If there is one thing that best encapsulates my experience at this year's PhotoPlus Expo it is: Veni Vidi Vinci. (We Came, We Saw, We Conquered).

I arrived at the Jacob Javits Center at about 9 a.m. and promptly received my press pass. I rushed to the first session. Andrew Rodney, aka. DigitalDog, had begun his seminar on color management. I found a seat to the side of the room, one of the only ones open. His use of simple language to explain the most complex of steps to produce rich, honest color out of our printers was greatly appreciated. The room was packed with people. Let me say this much, if you are ever befuddled about setting up your machine to produce accurate color and you have an opportunity to hear him speak, I urge you to go.

If you are a professional, not knowing how to calibrate your monitor or use those printer profiles will cost you dearly in time, money and eventually clients.

I skipped the first afternoon session and decided to go onto the Expo floor. As expected, it was elbow-to-elbow room only. Canon, Nikon and even Fuji (thanks to their new flagship DSLR, the S3 Pro) were all crowded beyond belief. To top that off, some camera companies had lines stretching beyond their own booths for those of us who wanted to pick up a signed poster or two. It made navigating from one end of the large hall to the other very difficult.

I slid into the third session; Joe McNally‘s workshop on location lighting. Not quite what I expected. Mr. McNally must have been tired. Between self-depracatory quips and anecdotes, he managed to persuade some in the audience that all that is required to light a scene or a subject is a bag full of expensive Nikon Speedlights. I wasn't terribly impressed or convinced by the presentation; though his story on how he bagged an image at the very tip of the Empire State Building for a National Geographic magazine story made the two-hour session bearable. Next time Mr. McNally, please structure your time to make it a real workshop. If I had paid $80 for that session, I know I would have wanted to get my money back.

Later that evening, I attended a special session moderated by the legendary Peter Howe. The session was cynically titled “Is Anyone Out There Listening? The Relevance of Photojournalism Today.” The panel consisted of photographers from the VII photo agency; Ron Haviv, Lauren Greenfield, Antonin Kratochvil, James Nachtwey and Christopher Morris. Nachtwey went first because he wanted to get to the Eddie Adams wake that evening.

Nachtwey's slide show made my jaw drop. If you pick up TIME magazine, you will a lot of the images he was showing, but to see them at that size gave them a sense of urgency that one doesn't experience while flipping through a magazine. Wish he could have said more about the images and his work. Lauren Greenfield followed him but I was just way too tired to sit and listen to her. The images she began to show were from her book, “Girl Culture.”

As I left the Jacob Javits Center, I ran into James Nachtwey. Initially shy about introducing myself, I took off to the other side of the street as soon as it was safe to cross. Nachtwey remained on one side, presumably waiting for a taxi. I thought about it for about a minute, turned back, crossed the street again and extended my hand out – “Mr. Nachtwey, my name is Seshu Badrinath and I am genuinely honored to meet you,” I said. I handed him a card. He quickly stuck it ino his jacket and smirked. He seemed to be in a hurry and I didn't want to seem like I was cramping his style. So, once again I crossed the street and headed North to Barnard College.

Via Shawn G. Henry, VP Editorial Photographers

Digital Issues in the Editorial Market, a panel discussion sponsored by The American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) and Editorial Photographers (EP) will be held on Friday, October 22, 2004 at Javits Center/PhotoPlus Expo, from 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM at Seminar Rms. 1E04 & 05. This is free!

Join an extraordinary panel of photojournalists in a discussion of the impact of digital technology on the editorial market: Barbara Alper, Alan Chin, Shawn G. Henry, and Brad Trent moderated by Peter Howe. The focus of the discussion will center on how to successfully integrate digital capture into a creative and profitable editorial photography business. Topics to be discussed include:

The Transition from Film to Digital
Pricing Digital Production VS Film
Managing the Workflow
Delivering the Job
Satisfying Clients While Maintaining Your Bottom Line

Biographies:

Barbara Alper is a New York City based photographer and  regular contributor to The New York Times, Barron's, Wall Street Journal; she works with a number of corporate clients and has acted as a consultant to Olympus.  Her works are included in the collections of Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris,The Brooklyn Museum, New York, FNAC Galeries, Paris, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, International Center of Photography, New York, L'imagerie, Lannion, France, Lehigh University, Pennsylvania, Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, The New York Public Library, The Polaroid International Collection, Victoria & Albert Museum, London and The Wagstaff Collection.  She has exhibited widely throughout the United States and Europe. Barbara Alper is represented by Mega Press Agency (Japan) and Stock-Boston (USA).

Alan Chin has spent recent years covering conflicts in Iraq, Afganistan, the Middle-East, the former Yugoslavia & Balkans for outlets such as The New York Times, Newsweek, and Gamma. His current images appear regularly in The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, The New York Daily News, The New York Post, The Boston Globe, The International Herald Tribune, New York Newsday, The Guardian (UK) as well as Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, Brill's Content, Marie-Claire, MacLean's, Maxim, Seventeen, VERY Style Guides.  His photography is part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art and Alan has been nominated twice of the Pulitzer Prize for photography by the New York Times, 1999 & 2000, for coverage of the Kosovo conflict.

Shawn G. Henry has over 16 years experience as an editorial and corporate photographer; for almost three years, he's shot digitally exclusively. He's photographed for clients ranging from FleetBoston & Fidelity Investments to National Geographic & Newsweek, and his work appears regularly in Business Week and Forbes. He is the vice president of EP.

Brand Trent over the last 22 years has worked for such editorial clients as Time, Life, Sports Illustrated, The New York Times, GQ, Premiere, Business Week, Newsweek, Men's Health and Texas Monthly. For some reason General Motors, IBM, The NFL, Dow Plastics, Pepsi, Pacific Bell, NBC and AT&T have all seen fit to let him shoot their advertising! And until about a year ago he could be heard declaring that digital had ZERO chance of getting a toe-hold in the mainstream professional market! In that year's time he has gone from shooting 100% film to about 95% digital; and aside from the completely sick cost of his digital backs, doesn't really miss the old way of doing business!

