This is going to hurt. The truth does.

“If the game is to be in the right place at the right time, I can’t win at that game, because there’s only one of me,” says Rob Bennett, a Wall Street Journal contract photographer. “I’m resigned to that.” Millions of people with smartphones are now in constant possession of cameras. Nobody plans for a 9/11 attack or a Japanese tsunami, and when those things happen, it’s not photojournalists who are there first, it’s iPhone users. “The iPhone people are going to be there when the bomb goes off, when the house burns down, when the assassination goes down,” says Bennett. “They’re going to crush that market, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Author — duckrabbit

duckrabbit is a production company formed by radio producer/journalist Benjamin Chesterton and photographer David White. We specialize in digital storytelling.

Discussion (3 Comments)

  1. John Edwin Mason says:
    December 16, 2011 at 16:37

    I’ve just read the whole text, and I’m not persuaded. The blog is really about spot news, not the full range of photojournalism. Producing strong, penetrating work — of the sort that you feature on this blog, for instance — is a very different thing from stumbling across an automobile accident or burning building. Even when it comes to spot news, editors won’t be happy with 99% of what they get from the crowd. Certainly the profession is under pressure, but happy snappers and their iPhones are not to blame.

    Reply
  2. ST84Photo says:
    December 19, 2011 at 13:33

    If the rules of the game are stacked against you, change the rules of the game.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.