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Staying Alive in the Fast Lane

I’m always wondering how we can still make a reasonable living out of the photojournalistic craft.  Taking frames, capturing remarkable moments is almost a doddle compared to the downstream travail of editing and then on to trying to vend the stuff.  In an age of shrinking and specialized markets it is becoming harder to flog hard core subjects, cutting edge traumatic images; the advertisers loathe to put their products against disturbing reality.  The competition is fierce.  It is hard to duel with staffers from the papers and wires who fat budgets, expense accounts and usually reliable communications.  As a freelancer you are constantly watching your wallet, costing in the car rental, the phone calls and broadband time which all cost a premium whack in zones aggravated by conflict or disaster.  The profit margin is going to be slim unless you can land the ‘scoop of doom’.

This is where the agency or representative comes into play.  Admittedly the agency/stock house will take 50% of your sales, but then 50% of something is better than 100% of nothing.  A rep is going to take 25% upwards.  More and more editors are going on line to choose pictures, using search engines to scan for sources where frames are tagged by their requirements – putting the onus on the photographer to load his captions with information that can be indexed easily.

Say you have an image of an action in Afghanistan, you put in Afghan, Taliban, coalition forces, the weapons used (AK’s or whatever), the town or province name – building a montage of details easily disseminated by an editor thousands of kilometers away and on a deadline to illustrate a breaking story or one written by one of their correspondents.  How do you move your images, how to make your deadline, how to manage that account.  Your possible solution and one to which members of the new °SOUTH co-operative subscribe is the DDR, not the Deutsche Democratic Republic but ‘Digital Railroad’.  On line only for the last year it is attracting shooters and their agencies in flocks.  ‘Magnum’ and ‘VII’ are running their frames down this global pipeline.  All you need is a place to plug in your laptop to some power and a telephone hook up.  Pray that broadband is coming cheaply to you conflict area.  It’s photographer friendly, designed by and used by those of us needful to get pix to diverse clients.  You can post messages there and contact folk after a simple print to a commission of dreams.

In earlier days when I had to file to ‘The Scotsman’ or ‘The Guardian’ or a German magazine out of Phnom Penh or Ho Chi Minh City, I would have to hunt down a mate at one of the three wire services – Associated Press, Reuters or AFP.  For a few beers and a small charge to the receiving client the images were delivered.  The transition to a digital FEDEX or UPS even overnight post has made our business both incredibly fast and demanding.  Time once spent in the darkroom now goes into digital management; hours glued to a screen emitting rays of disharmony.  In NY shooters working digital now post rates which include fees for image management.  The prices akin to producing a resin coated RC proof print from the contact sheet.  You still have to download and then edit the images, which are usually an amount in excess of that shot on film.  All of it requiring time which equals money, less time to shoot, more time confronting technology.  Let Digital Railroad shift your stuff – it takes a load off.  Get broadband, get DR, pump your pictures, and punt good frames to new clients.

All this means is that the older I get the lighter I want my bag to weigh though now I’m obliged to pack an endless series of adapters and rechargers for a heap of electronics.  I’d prefer a couple of long lenses instead.  Keep it simple is a good Aussie way of going on the road.  A ‘Coolwalker’ or an Epson still better to store your images.  I pod for sounds.  A Sony mini short wave radio for BBC news.  A good headlamp for blackouts and reading at night.  Once upon a time everything ran on ‘AA’ batteries.  The new tools, lamentable objects to international security arrangements.  Parting with ones shoes is one thing – having your digital bits blitzed by incompetents is the same as having your film disappear down a former communist bloc’s country’s luggage scanner.  Some editors still won’t concede that a travel day is not a day rate; the nightmares and bizarre stories of transit warrant double rates unless you’re really excited about airports and aircrafts.

Therein lies the rub of forming an agency or collective – from ‘Magnum’ in the late forties, a gamut of Greek lettered French consortiums of the 70’s, the auspicious founding of VII, when Jim Natchwey shot the World Trade Centre tower 2 coming down on top of him and Antonin Krachovil was virtually under the Airbus that came down on Long Island weeks later.  This gives you the power, the bargaining chips at the table to prize commitments even contracts.  Getting to the site of a scoop of a breaking story, having all the necessary kit plus sat phone and the rest requires a large budget, especially as aviation becomes only more expensive.  Club together and you can start to afford dispatching more than one member to a zone of hot interest.  Paparazzo’s do it.  More and more you have to get into a pool of shooters, be embedded or is it ‘in bed’ with Ed?

The irony is that now in a place like Iraq it is hard to get any frames without being embedded with the US military.  To drive solo or in an unarmoured vehicle could spell your fate as a ‘media martyr’.  Already we have lost eighty personnel, reporters, sound, camera and photographers not to mention the poor Iraqi fixers, drivers and interpreters – collateral casualties the latter lot.  As a freelancer without the backing of an assignment functioning in the tough spots becomes almost unfeasible.  As a group you can get the clout back.

The sum of the parts is more than each individual part.  One archive of many years is fantastic; multiply it by seven or eight and you have tangible collateral.  You arrive at the ability to publish volumes like the N.Z. mob ‘Milk’ has done, without ripping of the photographer.  Remember when they approached us all years ago to enter a competition at a frame?  Copyright violated with no syndication fees in how many editions, cards and products.  Now, intra group we can edit tomes of diverse titles besides creating the base from which we can create an agency when the time is perceived to be right.

Meanwhile, we collect stock on similar subjects using the combined wisdom to try to assess what images editors will require in the future.  In an overcrowded world do you focus on resources, energy, water, industry, travel or ecology?  Are there subjects that lend themselves to future publications and what shape will they take?  On line, on paper, on disc or………  all we know is that we still believe in film, have a passion for shooting it, thrill to the edit and rejoice in a good print.  Maybe we are the rearguard of bygone shooters, still excited by larger formats still harbouring stocks of B&W, still clinging to old fashioned ethics, still believing that one image is worth a million words or a zillion pixels.
Watch the space;  www.degreesouth.com

UN chopper leaving Prey Veng, Cambodia
UNTAC elections, May ‘93

Shot on assignment for the Guardian Weekend Magazine.  The correspondent Robert McCrum carried the exposed chromes back to London where an eight page spread of the Cambodian elections was laid out.  The trannies were picked up by friends from a now defunct agency “REPORTAGE’ and distributed globally.  Two pages in ‘LIFE’, ‘PARIS MATCH’ etc.  Sure I only got 50% but the sales of this image have kept on coming in.  the UN bought it for the cover of their 50th anniversary ‘Review’ – of note, Philip Jones Griffith shot the same scene from the adjacent podium, an awesome frame of the chopper a few meters above the crowd graced two pages in The Independent on Sunday, Greg Davis shooting for ‘TIME’ had saluting generals swirled in dust.  Prince Ranaridh Sihanouk actually won the election though was forced to share power with CPP leader, Hun Sen.

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Last Updated: 30-03-2008

Date Created: 14-06-2007