I’ve spoken with a fair few people over the last year who believe that the IPAD
Written by duckrabbitwould offer a big financial boost to the photojournalism industry. The same goes for paywalls.
I disagreed, but I wish I’d been wrong.
In 2011 please don’t put your faith in companies that have no respect for what you do.
Author — duckrabbit
duckrabbit is a production company formed by radio producer/journalist Benjamin Chesterton and photographer David White. We specialize in digital storytelling.
Discussion (9 Comments)
If you’d like to hear a different sound, there’s this too: http://mashable.com/2010/12/29/ipad-magazine-sales-decline/
Mags have some logistics trouble in the App Store: no subscriptions possible at this point, no separate category making mags more visible in the store etc.
A related problem: Arts & Culture don’t have their own section in the store, making apps in that section hard to find
At the end of the day. I’d be really suprised if this isn’t a temporary thing and tablet would NOT make a positive change in the long run
One of the problems outside the store is free online content. I still don’t understand why, if you have something good, you give it away for free…
Hi Diederik,
It’s an interesting discussion. The kindle shows that people want good old fashioned content, which they know is quality.
Companies give newspapers away for free because they make more money from the advertising for larger audiences.
Content is only worth what people will pay for it. That’s the challenge we all have to rise to.
Howdy Duck and happy newyear to you! You are right, of course.. We have learnt from user feedback and are evolving our mag into a guide to great photographic stories filled with context information that helps users find top photography and learn about the works and the topics presented. In addition, we’re integrating blogs into the thing. Once the app enables users to find great stuff and a lot of context info more easily than they would browsing around for more than 10 minutes, we have made their life more easy and presented them with some great great photography. The success of apps is in their ability to make things more fun or easier for users (it’s the same as how Google maps is easier than buying printed city maps). This is where some mags may have underperformed by simply migrating content to the tablet… Our first issue isn’t the greatest either, considering what we have learnt during the last couple of weeks.. Apart from all that, change takes time, the thing has only been out there for less than a year…
I’ve spent time looking at the various offerings available for the iPad and I’ve come to the conclusion that publications, who have an iPad version, are showing how incredibly shit they are at basic business. Look it’s no great surprise that this dinosaur industry doesn’t like change, but if you expect a customer to pay nearly double for the iPad edition over the printed edition and offer very little as a result, you are doomed to fail.
In most cases, the apps themselves are a hack. Designed to look ok but jesus wept, has anyone ever heard of User Experience Guidelines at these publications? The Wired app is ok, glitzy and what not, but damn expensive. Maxim’s offering only really had the video at the start, the rest was piss-poor. I briefly touched on the approach you should take with designing for iPads, alas it seems many developers do not have a clue where/what to do with this new medium. Where are all the community-based apps that allow us photojournalists to show our work in a new way?
I use the Kindle app on my iPad and purchase good reading material, I would do the same if someone out there actually developed this for photojournalism. Now Diederik Meijer, who commented first and is a good friend of mine, is doing that with 50pm and I wish them the best of success but as we can see from the thousands of shit apps in the app store, mediocrity is king right now.
Apple is party to blame here. We have a bookstore but no magazine store? There is no framework for indie publications to take away the burden of payment processing, hosting and supplying apps and just concentrate on the magazine content itself.
Diederik just nailed it on the head in his comment, “…I still don’t understand why, if you have something good, you give it away for free…”. I’ll tell you why, it’s because so many feel this is the way to get exposure today. Fuck off. Sorry it’s harsh language but it’s this attitude that leaves this industry struggling to survive and see’s legendary photographers turn to virtual begging bowls to get projects done.
For the iPad and Android alternatives to succeed, we need the following to happen:
1: Apple to sort out the magazine framework, similar to their book version. Take away the overhead of uploading, categorizing, maintaining and e-commerce headaches often associated with online publications.
2: Publications to stop treating consumers like fucking idiots. No I will not pay double for your magazine because it’s on a trendy platform like the iPad. Buck your ideas up, your industry is failing because of poor business practice and direction.
3: Content creators need to stop giving shit away for free. Yes this will be hard, if your work isn’t online it doesn’t exist, but let’s be honest, how many editors buy content when it’s available for free (hello Daily Mail, I’m looking at you!!)
4: Designers and developers need to sit down and make use of the frameworks to produce apps that really are a joy to use. It’s not hard, Apple has many guidelines on UI experience coding, just read them.
Thank you Daniel! See my reply comment above. These things are slowly moving, but they are moving..
Photography platforms have to have a reason to exist beyond showing photography.
People keep treating photographs as the end product, the reason for existence, the product with inherent value just waiting to be realised for shooters when the curatorial work is good enough. Those days have gone and putting old ideas of how photography is to be used on an iPod is not going to change a thing.
Portfolio’s only serve employers of photographers and not the mass public who demand more from their time, a resource more precious than money. Online iPad magazines structured like a series of portfolio’s showing the best images will find it hard to bridge the gap between the photographic community and the public.
Who would prefer to pay in order to look at someone else’s high concept artistic abstract images as opposed to thier own or their friends celebrating new year, getting married, seeing their freinds children on Facebook etc etc espcially as they are free? The social function of this being the ability to tell personal stories for a personal audience.
The photographic world that values single images higher than the public do and is structured only to serve those who are too rich to care about the cost. Towell’s Kickstarter project is symtomatic of the lack of a democratic vision as it does not tell us anything new, just shows old ideas in beautiful black and white images and the whole thing is structured to serve itself (and Magnum) and to centralise the limited income streams from a few wealthy donators. At the time of writing, 3 pledges of $1,000 consitute the majority of pledges so far for “Crisis in Afghanistan”.
Photography has to have a use, a context, a reason beyond artistic exploration and composition. It has to find a social function once more, a reason to exist beyond the frame itself.
The reason why I think iPad’s have half a chance is that the mass public will buy them more and more, especially the “silver surfers” that will find them very forgiving as computing tools to use. The people sitting on top of the institutions of photography will eventually yield to braver new entrants with broader visions coupled with an evolutionary business model – now is the time to be patient and learn, learn, learn!
The iPhone took a while to develop its Apps store and the iPhone 4 makes the original look very dated. The iPad 2 will open up more new markets with Facetime and better functionality.
The current institutions leveraging off the sense of entitlement their brands give them will continue to be fixated on preserving editorial and curatorial control to enforce their sense of what photography should be to others. This will give the new generation more time to try new things and succeed whilst the institution of photography tries everything to hold on to its perceived power.
@diederik
Keep going and keep learning… even if you do not succeed the way you want to, the knowledge base you acquire through this process will make what you do very worthwhile at worse and at best, you are part of the future – good luck for 2011!!!
Thank you Iam, that is very kind, encouraging and highly appreciated!! I agree with your remarks, by the way. People want stories they can share….
Thank you for mentioning this. I agree, its just another device for us to get us addicted to. And i am sure that the banks and investors will want to sell us more food, style and real estate. It makes fotos look great, but I wonder how much our own foto stories we will see up on the ipads
Hi Joseph, on that last thought, don’t you think that’s up to us, ourselves? I think it should be…