And, some more, in case you’ve got time to kill:

The March issue of Philadelphia Magazine marks the end of a small epoch for me. Since November of 2005, I’ve been given the honor of making the opening photograph of the calendar section in Philadelphia Magazine. I haven’t made every single one of these images during that time period, but I did complete a lot of them. To give you an idea, I’ve cobbled together 32 images of images that ran as the Pulse opener from my archive, which represents 32 issues of the magazine. This doesn’t mean the section is leaving the magazine, just that I won’t be shooting as many of the images for that section, if at all.

The assignments took on different formats through the 4 years that I did it. When I first began making the images, we were approaching the assignments from a journalistic approach, trying to find newsworthy events for the upcoming month’s issue that we could photograph in a candid, documentary approach.

What made the assignment particularly challenging at that time was making a singular photograph that communicated the story, but also fit the VERY specific format of the page, e.g., the format had to be slightly more vertical than square and with a lot of negative space in the composition to run type in two very specific places. Suffice it to say, I would often find a composition and just sit (sometimes for hours) waiting for that story-telling moment to take place within my little viewfinder. If I missed it, well, I didn’t miss it. It was a challenge and a lot of fun.

Eventually, the magazine decided to start running portraits of newsworthy Philadelphians in the Pulse spot. It offered me a chance to meet some fascinating people in and around Philadelphia. It also afforded me a chance to test my lighting chops. We, my assistants and I, almost always took our little studio on-location to where the subjects lived. The challenge was to create a fairly consistent portrait on the road. The set-up was almost never the same.

As I looked through the images, particularly the older images, I was struck by how many things I had experienced and people that I had met along the way: South Philly men dressed as Brazilian Mardi Gras dancers, Sixers dancers, Rocky in the Italian Market, homicides in the Southwest, rowing on the Schuykill, hanging out of the 56th floor of a skyscraper to photograph a crane operator, Eastern State’s gargoyles, Larry & Alicia, behind-the-scenes of a mall Santa, riding the Zamboni at the Flyers, flower show contestants, monkeys brushing their teeth, crawling around an abandoned roller-coaster from the ’60s, wudder ice, the Wildwood tram, high school rivalries, Comcast’s video wall, a congressional hopeful, an R&B legend, a surfing prodigy, an artists’ granddaughter, and so much more.

What other job in the world gives you access to that? Damn, I love this job sometimes.

Thanks to all the Philly Mag staff and alumni, the subjects and as always my assistants that helped make these images possible.

So, as a little homage to the good times that I had making those photos, I’ve put together a little video slideshow:

Photo by Chris Hamilton. Sweetwater, Texas, rattlesnake round-up. ca. I-Have-No-Idea.

WARNING: This is long and rambling. And this is the NY Times article that spawned the rant.

11-years ago, my first job in photography was as a part-time photographer at the Arlington Morning News in Texas, a small suburban paper owned by the Belo Corp., which also owns the Dallas Morning News. I was laid off, after about a year, when Belo decided to absorb the paper into a zoned section of the DMN. It was subsequently suggested to me by some of the management that I should stay on as a freelancer and wait for a job opening, which was supposedly coming down the pipeline. So I did.

My cohort of freelancers and I at the DMN, of which there were probably 10-15 “full-timers,” often worked 7-days a week, sometimes for month-long stretches. Often we would pick up 3, 4, maybe even 5 assignments a day. And we did a great job. We produced imagery that was often on par with (dare I say, even better than?) the staff photographers. And we did this all for $75 per assignment and without vacation, health insurance, company equipment (more on that in a second), retirement matching, liability insurance, etc. etc. (Texas did have the one advantage of having no income tax.)

This is where the story begins to relate to the NYT story linked above: When all the photography at the paper was still shot on film (ahhh, the glory days) the newspaper gave us loads and loads of film in order to produce the imagery, just like they did staffers. We were also allowed to checkout specialized lenses, which mostly meant long, fast telephotos for sports coverage (imagine 2-3 high school football games) per weekend, maybe even per Friday night, just like staffers. Freelancers were required to come into the office after assignments to process film, have that film edited by staff photo editors and then scan those images using company computers and scanners just like staffers. Essentially, we did everything exactly like a staff photographer did it.

