Image quality is secondary

<p>Just flicking through some news websites and came across a good example of image quality in news photography being secondary to getting the photo at all.</p>

<p>Tiny crop, horribly out of focus, intense purple fringing - but it's Mullah Omar so it makes the CNN lead story: <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/07/10/pakistan.taliban.omar/index.html">http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/07/10/pakistan.taliban.omar/index.html</a> . Of course, it would be better if it was a clear, crisp shot. But then I don't think whoever took the photo would still be around. Also, if it was a clear shot it'd probably be on every news website and in every paper. But my point is that an image with clearly terrible IQ can still be the lead photo.</p>

<p>Does anyone else have examples of similar? I seem to remember some amazing blurry ones from the Mumbai attacks. I really only posted this because I was reading a post (from several years ago now) where someone said Robert Capa's <em>Falling Man</em> wasn't so great because the contrast wasn't quite right. Wonder what they'd say about the D-Day pictures.</p>

<p>Just a few hours ago I saw an original Henri Cartier-Bresson photo in a gallery of the man jumping across a puddle. Fuzzy, maybe not in perfect focus but very powerful because of It's fame. Like seeing a celebrity in person. </p>

<p>I've always valued content over quality. I recently took in the Robert Frank exhibit at SFMoMA. They also have an Ansel Adams exhibit on display as well, but one has to pay an extra $5.00 to see it. I would regard Franks work as more important then Adams, but I suppose since obviously many more people are familiar with Adams the museum saw a way to cash in on his popularity. I suppose people viewing Franks exhibit without any previous knowledge of his work might wonder why his work is even in a museum along with Adams.<br>

Adams certainly deserves his place in the photography world, but I'll take a blurry, grainy picture by Frank, HCB, or Klien over an Adams any day.</p>

<p>Marc - you can come down to Carmel and see all the AA you want for free. Right now the Center For Photographic Art has an interesting AA exhibit featuring nothing but his photos of people he has taken over the years, a very different and unexpected group of photos from what you usually see from him. The two Monterey museums also have some fine photographic collections, but not usually free.</p>

<p>Thanks for the info Sanford. I use to live in San Jose and once visited a gallery in Monterey that had a number of AA prints. This was quite some time ago, long before I even picked up a camera myself. I wasn't too impressed then although that may have a lot to do with why. I also saw a few about year ago at the Gene Autry Museum in the Glendale/Burbank area of LA county. Here I was a little more impressed at the technical side of the prints, but other then that, they just weren't my cup of tea I guess.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.nocaptionneeded.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/985640413apmrade_viet_2d11g-copy.jpg">Nick Ut's Vietnam Napalm</a> . <br /> </p>

<p>Lots of memorable iconic journalism and documentary photos are technically flawed. The photos of Anwar Sadat's assassination, while in focus, appear distant and cluttered in a small photo. But it's remarkable any photos were taken at all. Only one PJ had the nerve to stand up and keep taking photos while ambush was in progress.</p>

<p>The famous photo of Einstein with his tongue wagging is out of focus. Too many other technically flawed but memorable and important photos to list here.</p>

<p>As others have mentioned, there are plenty of examples. Content is king - always.</p>

<p>Here's a relatively recent example, from the assasination of Benazir Bhutto (look at the photos starting at approx 2:23 in the timeline). Audio commentary by photographer John Moore:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/world/20071227_BHUTTO_FEATURE/index.html">http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/world/20071227_BHUTTO_FEATURE/index.html</a></p>

<p>Moore earned two first-place World Press Photo awards for his coverage of the Bhutto assassination and was awarded “Magazine Photographer of the Year” from Pictures of the Year International (POYi) and “Photojournalist of the Year” from the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA).</p>

<p>Jarle</p>

<p>I think we're talking about two different things. The OP gave an example of news journalism, and Robert Frank wasn't a news photographer. With his work it's more that it's a much different aesthetic from Adams, not so much that it's technically flawed. Should we call Adam's work technically flawed because it doesn't employ motion blur, for instance, or that it fails to include some nice fat grain? </p>

<p>Ray is correct; this must be one of the oldest disputes in photography. Adams and Weston used to scrap with Steichen over this. It comes down to personal perspective, and it's about as useful as the film <em>vs</em> digital argument.</p>

<p>I think the most well-articulated stance of the Ansel Adams vs Robert Frank argument comes from Elliott Erwitt:</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p><em>"Quality doesn't mean deep blacks and whatever tonal range. That's not quality, that's a kind of quality. The pictures of Robert Frank might strike someone as being sloppy--the tone range isn't right and things like that--but they're far superior to the pictures of Ansel Adams with regard to quality, because the quality of Ansel Adams, if I may say so, is essentially the quality of a postcard. But the quality of Robert Frank is a quality that has something to do with what he's doing, what his mind is. It's not balancing out the sky to the sand and so forth. It's got to do with intention." </em></p>

