PHOTOGRAPHER’S BLOG – DAY 2 – MOE DOIRON – NPAC – News Photographers Association of Canada:
I blame McDonald’s. In the same way marketers trick consumers into paying more for their super-sized lunch when they really don’t need the extra fries, photo agencies keep pumping more pixels through the pipe as they create packaged pricing deals. Back in the old days (OK, I’ve said it and I promise it won’t happen again) you could browse the wires in an hour, meticulously eyeing all the images of the day and making your selection with surgical precision. Today’s feed is 10 times that, hitting most days 4,000 images in a 24-hour cycle. So it’s keywords and speed browsing, praying all day that you didn’t miss the photo of Michael Ignatieff eating a banana. Such a great feeling. Everything needs to be edited. Even the stuff that you send to editors to edit needs to be edited.
Dear Getty, thanks for the 237 awesome photos of Kim Kardashian arriving at the awards show last night, we’ll be using all of them.