[Leica] Where Have All the Skilled Buggy-Whip Makers Gone?

[afirkin at afirkin.com (Alastair Firkin)]

Marc, this reply will require me more time and energy than I have now at 
work, so its archived. Quick scan suggests we are in agreement and I look 
forward to the fine print. I do agree that change has been "fast" for a long 
time. In Radiology the 1970's ushered in an enormous change however that had 
not occured in the 75 years previously. X-rays changed and "moved", but the 
basic principles and the extent they could be used in Medicine did not alter 
too quickly: 3 generations of Radiologists could survive on single volume 
books. Ultra sound CT MRI and advanced nuclear scanning has made the changes 
since the late 70's far faster and the demands far greater "in some ways". 
The degree of dedication is no different, but the scope of specialty has 
changed. So its not just change, its the effect the change has. Change has 
not spead up, but the effect of change has in my mind. So if you bought a 
Rollei in 1950, you could and probably would still be using it in 1960 (OK 
with newer film) and even if you bought another camera, it was likely to be 
similar. You had time to pick a favourite emulsion and use it for years. 

The effect of digital on the photographic market was more overwhelming than 
the introduction of a new film emulsion. It really was revolution rather 
than evolution. I don't think modern work forces will use skills learnt to 
make buggy whips for as long in their individual careers, just as my skills 
with PHotoshop Version 2/3 are now really cutting edge now. 

So I agree the rate of change may not be so much "faster" than more 
"effective". I do believe that when I started Medicine I could carry 
knowledge for about 10 years: I now estimate that I would be almost useless 
in 5 if I did not keep studying and I'm sure that is the same for all walks 
of life. I may not have to keep as much in the front of my mind as the 
technology can "remind" me, but I have to be able to use the technology

Cheers

--- marcsmall@comcast.net wrote:

From: Marc James Small <marcsmall@comcast.net>
To: Leica Users Group <lug@leica-users.org>
Subject: [Leica] Where Have All the Skilled Buggy-Whip Makers Gone?
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:52:36 -0400

At 11:06 PM 4/9/2008, Alastair Firkin wrote:
 >This is a great and very thought provoking post. Technology is
 >threatening many occupations. Artists have always had to struggle in
 >becoming recognized, and this is another issue, but the working
 >photographer is "suffering" what skilled medical typists and those in
 >the recording industry are suffering. Medicine is no different. Newer
 >techniques threaten the viability of practitioners whose skills become
 >obsolete. Once, university training would set you up for life, but the
 >rate of change is the issue.

Alastair

You raise many fine and worthy points, but bear 
in mind that the pace of technological change has 
been exceedingly rapid for centuries, and the 
plaints of those displaced by new methods and 
means go back at least since the time of the Luddites close to 200 years 
back.

The telephone was invented in 1876.  In 1880, the 
Republican Party in the US nominated James 
Garfield for President, and he was the first 
nominee to be advised by telephone of his 
selection to be the Party's standard-bearer.  My 
grandfather was born a week after the Convention 
and was named for Garfield (yes, yes, my 
grandfather was born in 1880 and was named 
Garfield Small, and my father, born in 1916, was 
James Garfield Small).  My point in this 
genealogical exercise is to point out that my 
grandfather was born when the telephone and 
typewriter and Linotype and elevator were brand 
new to the world, yet he lived to see man walk on 
the Moon.  When he died in 1976, aetate 95, I was 
serving in the Army:  at that time, we were 
phasing out typewriters for word processors and 
typewriters would be out of the Army's Orderly 
Rooms in another decade.  Think of the 
technological change between 1880 and 
1976.  Certainly, the pace of change over the 
past 95 years has been no greater.

This conversation is really a muddle of conflicting threads:

--  where are the snows of yesteryear, and didn't 
we do things better back in the Longago?

--  technical expertise versus technical change

--  economics in the dying world of journalism

--  the role of the dedicated photographer-as-artist

--  career paths for aspiring commercial photographers

On the first point, I have little to say.  I have 
not successfully made the jump to digital but, 
then, I am retired and, for that matter, do not 
take many pictures these days as I am still to 
build a new dark room.  Up to the first years of 
the last century, there were a lot of 
manufacturers producing horse-drawn wagons in 
quantity.  Only ONE of these concerns, 
Studebaker, made the jump to automobiles, and 
Studebaker has been gone these 45 years or 
so.  Some things were done better in the old 
days, certainly, but other things were not.  Most 
things are done a lot better today:  in general 
terms, most of us live lives substantially better 
and at substantially less cost than did our 
parents.   In 1880, agriculture was the most 
labor-intensive industry in the US and, by 1970, 
it had become one of the most efficient, and the 
laboring sector had fallen from something on the 
order of 30% of the population to less than 5%.

