Smaller, Faster, Stronger: Tech and the Pro Photog

By James P. McLaughlin | November 2011

With the technology revolution that we have entered comes many great advancements that make our lives more enjoyable and easier.  With each new technological advance comes a shift in how we interact with the world around us.  No industry has remained unchanged by technology, but among those industries radically changed is the Visual Journalism Industry.  With the development of new camera technology, the internet, and computer technology, the Visual Journalism industry has faced changes that not only push it to new heights, but that also threaten to make it obsolete.

Ever since Nicephore Niepce took the first true photograph in 1827, cameras have adapted and changed to better suit photographers needs.  Easy to use and personally owned cameras have been used ever since the Kodak No. 1, the first user-friendly camera sold for $25 in 1888. In 1975

developed the first digital camera for Kodak, allowing photographers to see their images immediately as well as switch out expensive and time-consuming film for small memory cards that hold more images than a role of film. Today anyone can take a photograph using his or her digital SLR camera, camera-phone, or pocket sized point-and-shoot.  What used to be a science, involving chemicals and mathematical equations, has now become the simplest process in our daily lives leaving professional photojournalists scrambling to keep up with the changing industry.

Because of the development of user-friendly cameras, professional photographers are now forced to compete with almost every single person in the world, causing sales to drop dramatically, newspapers to stop hiring, and the quality of imagery used by media to decline.  Professional photojournalists have lost a lot of money because media organizations use amateur images and video taken from camera-phones to cover breaking news.  One of the reasons media organizations are using amateur photography is because it’s free.  Programs such as CNN’s iReport use this free media while taking away potential sales from professionals. Camera-phone reporting has brought pixilated, poorly composed, and shaky camera work to the mainstream media leaving a higher quality of journalism to be desired.  Because digital photography has made Visual Journalism accessible to everyone, newspapers and other media organizations have cut their photography staff, sometimes in half, leaving the market over crowded with freelance photographers looking for work and chasing breaking news.

Another advance in camera technology is the switch from film to digital.  Digital photography not only allows imagery to be more accessible on a global scale but also allows photojournalists to use more available media platforms.  When photojournalists used film it often took publications several days or weeks to get the desired images.  War photographers often gave their undeveloped film to a random person at an airport to send back to the press agency, newspaper, or magazine.  The film would then have to be developed and distributed in the mail.  Today images can be uploaded in seconds via the internet or satellite from the other side of the world.   This is one of the greatest advances in the industry.  Journalists are now able to get information out to the world in real to almost real time, widening their impact on the public drastically. An example of the impact that lightning fast image circulation has had on the world could be seen on April 20, 2011.  Veteran War Photographers, Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros, were killed covering the revolution in Libya.  The very same day they were killed, images they took earlier that day could be viewed on the websites of the New York Times and Vanity Fair. The ability to see images that were taken ten hours ago by a person that was killed 5 hours ago from the other side of the world adds a new dimension to the way stories are told by Visual Journalists.

Digital photography and its interface with the internet and computer technology allow the expansion of new media platforms creating a further advantage to photojournalists who need no longer rely solely on print media to distribute their photography.  The internet provides new platforms such as online newspapers and magazines and photo sharing websites. The New York Times Photojournalism Blog, “Lens”, shows dozens of new photography everyday and during the Libyan Revolution many young Combat Photographers, who otherwise would never stand the chance of being published in the New York Times print edition, were given the opportunity to be published on the blog. Computer technology provides photographers with new software programs that allow them to easily edit their photography and provide new ways to market their product.  Programs such as Adobe Photoshop completely replaced the need for the darkroom. Photographers can edit and crop their images in seconds using Photoshop.  All these advances dramatically increase the amount of visual information that can be conveyed to the public in any given news day.

The combined effect of these new technologies has resulted in a push-pull effect on the photojournalism industry. While the industry is pushed to new heights through new developments that provide worldwide accessibility and new media platforms, it has also caused the industry to shrink due to user accessibility. With the growing use of amateur photography and the greater global capabilities, photojournalism is being forced to adapt.  The technological advances in photojournalism will force photographers to hone their craft and become better market aware photographers or they will be forced out. The end product will be a smaller, faster, and stronger Visual Journalism Industry.

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Landslide: Losing Shangri-La to Globalization

Men sit on a boulder and watch as a backhoe loosens rubble at the top of a landslide close to the Chinese border in Nepal. (Image by James P. McLaughlin)

By James P. McLaughlin | September 2011

A cargo ship makes its way up the Delaware River towards the Port of Philadelphia. (Image by James P. McLaughlin)

Just a week and a half before, I had been docking large oil barges in the industrialized port of Philadelphia.  I was a deck hand for a Baltimore based tugboat company, saving up money to travel abroad as a photojournalist.  Through out my day, when I could find the time, I would grab my camera and snap telling images of the oil industry.  Smoke from near by factories billowing into the setting sun giving the pollution a beautiful tint of red and orange, my fellow crewmembers pumping oil from a barge to a large ship destined for far off places, and the skeleton like structures on the shores of the Delaware River that had been abandoned; a photojournalist couldn’t ask for more.  I worked and lived in an ever expanding world of consumerism: the western culture.

Now I’m standing on an abandoned road in the Himalayan Mountains of Nepal with my friends Florien, Irene, and Andrea. We are heading for the Chinese border. I’m just hoping for a glimpse of James Hilton’s Shangri – La; a fictional paradise hidden in the mountains of Tibet. I have grown up reading about Everest expeditions, the Dali Lama, and the barren and forgotten land of Tibet.  In my mind, it is the end of the earth, it is untouched, and I have always planned on having my own wild adventures there.