</blockquote>

 

<blockquote>

<p><em>"Good photography is not about 'Zone Printing' or any other Ansel Adams nonsense. It's just about seeing. You either see, or you don't see. The rest is academic. Photography is simply a function of noticing things. Nothing more." </em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>As is so often the case, Elliott Erwitt's quote hits on something significant while also oversimplifying the matter.</p>

<p>Technique is important to any craft, whether it's painting, sculpture, architecture, or photography.</p>

<p>It's a matter of seeing technique, content, feeling, and all other elements in relationship and in context.</p>

<p>Adams's technique combined with his subject matter leaves me somewhat cold much of the time. But much can be learned from his technique.</p>

<p>I saw the same Frank exhibit and agree with most assessments here, although some of the photos could have been improved with a little more emphasis on technique.</p>

<p>Technique is often used to express. Expression doesn't take place despite technique, it often takes place with technique.</p>

<p>When technique is used harmoniously and appropriately with subject matter and feeling, the best photos will result.</p>

<p>Erwitt is wrong on at least one important count. A photo is not simply a matter of noticing things. All kinds of people notice things all the time. A photo is a matter of noticing something, taking a picture of it with a camera, and then processing what you notice or what you want to express about what you notice. A photo is about how you capture or express what you notice.</p>

<p>In some cases, we don't care about blown highlights and in others we do. It's got to do with what the photo is about and there are no "rules" of technique that apply to all photos. But it is too easy and too much of a copout to dismiss technique in favor simply of an eye. That would mean that too many bad photos would pass as worthwhile.</p>

<p>Like a musician has to learn scales, a photographer has to learn technique. Then you decide what to do with it and how to apply it. But if you discard it before you embrace it, you will always be mediocre . . . unless you're very rare or very lucky.</p>

<p>"...some of the photos could have been improved with a little more emphasis on technique."</p>

<p>I trust Robert Frank knows what he's doing with his own work, thank you.</p>

<p><em> I would regard Franks work as more important then Adams</em></p>

<p>How could such a comparison be made? They're in completely different genres. Important to what end? Obviously Adams' work touched the hearts of many people and changed the way people feel about nature. Elliot's disinterest in landscapes biases his views and many people feel differently about this matter. Personally I love documentary photography but the portrayal of misery is way overdone in today's society - newspapers and TV feast on it. I would never have one of Frank's books in my shelf.</p>

<p>That is a difficult comparison to make. And although personally I think it's landscapes that are far too overdone in photography, I have Ansel Adams' <em>400 Photographs</em> book and I think it's amazing.</p>

<p>Have a look at the Reuters guide to photography on their website...all the rules etc. It is definitely "get the shot, don't mind the quality. We'll fix it in the office"! In fact you are not allowed to do processing in-camera. No sharpening, standard settings everywhere, low enough res to transmit on a sat/mobile phone. A few hundred kb only.<br>

PJ is all about content and drama, not quality. Thats why so many PJs still use the under-rated but quietly respected by pros, 40D. Nice and light, good enough for PJ, cheap and easy to replace. But no compromise on lenses.<br>

I was at a protest political rally last weekend, standing next to a veteran press PJ. He just stood there in the crowd with his gear still in his waist bag. . He was about 65...a vet PJ. Even older than me!! I just watched and learned. The protest leader worked his way through the crowd towards the podium...the drama of it. Police in plain clothes. The crowd reaching out to their hero. It took all of 30 seconds. The PJ watched and took his moment...a scant few seconds...out came the battered old 1Ds all taped up, 80-200 all battered and taped as well. All settings fixed under the peeling black tape. No time to fiddle. One press of the shutter button a quick burst of shots, then straight back in the bag. He turned and left. Job done. No one noticed. Gone.<br>

I stood there thinking...I have so much to learn about what's important. Certainly not about how many pixels my camera's got or how big is my camera's LCD.<br>

Capture the fleeting moment. So hard to know just when! And to do it all close up but almost unnoticed. Thats the key.<br>

Oh well!</p>

<p ><!-- [if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:DoNotOptimizeForBrowser/> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--> In my opinion, photos such as the examples presented in this thread win awards because for one thing, the PJ who took them wasn’t a disinterested bystander who just happened to be casually strolling by the scene at the time these events occurred. Their photos capture not only the highly emotive, even dangerous situations; they impart a bit of themselves in these photos and drag us emotionally into those situations as well. </p>

<p ><!-- [if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!-- [endif]--></p>

<p >A recent example: Even if you’re not a Michael Jackson fan, the cheesy tabloid closeup photo of him on OK! Magazine’s cover the day he died can’t help but rattle you. Many are outraged by it, calling it tasteless. Like the other examples listed in in this thread, especially the little Napalm Girl, I think it's crucial. </p>

