Working with a picture editor / loss of control ?

[monkeyleader]

Evening,

At most games these days you will get a mixture of shooters who are wiring direct to their news desk (or someone back in the wire room), shooters who have runners and then the rest of us who are attempting to shoot / edit / wire (all without poking someone in the eye with a 400mm / missing the next bit of action).

While the thought of having a runner / editor is so appearing I sometimes wonder how I would feel about the loss of control - of course one could argue that a picture desk editor knows what sells so will know how to crop and do a few edits .... but I sometimes wonder if a shooter has nailed a shot and in his/her head knows how it should look only to see a botched job once processed ....

I guess you just get used to it after a while?

Nige

 

[whitey]

I am in your boat aswell

Always been a believer of if you want a job doing....

 

[Gary Coyle]

Doesnt really matter what you submit, editors will invariably butcher it anyway, either that or some guys just send in any old crap in the hope its the first one to land on the desk or be pulled out of the waiting ftp stack

 

[whitey]

Thats true swell

I seen one of mine on the MOL a while back from Boro os a cele with part of the head chopped off. Made me doubt myself to the point of checking the image again lol

 

[monkeyleader]

I actually sometimes think it would be great to sit at the Picture Desk at some larger publications and see behind the veil ... I got chatting to a picture editor for a smaller paper a few months back over coffee and it was certainly a bit of an eye opener in terms of what they were looking for in the heat of battle ..

 

[bigrob]

Nigel - can you expand on that a little more?

 

[blue marlin]

Thats true swell

I seen one of mine on the MOL a while back from Boro os a cele with part of the head chopped off. Made me doubt myself to the point of checking the image again lol

better to have a sale than not at all IMO

 

[Aperture87]

If a paper wants to use (and therefore pay for) one of my shots, that's all that really matters to me. Although I can understand why such issues would concern someone, particularly if there name is shown attached to it.

 

[blue marlin]

If a paper wants to use (and therefore pay for) one of my shots, that's all that really matters to me. Although I can understand why such issues would concern someone, particularly if there name is shown attached to it.

quite agree also as it has been noted on this forum many times it mainly snappers who look at by lines.

 

[monkeyleader]

@bigrob So I guess two points here .. firstly when shooting a game there are certain shots you just have to git ... the managers, the shots, the goals, the celebrations etc etc ... the trouble is most other shooters will have gotten those as well ... I'm always thinking two things (and this moto does not just apply to sports shooting but to all my photography pursuits...) how to build a story from the game ... the shots that bind together the main shots from the day ... I've had quite a few usages on shots which on their own seem pointless .. but I guess as the picture editor tries to build a story from the day they show their worth ... The second thing is trying something different .. sure 90% of the time it does not come off but if you can manage to get something a little different it can help to draw your image out ... Regarding the conversation with the picture editor .. nothing specific, it was just interesting to hear some of their thought process .. again picture editors who are worth their salt won't simply start picking shots randomly from the incoming pile ... rather already have a mind of what they are looking for to build the story ... getting into that zone before shooting can help IMO ..

 

[monkeyleader]

@Aperture87 i guess this works two ways ... for sure usage will be the primary concern here from putting bread on the table to ensuring you have enough hits from the season to secure your license for the following season ... at the same time one may question shots which never got used when looking at the PP version after the game .. this is especially true when perhaps trying something a bit more creative ... only to find the person responsible for PP didn't get your thought here (why would they?) and crop out the important part of the image ... I'm sure if someone put an image and asked 10 people to crop and do some slight PP you would give at least a few different versions ...