The most interesting pairing of photographs in my latest book The Photographer’s Vision is what at first glance appear to be identical (well, nearly identical) versions of one of the Vietnam War’s iconic images, of a dead young Vietnamese girl lying in a flatbed truck, with her equally young brother howling in grief over her. It appeared in the book Vietnam Inc, Philip Jones Griffith’s personal condemnation of the American prosecution of the war, and is one of Griffiths’ most famous and powerful pictures.

But what’s that picture next to it? Almost the same, but from a little to the left and a few seconds distant in time. Possibly not quite as wide-angle, maybe 1 24mm instead of a 20mm (everyone used prime lenses in those days).

It’s by Tim Page, another well-known photographer from the Vietnam War, albeit for different reasons. Griffiths was known for his photographs, Page for his appearance in Michael Herr’s book Dispatches, his supposed characterisation by Dennis Hopper in the film Apocalypse Now, and general reputation. Their philosophies could hardly have been different. Griffiths was a committed photojournalist (committed and effective to the point of being declared persona non grata in Vietnam), while Page is on record as saying “Oh war is good for you, you can’t take the glamour out of that,” a statement that many might find offensive but which served Herr’s hip commentary on the war.

Peter Stuckings, a photographer friend, just posted a comment about this, with the double-page spread, on Facebook here and makes an interesting point. Many people in the business – photographers and picture editors – feel uncomfortable looking at this pair, because the comparison doesn’t compare with received wisdom, which Peter underlines.

To my knowledge, I’m the only person to have put them together on the same page/spread. This isn’t a boast, and it wasn’t the result of any deep research, but by chance. Many years ago, I was talking with my Paris agent, Anna Obolensky at ANA, and Griffiths’ picture came up in the conversation (I can’t remember why). Anna said, “but you know that Tim Page took the same picture.” No I didn’t, and was taken aback when she pulled it out from the archives and showed it to me. At the time, she was also Page’s agent.

The two photographers were standing right next to each other in a Saigon street in 1968. It’s a cautionary note on the generally held belief that every photographer has a unique eye, and that that eye is influenced, in reportage at least, by philosophy and point of view. I happen to subscribe to that myself, but conditionally. In his Facebook comment, Peter is nit the first person, incidentally, to say that Griffiths’ is the better shot because of detail in framing, position and moment. And detail, as we all know, can make or break.

Maybe I should have asked Griffiths and Page for comment, but I preferred the eloquence of imagery over words. I still do think that words might interfere with what you can see and think for yourself by looking at this pair. In any case, it’s too late to ask Philip, as he passed away recently.

One last point that intrigued me. Both pictures were shot on colour film, but for reasons I was unable to discover, the Griffiths photograph was available from Magnum only in black and white. So we had to present the Page version in black and white also, to avoid implying that there was an extra difference. Pity about that.

Over on my Open College of the Arts site I’m digging further into the detail of making slideshows – or as some newspapers call them, galleries. It’s impossible to avoid the software technicals, but as usual I’m really more interested in what goes on editorially and creatively. This is part II, which follows the process of developing a small story, and considering how the medium of the slideshow suggests new ways of handling the material from the traditional print way. It goes through three stages, from a basic click-through to a more evolved click-through and finally to a movie with soundtrack. Here’s the workplace for making it, but see how the final movie looks. Sequence, transitions, animation and sound add new dimensions to photographs — but whether this enhances the pictures or turns them into something else is something you’ll decide for yourself…

Please excuse the blatant promotion, but we just had a very good review on Adorama TV for the Photographer’s i magazine for the iPad. More on that on the blogroll at lower right. One of the things about publishing of any kind is that you really do put yourself up for comment, from anyone, anywhere. So it’s always a case of ‘phew’ when the first reviews come in and they’re good. Can’t ever take anything for granted, however. It’s a big world of opinion out there!

It’s available here

[for some reason beyond my limited understanding, in Safari, at least on a Mac, the movie appears as a pop-up, which it shouldn't! It's OK on Firefox, but of course it's not OK at all, and if there's anyone out there who can tell me what I'm doing wrong with embedding QT movies, I'll definitely buy you a beer somewhere!]

Gave my Tea Horse Road talk and show yesterday at the Hay Festival in Cartagena — that’s the beautiful, energetic city of Cartagena de Indias, Colombia. Although I adapted the show for Spanish, in the end I didn’t think my own Spanish was quite up to the task, especially at a literary festival, so I began instead with (this for Spanish speakers): “Les ruego me disculpen por no hablar en español, pero será más amable en sus oídos delicados si se utiliza la traducción simultánea.”

All went well, and it was packed. I started with the cultural difference between tea as we English understand it, and tea in the Chinese concept (aka as it should be!). I use a silly slide which says it all about where I come from, Lancashire…

For those who don’t know the north of England, this cuppa has the essential quality of being strong enough to stand a teaspoon up in it. And by way of complete contrast, here’s the real thing — Pu’er tea being served in Heshun, southwest Yunnan…

I’m beginning to take slideshow production more seriously, not least because it’s a key part of my next book, which I’m still writing. One of the interesting, tempting, but ultimately risky techniques is injecting movement into still images. The standard technique for this is pan-and-zoom. In this, the view starts with one framing of a photograph and ends with a different framing. The effect replicates what would happen in a video if you operated the zoom and/or panned the camera during filming. It was originally developed for television and film as a way of bringing life to rostrum camera copy shots of prints and paintings, and is also called after the names of two people who specialized in this — the Ken Burns effect in the United States as, and the Ken Morse effect in Britain. Done smoothly and with some thought for the start and finish positions (as with any camera movement), it can draw the viewer into the scene and also direct attention. But it also tempts over-use.