Peter Howe with over thirty years experience in the photography industry has worked as a photographer, editor, agent, writer and curator. Presently he is occupied as an author and commentator on the subject, and is a regular contributor to many of the publications that deal with photojournalism, including the Digital Journalist, American Photo, Columbia Journalism Review, and also to USA Today. He recently curated the critically acclaimed exhibition “War in Iraq: The
Coordinates of Conflict” at the International Center of Photography in New York. He also consults with and advises independent photo agencies and individual photographers on strategies for the digital organization, storage and licensing of their work.

Howe was the Picture Editor of the New York Times Magazine and Director of Photography for LIFE magazine. On three occasions he was awarded first place for magazine picture editing in the National Press Photographers Association, University of Missouri's Picture of the Year contest, and won four National Magazine Awards from the American Society of Magazine Editors. From 1997 to 2000, he was Vice President of Photography and Creative Services for Corbis, where he was responsible for the company's acquisitions worldwide, photographer relations and copyright and contract concerns as they relate to the digital environment.

Getty Images, one of the two power-house photo agencies in the US is facing a barrage of questions from photo editors across the nation about their business dealings conflicting with their editorial decisions. As a wire service, hundreds of newspapers depend on the news feed Getty Images provides. But recently there have been charges that Getty Images which has business relationships with the National Hockey League (NHL) and the National Basketball Association (NBA), has failed to send through their service some poignant and editorially important images.

The most recent controversy sprung from the lack of images from the infamous ice hockey game between the Vancouver Canucks and Colorado Avalanche. Colarado's Steve Moore was sucker punched by Todd Bertuzzi of the Canucks. Moore fell face forward and broke his neck and ended his season. But curiously there were no images of this particular incident on the Getty wire service. Naturally Colorado papers using the service will be miffed.

Is Getty Images censoring their own photographers, on behalf of their business partners – the NHL, the NBA or more recently the Major League Baseball (MLB)? Who looses in the end? Not only do the photographers loose the sale of the image nation or even world-wide, but so does the audience from seeing what happened. While I am open to the idea of promoting businesses, I get antsy when editorial freedom gets curbed in the process. It kills the notion of ‘what you see is what you get' and that's plain troubling. It's time to revisit our Ethics 101 books about this.

Freelance photographers at the New York Times are getting hit really where it hurts – their wallets. According to a New York Post article, photographers who work with the New York Times but are not on staff will be required to sign a freelance contract that borders on the ridiculous.

One disgusted photographer said that the new contract “demands that photographers relinquish their copyright, resale opportunities and entire take, without any added compensation.”

The American Society of Media Photographers and Editorial Photographers are fighting hard to bring some parity to a moribund dialogue between management and freelancers.

Quite frankly, the Gray Lady is shooting herself in the foot (no pun intended). Lower wages and total control of images (from copyright to resale) means the paper will likely drive good (or even great photographers) out of business and attract low-ballers (those who choose to sell their work rather than license their images for a rate far lower than the competition or the market really demands). Unless the paper is hiring photojournalists, any work submitted to the paper will now be of lesser quality and the veracity and credibility of the images published in the paper, in my opinion, will be suspect. When you have seasoned photographers who have some sense of ethics being effectively fired from their jobs only to be replaced by hacks, well, you know American journalism can expect more troubles ahead.

This was originally posted on the NPPA-L by Paul Guillory, a photojournalist turned Copy editor at The Advocate, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana:

I posted a note here earlier this week encouraging a photographer to defect to the word side as a way of helping teach editors about picture usage. And it set me thinking about an occasionally visited topic on the list: respect.

We often complain that we photographers are not taken seriously in the newsroom. Would you consider for a moment that we create a persona that makes it easy for us not to be taken seriously?

Here are a few suggestions (from a former photographer who now gets to watch the photographers from the other side of the room):

Be careful about what you put on paper. You are actually being evaluated on the cutlines, memos, evaluations, purchase requests, etc., that you write. So buy a dictionary and use the spell checker. Find a stylebook. Let a copy editor read your memos before you submit them. Write an occasional story to
prove that you are a “well-rounded” journalist. (Your writing is a BIG deal. The word people complain about bad cutlines, poor grammar, misspelled names and shady fact checking. The more polished your writing is, the more respect you are granted.)

Wear the uniform. Instead of jeans and hiking boots, change into pressed slacks and a long-sleeve shirt before the news meeting. Keep a tie and jacket on hand for when you will be in front of the publisher or mayor.

Modulate your voice. Photographers love to bitch. But a well-reasoned, quietly delivered argument goes much further.

Take a copy editor, city editor or features editor to lunch. And DON'T talk about newspapers or photography. Get to know these people. Let them see you as a person. Talk about your kids, hunting, the cabinets you built for the kitchen. Save any attempts to “educate” for the fifth, eighth or 10th
luncheon.

Be ahead of the game. Read the paper and read the wire budgets early in the day. Know what's going on in the world so you can participate in newsroom and budget meeting discussions.

Be interested and involved in the process, but don't micromanage. (This suggestion comes from a news editor friend of mine.) Attend the planning meetings and have your picture ideas ready. Propose stories. If an assignment is crap, be honest about it; BUT be ready to suggest something better. Offer alternatives at all stages of the process. (One sports editor says he wants more than one picture.) And make deadline.

Apologize when you're wrong. Don't try to explain bad decisions. Just say “I'm sorry, I screwed up,” and leave it at that.

Good luck,
Paul Guillory