Magnum Photos website vs Steve Huff blog

[furcafe]

Of course photographers who display prints deserve respect, but completely ignoring digital display & web distribution is pointless, too, like trying to pretend it's 1985.

This is exactly what I'm talking about.

Any photographer who puts their work out there in print deserves respect, even if its a blurb book. Filling up flicker servers with countless photos is easy, very easy, and unfortunately pointless, its like using an eye dropper to put water in the pacific.

 

[fstops]

i agree with a lot of what you say fstops but i think some of it is too extreme.. mostly the bit about online work.

When everyone and their pets started uploading photos online, the logical outcome has been a complete devaluation of photos (the more of something, the lesser its value). So what if thousands look at your photos online but none of them remember it? I mean how many photos have you looked at online, and how many of them do you remember? How many photos that you have seen in print from are still in your memory?

Look at the photos of your favorite photographers, even in high resolution on the net, and then go and look at one of their books, let alone large prints, you'll find the answer.

 

[fstops]

Of course photographers who display prints deserve respect, but completely ignoring digital display & web distribution is pointless, too, like trying to pretend it's 1985.

Don't ignore anything, just don't put all your eggs in one basket/all pictures on flicker or like and hope you'll be "discovered".

You won't be discovered on the internet even if you have something special, because there are too many trying to do the same, and of course there is the "perception" that if its on the internet its crap. I disagree with that, but that is how it is because of the glut of all the photos online.



Everyone can post an image online, not everyone can make a print.

 

[jsrockit]

Any photographer who puts their work out there in print deserves respect, even if its a blurb book. Filling up flicker servers with countless photos is easy, very easy, and unfortunately pointless, its like using an eye dropper to put water in the pacific.

Perhaps you are assuming everyone wants to make it in the photography world? Many people are satisfied with sharing their photos with their friends and family. You just can't generalize photography and its many uses this way.

 

[paulfish4570]

i look at the magnum site every now and then. but i have to say, most reportage photography (and that is what magnum does), no matter how well done and no matter the event photographed, does not blow up my skirt. i lived reportage photography as a newspaper editor for 30 years. did i work with magnum photographers? nah, but i worked with some dat-gummed good ones.
where is the "magnum" site for experimental photogrphy? is there one? for night landscapes? for anything that does not require a face in almost every photo?
i love dipping into PKR's camera work entries. lots of gravel there, but some jewels, too.
back to magnum: i wonder what the ratio is of smiles to anything else on a human face. just sayin' ...

 

[fstops]

Perhaps you are assuming everyone wants to make it in the photography world? Many people are satisfied with sharing their photos with their friends and family. You just can't generalize photography and its many uses this way.

Yes, those are called normal people, they don't call themselves photographers, and don't usually join photography forums.

 

[Lss]

Everyone can post an image online, not everyone can make a print.

Making a print can be the same exact process as uploading a picture to a web page or a photo app or whatever. The difference is that you need to pay for it (the web page or app may not be free to user either) and wait a couple of days for your print to arrive in the mail. It takes money and patience, not skill to have a print.

So, I guess you mean more by the word print or by the idea of making a print here. Is this about digital vs. film or what?

 

[fstops]

A print is a print, digital or film, wet or dry.

 

[jsrockit]

Yes, those are called normal people, they don't call themselves photographers, and don't usually join photography forums.

There are plenty of people on this forum that do not consider themselves photographers.

 

[jsrockit]

It takes money and patience, not skill to have a print.

What makes you say this?

 

[Lss]

What makes you say this?

I referred to online print ordering being like putting pictures on Flickr/whatever. You need to pay a few cents per print and wait a day or three for your print to arrive. Same thing with handing in your film for printing. Of course, a print you make yourself demands skill. A skill valuable for any photographer, a skill not necessary for every photographer.

 

[grantb]

If you visit magnum photos website (www.magnumphotos.com) there is not a single response to any of the pictures or stories posted. If you visit Steve Huff blog (www.stevehuffphoto.com), which I'm using as an example, every post has more than fifty responses to it on an average.

To me this pretty much sums up today's photography, the photography gear itself is photography, photography as an art or medium of self-expression is pretty much dead.

With a quick visit alexa.com, you can see that Magnum is visited by about 0.002% of web users and and Huff is visited by 0.005%. So Huffs site is only a little more than twice as popular, when it comes to number of users.

So statistically speaking, photography is only half dead.

 

[jsrockit]

I referred to online print ordering being like putting pictures on Flickr/whatever. You need to pay a few cents per print and wait a day or three for your print to arrive. Same thing with handing in your film for printing. Of course, a print you make yourself demands skill. A skill valuable for any photographer, a skill not necessary for every photographer.

I would say that it takes skill to make a print even if I ship it out.... I still have do post processing to ensure it'll look right when printed.

 

[fstops]

With a quick visit alexa.com, you can see that Magnum is visited by about 0.002% of web users and and Huff is visited by 0.005%. So Huffs site is only a little more than twice as popular, when it comes to number of users.