As the name has it, there are two separate directions, which can be combined or not as you like. Panning is across the image, in any direction, and zooming is a change of scale, either in or out. The variables are the extent of these movements, and the time taken. A succession of pan-and-zooms, one after another on different images, can become dizzying and irritating, and even if you like the effect in principle, it’s as well to moderate it. But there’s an exception, and this is using repetition to build up an expectation. As long as the movements blend slowly into each other, a succession can go on for quite a long time comfortably. Here’s an example, but the devil is in the detail. To keep it flowing smoothly, and give the sense that the viewer is floating forward through everything, the pacing has to be consistent, as do the dissolves, as does the range of the zooms. And possibly most important of all, they need to be centered, exactly. Beyond that, it’s an interesting exercise in choosing sequence, progressing from one subject to another, varying similarities and contrasts, and playing with the graphic effect that only a linear show can produce — the match dissolve.

If you’re shooting a photo essay, this is basic and standard. But perhaps so basic that it rarely gets spelled out. 3+1 is my term for it, but it’s been around since the days of Life magazine….

For more, see the blog I wrote for Photo.net here.

Every so often, my friend Steve Vidler calls to urge me to join him shooting the kind of event I would normally be too lazy to bother with. For anyone who doesn’t know Steve (but you can find out about him here in an interview I did for my Open College of the Arts site), he is truly one of the world’s most successful stock photographers. I am not exaggerating, but it’s rather beside the point here. Anyway, Steve’s plan today was the Gay Pride Parade in central London, and I have to admit I’ve never been. But then until last year, again with Steve, I’d never been to the Trooping of the Colour (see the post below on the New York Times interview). And I have to say, quite fun…

The other day a photographer from Singapore, Patrick Tay, wrote with some questions that struck a chord. More than usually interesting questions, in other words, and the first were about the professional side of photography. This, of course, exercises the attention of professionals greatly, because a number of the traditional revenue streams are, well, entering drought conditions. But there are many other people out there interested in the state of the profession, as it were. People who are thinking of making photography a career choice. The result has been a huge upsurge in the Making-a-Living blog. They tend to be cheerily enthusiastic, full of tips, delivered with self-help positiveness, and featuring the writer’s first tentative steps towards earning money from what has been a hobby. They also, unfortunately, tend to be totally unrealistic, and written without the experience of actually making a full financial living from photography.

Anyway, I’m grateful to Patrick for prompting me to take a clear look at the future of what we do. His first question was:-

With the lines blurring between photographers, photojournalists and picture editors, what do you foresee will happen in the near future with regard to these professions?

MF: I take it ‘photographers’ means photographers in general. The lines have indeed blurred, with the (positive) assumption that we can all now do a bit of everything and take more control over our images, but the killer part of your question is the word ‘professions’. They are all at risk as full-time professional activities, and you can take comfort or despair from this as you wish. Take the last first: picture editors, who traditionally have been associated mainly with magazines and newspapers. The great names, from Wilson Hicks at Life to M. F. Agha at Vogue (well, all right, he was art director) were highly influential in forming the look and content of their magazines, but they were able to do this only by being part of an organizational hierarchy and by having large circulations that generated advertising revenue. Magazines are on the downslope now, so the influence and importance of picture editors is fast declining, and that means fewer good new ones taking it up.

Next, photojournalists. According to some points of view, there are very few still in existence. Former Magnum bureau chief Neil Burgess voiced this view in 2010 when he wrote, “Today I look at the world of magazine and newspaper publishing and I see no photojournalism being produced. There are some things which look very like photojournalism, but scratch the surface and you’ll find they were produced with the aid of a grant, were commissioned by an NGO, or that they were a self-financed project, a book extract, or a preview of an exhibition. Magazines and newspapers are no longer putting any money into photojournalism. They will commission a portrait or two. They might send a photographer off with a writer to illustrate the writer’s story, but they no longer fund photojournalism. They no longer fund photo-reportage. They only fund photo illustration.”

And photographers in general? The wonderful thing is that now photography has become truly democratic, popular and absorbing. But for these very reasons, only a very few people will ever make it as a well-paid profession. See my next answer for the unpalatable truth…. on the Pixiq blog.

This shot (well, a lot more than one shot) brings back memories. It was part of one of the most enjoyable stories I ever had, a feature on Industrial Light & Magic, the special effects facility set up by George Lucas, initially to do Star Wars. It remains the grand old FX movie shop. Normally, as you might imagine, they don’t open their doors, but in the case of the Smithsonian magazine they made an exception (more serious, more likely to be read by clients – they’d just turned down People magazine). So I had the run of the studio for two weeks. What a playground! Even the sound stage, and the cloud chamber, and….

Anyway, with more post-production than you could think of, this was one of the shots published, about how bluescreen (in the old days, preceded greenscreen) was used to make the DeLorean car from the film Back to the Future III fly….

And if you think about the dates, this was pre-Photoshop. In fact, John Knoll, one of the two brothers who invented Photoshop, was Visual Effects Supervisor at ILM. I remember him explaining to me how morphing would work…. For more on this, please go to the Manfrotto School of Xcellence site.

Tonight I’m giving another talk on the Tea Horse Road at Asia House….