Hello,
Chinese New Year is a strange time of year, for those of us foreigners who are still in China. It's a time when the local population, after working their guts out for eleven and a half months, finally let down their hair and enjoy some quality time with their family or go on vacation.
While cities like Shanghai, my home, and Beijing empty out as migrant workers (making up somewhere between 25%-50% of the city population) head back to the small counties and villages to catch up with family and friends, there are still a lot of local residents who are resting, relaxing and enjoying their downtime in the city. The city is quiet and relaxing. The traffic is light and there is a general feeling of rest and relaxing in the air. There are no honking horns and no one is in a rush - perhaps an indication of what Shanghai could become in the future. With that being said it's a great time to be at home in Shanghai, as shops and most basic services are still open, enjoying my idealistic view of what my adopted home can be.
Yesterday I flew to Shenzhen for an assignment and I was a shocked by the emptiness of: the airport, my hotel and the city in general. Shocked so much by the emptiness as I compared it to Shanghai just a day earlier. Shenzhen is very much a migrant city, meaning that no one is actually from Shenzhen; seeing that it didn't exist until 1979 - it was created out of thin air. So when Chinese new year comes around my guess is that the majority of the staff at the airports, hotels just take off back home; leaving the city with an uncanny silence. Adding to the silence is Shenzhen is no doubt the decrease in global demand for Chinese goods which is wreaking havoc in this part of China, which I've been fortunate to document in towns like Dongguan which lays just outside of Shenzhen.
Traveling in China often one becomes used to the noise, the congestion and the chaos that makes this part of the world romantic and interesting to some, and a massive headache to others. But when a town goes completely quiet, it leaves me with a chill - where are fifteen million people who are supposed to be here? It's almost uncomfortable to look around and see massive infrastructure projects just put on hold, or large eight lane expressways completely empty at mid-day.
My hotel had one person working reception and one person working the door and acting as the concierge, a skeleton staff by Chinese standards. Normally in China you're bombarded with staff and service almost everywhere you go. Bags are collected from the taxi, doors are opened for you, no line ups ever; it is not unusually to have two waitresses or servers focusing just one your own table at a restaurant. The taxi drivers are no where to be found, shops are closed and I feel like I am trapped in some kind of bad movie where everyone disappears and I have an entire city to myself. I wonder how much of this emptiness is because of the holiday and how much is caused by the difficulties in manufacturing that China is facing.
The questions really won't end, will China's manufacturing industry recover as global demand recovers? Will cities like Shenzhen be affected? Will migrant workers flood back to this part of China looking for work, even if there is none to be had? Will factories being to hire again? What about the millions of young men and women that work at hotels and restaurants throughout the region, will they have a job to come back to if the business slows down or dies? Over the next twelve months I'm hoping to be back in Guangdong province several times looking at where China is being hurt this most by this economic atom bomb created by greed in our global financial institutions. I saw today on the news that some fifty million people globally have already lost their jobs, I wonder what China's contribution is to that number, and how many more will be added to the total in 2009. Needless to say, I'll be here watching.
--
Cheers,
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Friday, January 23, 2009
Ryan Pyle Blog: My Archive is Back Online
Hello,
I remember that frightful morning in October like it was yesterday, waking up to an email that told me that Digital Railroad had just 48hrs left to live, and that anything left on the servers would be erased and gone forever. Now, this was tough to take at the time, and thinking back to the havoc and stressed it caused me, much of my anger still hasn't subsided. While I knew a lot of the DRR managers and editors personally, and I don't blame them for this, I simply can't believe that an entire company servicing so many can vanish so quickly. I know there are a lot of horror stories out there from the DRR collapse and many were much worse than mine, but below is a brief summary of my difficulties.
I became a loyal member of Digital Railroad in the summer of 2005. I thought the service was genius, a chance to manage and display my own images to clients. I bought in to the service, used it and promoted it heavily to other photographers I knew. Life was bliss for years. No service interruptions, no problems, no issues to report at all. Actually I think once there was a service interruption when they were upgrading servers and lost images temporarily, but within a day or two everything was backed up and back online. So, apart from that issue DRR fulfilled all it's promises to customers like me who wanted more control over our own archives.
