Wednesday, December 10, 2008

The death of the newspaper still photographer

Vincent Laforet's talk last night at APA-LA was quite interesting. It's always nice to hear the stories behind shots first hand.

I thought I'd share something he spoke about last night that honestly, left a bad taste in my mouth. He said that with the advent of HD video capabilities, he couldn't see anyone in the future who shoots for newspapers shooting still images. It just doesn't make sense when you are there to cover an event and need to get the shot and you can now shoot HD video that allows you to pull any frame at 72 dpi and 2000 pixels wide, which is plenty of quality for online or newsprint. The exception, he said, would be sports photographers.

Sad.

4 comments:

ryan schude said...

or does this mean the death of news videographers when a photographer can now get video from their slrs?

J. Wesley Brown said...

If anything, I think the opposite. The videographers will have a head start in terms of understanding how to shoot video.

The Venice Beach Nibbler said...

Instead of being aware of the moment, the instant for maximum communication, a shooter will end up shooting a few seconds of video...thinking the ideal frame can be pulled later. This will breed laziness, encourage a sloppy method of shooting, and will 'dumb down' the profession as a whole.

yes, sad.

-commanderbrc@gmail.com

Anonymous said...

I highly doubt that is going to happen. As a photo editor who works online with both photo and video assets, I can say first hand that HD stills don't look as good as photos. Also, no one has the time to sit through a video to find the perfect still. My assistnat has been working getting decent thumbnail stills for our player and it's tremendously tediious. Also, HD video is more expensive to store on back-end servers.