HNC_Block2 Part4 - Travelogue Brief 3

Photography technology and business keeps changing.
In the 30s and 40s, picture magazines like Picture Post and Life, used photographs to explain what was happening throughout the world to massive audiences. Photographers like Bert Hardy, Lee Miller, Grace Robertson, Eve Arnold and Magnum used photographs to tell stories, and they led very exciting lives doing it.
Photographs were used in newspapers and magazines to tell factual stories - the term for this type of photography is documentary, and it is also known as editorial.
The main body for representing this type of photographer is EPUK - http://www.epuk.org/


This is still an important style of photography, but magazines and newspapers do not, at the moment, pay well for it. It is necessary, I think, that photographers are still telling factual stories. The New York Times has an online series, called 1 in 8 Million which uses still photography and sound to tell the stories of ordinary people's lives:
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/1-in-8-million/index.html?scp=1-spot&sq=1%20in%208%20million&st=cse#



The market for stock photography has changed too. It used to be that only professionals could provide pictures for most agencies, but with digital and internet technology, the stock industry is also supplied by non-professionals who almost give away their work. This has also made it difficult for many photographers to make a living.
For real photographers, it is necessary to offer something that amateurs cannot.
For photojournalist, Jim Pickerell, that something is the ability to tell complex and in-depth factual stories. He is suggesting that it is possible to use traditional documentary skills with multimedia technology, to produce a professional product that keen amateurs cannot compete with. He is presenting this as a way forward for both stock and editorial photography. Let's hope he's right.


Here is where you start to tell a story with a camera.
If you go to HND, you will need to do this under pressure.
The benchmark for visual style, and telling the truth without digital cheating, is the black-and-white film.


Here is the brief:

- The stock agency ‘Travelogue’ is accepting photographs for submission.
The agency distributes images to travel guides and publications worldwide. They stock pictures on the life, landscapes, culture, architecture, work and leisure of the countries and cities that they feature.

They require images that tell the story of a day of ‘work or leisure’ in a traditional monochrome style.

The agency emphasies traditional story telling with pictures, using traditional photographic techniques, and up-to-the minute technology.

They believe that there is a market for monochrome film photo stories in the style of Picture Post and Life magazine. They believe that these tap into photography’s reputation for objectivity, style and craft and that this separates real photographers from 'virtual photographers' -hobbyists with expensive kit.

They require a set of 10 images, printed in the darkroom from film. 10x8 resin prints are acceptable.

The images must work as a series, clearly telling a story with establishing views, middle views, close-ups, key images and linking shots.

The work must be scanned and submitted as digital files, as well as darkroom prints.

Follow the workflow and QC steps outlined in task 2