The Demise Of The Ten Percenters.
Ten percenter has two connotations here.
Being a photographer for a local paper means you need to be in the most literal sense, a photographic jack of all trades, a “ten-percenter”.
I have been a specialist in several fields either by passion or employment.
Specialising means making an effort to put all your skill, resources and focus into a single type of photography (or video) over all others, for a period long enough to matter.
A little obsession helps.
A basic portrait image of a subject for the paper. Where did the process come from? Years of thinking about photography in a variety of forms and genres.
This may mean a full day or several days concentrating on a drama production, months creating a landscape portfolio or years even, accumulating a travel stockpile.
Travel, street, landscape, studio portrait, environmental portrait, candid portrait, sport, wildlife, still life, astro, event, drama, music, time lapse, in film, digital stills or video, even sound. You name it, I have had a period, long or short, where this has been the keen focus of my interest. I tend to work things through to their logical end and move to the next interest, then sometimes come back again, sometimes not.
The candid shooter in me (a favourite), loves the down time between events.
Being a news paper photographer, especially at a small local paper, means you will tap into most of these interests regularly, so it is best you have them to call on.
The trick is to bring your best kernels of that wisdom, when and as required.
I have gone to press conferences that turned into sporting events, local news stories that turned into semi-formal portraits, low key drama previews that produced a full rehearsal with the works and unknowns that have taken to all sorts of creative places.
Never used in this form, but this is the one I liked. These guys are specialists.
You have to adjust your thinking. You have to learn to do the best you can, compromise and hero practicality over quality.
So 10% means two things.
First it is a rough estimation of the amount of experience and training you will tap into from any single specialist field on a given assignment. I guess you draw from it all, but the reality is you can follow the trail back to a single experience in your photo “memory catalogue”.
Secondly, it is a rougher estimate of the resource pool you will be able to draw from. A portraitist uses lighting control, a sports shooter uses a clutch of otherwise over the top cameras and lenses and a landscape shooter worships a “built like a tank” tripod and filter set over all else.
How to pose an image? Place the subjects in their space, let them do their thing and capture the magic.
You use 10% of your skill awareness and 10% of the time and gear you would like to have to shoot for the top 10% of results.
The most common issue is gear.
Ignorance is probably bliss here, because knowing what you would like to do is often at odds with what you can do. My bag covers (full frame equiv) 18-300 with mixed zooms and primes, three light sources (flash, LED, reflector), a mic, phones and a pair of camera bodies all in a relatively small and light bag (Domke F2). Sometimes a tripod comes with me, often not.
What I would love to carry is a light stand or two and brolly or soft box, a bigger LED, tripod (always), more lenses, multiple flash units, several sound options with cables, a camera better suited to video (S5 or G9 properly rigged up) etc.
Because I do not work exclusively for the paper and we do not get designated cars, I do not have the luxury of having these at hand.
Sport has its own needs, but thankfully, you usually know what they are.
If I cannot carry it, I cannot use it.
If I cannot use it, I cut it out of my creative processes.
All I can do is take what I may need and hope for the best.
The second biggest issue is time.
Never enough, never the right time and always turn round speed over quality, so quality has to come from efficiency, selective compromise and acceptance.
Every specialist sees time differently. The landscaper thinks in perfect days and hours, the portraitist in split seconds, the sports shooter in even less than that. As a journalistic shooter, I see time as simply a “make the most of” proposition. Sometimes you get lucky, usually not.
Light, being the grist of our mill is usually a tug of war thing, which is where time is so cruel.
Sometimes it does not matter much. Light just is and the subject has to do the heavy lifting.
Sometimes it is hard to improve upon.
Sometimes you just have to make it work.
So, why the demise?
I doubt in the near future there will be a pool of long term photographers to draw from, cadets are thing of the past and the need is shifting to more “journalist with a phone on the spot” thinking. Ironically video, which is technically harder, should be where photographers migrate, but probably not.
The thing lost, as with so many similar stories like printed papers, or free to air TV, is that as soon as it becomes an unknown to a new generation, they do not know to miss it.