A road winds through the Himalayan Mountains close to the Chinese border in Nepal. (Image by James P. McLaughlin)

It’s been an hour since we missed the bus heading for the border and we are now sitting on the side of the road just waiting for a car or a bus. I’m lying on a pile of firewood that rests against the side of small shacks that line the ravine that plummets into the earth below us while Florien sits several feet from me reading up on the Tatopani Hot Springs that lay just south of the Chinese border, in his Lonely Planet Guide to Nepal.  I listen to the gushing of the Bagmati River, moving over rocks at the bottom of the ravine, and watch birds dip and glide around the green mountain peaks that look down on us like big green giants that would grace the pages of a J.R.R. Tolkien novel.  The jagged and densely vegetated peaks remind me of the peaks in the Andes Mountains surrounding the small-secluded town of Aguas Calientes.

Aguas Calientes seemed to be a place hidden from the world.  Well not really hidden, but it felt like it was.  The small town sat at the base of Machu Picchu, the incredible Incan ruins discovered by archeologist Hiram Bingham in 1911.  It was built into the sides of the surrounding mountains and the only way to reach the town was by train or hiking from Cusco.  It felt as if it were straight out of an Indiana Jones movie.  The type of place I dreamed of as a kid. But in reality, it was a poor community scattered with hotels to accommodate the heavy traffic of tourists who came to visit Machu Picchu.  This incredibly charming town was slowly being pushed down under the weight of a fast paced and changing world.  Garbage scattered in gutters, tourists wondering through the market with their annoying children, becoming frustrated that the locals didn’t speak English, and the heavy chested female mannequin showing off sexy clothing in a shop window – I mean who’s looking for something to wear to the club in a place like this?  It was there that my love for photojournalism had been re-sparked after years of dual routine.

Men sit on a boulder and watch as a backhoe loosens rubble at the top of a landslide close to the Chinese border in Nepal. (Image by James P. McLaughlin)

Andrea finally flags a car that’s willing to pick up four hitchhikers but we only get several kilometers before we role to a stop. The road is blocked by a landslide that has happened just hours before.  We get out to get a better look at the extent of the damage.  As the other three approach two men perched on a large boulder to ask them how far the border is, my photojournalist instincts kick in.  I rummage through my pack and pull out my camera and begin taking photos of the damage.  Up the side of the mountain is a large backhoe slowly pushing rubble down the slope.  As I climb up the landslide towards the large piece of machinery I find myself wondering if I could be standing several feet above someone who has been crushed by the sliding mountain.

Florien turns to me and says, “We’re going to walk. Its not far.”

We grab our packs and continue our journey on foot.  As we walk the first couple of kilometers, I am over taken with the amount of industrialization in this secluded part of the world.  There is a large warehouse with about one hundred tractor-trailer trucks with advertisements for the Beijing Olympics in the parking lot, and more bulldozers and backhoes like the one I saw hours before, building what looks like will one day be a large hotel.  Are they trying to turn Shangri – La into a tourist attraction?  Are they trying to turn Nepal and Tibet into Aguas Calientes?

We continue to walk from town to town up the long and narrow road that winds through the passes of the Himalaya. As we arrive at the Tatopani Hot Springs its getting dark and we are still far from the border.

“Oh thank God,” Irene whimpers in exhaustion. “I really need this.”

We are cold, tired, and in low spirits.  We stumble through the village to where the hot springs are cut into the side of the mountain on the opposite side.  As we approach the springs we are hit with another blow of disappointment. Before us lays, what looks like an inner city public swimming pool rather than the unique hot springs in the secluded Nepali Himalayas we had psyched our selves up for.  We continue our bathless journey up the road towards the border in the dark.

A small town sits on the Chinese-Neapli border where travelers can find shelter for the evening. (Image by James P. McLaughlin)

This evening we sleep in a small bedroom above a restaurant for travelers crossing the Chinese border.  As I lie in the dark listening to the girls breathing in their sleep and the Bagmati River pounding against the foundations of the small structure a little bit of hope returns.  The one place in the world that I want to witness more then any other is just across the river.   I have finally reached the place that will fulfill my childhood dreams. In my mind, it is the end of the earth, its untouched, and I have always planned on having my own wild adventures there – here.   I have had adventures from the mountains of Peru to the shores of the Delaware River, while being everything from a Marine to a photojournalist.  In my mind none can compare to what is about to come. Or so I think.

The following day would be marked with piles of trash as big as buildings laying on both sides of the border, miles of trucks lining the roads of Tibet waiting to make their next big delivery, and Tibetans being held at gunpoint by Chinese soldiers while they’re searched at the border; a photojournalist couldn’t ask for more; a kid looking for an untouched and wild place would be over come with a deep sadness and disappointment.  I live and work, still, in the growing world of consumerism, expansion, westernization, and the destruction of cultures like Tibet, Nepal, and Peru. If there ever was a Shangri – La, it certainly does not exist any more; what’s worse is I wasn’t there to take pictures when it was destroyed.

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The People’s Champ

KATHMANDU, Nepal – Manhor Basnet or “Max Bee” is the 2008 Nepali and 2009 Indian National Boxing Champion. Max was born in a small village in the Katmandu Valley where he started boxing at 17. Because the political unrest in Nepal makes funds and support for boxing tournaments near impossible, Max continuously applies for a VISA to the United States where he can fight as a professional boxer. When Max isn’t training in the gym he is organizing community outreach programs, speaking in schools in remote villages about drug abuse and the importance of education, and coaching a youth boxing team.

<a href=”http://vimeo.com/28072506″>Max Bee</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/user7157514″>James P. McLaughlin</a> on <a href=”http://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a&gt;.