With massive layoffs at newspapers and TV news departments, photojournalists and videojournalists are legitimately complaining that their industry is passing them by. Even the best and brightest are being sent to pasture. Top newspapers in our nation's capital have recently lost the award-winning talents of luminaries such as Travis Fox and Pierre Kattar (Washington Post) and Mary Calvert and Janet Reeves (Washington Times) -- a horrifying scenario that's reverberating in newsrooms throughout the land.
Every photography and journalism trade publication wails, "How can this be happening?" and "What can we do to stop the bloodbath?" Sure, we know all the economic reasons, but it's so... unfair! To rob these superstars of their forum, and deprive audiences of their work is so... wrong!
Then we read this recent blog post by marketing superguru Seth Godin. Though he was addressing mass marketers, his wisdom applies to visual journalists as well: "Just because you're good at something doesn't mean the market cares any longer."
He imparts cold truths by reminding us of the career of comic genius Groucho Marx.
The Marx Brothers were great at vaudeville. Live comedy in a theatre. And then the market for vaudeville was killed by the movies. Groucho didn't complain about this or argue that people should respect the hard work he and his brothers had put in. No, they went into the movies.
Then the market for movies like the Marx Brothers were making dried up. Groucho didn't start trying to fix the market. Instead, he saw a new medium and went there. His TV work was among his best (and certainly most lucrative).
It's extremely difficult to repair the market.
It's a lot easier to find a market that will respect and pay for the work you can do. Technology companies have been running this race for years. Now, all of us must.
If some cultural shift has turned what you do into a commodity, don't argue. Find a new place before the competition does. It's not easy or fair, but it's true.
OK, all you visual storytellers. Now that your stock photos sell for pennies, media staff positions are drying up, and "citizen photographers" are cornering the market with shoddy goods at the right price (free!) -- what are you going to do with your talents?
What's your plan?
Are there avenues still open for you to explore? Probably not. Those days are gone, kaput -- get used to it, live with it, deal with it. Can you forge new avenues, create new paths, blaze new trails? Pioneer and conquer new territory, like Groucho did? You bet your life.
One common complaint about Flip camcorders is that they don't have jacks for external mikes, so you have to hold them extremely close to your subjects if you want to get good audio. Other common quibbles are that they have limited 2x digital zoom, and that without image stablization, most handheld shots can look wobbly.
You don't often hear Flip shooters yearn for a wider angle lens, but that's what Russ Roca wanted, and that's what he got -- by figuring out how to attach one himself.
Southern California-based Roca, who combines his passions for bicycling and photography, reports:
The lens on the Flip is about 38mm by most reports. It’s a pretty boring/normal focal length. Not quite the length for narrow depth of field and not wide enough to make dynamic feeling wide shots. I’m a photojournalist at heart and I see everything wide. If I could live with one lens it would probably be a 24mm.
So Roca hacked the Flip to better accommodate his needs.
I bought a cheapie Sunpak wide-angle lens adapter kit made for more sophisticated camcorders. It came with a series of step-down rings. I took one of the rings and roughed it up with sandpaper (from a patch kit) and superglued it to the front of the Flip. (Be sure to glue it so you can still remove the battery cover!). This gave the front element some threads so I could screw on the wide angle lens!
Now you have a Flip Ultra that can shoot a “normal” focal length that you can convert into a wide-angle action machine. It gives your footage a bit more dynamic feel and it also mitigates the small camera shake quite a bit! I used this setup for my recent trip and it worked great.
Here's his demonstration of the difference between the lenses:
And here's a cycling video he shot with his self-designed Flip wide angle:
UPDATE: Roca is on an extended bike tour of the U.S. with his girlfriend, "with the goal of connecting with, and collecting the stories of, people who followed a calling to live their lives in unique ways."
Through photos, interviews, sketches, hand-bound books, and an extensive web presence, Laura (an art jewelry maker) and Russ (a photographer) will compile example after example of lives less ordinary – independent artisans and makers, small business proprietors, community activists and more.
Roca's ingenuity and curiosity should carry him far. You can follow his adventures on his multimedia blog, The Path Less Pedaled.
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