Then came the Marketplace, DRR's big move to enter the stock photo industry by using images they had stored on their system by members like me. It seemed like a decent natural progression, the problem was that it seemed like DRR had to really expand their sales operation and "ramp up", so to speak.
Now throughout my career I've always backed up everything: digital files, RAW, TIFF and scanned negs. So when DRR went down I didn't actually lose anything per say. So, if I didn't lose anything why has it taken me so long to get my archive back up and running at full capacity?
What I lost was organization. What I lost was some captioning information. What I lost was the hours and hours it took to upload all those images through the Chinese firewall. Now, I had over 7000 images in my archive, a collection of corporate and editorial work, organized in to hundreds of groups and galleries.
Digital Railroad, or I should say management company handling the sale of assets, told everyone that they had only 48hrs to get everything off the site. That wasn't exactly true, they allowed more than a week. My goal when I first got the message about the shut down was, this is no problem. I can just FTP everything to my new archive space at photoshelter, the problem was that all of the 1500 independent photographers and dozens of agencies all thought the same thing at the exact same moment. Needless to say the bandwidth was so jammed during that week I only managed to get about 20% of the images FTP'd across safely, and much of those images were corrupted and had to be "replaced" later.
From mid-October to just last week was the time it took to replace, upload, re-caption (some) and re-organize my entire archive. The reason it took so long was complicated. First I live in China and bandwidth here is severely restricted. The firewall means that anything FTP'd from China has to leave at a snails pace, and even all the hotels I stay in when I am working didn't offer much better internet connections then what I had at my home. I've had to leave my computer on every night uploading and FTP to photoshelter for months now. The second reason was that I was working consistently for that entire stretch and things just never managed to finish it off. The last reason is simply that the task at hand was so large and daunting, I had a lot of starts and stops and even hired a few people to help me out during times.
What did I learn from the whole mess? Nothing really. I back images up and apart from keeping two seperate completely updated archives I don't think there is much I could have done differently. Having a full time assistant would have made my recovery time faster but I don't have one. So there it is, just a huge cluster F*ck that nobody predicted and that almost everyone got caught in. Painful, very painful.
What are my plans going forward? Simply to keep my photoshelter archive (http://archive.ryanpyle.com) as updated and current as possible, and continue to add strong images to it. I hope another DRR meltdown will never happen again, but now that photoshelter picked up all the extra business from DRR they should be sitting pretty for years to come. Fingers crossed.
--
Cheers,
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
I remember that frightful morning in October like it was yesterday, waking up to an email that told me that Digital Railroad had just 48hrs left to live, and that anything left on the servers would be erased and gone forever. Now, this was tough to take at the time, and thinking back to the havoc and stressed it caused me, much of my anger still hasn't subsided. While I knew a lot of the DRR managers and editors personally, and I don't blame them for this, I simply can't believe that an entire company servicing so many can vanish so quickly. I know there are a lot of horror stories out there from the DRR collapse and many were much worse than mine, but below is a brief summary of my difficulties.
I became a loyal member of Digital Railroad in the summer of 2005. I thought the service was genius, a chance to manage and display my own images to clients. I bought in to the service, used it and promoted it heavily to other photographers I knew. Life was bliss for years. No service interruptions, no problems, no issues to report at all. Actually I think once there was a service interruption when they were upgrading servers and lost images temporarily, but within a day or two everything was backed up and back online. So, apart from that issue DRR fulfilled all it's promises to customers like me who wanted more control over our own archives.
Then came the Marketplace, DRR's big move to enter the stock photo industry by using images they had stored on their system by members like me. It seemed like a decent natural progression, the problem was that it seemed like DRR had to really expand their sales operation and "ramp up", so to speak.
Now throughout my career I've always backed up everything: digital files, RAW, TIFF and scanned negs. So when DRR went down I didn't actually lose anything per say. So, if I didn't lose anything why has it taken me so long to get my archive back up and running at full capacity?
