I'd been talking to a friend of mine who writes for a paper and we got into the conversation about "real" journalism. I'd half kiddingly told him that I don't know what "real" journalism is, but I may have stepped in it a few times.

This conversation got me to thinking about the craft of photojournalism. I'd decided that the craft of photojournalism- at least in the traditional sense- is no more. I think that it first started showing signs of decline in the mid 1980's when the big buzz words in photographic circles was "electronic darkrooms". Newspapers were using this to market themselves to potential employees and to show the world how state of the art they truly were.

Yes, it was then that photojournalism began to evolve as a communications medium. Since the 1860's when photographers documented the Civil War, photojournalism and the technical process had changed very little. You go to the "scene", shoot the picture, develop the film and make a print. An editor gets the image, grumbles something about the angle and proceeds to crop the hell out of it and runs it postage stamp sized. It was a predictable routine that most photographers actually got comfortable with.

But the times changed and the world's pace somehow grew quicker. Everyone was getting "wired" with cell phones, pagers and fax machines. Some people were even spending thousands of dollars on a "MacII" and thinking how advanced we of the human race have become. And if you were truly a "techno-dweeb" you knew UNIX, Cobol and Fortran and thought that "BASIC" was so "1983". You'd also heard about this thing called "The Internet" that was used by scientists, educators and the military. Slowly, newspapers started taking this new technology and incorporating it into their daily routine. I remember first having a "Laser Scanner". These were incredible beasts- taking up full rooms to digitally scan slides using a laser beam to "etch" the image onto the orthographic film that would make the separations. After being made, the images were "Stripped" to the page and the plates were burned and the press printed color. Few papers had them because of the size and tremendous cost- between $250,000 and a million dollars per scanner. Still, at the time, the color looked stunning and you could see the difference between a laser scan and a traditionally projected separation.

Then, a little software company named Adobe presented a program called "Photoshop" and it threw traditional photojournalism out on its' ear. It was crude picture editing (any of you reading this remember how in Photoshop 2.0 if you forgot to "zoom out" your image would look Picasoesque with the large, square detail on a normal photo?), but what an advancement over the traditional methods! Gone were the hours in the darkroom and the smell of fixer on your hands. No more brown fingernails either...

And then came the Associated Presses' "Leaf Scanner". What an invention! You could transmit color images in a relatively short time from a remote location to your paper or the AP itself. If you've never seen one of these, they had a "Halliburton" case with a small (3" I think...) pop-up monitor. The scanning process was slow and tedious. And the Leaf Scanners tended to be a bit on the temperamental side too. Still, photojournalism had evolved to a whole new level of "now" imaging. Photographers could now affordably shoot, scan and transmit images to any publication in the world from the remote location.

Fast forward ten years and the entire process became digital with the advent of the first truly professional grade digital cameras. Now, the process wasn't close to traditional photojournalism. It takes longer to walk to the transmitting station then it does to send the image. AP transmits images world wide via satellite beaming. So, a paper in Sydney can have your image moments after it's shot. Fast forward now to the present and photographers are quickly becoming digital imaging specialists rather than just photographers. It's not good enough now to simply shoot a photo. You have to be photographer, editor, graphic artist and now, videographer too. I see this new imaging as a meshing of the best features of television and those great storytelling characteristics of traditional photojournalism. Photographers who have been trained as traditional photojournalists are now regularly taking video cameras into the field with them to "multi-source" the display of their stories. These are the leaders of tomorrow's imaging.

Gone forever are the days of smelly darkrooms, squinting eyes, dim safelights and idle time drying prints...And none too soon if you ask me.

Yes, traditional photojournalism is quickly dying. Gone forever are the traditional decisive moment- giving way to streaming media and the web. Tomorrow's photojournalist will have the equipment of a videographer with the eye and editing skills of a still frame shooter. And I for one, am looking forward to seeing the next step- to see how this will evolve within the next ten years. My guess is that not only will news photographers be able to give you the news, it will become an environment- something that you can literally step into to witness first had what happened on the battle lines of the future. A 3 dimensional virtual world where you can see, hear and smell a total interactive environment that's been recorded by the digital imaging specialist. What better way to witness what's going on around the world, right? I look forward to the future... Take care of yourself.

Behind the Viewfinder - A Year in the Life of Photojournalism
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