Multimedia isn’t making the world fall apart, photojournalism is just evolving

I have a lot of random thoughts throughout the day, today I had one that I just had to write down. It was supposed to be only one sentence and part of a new series I was toying around with, but as it so often happens I got on top of the soapbox and looking down realized I was afraid of heights. So I just stayed up there.

Remember how before everyone was asking should I learn html… and then it was Dream weaver… and now it’s Flash.

Everyone is asking should I learn Flash (imho, it wouldn’t hurt) and I’m already hearing whispers of should I learn Avid… should I learn ProTools? (I also hear, should I learn RSS… but that’s another story.)

It seems to me that we keep getting caught up on the things that are holding us back, like learning how to hold and hammer with these new tools, and we keep losing sight of the thing that makes us who we are in the first place, our creative eye that was deemed special enough for a yearly salary.

Maybe we need to stop worrying about the medium and worry more about the quality of the content that flows through that medium.

During the NPPA Summit in Portland, Carolyn Cole, LA Times staff photographer and Photojournalist of the Year 2007, showed her piece from the Immersion course and despite having never done it before- she’d mentioned that she was unfamiliar with the process and the programs, and stories from others had confirmed it- on her first time at bat she hit one out of the park. Because she didn’t forget that she’s a photographer first and she knew how to ask those in the know for help and guidance in filling in the blanks.

I’d love to link to the piece now so you can see what I’m talking about for yourse;f, but they haven’t been posted yet. But promises have been made.

I’m not saying don’t learn Flash or Avid or CSS or whatever else is out there, what I’m saying is don’t learn it if you don’t want to. The foundation of this business is still compelling images and if you got that down, you got nothing to worry about.

If you don’t believe me, just take a look at some of the other pieces (as soon as they’re posted) that came out of the Immersion Workshop. And while it will get hard to tell, yes, they were all done by newbies.

Dear Me, how’s it going, call your mother more often #JCarn

Yup, once again, welcome to my latest post for #JCarn. The Carnival of Journalism is a loose collection of journalism thinkers (and people like me) who get together to post on their blogs with their reflections on a given prompt. This month I had the opportunity to host and asked folks to write themselves a letter. As it’s the end of the year, it felt like the right time to look inward. Plus we spend so much time looking outside of ourselves at the industry/government/tech trends/government that self-reflection becomes that icky no-no that we seldom tackle. I know it’s scary, but come’on, let’s do this thing! Why? Because YOLO? “Write a letter to your younger self.” Dear Me, I’m writing to you from 2013, a little wiser, a little slower and probably still confused about why more people don’t do the right thing, but don’t let that stop you from trying. We’ve always been stubborn. I’m packing for a trip to India right now as I write this– don’t worry, you’re not married and yup, you’ll eventually leave California and actually get to fly in a plane– it’s been a wild couple of days. The last 10 or […]

Posted: December 20th, 2013 ˑ No Comments
Filled under: Ideas

Write a letter to yourself! #JCarn Dec prompt

Howdy folks, After trading some e-mails with David for the great reboot of #JCarn– we were trading prompt ideas and well, I’ll be your host for December. Oh how rude of me, I’m being such a terrible host, let me take your coat, come on in, wipe your feet. As we race toward the end of 2013, it’s a natural time for reflection and in that spirit I think I’ve come up with what I hope will be an enjoyable and perhaps even cathartic prompt: “What would you write if you could send a letter to your fifteen-year-old self?” For December I would like you all to write a letter to your younger self. You can write about anything, no rules, no apologies. You may like to share with yourself advice, things to look out for, things you wished you did differently, regrets, hopes, what you’ve learned, about your life, choices… or just about anything that is on your mind. Ideally these are deeply personal to you and I hope it’ll be enlightening to others in its universality to the human condition. More often than not, if it’s important to you, it’s important to others. And who knows, maybe you’ll […]

Posted: November 11th, 2013 ˑ 7 Comments
Filled under: Ideas

Multimedia isn’t making the world fall apart, photojournalism is just evolving

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Dear Me, how’s it going, call your mother more often #JCarn

Write a letter to yourself! #JCarn Dec prompt


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