Youtube photographers struggle under isolation

With everyone but press photographers stuck at home in lockdown due to the Coronavirus – or more commonly referred to as the Chinese Virus, you would think the army of Youtube photographers would have a captured market…well, think again.

As the Covid-19 bites harder, the plethora of Youtubers or educators have struggled to get to grips with their new environment.  Some, who use their channels to educate viewers on the latest techniques in post processing, appear to be able to provide a ‘normal service’ whilst others have gone into complete meltdown.

Unable to venture out or test the latest bit of kit, there have been some peculiar postings in recent weeks as they struggle to find suitable subject matter for content.  Somehow, the newest, fastest camera lens or ultra lightweight tripod seems a little trite under current conditions and besides, who will be able to afford to spend any money with so many out of work or suffering huge financial penalties due to the virus?

It is a sad reality that with so many amatuer and professional photographers seeing their incomes slashed, the idea of buying anything at the moment may appear like wishful thinking.

What is intriguing as a complete newbie to the Youtube ‘educators’ is the amount of vitriol that flows and ebbs between the hosts.  Many of whom, as I have been discovering, are not actually working photographers and by that I mean, photographers who earn a living by using their skills as a photographer, but are merely presenters using cameras to demonstrate one thing or another.  They don’t have clients, they don’t shoot editorials, they just talk about photography.

How long they can continue their valuable income stream through the medium of Youtube is questionable as people turn their attentions to more pressing matters. For genuine photographers, the industry will recover and their skills will once again be required.  For the ‘educators’ they might have to rebuild their subscriber fanbase all over again.  But for now, it’s interesting to see how this will all play out….

 

Raw vs Jpeg

This is an argument I have seen played out on many occasions between photographers, most recently on social media and in particular on my favourite new fix: YouTube, where there is no shortage of advice and opinions.

Two high profile ‘educators’ or vloggers, (not sure if they are working photographers or just YouTubers) publicly slugged it out via their video channels, each arguing the case for either format.  None of their arguments made much sense but that’s probably just as well. However, the fundamental point of which is better, completely missed the point.

Just like the cameras and lenses photographers choose to use for a specific job, so too can be said of which format a photographer should use be it RAW or Jpeg.  I would go further and to be fair, this point was made…sort of, a beginner would do well to learn as much as they can before shooting in RAW, for no other reason than there is a certain amount of post processing required to extrapolate what they have shot in-camera before they can use the image.

It stands to reason therefore, that a person just starting out in photography will have little if no experience on how to process a RAW file and would be better served shooting Jpegs until such time that they have gained the required level of skill to extract all the detail from a RAW file.

And to be honest, this is an area that I have yet to fully exploit as my skill level in post is pretty basic as I have never needed to use photoshop other than the basic tweaks and for captioning.

To this end, the only time anyone would readily choose to shoot Jpegs would be those working as a press photographer, where the single most critical aspect when on a job -apart from the obvious – is speed.  They do not have the luxury of trawling through hundreds of images converting RAW files into Jpegs before transmitting them to their respective publication or agency.

Of course speed is all relative. When I was working on assignments back in the day of film, speed could be a matter of hours or in some cases days. Naturally, this was before the age of the internet and lead times were much longer. You had time to return to your publication, pop into the darkroom, place your rolls into the drop tanks of developer and so on…

If further afield, you had the option of handing your undeveloped rolls of film to a courier who would then either jump onto a bike or in extreme cases if abroad, onto a flight back to base. 

Then we had portable scanners and wire transmitting equipment and things became a lot faster until we finally reached the point of rolling news and the internet and speed was down to a matter of minutes.

Today, everyone from fashion to landscape to wedding photographers and most probably everything in between, should be shooting in RAW to maximize the full potential of the image they have captured.  And despite what anyone says or tells you, maximize they will and do.

A picture is worth a thousand words

Once again a photograph has captured the imagination of politicians and the public alike and, in the most tragic of circumstances. At a time when it appears that the world is obsessed with the vacuous lives of Miley Cyrus spreading her legs whilst sticking her tongue out or with that family from Star Trek with a deformed backside (Kardashians), a picture of dead child brings us back to reality.

But isn’t it surprising that in today’s world, with videos and TV footage bombarding our screens every day of the mounting crisis surrounding fleeing migrants, it is a stills image of a hapless body lying motionless on a beach that has everyone incensed.

Once again, it is the power of a single image, not the hours of video or the columns of words in newsprint or on-line that has generated a furore surrounding the refugee crisis.  There is something intangible about a single frame that holds so much more weight than a moving picture that stirs the imagination.  A picture really is worth a thousand words or even ten thousand words.

Photojournalism may well be a dying genre with countless photographers switching to video in order to make ends meat, but every now and then the power of a stills photographer demonstrates why this industry needs photography in the media armoury and not rely on the video which perhaps dilutes a story to the length of the clip.

Perhaps, it is because we are so accustomed to video and sound bites that the public’s attention span has been reduced to a couple of minutes and it just washes over them.  By contrast, a photograph you have to look at, study, examine and spend more time absorbing what is presented in front of you and, for that reason it has more of an impact.

The same thing could be said for the tragic air crash in Shoreham a few weeks ago.  A day or two later a dramatic image emerged of a fireball on the A27 with part of the cockpit and wing clearly visible poking its nose through the flames.  Despite all the video footage it was this image that generated most interest; taken at ground level, it illustrated in the most dramatic of circumstances the full horror of the moment of impact.

Photography may well be dying and on life support, but its not quite dead yet and so long as there are enough talented and dedicated professionals prepared to stick to their DSLRs and not give way to video, we may yet prevail.

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Baptism of Fire: a freelancer’s behind the scenes look at covering areas of conflict is now available from Amazon as an e-book and no, you do not require a Kindle. http://tinyurl.com/l57rqa6

“Theo liasi has written an honest, no frills account of life as a war photographer. His was the reality of a freelancer with no one to cover his back. His conclusion Is surprisingly funny given the subject matter. Well worth the read especially if you are contemplating a career in this area”