On the second point, those who stay on top of the 
technical heap remain competitive, and those who 
fail to do so drop by the wayside, and that is 
just the way of things.  In the 1930's, photo 
editors were distressed when their folks insisted 
on using Rolleiflex TLR's and the next generation 
were horrified by the spreading use of Leicas and 
Contaces and then Nikons.  On the Questar List, 
we recently had a discussion on the spreading 
influence of computers, and it was interesting to 
note the number of folks who first came into 
contact with computers in the 1960's and continue 
to use modern computers today.  Those guys have 
kept their technical skills honed.

My late ex-wife first went to work in 1963 as a 
typist in a steno pool at an insurance agency in 
Cleveland, Ohio.  She knew shorthand.  She knew 
how to type.  She was a bit intimidated by the 
IBM electrics of the era but, shucks, I've used 
these myself and they clack and wang and bang and 
take half an hour to warm up and, even then, can 
kick back most meanly.  (The Selectric, that last 
of analog typewriters, was a God-send for its 
simplicity when it appeared in 1965 or so, and 
the Wheelwriter an entirely new universe but, as 
is the case with my K&E Log-Log Duplex Decitrig, 
where the hell HAVE the snows of yessteryear 
gone?)  Of course, she had to wear elbow-length 
white gloves, below-the-knee skirts, and high 
heels every day.  And where are steno pools 
today?  My mother was a G-Girl, a term she hated, 
during the Second War:  at that time, the US 
government employed a cowflop-load of typists, 
and the US Army Clerk-Typist position used to be 
common.  I doubt that the US Army even has any 
71B's left on the rolls anymore.  Who needed 
stenographers once dictation gear came out 
(though a good steno could whump the hell out of 
a typist using dictation recording gear every 
time, and more accurately)?  And who needed 
clerk-typists once the Army did away with typewriters for most purposes?

On the third point, print journalism is 
effectively dead, though it hasn't learned of its 
own death yet and the funeral is not yet 
scheduled.  How many of you read a daily paper -- 
I do, but I am very much in a minority even here, 
I suspect.  Slashes are being made everywhere to 
preserve some remaining last gasps so long as the 
corpse can continue to made to look alive, but it 
is dead.  (In a similar vein, Fletcher Pratt 
began his history of the first years of the 19th 
century in the US, THE HEROIC YEARS, with a 
comment on the results of the elections for 
President of 1800:  "John Adams was 
dead.  Through a foregiveable oversight, they 
neglected to bury him for another quarter of a 
century, but John Adams was dead." The same 
certainly applies to print journalism today.

This has had huge impact over the entire 
industry.  The head of the Tribune Group (Chicago 
Trib, LA Times, &c) recently challenged his staff 
to tell him why their Washington Bureau needed 67 
folks.  Instead of dealing honestly with the 
reality that the Tribune Group is leaking money 
at a rate which would have led to admiration by 
Zeiss Ikon in the 1960's and that SOMETHING has 
to be done to plug the leaky life-boat before it 
founders, journalists nationwide are jumping up 
in horror and protest to speak of this "attack on 
journalistic ethics" and "the bean-counters' 
assault on professional excellence" and the 
like.  As we used to say back in the day, "if you 
aren't part of the solution, then you are part of 
the problem", and such is the case here.  In the 
end, either the Tribune Group will axe most of 
its DC Bureau and tell the others to get about 
their jobs, or it will founder and America will 
lose great newspapers will all 67 of these guys 
will be out of a job.  Tough times call for tough solutions.

