Comments on: Alternative view http://blog.melchersystem.com/2009/01/01/alternative-view/ Another Photo Industry blog Tue, 22 May 2012 00:54:43 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.2.1 By: Brad Armstrong http://blog.melchersystem.com/2009/01/01/alternative-view/#comment-2781 Brad Armstrong Tue, 14 Apr 2009 15:29:00 +0000 http://blog.melchersystem.com/2009/01/01/alternative-view/#comment-2781 I hope I'm understanding your post correctly about picture of the year and there all agency images. I agree they may be taking the path of least resistance by using the wire services. I agree they may be slightly lazy but in their defense I think their may be a few reasonable explanations. Let me give an example from my own experience. I used to be a photojournalist then DOP for a few years at a local mid size paper in Arizona before getting laid off in January. We would get calls from all kinds from agencies and publications US and abroad asking for photo's. We would try to help but we would cringe at the same time. Trying to get a newspapers photo editors to submit work to large agencies is difficult. In our case the company that owned the East Valley Tribune in Mesa, Arizona was "Freedom Communications". It seemed they could care less about the archive systems or investing one time in it to keep it running. We used out dated computers and an archive system called Javelin mid to late 1990's. Most of the time it didn't work at all. Captions wouldn't stick in the info fields and so on. If it wasn't down completely it was a monumental task to deal with and a huge time consumer. Prior to 1996 there was film. It was archived but without a data base linked to the images. You had to find the actual article look at when it was published then look for the film from that week and go through every photo. Prior to 1993 there are no archives at all. The photographer kept all there film. Their was a time when they had original prints and physical article in the morgue. They were thrown out because people were complaining about the smell of old papers and there allergies. Currently Freedom has the newest DTI system. Works very well but because the company is so cheap they purge the archive every couple of months because they can't afford storage space. Therefore the photo department had to burn DVD as back ups. As you know DVD are not a searchable archive system. Bottom line most newspaper suck when it comes to investing in archiving. We would have our own departments like sports use AP photo as file instead of our staff images because AP's system are so much more efficient. This would create many spirited conversations. Its a shame but if you asked 100 newspapers photo editors to send you there very best pictures from the year. One I wonder how long it would take to get the images and two how many would participate at all. Thank you, Brad Armstrong I hope I’m understanding your post correctly about picture of the year and there all agency images.

I agree they may be taking the path of least resistance by using the wire services. I agree they may be slightly lazy but in their defense I think their may be a few reasonable explanations. Let me give an example from my own experience. I used to be a photojournalist then DOP for a few years at a local mid size paper in Arizona before getting laid off in January.

We would get calls from all kinds from agencies and publications US and abroad asking for photo’s. We would try to help but we would cringe at the same time.

Trying to get a newspapers photo editors to submit work to large agencies is difficult. In our case the company that owned the East Valley Tribune in Mesa, Arizona was “Freedom Communications”. It seemed they could care less about the archive systems or investing one time in it to keep it running. We used out dated computers and an archive system called Javelin mid to late 1990’s. Most of the time it didn’t work at all. Captions wouldn’t stick in the info fields and so on. If it wasn’t down completely it was a monumental task to deal with and a huge time consumer.

Prior to 1996 there was film. It was archived but without a data base linked to the images. You had to find the actual article look at when it was published then look for the film from that week and go through every photo. Prior to 1993 there are no archives at all. The photographer kept all there film. Their was a time when they had original prints and physical article in the morgue. They were thrown out because people were complaining about the smell of old papers and there allergies.

Currently Freedom has the newest DTI system. Works very well but because the company is so cheap they purge the archive every couple of months because they can’t afford storage space. Therefore the photo department had to burn DVD as back ups. As you know DVD are not a searchable archive system. Bottom line most newspaper suck when it comes to investing in archiving.

We would have our own departments like sports use AP photo as file instead of our staff images because AP’s system are so much more efficient. This would create many spirited conversations. Its a shame but if you asked 100 newspapers photo editors to send you there very best pictures from the year. One I wonder how long it would take to get the images and two how many would participate at all. Thank you, Brad Armstrong

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