What I lost was organization. What I lost was some captioning information. What I lost was the hours and hours it took to upload all those images through the Chinese firewall. Now, I had over 7000 images in my archive, a collection of corporate and editorial work, organized in to hundreds of groups and galleries.
Digital Railroad, or I should say management company handling the sale of assets, told everyone that they had only 48hrs to get everything off the site. That wasn't exactly true, they allowed more than a week. My goal when I first got the message about the shut down was, this is no problem. I can just FTP everything to my new archive space at photoshelter, the problem was that all of the 1500 independent photographers and dozens of agencies all thought the same thing at the exact same moment. Needless to say the bandwidth was so jammed during that week I only managed to get about 20% of the images FTP'd across safely, and much of those images were corrupted and had to be "replaced" later.
From mid-October to just last week was the time it took to replace, upload, re-caption (some) and re-organize my entire archive. The reason it took so long was complicated. First I live in China and bandwidth here is severely restricted. The firewall means that anything FTP'd from China has to leave at a snails pace, and even all the hotels I stay in when I am working didn't offer much better internet connections then what I had at my home. I've had to leave my computer on every night uploading and FTP to photoshelter for months now. The second reason was that I was working consistently for that entire stretch and things just never managed to finish it off. The last reason is simply that the task at hand was so large and daunting, I had a lot of starts and stops and even hired a few people to help me out during times.
What did I learn from the whole mess? Nothing really. I back images up and apart from keeping two seperate completely updated archives I don't think there is much I could have done differently. Having a full time assistant would have made my recovery time faster but I don't have one. So there it is, just a huge cluster F*ck that nobody predicted and that almost everyone got caught in. Painful, very painful.
What are my plans going forward? Simply to keep my photoshelter archive (http://archive.ryanpyle.com) as updated and current as possible, and continue to add strong images to it. I hope another DRR meltdown will never happen again, but now that photoshelter picked up all the extra business from DRR they should be sitting pretty for years to come. Fingers crossed.
--
Cheers,
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Ryan Pyle Blog: The Year of the Anniversary
Hello,
Every year we move forward we end up celebrating an anniversary for something that happened in years past; whether it be as small an act as adopting a baby puppy from a pound or beginning a new career or even getting married.
So as the year of 2009 gets going I've sat back and looked at my calender and I'm utterly speechless. Living in China and being a "China Watcher" I'm blown away by the sheer number of major anniversaries that China will be lining up to celebrate (and pretend never happened) this year. Let's take a quick at a few of these, in no particular order.
1) Of course the big daddy of them all will occur on October 1st 2009, marking the 60th Anniversary of the People's Republic of China. It was 60 years ago that the Communist Army pushed out the Japanese and sent the KMT in to exile in Taiwan. Preparations are already under way in Beijing for a grand military showing, roads are already said to be reinforced. Zhang Yimou, the creative force behind the Olympic Opening Ceremonies, has been commissioned to come up with something for this show of shows. Watch out for another city lock down and potential visa problems. Five star hotels, brace for another season of bleak occupancy rates.
2) Reform and Opening continues on. December 1978 and January 1979 where key dates for China's reform and opening movement initiated under, then President, Deng Xiao Ping. While the 30th anniversary was officially celebrated in the middle of last December expect there to be a lot of continued talk about China's 30 years of capitalism; especially if the current crisis worsens.
3) The year of 2009 will also mark the 50th anniversary of the Dali Lama's exit from Tibet. That's right, in March 1959 the Dali Lama had to flee Lhasa for India, and begin his life in exile. It's generally assumed that there may be activity in various parts of China this year to commemorate that event. All eyes are, no doubt, watching. Just remember that in March it'll have been a full one year since the Tibet riots that left several Chinese shop keepers dead. There could be a lot of mixed emotions on both sides (Tibetan and Chinese) of this and clashes of culture and religion could occur. As an aside I've already had a Tibetan guide tell me that government officials are already suggesting to tour guides to keep foreign tourists out of Western Sichuan, which is a Tibetan region, during that time.