Enter the lawyers. In order to continue working for the paper, freelancers were required to invest in digital equipment in order to fit into the new work flow of the paper (I only recently paid off my debt from that initial investment in cameras)  and, most importantly, they were requiring us to sign a new contract, which made it official that we acknowledged we were Independent Contractors in addition to signing away our rights to the photographs we made for the paper. The dreaded Work-for-Hire (mwah hahahaha). I’m proud to say, that for a brief period, some of us freelancers actually stood up to the management and rejected the contract. We had a month hiatus, which my friend Matt and I used to go on a crazy road trip through….Arkansas? Hmmm, that now sounds lame. In the end, we barely got any concessions (a little more money per assignment and co-ownership of the images), but at least we made a little stand.

For me, that was the beginning of the end of newspaper photographer. (sigh.) Eventually, I was denied a job when it came up. I yelled, ranted and ran away to Mexico for a bit. Came back. Held (hold?) grudges. Fell into the same routine, only for a larger paper, the NYT. And then wised up and realized that I was in a cycle of working my ass off and producing good photography for absolutely no money and no real appreciation. I finally broke the cycle, realized the value in my photography and told people they could piss off if they wanted me to sign away rights and undervalue myself and my work. That doesn’t mean I’m not guilty of still accepting the odd under-paid job or not negotiating terms to my best interests, but for the most part, I don’t.

In the end, I’m better off for never having gotten a job. It was a long and rough path for me to get here, but at least it happened when I was young, with no more responsibilities than feeding and housing myself and a dog. I never tasted a steady paycheck so I never got accustomed to one.

A number of years ago, I remember reading a column by the NPPA contributor Mark Loundy on the topic of increased use of low-paid freelancers in newspapers and how that fact foretold the end of the staffer as we knew it. And we’re seeing this come to fruition now in both photography departments and in the writing ranks. Why continue to pay benefits and taxes for staffers when you can get the same quality work for waaaaaay less? I’ve been approached by numerous newly laid off or bought-out photographers and writers wanting to pick my brain about freelancing. Or, even worse, I see them continuing to work for their former employers as freelancers for the same shitty wages that caused this whole thing in the first place (sigh.)

I hope that this crackdown on companies by the Obama administration will bleed over into the media world. Maybe if the media world had to treat it’s freelancers more fairly than maybe it might give them more incentive to hold onto their staffers. Ultimately, though, in the end it’s up to us as freelancers to understand the value of what we bring to these companies and simply reject their offers for terrible pay, treatment and contractual terms.

Oh and since this is a photography blog, I thought I’d just end with some pictures from those glory days:

Of course, when Colin’s visiting, for any decent amount of time, it’s become tradition to reshoot his acting headshots. This is not something I do for anyone other than Colin. And of course, this time around, he and I put it off until the absolute last day we both had time to do it.

So, as an excuse to post some images to my blog, here are some images from our 2-hour, bare-bones shoot. (We didn’t even get to finish one glass of whiskey during the shoot!) He IS a handsome devil, ain’t he. Check him out, he’s on The Facebook. I’m sure he’s going to be the next big thing, or at least star in a commercial or two someday.

Faith Hill retouched in Redbook (source: jezebel.com)

NY Times Opinion Video on Photo Retouching

The NY Times has a decent read today by Steven Erlanger about a French lawmaker, Valérie Boyer, who has:

…created a small furor [in France] and abroad with her latest proposal: a draft law that would require all digitally altered photographs of people used in advertising be labeled as retouched.

As a photographer who does only minimal retouching (i.e., occasionally reducing wrinkles and blemishes on the skin of portrait subjects and then usually only for those who don’t get the benefit of a professional make-up artist) I’d be curious how the law defines “digitally altered”. If I increase contrast or exposure or change the color of the image, would that constitute digital altering the image? Would adding “digital make-up” be altering the image? Wouldn’t having a professional make-up artist on set (physically) reducing wrinkles and blemishes with make-up be altering the image?

I agree that advertising and magazines have and will continue to go overboard with altering images (typically with female celebrities and models). But I’m not sure we should be creating more laws to curb current (and temporary?) cultural issues.

The narrator of the NY Times video (linked above) makes a valid point that if magazines aren’t going to admit to the extent of the retouching in an image then publishing the retoucher’s name might one half solution. And, on that note, I would agree that these retouchers (illustrators?) often deserve as much credit as the photographer does.

An interesting debate none-the-less.

Ryan (left) + Ryan (right)

We’re a handsome pair, no? No? You’re right.

Just wanted to let anyone paying attention to this space that I’ll be traveling to Chicago and Madison, WI, from tomorrow, the 10th through July 15. If you have any photographic needs from one of those places, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. Otherwise, I’ll see you on the flip side.

SIDE NOTE: My new Philadelphia Polling Project website is almost finished. Keep an eye out for mailers and announcements in the next week or so.

Thanks to Colin Lenton for pointing me to it.