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

[tedgrant at shaw.ca (Ted Grant)]

Marc James Small offered:

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

Hi Marc,

Thank you for such an in depth and thoughtful post. An interesting
historical and modern point of view. Most important? It?s true of the past
and present times. 

You?ve certainly made it very clear ?move with the times, maybe ahead of it,
or die!?

We, well some of us tend to jump and bitch about newspapers and photographer
use too easily on the bases of the ?olden days and the way it was.? 

Unfortunately without the extra thought of the massive changes, not only to
the owners of the paper in loosing readership and advertising, but ourselves
for not moving with the daily advancements of technology.

But you present a much clearer overall look at the incredible advances in
publishing and communications many of us have not quite kept pace with,
there fore finding ourselves ?still back in the olden days thought process.?


In my case the complete lack of understanding why my publisher hasn?t sold a
million copies of our book ?Women in Medicine. A Celebration of their Work.?
Certainly when we look at the North American female medical population of
approximately 2.5 million women and growing faster than a rocket to space.
Meanwhile the sales have been miniscule compared to the millions of
potential buyers.

I still believe it?s the publisher to some degree, but myself and co-author
Sandy Carter have not quite moved with the times from photojournalists
creating a book receiving incredible accolades each time it?s seen by women
of medicine. But maybe we?ve failed to become ?Book promoters ourslves!? 

And our, certainly my attitude of.. ?Hell we did all our work shooting it,
why doesn?t the publisher do his etc etc etc.? But maybe we as authors are
part of the problem? 

By not pounding the airwaves of the internet because that?s the new world
order of selling products. 

Rather than the ?olden days? of author in book store autographing days of
yore.

If nothing else good Sir, you?ve given me the kick in the ass, certainly to
have a go at marketing the book with the times required and use ?modern day
electronic methods? instead of bitching about what the publisher isn?t or
hasn?t done! 

When in reality, it?s we who are lacking in taking the selling/awareness
battle to the airwaves of the masses of women in medicine.

So in that vain, thank you for the kick in the butt!

I?m going to be the first to say I?ve whined, carped, bitched, complained
and derided the publisher for not doing enough to promote. Now we?ll have a
look at the part of the team still sitting in the locker room contemplating
the ?good old days of yore as it was.? Instead of using the electronic world
of today and how it is to succeed. Thanks.

ted

 

 

>>>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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