4) It's been 20 years since June 4th 1989. Tiananmen Square demonstrations have left an tough legacy for China to deal with. The idea of pretending it never happened as worked well enough so far, loads of people are still in jail and the rest under house arrest - and China's economy is still the main reason why most governments around the world self censor themselves about this issue. What might occur for the 20th anniversary? Nothing is most likely the correct answer. Expect another city lock down. As an aside, Ma Jian wrote a book published last year titled "Beijing Coma" in which he talks a about the Tiananmen Square days in 1989. His take seems to be that many of the student leaders of that movement may have been much less democratic that originally thought, using democracy in the name of installing another authoritarian regime? We may never know the truth, but it makes an interesting read.
5) August 8th 2008 was the moment when China entered the world stage, and billions around the world tuned in their TV's to watch a spectacle that could have only been duplicated in North Korea. I was blown away by the opening ceremony, and I even have a fake dvd copy of the event. And the date of August the 8th will be celebrated each years as a day to promote sports and physical activity in China.
6) Another new anniversary wins for being the most confusing of the bunch, the Chinese government has just recently announced that March 28 is going to become a yearly holiday in China, and it's going to commemorate the ending of slavery in Tibet. As the government sees things, Tibet was a horrible and cruel civilization dominated by poverty and slavery. The official line is that the Chinese government rescued the Tibetan people from their own government leaders and freed them. Apparently this occurred in March 1959, the same time Tibetan leaders fled to India and around the same time as around one million Tibetans were slaughtered in a one sided defense of their Himalayan kingdom. When asked to comment about the one year anniversary of the riots last year in Lhasa a Tibetan women (held at knife point, maybe?) said "After all these happy years for us, it's a shame that the Dali Lama is still trying to ruin things and reinstall serfdom." Confusing times for ahead for all of us. I needed a machete to just to get through the propaganda in the China Daily this weekend.
7) On May 12th it'll be one year since the Sichuan earthquake that killed 88,000 people. This anniversary is one that sits close to me because I spent about 16 days in the quake zone just after it happened and I was overwhelmed by the destructive force of mother nature. I still to this day believe that the casualty rate is much higher than official numbers suggest, easily topping 100,000. I don't know what a government would gain by artificially keeping the numbers down, but perhaps I'm wrong. Either way some 15,000 to 20,000 of the dead where school children who died when their schools collapsed around them mostly due to poor construction. In some towns other buildings were left standing while schools, right next door, lay in rubble. Expect the parents of the dead school children to continue hassling not only local government officials but by traveling to Beijing in order to make official requests and complaints. It's pretty clear the parents aren't interested in hush money, they want heads to roll and it'll be interesting to see if Beijing feeds any of it's own to the sharks. My guess is more arrested parents.
8) My last point is one of wishful thinking. I hope that sometime this year the Chinese government adjusts it's legal system to allow for less political collusion. If they complete this task this year, then in 2010 I can sit back and write an updated version of this blog and praise the government for taking real steps to reform in 2009. You see, the local county and provincial courts all report to the Party Secretary for the province, not to Beijing. So essentially the Party Secretary for a province is a God-like figure that decides what does and doesn't stand as acceptable behavior. But what's been happening a lot is that local people fed up with government corruption have been caught for crimes like trying to travel to Beijing to tell on them, or even contacting foreign media. These crimes, because of their political nature, tend to stay under the radar and are handled at the local level - never reaching ear shot of Beijing; not that Beijing has a track record of over turning anything or standing for much more than the will of the party.
It's my opinion, based on my frequent travels and conversations, that this country may very well tear itself apart sometime in the next decade, especially if economic hardship hits, and something that might legitimize the Communist rule in the eyes of the people is to free up the legal system and allow provincial courts to report to a central court in Beijing, and to keep the party officials out of the loop. With all the talk that our current Chinese leaders splash out about ending corruption in China; that would be the first big step forwards. And it would quickly differentiate between the honest, hard working government leaders (of which there are many) and the scum. So that is one anniversary that I would like to celebrate in 2010. Let's hope there might be someone out there, high enough up the food chain, who feels like I do. But I'm not holding my breath.
