Scene on the Road

I shot the actors Liz Filios and Ben Dibble this week during the Arden Theatre rehearsal of their new production of Leonard Bernstein's operetta Candide that opens on Wednesday.

My picture won't make it into the little file we all carry in our memory banks that define who we are and what we all share. But in one way it is just like those images - Iwo Jima, the lone man blocking the tanks at Tiananmen Square, prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison - it freezes time. In this case, the still picture captures that exact moment Cunegonde makes her move on the Baron's bastard nephew, the clueless Candide, before their dreams of a happily married life together are dashed as they're caught in flagrante and Candide is banished from the castle in Westphalia setting him off on a journey of unpleasant adventures and tragedy. Whew.

I have always had a soft spot in my heart for Candide. It was the first piece of French literature I read, and one of the best plays we did when I worked (in the periphery) with a community theater years ago. So I have to wonder if my faith in the power and value of still photography is the same optimism that Voltaire satirized in his novella on which Bernstein based the musical.

The doom and gloom for print media continues nonstop. It is hard to escape from "The Future" if you talk with any photojournalist these days. Everywhere, in blogs, in newspapers, on the web, and among photographers is the talk that still photography in newspapers and magazines is dead.

Maybe it's that Age of Enlightenment philosopher's optimism, but let’s say all that's really dying is the way we think about photography. To quote Brian Storm, who founded MediaStorm, to create social documentary photojournalism projects for new media: "How can you kill something that people will do for free?"

I believe there will always be a use for editorial photography; we just don't know exactly what it will be, because like everything else today, it has never existed before.

One of the new things is so simple that any newspaper photographer should have thought of it. Instead, Alan Taylor, a web programmer at the Boston Globe, created The Big Picture, with huge, dramatic, vivid still photos that fill up your entire computer screen. It debuted June 1 and in its first two weeks almost reached 1.5 million pageviews. It also created such a stir that before the end of the summer dozens of Big Picture-inspired imitators were popping up at dozens of other newspapers - even the Wall Street Journal.

A lot of people think that because the tools are getting better and easier to use that anybody can shoot great pictures, and that is what is contributing to the current angst about photography. Throughout my entire career I have met hundreds of amateur photographers who have had newer and better camera equipment than I've used. None of that has changed. It's still the person looking through the viewfinder that matters the most. What has changed with all the file sharing and easy access is that everyone now has a greater appreciation of what it takes to make a good still photograph. I think readers will want to see - and enjoy - good photographs even more.

One of the photos I appreciated most recently was this Republican Convention stage image shot by Damon Winter at The New York Times. He has done a lot of good work recently, both at home, and on the campaign trail with Barack Obama. But from the first time I glanced at it on the rack in the Wawa, to looking at it closer with the doll-sized Laura Bush, it made me smile. It reminded me of the picture of Nancy Reagan waving to her Ronnie on film at the 1984 GOP convention - with much better resolution on the president's projected image and the size of the screen.

As long as I'm looking at the still photos from the campaigns, Stephen Crowley, the Times' photographer covering John McCain also has a slide show.

I also went back to look at some of the Olympic photographer blogs, curious how many had continued blogging when they'd arrived back home (most blogs ended when they left China). I was mostly struck by how similar and unmemorable most of the images are now.

Someday there will be an Olympics where an athlete will be on the brink of winning nine gold medals, and all the Michael Phelps pictures will be resurrected. But until that happens, what will be the images we remember and continue to see as the China of Tiananmen Square in 1989 is changed by the Olympics in 2008?

I'll bet it's the pictures like this one by Kenneth Jarekce. I came across his Olympic image while re-visiting his blog, Mostly True.

Jarekce is a magazine photographer, someone who has been hired for years to shoot still pictures that will make readers stop at the newsstand and chose the magazine with his photo on the cover. Or read the story under his picture, even though it illustrates something that was on tv, or the web, or in a newspaper days earlier. Because you're seeing something unique he saw, a captured moment often unnoticed by others, some even with cameras.

In blogging about how he is inspired, Jarekce writes, "Every time I go out to shoot I always pretend that I'm doing a twenty page piece for the best magazine in the world. That's the name, BEST MAGAZINE IN THE WORLD." He admits it's not a very catchy title, but that how he gets moving. Remember. It's not the cameras or the technology, but what you see out there.

"Feel free to try it yourself," he adds.