we’re at it, let’s drop the vibrance and give it that gritty “Leica” look. You know, their promo photos don’t look like that on their own… Who gives a shit about natural tones and staying true to the subject matter. Everything can and should look like it’s fifty years old and about to fall apart from putrid decay.

Of course, we’re not doing this to feed our own ego or put more money in our bank accounts. It’s all about communicating the world’s suffering and emotion… and stuff…

(submission by Samuel Morse, standard cat photo and +100 contrast by Taylor)

photo by the legendary Aleksandr Rodchenko

Tired of taking the same old photograph? There is a solution, my friend, and what a solution it is. TILT YOUR CAMERA.

THIS IS A NEW AND INNOVATIVE TECHNIQUE THAT HAS NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE.

We are embarking on an age of diagonals and slants. No longer is it acceptable to take pictures in a strict horizontal or vertical fashion. Photographers want to be noticed, so what’s the solution? Drop that elbow and lean like a cholo.

It enables you to control the attention of a photograph while creating an “abstract” image. You are no longer just a photojournalist, you are an ar-teest. No professional would dare return to an editor without at least a few tilted photos. Every situation deserves a skewed approach.

Sure, there’s the old-fashioned photo editors who would tape a level to the top of your camera, but what do they know about real photography?

It only takes one photo to change the world. Just one photo to make a difference. I’m no more noble than any other hard working photographer, except for the fact that I’ll tell you that I’m working for a cause, not a paycheck.

I am not just some fashion photographer or commercial wannabe who takes pictures for money.  I risk life and limb to make the picture. I’m going to make the perfect image that will save the life of a child, and it doesn’t matter that I didn’t bother to talk to him while capturing his suffering. Afterall, I am a photojournalist and that means that I don’t do this for the money.

I do it because I am more righteous than you and I know it. I’m so passionate about my cause that I am going to remind you of it every time we have a beer. I dare you to scroll through my facebook comments from friends dealing with guilt- driven admiration and trendy, humanitarian jealousy of my selfless lifestyle.

It is no coincidence that all my camera bags are earth tones of leather and canvas. I wear a scarf from Pakistan and a bracelet from the DRC. I have a voodoo keychain from Haiti and a red shirt from Thailand. It’s kind of like wearing a flag that tells everyone I have been to the craziest places at the craziest times. Remember, it’s always because I was there to help.

Now don’t forget to pay me after our heated discussion about my usual day rate and NGO discount. And please, if we agreed on using one of my images for your charity organization’s website, don’t let me find it in your newsletter, or I’ll have an attorney so far up your ass that your eyes won’t even be able to see the dirty, little children you’re trying to feed.

Is it any coincidence that four of the major academic photojournalism programs are offered within close driving (or even walking) proximity of multiple trailer parks and pockets of known methamphetamine use? 

Misery loves company and photographers are happy to provide that company.  They’ll wallow with you through your darkest hour and when you’ve lost your job, been evicted from your crappy tract home and lost all your friends…a photojournalist will actually ASK to be right there with you through it all.  And if you really go off the deep end and try to drown your troubles in cheap booze, a photographer will probably join you at the bar.  (Though ethically s/he can’t actually PAY for your drinks)

Though it’s not impossible to make a good picture story using rich people, it’s so much easier to exploit your local homeless population or hapless teenage mom.  Third-world poverty creams our twinkies too, but since we tend to be on pretty tight budgets ourselves, it’s good to know that you can almost always find desperation in your own backyard.

And remember, squalor almost always has more aesthetic appeal in black and white.

C’mon now, why the hell do you think we all have Twitter, Facebook, Sports Shooter or Linkedin accounts? We say they are for “sharing” our work, but honestly, we’re just looking for another venue to talk about ourselves. Sure, we may be looking for the occasional ‘critique,’ but we all know we’re getting more hits from non photographers than anyone else. We post Facebook links to our new, totally rad blog posts of events that six other local photographers have already posted about, with our fingers crossed that someone will post the ever-cherished “great pics!”  for which we so yearn.

These normal folks are fantastic sources of positive feedback, and we eat that shit up.

Having a little gathering of friends? Maybe a birthday party? Awesome! We’d love to come! Just don’t fucking ask if we “could snap a few pictures.”

Just because we make a living from photography doesn’t mean we’re available to photograph all of your social occasions. Seriously, god forbid we would want to come and enjoy ourselves. We work several eighteen-hour days of photographing the most mind-numbing shit you could ever imagine in the hopes of making some extra cash to photograph something we might actually enjoy, so I think we deserve to drink away the pain in a social situation. By the way, this isn’t your little fucking fete.

Remember, as much as we all truly enjoy photography, it’s still our job. Would you come to our birthday party if we asked you to review some legal documents? Or process some mortgage paperwork? Shit, you could bring your middle school English class and get some more classroom time in.

You’d be better off asking your uncle anyways, he’s probably got a better camera than we do.

From a reader:

“asking your advice, opinion, etc.. i am a freshman photography major at a fine art school, wondering what the eff i am doing. wondering why there is so many haters. wondering if i am living a pipe dream. wondering if i am wasting my time. worried i am wasting my money. even faculty at school say that “photojournalism is competative, are you sure you are ready for that…” (WHAT??)  worried too many jaded haters to care. are you one?”

Our answer:

Is photojournalism competitive? Yes. Are there haters? Yes. Are people going to constantly remind you that this industry is dying? Yes.

Does it matter? Fuck no.

We made this blog because we love what we do and need the occasional reminder not to take ourselves too seriously.

Keep living the pipe dream. God knows we are.

Photojournalists love to shoot with their sexy fast prime lenses, wide open at f/1.2 or f/1.4. What, you think I’m going to spend that kind of cash and then just go all “f/8 and be there?” Fuck no. My lens says f/1.2 on the barrel and that’s where it stays. Locked down, baby. 

All the best portraits are shot wide-open. That way you get to flip through hundreds of identical pictures in Photo Mechanic looking for the one image that has one eye mostly in focus.  The other eye is soft, the rest of the face is fuzzy, and the background is an amorphous blob of light and shadow, but I nailed the focus! Love that AF system, totally rocks. Give me a second, I need to delete the other 299 images. 

Is shooting between 7 and 10 frames per second ALL THE TIME necessary? Probably. You need to get that perfect shot, and shooting single frames might cause you to miss. But that’s not why we do it. We do it because it looks awesome, sounds awesome, and it feels like we’re shooting a machine gun.

Hell, you’ve got Dual Digic 4 Processors. Use ‘em.