--
Cheers,
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Every year we move forward we end up celebrating an anniversary for something that happened in years past; whether it be as small an act as adopting a baby puppy from a pound or beginning a new career or even getting married.
So as the year of 2009 gets going I've sat back and looked at my calender and I'm utterly speechless. Living in China and being a "China Watcher" I'm blown away by the sheer number of major anniversaries that China will be lining up to celebrate (and pretend never happened) this year. Let's take a quick at a few of these, in no particular order.
1) Of course the big daddy of them all will occur on October 1st 2009, marking the 60th Anniversary of the People's Republic of China. It was 60 years ago that the Communist Army pushed out the Japanese and sent the KMT in to exile in Taiwan. Preparations are already under way in Beijing for a grand military showing, roads are already said to be reinforced. Zhang Yimou, the creative force behind the Olympic Opening Ceremonies, has been commissioned to come up with something for this show of shows. Watch out for another city lock down and potential visa problems. Five star hotels, brace for another season of bleak occupancy rates.
2) Reform and Opening continues on. December 1978 and January 1979 where key dates for China's reform and opening movement initiated under, then President, Deng Xiao Ping. While the 30th anniversary was officially celebrated in the middle of last December expect there to be a lot of continued talk about China's 30 years of capitalism; especially if the current crisis worsens.
3) The year of 2009 will also mark the 50th anniversary of the Dali Lama's exit from Tibet. That's right, in March 1959 the Dali Lama had to flee Lhasa for India, and begin his life in exile. It's generally assumed that there may be activity in various parts of China this year to commemorate that event. All eyes are, no doubt, watching. Just remember that in March it'll have been a full one year since the Tibet riots that left several Chinese shop keepers dead. There could be a lot of mixed emotions on both sides (Tibetan and Chinese) of this and clashes of culture and religion could occur. As an aside I've already had a Tibetan guide tell me that government officials are already suggesting to tour guides to keep foreign tourists out of Western Sichuan, which is a Tibetan region, during that time.
4) It's been 20 years since June 4th 1989. Tiananmen Square demonstrations have left an tough legacy for China to deal with. The idea of pretending it never happened as worked well enough so far, loads of people are still in jail and the rest under house arrest - and China's economy is still the main reason why most governments around the world self censor themselves about this issue. What might occur for the 20th anniversary? Nothing is most likely the correct answer. Expect another city lock down. As an aside, Ma Jian wrote a book published last year titled "Beijing Coma" in which he talks a about the Tiananmen Square days in 1989. His take seems to be that many of the student leaders of that movement may have been much less democratic that originally thought, using democracy in the name of installing another authoritarian regime? We may never know the truth, but it makes an interesting read.
5) August 8th 2008 was the moment when China entered the world stage, and billions around the world tuned in their TV's to watch a spectacle that could have only been duplicated in North Korea. I was blown away by the opening ceremony, and I even have a fake dvd copy of the event. And the date of August the 8th will be celebrated each years as a day to promote sports and physical activity in China.
6) Another new anniversary wins for being the most confusing of the bunch, the Chinese government has just recently announced that March 28 is going to become a yearly holiday in China, and it's going to commemorate the ending of slavery in Tibet. As the government sees things, Tibet was a horrible and cruel civilization dominated by poverty and slavery. The official line is that the Chinese government rescued the Tibetan people from their own government leaders and freed them. Apparently this occurred in March 1959, the same time Tibetan leaders fled to India and around the same time as around one million Tibetans were slaughtered in a one sided defense of their Himalayan kingdom. When asked to comment about the one year anniversary of the riots last year in Lhasa a Tibetan women (held at knife point, maybe?) said "After all these happy years for us, it's a shame that the Dali Lama is still trying to ruin things and reinstall serfdom." Confusing times for ahead for all of us. I needed a machete to just to get through the propaganda in the China Daily this weekend.