<p > </p>

<p >Ok!'s Jackson photo is the last look the public will ever get of the real Michael Jackson, at his most vulnerable, his final “This Is It” moment. It's the undeniable truth that despite all his millions, possessions, notoriety, popularity, and accompanying power, he was still simply a human being, like the rest of us, and who he was and what he’d amassed would never protect him from the death we will all experience one day. And if he willingly did this to himself - abused drugs -, that makes it all the more significant because millions of ordinary non-celebrities also destroy themselves and their families and friends with their drug abuse every day.</p>

<p ><!-- [if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!-- [endif]--></p>

<p >Man's inhumanity to man - those types of photos matter the most - to me, anyway.</p>

<p > </p>

<p >http://www.inquisitr.com/27969/ok-magazine-michael-jackson-cover/</p>

 

<p>The previous two posts were really interesting. I didn't know the 40D had a photojournalism following, re-enforces my faith in my Pentax K10D. What kind of resolution is a file of only a few hundred kb? Do they then shoot using 4, or 6m MP or so, or still use the maximum camera MPs and re-size the photo?</p>

<p>I agree that the best photos are taken by people who care about what's going on.</p>

<p>I don't have any examples on hand, but if you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Good PJ photos are rare and hard to come by, so that rarity increases the value. Even if they aren't perfect technically it's just about impossible to take a "better" one of that moment, unless someone else is there as well. That's why photos from new conferences are mostly technically good, there's lots of photogs there and they are prepared, and bring their A game cause they have to compete to get the best shots. The good clear shots sell and the imperfect ones don't becuase there are clear ones of the same thing. It's not really right to compare PJ to landscape photography because when doing landscapes there is more time and someone else could go to the same spot and wait for similar light and take a technically better photo, so the technique is important. In order to sell landscapes they have to be near perfect, not necessarily so with PJ. Better IQ is always preferred, but any image is better than nothing. The super purple fringed photo the OP showed was obviously taken with a camera phone, but if you think about it it's really the only way the photog could still be alive. If he was there with a 1D or whatever firing away they would have noticed him and starting firing back (and not with cameras...)</p>

<p>If he was from an electronic media group, jpeg low, if he was from a newspaper, maybe jpeg med but I doubt it, as even in a newspaper, the max photo would be 5x7. The file can never be bigger than the one transmitted. Reuters goes into it at length. Its very interesting and if you don't obey the rules then you don't get used. They basically want to retain all the ability to enhance back at the office, starting from a neutral file. They don't trust the photographer and want to see an original true to life image.<br>

I was talking to another PJ there from a daily newspaper, and he doesn't even bother to download the files from the CF card. He drops the cf cards in to the office in a envelope, all labelled up, and swaps them for blank ones. Then back out in the car. He only uploads if he is out of the city. The other point he made was that for a given event like a doorstop interview or an accident etc, he would only take 20-30 shots. Not hundreds like sports guys do. Apparently the news photo editors get mad if you drop a 2gb card in with hundreds of shots because they have to go through them all and it takes too much time. So a news PJs reputation for fewer quality shots gets known. Logical I suppose.<br>

Now how all this translates into guidance for fellow street photographers is questionable.</p>

<p>I think it's acceptable and possibly expected in photojournalistic photos to have sacraficed IQ to just get the shot in the heat of the moment.</p>

<p>I used the Frank/Adams comparison simply because imho they can be seen as polar opposites. Franks most famous works are all about content while Adams is all about technique. Sure Adams brought attention to enviromental concerns. Frank brought attention to social concerns such as segregation and urban alienation during a time when it was unfashionable to do so. I simply feel the work of Frank (and Salgado to name another photographer of the highest caliber) and the way they have shed light onto some of the darker aspects of the human condition to carry a little more weight then the enviromental causes sparked by the work of a photographer like Adams. Your mileage may vary of course.<br>

Lastly, while Ray is correct in that Frank was not a news photographer, this may be simply because by most accounts he had some difficulty finding work that wasn't fashion oriented when he first arrived in the US. Futhermore, Frank applied to Magnum for membership but was not accepted. One can only wonder what he might have gone on to do had he been accepted.</p>

<p>Marc, your comparison has merit, there is no denying that. The trouble is that people will pick that up and start arguments based on personal preferences which quickly clouds any discussion. Fred has got a point though. I've seen the same exhibit some time back. From a purely personal point of view I saw prints there that I myself would have binned without any regret because they were simply way under par technically speaking. However, it's good to remember that some of these are simply there because of the context in which the exhibit is set up. It shows a certain amount of personal stuff of Frank. It could be argued therefore that not many photographers of his stature would be prepared to show working prints even in such a context. Still, the fact that someone famous presents something doesn't make it good as such. Everyone can screw up.</p>