Note the failure of most newspapers and many 
magazines to fail to update their 
plants.  Compare, say, the Roanoke (Virginai) 
Times with the Richmond (Virginia) 
Times-Dispatch.  The Roanoke Times recently 
invested a gazillion dollars, and six-pence (for 
those of you who know your Cecil B DeMille 
movies!), in Heidelberg presses.  It took them 
almost two years to get them to run properly but, 
by God, this is a newspaper with a crisp, clear 
look, with almost all of its pictures in color, 
vibrant, real, attractive, albeit with an 
editorial policy which would have embarrassed N. 
Lenin, while the Times-Dispatch recently built a 
state-of-the-art press building but held onto its 
old presses, so I now enjoy a daily paper which 
is dirty, muddy,, has very little color, and 
where I occasionally have to use a magnifying 
glass (I am well-equipped there, as the son of a 
gemologist and as a photographer), albeit their 
editorial policy is only mildly Bolshevik.

The fourth point is the toughest.  Photograph IS 
art and quite a few really talented photographers 
have gotten to make solid livings from their 
skill.  But, in the end, if the market isn't 
there, that's the way of the world and so be 
it.  To draw a minor parallel:  in the early 
1700's, the British polity was split by scandals 
involving the number of skilled woodcarvers 
creating elaborate figure-heads and stern frames 
and the like.  They were almost all canned when 
George I came to the throne, that German 
usurper.  And these wood-carvers, having lost 
their fat and well-paid government sinecures, had 
to go out in the REAL world and meat 
facts-as-they-are.  Most of them ended up carving 
reredoses and the like for Anglican churches 
around the world:  I believe that St John's 
Parish here in Richmond, Virginia, has some such carvings in its structure.

I do acknowledge that a lot of newspapers are now 
swapping credits for amateur shots but understand 
the flip-flop on this:  That fan cannot get a 
press pass to attend a press conference by the 
Governor or get inside the police lines when they 
snip the ribbon on the new Mayor's Office.  So, 
yes, there is still a need for photographers 
capable of getting the shot who have the 
connections necessary to get such credentials and 
that is true in Nashville, Tennessee, and Dodge 
City, Kansas, and Lexington, Virginia.  No 
newspaper can survive without at least a couple 
of regular photographers, whether they be 
staffers or hired guns.  I don't care HOW good 
your Photoshop sills may be -- and mine are 
non-existent -- but you just cannot take a 
cell-phone shot of Hillary Clinton giving a 
campaign speech from the back third of the crowd 
and make it a front-page illustration.  You need 
a shot taken by someone -- professional or 
amateur -- who has the gear and knows the gear 
and who can get inside the police lines.

Most artists starve in garrets for a 
reason:  after all, a prophet is without honor in 
his own land.  Most photographers, even back in 
the Day, never went commercial.  In today's 
world, yes, it can be tough, but think of all of 
those Skilled Buggy-Whip craftsmen whose jobs 
evaporated in the US between 1900 and 
1920.  Tough toenails, kid.  Live with it.

On the last point, niche photographic career 
fields survive and will survive.  I do not see a 
day when Hermes will want its advertising 
pictures e-mailed to them by some kid with a P&S 
digital camera.  And most technical work -- 
scientific, military, medical, industrial -- is 
wide open.  What has been severely challenged is 
photo-journalism, and that has never employed, I 
would guess, an educated guess, mind you, more 
than 20% of those who call themselves 
professional photographers.  (SHUDDERBUG ran an 
interesting and very minor article around 1993 or 
1994 pointing out that about half of the 
professional photographers in the US were 
employed in producing company, school, and baby 
shots, and, pray, hold your artistic 
snobberies:  some of the better-able of these 
folks made six-figure salaries as they had it all 
down to a matter of time and process, and they 
held their artistic thoughts to themselves while 
shooting the GUL Corporation Drunken Softball 
Game at the Company Picnic in 1994 or cranking 
out 12,000 prints in December, 1997, of Mom and 
Dad, Big Brother, New Baby, and Family Dog.  I've 
known some of these guys -- one told me once that 
he HATED photography-as-art and only had original 
oils on the walls of his house, though I never saw this in person.

If a 17-year-old High School senior came up to me 
today and asked about the possibilities of a 
career in photography, I would advise him to take 
a lot of classes on digital photography and 
computers -- PHOTOSHOP and the like and WHICH 
computer gear you need and WHICH digital cameras 
are proper for a given job.  And then I would 
suggest that he angle in on just what he wanted 
to do, and concentrate on that.  Portrait 
work?  Lab photography?  Processing and 
interpreting KEYHOLE shots for the US 
military?  Go for the gold.  But, yes, there will 
always be openings for capable 
photo-journalists:.  Folks today make buggy-whips 
and make a living at it.  And there will always 
be openings for photo-journalists.