7) On May 12th it'll be one year since the Sichuan earthquake that killed 88,000 people. This anniversary is one that sits close to me because I spent about 16 days in the quake zone just after it happened and I was overwhelmed by the destructive force of mother nature. I still to this day believe that the casualty rate is much higher than official numbers suggest, easily topping 100,000. I don't know what a government would gain by artificially keeping the numbers down, but perhaps I'm wrong. Either way some 15,000 to 20,000 of the dead where school children who died when their schools collapsed around them mostly due to poor construction. In some towns other buildings were left standing while schools, right next door, lay in rubble. Expect the parents of the dead school children to continue hassling not only local government officials but by traveling to Beijing in order to make official requests and complaints. It's pretty clear the parents aren't interested in hush money, they want heads to roll and it'll be interesting to see if Beijing feeds any of it's own to the sharks. My guess is more arrested parents.
8) My last point is one of wishful thinking. I hope that sometime this year the Chinese government adjusts it's legal system to allow for less political collusion. If they complete this task this year, then in 2010 I can sit back and write an updated version of this blog and praise the government for taking real steps to reform in 2009. You see, the local county and provincial courts all report to the Party Secretary for the province, not to Beijing. So essentially the Party Secretary for a province is a God-like figure that decides what does and doesn't stand as acceptable behavior. But what's been happening a lot is that local people fed up with government corruption have been caught for crimes like trying to travel to Beijing to tell on them, or even contacting foreign media. These crimes, because of their political nature, tend to stay under the radar and are handled at the local level - never reaching ear shot of Beijing; not that Beijing has a track record of over turning anything or standing for much more than the will of the party.
It's my opinion, based on my frequent travels and conversations, that this country may very well tear itself apart sometime in the next decade, especially if economic hardship hits, and something that might legitimize the Communist rule in the eyes of the people is to free up the legal system and allow provincial courts to report to a central court in Beijing, and to keep the party officials out of the loop. With all the talk that our current Chinese leaders splash out about ending corruption in China; that would be the first big step forwards. And it would quickly differentiate between the honest, hard working government leaders (of which there are many) and the scum. So that is one anniversary that I would like to celebrate in 2010. Let's hope there might be someone out there, high enough up the food chain, who feels like I do. But I'm not holding my breath.
--
Cheers,
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Ryan Pyle Blog: Attack of the Confusing Credit
Hello,
I've been waiting to write this blog for months, and I finally had my nerve broken by a picture credit in the New York Times over the weekend; more on that below.
So, let me first start off by saying that for years I've been confused by picture credits, and as a photographer I'm concerned. I think the big picture agencies started confusing people a few years back when they stopped adding actual names with image credits. For example, how often do you see an image credit "REUTERS" and not "John Smith/REUTERS". I'm not familiar with the business terms with agency photographers but I've always been someone who thinks that images should always have the photographers names in the credit. Perhaps I'm just old fashioned but I like to know who is shooting what, and where - even if I've never even heard of the photographer before. I take a lot of comfort in knowing that there is an actual human being standing somewhere with a camera trying his or her best to capture the moment, all in the name of journalist integrity; and thereafter getting credit when that image is used. REUTERS was just used as an example, EPA, AP, AFP and Getty are all in on it as well. I know that sometimes agencies do this to protect the identity of the photographer, for example picture credits coming from Myanmar after the cyclone that it in 2008 when the government blocked aid and journalists from the country, and that's understandable. But is there a logical reason for all the other cases? Can anyone shed some light on this issue?
My second point I'd like to talk about is picture credits coming from war zones and regions where natural disasters occur. For example, during the May earthquake in Sichuan province Getty images, AP and a host of other agencies were syndicating images from China Photos and Xinhua News Agency. This is a partnership that has existed for several years where Chinese photographers contribute to local agencies in based in the mainland and through syndication end up having their images used around the world. It makes a lot of business sense, but ethically I think there are some loopholes. For example, who are these Chinese photographers? What are their names? Are they military photographers or journalists? Are the images made in a way that respects the subjects and the surrounding situation? Are the situations staged? China has some incredibly gifted photographers but the country lacks on integrity and any sort of journalism standards. There have been several well documented cases in the past were Chinese photographers have won major international awards only to later confess their documentary images were staged. And furthermore should the sale of images by major American agencies be aiding the Chinese military (if they are behind the syndication)? I believe that the big agencies should have to live up to these questions if they want to syndicate the work.