<p>In PJ it's not so much the content what's paramount but how newsworthy it is. More in general it's a lot more fluid because out of focus, blown-out highlights and darks without any detail (to name but just a few technical criteria) can be used creatively. For me the deciding factor would be if such "flaws" are based on choice or represent merely a lack of skill. I myself don't belief in image quality being secondary as a rule, it's a argument too often misused by those that lack the necessary skills. A good photo needs both just as a house needs a fundament.</p>

<p> </p>

<p><em>"Technique is important to any craft, whether it's painting, sculpture, architecture, or photography.</em><br>

<em>It's a matter of seeing technique, content, feeling, and all other elements in relationship and in context"</em></p>

<p>Exactly</p>

<p>My most-viewed photo -- not a PJ shot at all, but still my most-viewed -- is not my best photo, but it tells a good, story. It is substantially out of focus, but it tells a wonderful story that's an eyegrabber. <br>

I hesitated even to post it, and when I did, I published it in a lesser folder on Photo.net, but was transfixed some days when it would get 1,000 'hits' (actual measured clicks) a day.<br>

I once was a photo editor in NYC at Associated Press world headquarters at 50 Rockefeller Plaza, and we viewed a lot of negatives taken by local assignment photographers when I was assigned at first to local, NYC Metro work, and a lot negs we tossed out because the photos were 'soft' -- meaning out of focus or with subject blur AND they were not meaningful shots.<br>

Other shots would have been published even if they were not world class. If a plane crashed at Kennedy and a photographer got a photo of one of two 'black boxes' being carried away, and that was the only one, blurry or not, it would have run on the wire. (that photo was taken and it was clear, however.) Same with photos taken when the FBI arrested Angela Davis. If the image was good enough to publish, and it was the highest image quality obtainable, then that was what got carried over the 'wire' -- blurry or not.<br>

I recall in a book edited by my former boss, AP photo chief Hal Buell, of past Pulitzers, of one photo taken by I think a NY Daily News photographer of children falling down beside a tenement wall during a fire, apparently having jumped to escape incineration. <br>

That photo shows much motion blur from the falling kids, to die within seconds from their impact with the ground, and was also cropped from a larger press photographer's negative (probably a graflex of unknown negative size), but it was a great photo - one of those once- in-a-lifetime (no pun intended) photos.<br>

Of course it got a Pulitzer for 'spot news' or some such, for the year in which it was taken. A lot of Pulitzer photos were not sharp or had other defects that would not be permissible if taken at a wedding . . . .<br>

My 'most viewed' photo sort of embarrasses me, because I dislike posting 'trivial' photos that are not in sharp enough focus -- I'm not posting a link here, but if you look it involves a pair of mannequins and a peeking guy, but you'll have to look hard. I think Google images had something to do with its popularity.<br>

Capa's photos of the invasion of Omaha Beach may have begun as wonderful depictions with ultimate sharplness, but they were mostly ruined by a careless or overanxious darkroom technician, and all that were left were a few blurry, barely viewable photos of men wading through deep water to the beach, but for all those photos' deficiencies, they're iconic in a way that supersharp photos might never have been.<br>

They're almost certainly not what Capa had in mind, but they're still great in their own way and were (and still are) published around the world. Those 10 surreal photos of Easy Red Sector, Omaha Beach took on a life of their own, all because a darkroom tech back in England the same day dried the negs at too high a heat, melting most of the negs but 10 or 11 and those remaining negs mostly were difficult to reproduce except with substantial distortion.<br>

In PJ, if there's an iconic shot, image rules over image quality when there's only one shot. <br>

When I was at AP there always were 'airbrush' artists to 'fix' imperfections in photos blown up from negatives or sent in over the 'wire', often to 'wash out' the backgrounds which competed with the subjects, so that the head shots', say, of a celebrity or world figure in a crowd would stand out, or transmission artifacts from a faulty telephone line or other technical glitch could be 'airbrushed away'.<br>

I still can look at most old newspaper and wirephotos and tell which ones have been airbrushed just by their appearance, no matter how good the airbrush artist, as they taught me their tricks in slow times (but I never did actually airbrush a photo). <br>

Until the time I went to work there, I often wondered why my photos looked so 'busy' or cluttered in the backgrounds while newspaper photos and wire service photos that went through AP or UPI NYC headquarters were so clear and the backgrounds so untroubled. I learned the 'trick of the trade' --- pre-digital photo enhancement was the rule of the day at the world's large news and newsphoto agencies.<br>

Also, editors routinely 'flipped' (reversed) the headshots of celebrities, depending on how they wanted them to appear, regardless of the hair part or some facial feature such as a mole, etc. I steadfastly refused to do that, and seldom used 'airbrushing' except where there was a transmission error - I was against enhancement even then. It seemed like cheating; still does. Same with airbrushing, and I am glad to learn of severe restrictions on Photoshopping.<br>

John (Crosley)</p>