So statistically speaking, photography is only half dead.

That is two-an-half times more traffic.



From the same website, a far more telling chart:

 

[jwc57]

I would say that it takes skill to make a print even if I ship it out.... I still have do post processing to ensure it'll look right when printed.

I agree. Even after all the post-work, I order samples before I order the large prints, make any final adjustments (burn, dodge, etc.), and only then order the final print. Getting digital just right is a lot of work, and skill in my experience, and since I use an online service takes days.

When I shot color film for clients, I used a great lab that worked with photographers, even calling you to come in and go over any problems they had or to get a better idea of you wanted for the final result.

 

[furcafe]

We don't disagree on this point: putting all your eggs in 1 basket is generally not a good strategy. There have been people who get discovered on flickr & similar sites (& even I was once able to get a nice corporate assignment off of flickr), but without any special skills (marketing, photographic/aesthetic, or otherwise), just putting stuff on the internet is mostly like playing the lottery.

However, making good prints, especially digital prints, is not that difficult now & even the art gallery world recognizes the quality of digital prints (though some collectors will pay a premium for traditional handmade wet prints, wet plates, etc.). If there is such a thing as image inflation (& I agree w/you that there is on a macro level but I think it's just a continuation of a trend that started w/the invention of photography itself), it also applies to prints as there's never been an easier time than now to get high quality prints, magazines, & books published.

For me, the bottom line is that quality & talent are always what matter the most; always have & always will. They're the only things that have ever truly differentiated the great from the merely good & the mediocre.

Don't ignore anything, just don't put all your eggs in one basket/all pictures on flicker or like and hope you'll be "discovered".

You won't be discovered on the internet even if you have something special, because there are too many trying to do the same, and of course there is the "perception" that if its on the internet its crap. I disagree with that, but that is how it is because of the glut of all the photos online.



Everyone can post an image online, not everyone can make a prints.

 

[steveniphoto]

When everyone and their pets started uploading photos online, the logical outcome has been a complete devaluation of photos (the more of something, the lesser its value). So what if thousands look at your photos online but none of them remember it? I mean how many photos have you looked at online, and how many of them do you remember? How many photos that you have seen in print from are still in your memory?

Look at the photos of your favorite photographers, even in high resolution on the net, and then go and look at one of their books, let alone large prints, you'll find the answer.

believe me i do buy photo books whenever i have spare cash to. im not denying that physical prints > online uploads but at the same time there are those who have a flickr/500px/personal site that have a carefully edited batch of work. i know a few photographers who make prints in darkroom and scan them online.. what about them?

i'm well aware of the flickr effect that has taken over.. adding to a billion groups, whoring out for favs/comments/etc but isnt that caused from the availability of good cameras nowadays? its not like a decade or so ago when nobody uploaded anything online. the fact that a used dslr can be bought for a couple hundred bucks just means that everybody and their moms is gonna hop on the photography bandwagon.. these people aren't serious enough to make prints or whatnot.

to answer your last question, its honestly a split. i have seen a few exhibitions and flipped through plenty of books but there are also plenty of photos ive seen uploaded online that are always in the back of my mind.

i see your point and agree with you in most aspects but i dont think that making prints vs uploading online has anything to do with skill unless we're talking about physically making a print in darkroom.

 

[rxmd]

That is two-an-half times more traffic.

From the same website, a far more telling chart:

You have just discovered that there are different metrics for the same thing. You are counting visitors. You might also go and see how much money Ken Rockwell is making from their website and how much money Magnum is making from their image library. That would probably be a rather different metric.

The more interesting question here is: what does that really say about the death of photography as a medium of self-expression? Evidently there is an assumption that photography is somehow dying; so if you measure how dead it is now, how do you measure how alive it used to be? Going back to 1962 and comparing the print run or the number of letters to the editor of Popular Photography to the number of phone calls to Magnum?

Maybe something else is the case, namely that it is intrinsically useless to compare the number of people interested in popular reviews to the number of people buying image rights.

 

[skibeerr]

Irrespective of personal opinions, if we don't acknowledge that gear has become a sort of cancer to our own creativity, let alone photography at large then we're deceiving ourselves.


Here is one small step that might help:

-Next time you see a guy/girl with a camera trying to be a photographer, don't ask him what camera or lens(es) his using, ask him if he has some example of his work on him. And carry a sample of your own work with you.

You started of by rubbing against the hairs here on this good old RF gearhead site.

However your statements make sense (Emra excepted)

I find myself in a continues state of photographic uchikomi and gazing at good images the likes of Magnum etc. confronts me with my failing.

We compensate the lack of driving skills by indulging in GAS, forever assembling the perfect kit or longing for the peace/zen of "one body, one lens"

Steve Huff , and RFF for that matter, are warm nests.

 

[Turtle]

I'd probably just have some beers and talk about whatever came up. Not everyone wants their brain picked.

Sure, but if you are going to talk photography...