A couple of final notes:

--  H Beam Piper noted the possibility of these 
changes in journalism in his 1963 FOUR-DAY 
PLANET, while Phil Dick spoke for years about the 
replacement of the daily newspaper with the 
"homeopap", which you would get out of your 
computer terminal every morning.  Other Science 
Fiction authors suggested the same (SF does not 
"predict":  authors simply develop a cohesive set 
of background conditions.  And, after all, these are just bloody stories!)

--  I have shot pictures since 1961.  I have most 
if not all of my archive and, unlike Weston, I 
will not burn them though I suspect my son will 
have a week-long orgy doing so once I shuffle off 
this mortal coil.  Every so often I get a shot 
published.  Some I have done on commercial 
contract, including a couple of CD covers and 
publicity shots and the like, and some I have 
sold as I was at the right place at the right 
time.  And sometimes I have had the right picture 
someone needed, and I have let them run the shot 
with a by-line, which has, with one lone mistake, 
been given -- the lone mistake being a credit to 
"Mary Small" back in 1997.  My sister would have 
appreciated the credit but she had left our 
environs twenty years earlier and was, at that 
point, busy arguing in the Hereafter with my 
Grandmother.  I normally carry a camera with 
me.  And it is usually loaded -- meaning "it has 
film in it" and bear in mind that I am digitally 
challenged.  If I happen upon a scene of 
interest, I will shoot some shots.  If I feel 
that it is newsworthy, I will contact the local 
papers and offer it to them for a credit and 
their paying for the processing of the film and, 
every eight or nine months, I get a hit.  Wow, as another noted.

--  I live in the Richmond, Virginia - 
Petersburg, Virginia corridor, actually a tad 
closer to Petersburg (which a bunch of my folks 
spent a lot of years back in the US Civil War 
trying to return to the Stars and Stripes).  We 
have a bunch of neighborhood rip-'n'-read local 
publications, put out weekly,   None have a staff 
photographer but all will pay (price unknown) for 
shots of events such as Board of Supervisor 
meetings and the like.  The bigger events they 
hive out to contract photographers, and I am too 
lazy to jump through the hoops necessary to do 
this.  I am retired, and the thought of getting 
out of bed at 6 in the AM to cover some 
ribbon-cutting offends my proprieties.  I will 
get up that early one Saturday a month for the 
Virginia Defense Force, but that is the limit of my interest.

--  Those interested in the topic of economic 
shifts might consider public 
libraries.  Circulation figures have plummeted 
dramatically for decades, and so local-government 
politicos are hard-pressed to explain new 
libraries as more than prestige items.  The 
libraries which have done well have aggressively 
worked out a web interface.  I miss the days when 
I went to the library to browse but, then, I can 
now find a book mentioned on the 'Net which I 
wish to read, and can then reserve it on-line so 
that I can drive by my local branch once its in 
to pick it up.  Cool stuff.  They also do great 
with DVD's and Books-on-Disk.  My local library 
flubbed getting the latest release of MIDSOMMER 
MURDERS early but damned if they didn't get the 
entire new release for the next season of FOYLE'S 
WAR two months before its official release;  of 
course, I am 28 out of 30 or the like on all four 
right now, meaning I will not be boring my wife 
by forcing her to watch the experiences of the 
Hastings CID in 1944 for quite a few weeks.

--  Every so often, I get fired up to do such a 
long and undoubtedly turgid statement.  I 
probably should BLOG but I have no idea how to 
BLOG:  I am challenged by a lot of modern 
technology.  The horrifying part of that is that 
I am only 58 and that my people live well into 
their 80's or 90's before croaking from terminal 
nastiness -- we usually sit up in our chairs 
while reading the Sunday paper and exclaim, "I 
TOLD that So-and-So" ...  and then we roll over 
dead.  (Actually, humor aside, almost all of my 
folks die peacefully in bed at a VERY advanced 
age:  my mother, who did so, reminded me a week 
or so before her own death that, "only the good 
die young".  We ARE a nasty lot!)

Sorry to have rambled on so long.

Marc


msmall@aya.yale.edu
Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir!



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