Bellevue Studio-    113 E. Main St.     Bellevue, Oh 44811   419-483-5428   fax 419-483-3473

Sandusky Studio-  209 W. Water St.  Sandusky, OH 44811 419-621-5428                             

Photo-journalism, what is everyone talking about?

Weddings typically consisted mostly of posed pictures.  In the old days photographers would take a maximum of 50 pictures at a wedding.  All posed.  I talked to one of the area's photographers when he retired about his craft. The reasons for so few images were:
    1. Film and processing chemicals were expensive.

    2. Most photographers processed their film and prints by hand and it was very time consuming.

    3. Customers only bought certain poses for their albums so that's all the images they made.

    4. Cameras used film that only gave 10, 12, or 15 images per roll.  This meant more expensive film backs had to be purchased, and film had to be reloaded often. It was a hassle to use more film.

Of course, when we started offering wedding photography, I didn't want to be like everyone else!  

So we spent the extra money needed to create more images at each wedding, sometimes up to 400 images with film! 

With color film, the only sensible place for processing is a professional lab.  Film processing must be very precise, and one minor problem means the loss of the images from your wedding day.  That's unacceptable to us. We have several great labs we work with.

I knew why customers were buying only certain poses, that was all they ever saw! Our customers purchase all sorts of images because we create and show more.   We're always designing new looks and catching more candid poses.

We started out using the same cameras, changing film every 12 frames, what a hassle! It didn't stop us from developing our photo-journalism style though. Now with newer technologies, that's not a problem so we can keep creating and not miss a beat!

So, back to photo-journalism!  This term was coined from newspaper type coverage of events.  It is fast moving, shooting lots of film to yield a few good exposures.  Think of when you see a newspaper photographer.  They will shoot a roll of 36 exposures to fill one or two spaces in the paper.  You'd have a pretty slim album with this type of coverage!

Then along came digital.  All of a sudden, everyone could shoot everything that crawls, flies, and walks on the wedding day and it didn't cost them anything to do it. Or so they thought.  Unfortunately, digital brings along a whole new set of challenges.  See Digital. 

All of a sudden, everyone starts taking more candid photographs at weddings and calling it photo-journalism.  Something we've been doing for over 15 years.

But what they don't realize is that you can't just snap away, its actually harder to create meaningful images of candid situations.  Knowing when to wait and when to shoot is necessary to capture the most meaningful moment.  Once it has passed, the moment is gone forever.

Experience and training is the key.  Knowing when to wait, where to wait, and which way to be looking makes you a photo-journalist.

Copyright © 2007 Firelands Photography  Thank you to all of our customers who allow us to publish their images.  If you do not want your image to appear, please e-mail us immediately.  Thanks!