[Basil Ransom]

The goal of a photo in a news article is to illuminate the subject, to reveal what it looks like, to give viewers insight into its character and how it would appear if they were there.

On that score, at least half the photos I see are just fucking terrible. I look at them and get confused and say, "what the fuck am I actually looking at? What is going on in this picture? Why did the photographer shoot this at such a bizarre angle so as to make it impossible to make sense of what's going on? Why he is focusing so much attention on such an insignificant item?"

Typically, there are close-up photos yet few panoramic photos that give you a good sense of scale, place and context. Or the panoramic photos have some weird kaleidoscopic shit going on that only resembles the real deal if you were tripping on acid.

As an example, I recently checked out a new bar, called Harlowe. Here are the photos that various online media outlets posted:









^From LA Weekly



If I were the bar owner, I'd feel robbed - the venue is much bigger than the photos let on, as that bar is actually a whole oblong octagon that goes all the way around - it's not your typical bar against a wall. The venue is actually quite nice and spacious - but these photos would have you thinking it's some old timey dive bar. The last one is the only successful one, and I only found it through a google images search. And even that one is oddly looking up at the ceiling too much - it's not the Sistine Chapel, no one is fucking looking at the ceiling.

I hadn't seen the last photo before entering the bar, but I had seen some of the others. I hadn't been to the bar that had previously been there either. So when I finally walked in, I was quite surprised by the scale of the place.

Instead, you have these hipster closeups of things that are admittedly interesting, but pale in comparison to the importance of the actual space. And as a guy looking to meet girls at bars, the overall bar arrangement is very important, something that these photos fail to illuminate.

I don't mean to rail at just this one episode of a bar being covered, but I see this sort of thing all the time. It's this weird cosmic dimension of our time, where the goal is not to expose truth and depict beauty, but to indulge in expression for expression's sake, to attract attention to the one speaking, and not to the actual content of his speech. Photography is just one subset of this - depicting something as it is, with minimal artifice, is boring and easy, so you must do something novel and esoteric, with the bizarre results you see above. If it's easy to grasp, it's not worthy of esteem.

Such photos also have a very 'ADD' quality to them - instead of capturing the feel of the overall space, they get distracted by little trinkets and devote outsize attention to them. If you let these media types post more photos, they'd post close up photos of those paintings on the wall, or an aerial hyper-closeup of the lilies in that fountain.

Also, having any expertise in what you're covering - say knowing how a cow is pastured, butchered, aged and prepared when reviewing a steakhouse is seen as ancillary, unnecessary, entirely unessential to the objective of assessing the restaurant's steak. Hell, the restaurant review is really just a vehicle for some melodramatic stream of consciousness missive that captures none of the craft and mastery involved in the steak before you. Because talking about the craft would marginalize the importance of you, the reviewer, and give the limelight to the steak instead.

You see the same thing with lots of media interviews - instead of asking questions to draw out the interviewee's thoughts and character, almost as if the interviewer is absent, the interviewer manages to steal the limelight and shine it on themselves, even when the interviewee is a much bigger name. That hag Deborah Solomon in the NYT Magazine is a typical example of this (I haven't read her interviews in several years though).

Every time there's a shooting, it's clear most reporters, and apparently our own President ( http://thelead.blogs.cnn.com/2013/04/04/...andy-hook/ ) don't know the difference between semi-automatic and fully-automatic firearms, an incredibly basic distinction. Not that I'm a gun nut, but how can you presume to cover anything when you don't know the most basic features of it?

I knew a couple kids in college who were into 'journalism' and the school paper, and the higher up they were, the more insufferably high their opinion of themselves, and the less they knew or cared about the subjects they covered. All they were interested in was being a journalist - what they actually covered was immaterial, so long as it was prestigious and glamorous.