Lastly, is the photography agency VII. Just in the last week I saw 3 different picture credits from this one agency. The first was from one of the founding members, "John Smith/VII". The second was a photographer from their network of non-members but very gifted photographers, "John Smith/VII Network". And just this past weekend I saw a New York Times credit from the Congo of another photographer who was credited "John Smith/VII Mentor". So, what does it all mean? Is anyone as confused as I am. Obviously it's a great honor to be a part of a prestigious agency, but if you are part of a mentorship program is that really something you can credit in a publication? If I did an internship at Magnum and was shooting on my off days for a magazine could I credit myself as "John Smith/Magnum Intern"? Where is the line drawn?
Now, don't go and misunderstand me. Gifted photography is wide spread amongst the big american agencies, the Chinese agencies and top dogs like VII, but I wish the captioning was more straight forward. While there may well be a clear and simply answer for each of the questions and somewhat confusing situations I've described above, they don't appear obvious to me; and I consider myself to be in the business - or at least on the fringes.
--
Cheers,
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
I've been waiting to write this blog for months, and I finally had my nerve broken by a picture credit in the New York Times over the weekend; more on that below.
So, let me first start off by saying that for years I've been confused by picture credits, and as a photographer I'm concerned. I think the big picture agencies started confusing people a few years back when they stopped adding actual names with image credits. For example, how often do you see an image credit "REUTERS" and not "John Smith/REUTERS". I'm not familiar with the business terms with agency photographers but I've always been someone who thinks that images should always have the photographers names in the credit. Perhaps I'm just old fashioned but I like to know who is shooting what, and where - even if I've never even heard of the photographer before. I take a lot of comfort in knowing that there is an actual human being standing somewhere with a camera trying his or her best to capture the moment, all in the name of journalist integrity; and thereafter getting credit when that image is used. REUTERS was just used as an example, EPA, AP, AFP and Getty are all in on it as well. I know that sometimes agencies do this to protect the identity of the photographer, for example picture credits coming from Myanmar after the cyclone that it in 2008 when the government blocked aid and journalists from the country, and that's understandable. But is there a logical reason for all the other cases? Can anyone shed some light on this issue?
My second point I'd like to talk about is picture credits coming from war zones and regions where natural disasters occur. For example, during the May earthquake in Sichuan province Getty images, AP and a host of other agencies were syndicating images from China Photos and Xinhua News Agency. This is a partnership that has existed for several years where Chinese photographers contribute to local agencies in based in the mainland and through syndication end up having their images used around the world. It makes a lot of business sense, but ethically I think there are some loopholes. For example, who are these Chinese photographers? What are their names? Are they military photographers or journalists? Are the images made in a way that respects the subjects and the surrounding situation? Are the situations staged? China has some incredibly gifted photographers but the country lacks on integrity and any sort of journalism standards. There have been several well documented cases in the past were Chinese photographers have won major international awards only to later confess their documentary images were staged. And furthermore should the sale of images by major American agencies be aiding the Chinese military (if they are behind the syndication)? I believe that the big agencies should have to live up to these questions if they want to syndicate the work.
Lastly, is the photography agency VII. Just in the last week I saw 3 different picture credits from this one agency. The first was from one of the founding members, "John Smith/VII". The second was a photographer from their network of non-members but very gifted photographers, "John Smith/VII Network". And just this past weekend I saw a New York Times credit from the Congo of another photographer who was credited "John Smith/VII Mentor". So, what does it all mean? Is anyone as confused as I am. Obviously it's a great honor to be a part of a prestigious agency, but if you are part of a mentorship program is that really something you can credit in a publication? If I did an internship at Magnum and was shooting on my off days for a magazine could I credit myself as "John Smith/Magnum Intern"? Where is the line drawn?
Now, don't go and misunderstand me. Gifted photography is wide spread amongst the big american agencies, the Chinese agencies and top dogs like VII, but I wish the captioning was more straight forward. While there may well be a clear and simply answer for each of the questions and somewhat confusing situations I've described above, they don't appear obvious to me; and I consider myself to be in the business - or at least on the fringes.
--
Cheers,
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Monday, January 05, 2009
Ryan Pyle Blog: Forward to 2009
Hello,
After enjoying a relaxing and festive holiday season, I'm back at my computer today trying to find direction and purpose for 2009. It's a process that's never easy, and given the rapid deterioration of the publishing industry, this year will stretch the limits of photographers as magazines try to do more with less.
So how does a photographer, like me, who relies on editorial assignments manage in this faltering economy? It clearly won't be easy for anyone to maneuver effectively in this environment. I haven't talked much about how I see my photography career developing or my ideas about how to make a living; but I think my mantra can be summed up in just a few words: "Don't sit on your hands; don't wait for the phone to ring".
What that means exactly is that photographers need to take pictures in order to sell pictures, and need to constantly be fine tuning their skill and vision. So sitting around and waiting for the phone to ring means wasting a whole lot of time. I try to stay working all the time whether on assignment or not. That means basically that I keep a long list of photo stories and projects that I have ready to work on for time between assignments. And I feel this could be the year that this list of mine finally gets a good work out.
How can I fund these personal projects if I am not taking assignments? Well, pictures are my business as well as my passion and my full time job, so I am well versed in how to earn a living from my imagery. I earn a stock income from work I've shot previously, I also have started making my way in to producing fine art black and white work for gallery shows. Beyond that I dabble in corporate photography and one time I worked in a studio and was paid for my work - but it was a little daunting.
I think the key in 2009, for me, will be to pursue topics in China of my own particular interest and hope that I can introduce this work to interested magazines and newspapers as features and stock. I'll continue visiting Xinjiang when I can to continue my black and white work; things should continue on without too much change; though I can't see myself getting too many 4 or 5 day assignments for New York, London or Hamburg anytime in the near future.
Let's keep our fingers crossed that magazines stop folding and the market for images and art continues to grow in these difficult times. If things go all wrong I'm sure I'll be quick to blog about it and try to keep people informed. Until then. Best of luck everyone out there.
--
Cheers,
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
After enjoying a relaxing and festive holiday season, I'm back at my computer today trying to find direction and purpose for 2009. It's a process that's never easy, and given the rapid deterioration of the publishing industry, this year will stretch the limits of photographers as magazines try to do more with less.
So how does a photographer, like me, who relies on editorial assignments manage in this faltering economy? It clearly won't be easy for anyone to maneuver effectively in this environment. I haven't talked much about how I see my photography career developing or my ideas about how to make a living; but I think my mantra can be summed up in just a few words: "Don't sit on your hands; don't wait for the phone to ring".
What that means exactly is that photographers need to take pictures in order to sell pictures, and need to constantly be fine tuning their skill and vision. So sitting around and waiting for the phone to ring means wasting a whole lot of time. I try to stay working all the time whether on assignment or not. That means basically that I keep a long list of photo stories and projects that I have ready to work on for time between assignments. And I feel this could be the year that this list of mine finally gets a good work out.
How can I fund these personal projects if I am not taking assignments? Well, pictures are my business as well as my passion and my full time job, so I am well versed in how to earn a living from my imagery. I earn a stock income from work I've shot previously, I also have started making my way in to producing fine art black and white work for gallery shows. Beyond that I dabble in corporate photography and one time I worked in a studio and was paid for my work - but it was a little daunting.
I think the key in 2009, for me, will be to pursue topics in China of my own particular interest and hope that I can introduce this work to interested magazines and newspapers as features and stock. I'll continue visiting Xinjiang when I can to continue my black and white work; things should continue on without too much change; though I can't see myself getting too many 4 or 5 day assignments for New York, London or Hamburg anytime in the near future.
Let's keep our fingers crossed that magazines stop folding and the market for images and art continues to grow in these difficult times. If things go all wrong I'm sure I'll be quick to blog about it and try to keep people informed. Until then. Best of luck everyone out there.
--
Cheers,
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
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