Photography News is broken, how do we fix it?
Mediocrity in photographic journalism
While reading Fil Hunter, Paul Fuqua, and Steven Biver’s excellent Light, Science and Magic I was struck by a line demonstrating a traditional use of the beauty dish.
“the large refector acts as a soft light; the smaller fash tube acts as a hard light. Some beauty dishes have optional covers for the fash tube for softer light: sort of a beauty dish–soft box combination effect. they require only one stand instead of the three or four needed by the other methods, and so one photographer can easily control them.”
This now uncommon use of a beauty dish was a lightning bolt, not so much because of the novelty, but because I had interfaced with this information before. Searching any number of terms looking for elaboration on this soft and hard spill technique won’t net any useful results on google- at least not any more. However I had seen a personal blog demonstrate the same idea at least ten years ago. The information had stuck in my head for years without any useful way to certify it, until this throwaway line in Light, Science and Magic.
If you’ve been looking for information about photography online, you probably share my frustration. Things seem to have taken a turn for the lower quality, rushed, and dumbed down over the last few years. Online publications which were once reliable sources of information now parrot press releases from camera manufacturers, with barely the pretence of critical engagement with the hows and whys of photography as a medium. Good photography tuition now mostly exists on YouTube, where it is next to impossible to parse quality until several minutes into a video. What separates a novice with an aputure light dome and an expert recording on their phone may not become apparent until a good amount of time has been wasted- and that’s supposing good information under poor production values is able to pass through the algorithm into your feed in the first place.
Compare and Contrast
If we were a new photographer looking for insight into this modifier, chances are google would take us to an article like Digital Photography School’s Beauty Dish Photography: The Essential Guide.
“beauty dishes are primarily used for portrait photography, especially fashion. So if you’re hoping to shoot still life photos, product photos, or even studio pet photos in addition to standard portrait shots, a softbox is the better buy.
Softboxes are also great for achieving a softer, flattering look — so they’re perfect if you’re hoping to get that “diffused window” effect that portrait photographers love.
Plus, you can buy huge softboxes, which are great for group shots (beauty dishes vary in size, but they never go that big).
On the other hand, the beauty dish look is harder and sculpted, so if you want intense portraits, a beauty dish will serve you well.” Gary Detonnancourt, Beauty Dish Photography: The Essential Guide
Ok, so a beauty dish is harder and that makes it good for fashion, not so good for anything else. Softboxes are softer. Beauty dish light is.. sculpted? Let’s now compare that to an article with actual insight and expertise
“ A broad, shallow reflector, it throws a modestly soft light at portrait distances. There is nothing particularly “beautiful” about it. The dish just has good PR, I guess.
A light this size won’t wrap as much as a giant octa or umbrella when used at the same distance, which can be a good thing. So while some people may think of it as a beauty dish, I tend to think of it as a character dish…
When used with a giant, on-axis fill light, the beauty dish really starts to live up to its name. The shadows from a dish are distinct, and controlling their depth with another light source gives you a wide range of possibility.” David Hobby, Choosing Soft Modifiers
David Hobby understands that apparent light size controls softness, he knows how light angle shapes shadows, and these insights allow him to convey more necessary information about a beauty dish in substantially less space (This is all David has to say about the dish, whereas the DPS article goes on for another five sub sections with such insights as ‘you can use them outdoors’). The difference, really, is that DPS articles are written for specific SEO targets, while David simply writes until he has finished typing the information he has to give.
Unfortunately, Strobist articles got it right the first time, and will likely only be updated when we make a major change to how physics and light works. This means the articles consistently underperform in the algorithm, pushed off the first page of google by the patently absurd An Unusual Way to Use a Beauty Dish, and the shallow How to Use a Beauty Dish for Perfect Photography Lighting (Expert Photography will not be singled out in this article because they are beneath contempt.)
It wasn’t always like this
Vapidity in online blogging is hardly a novel charge. Writing on the internet has been accused of being shallow and lacking expertise for as long as it has been publicly accessible. This issue is also not specific to photography, and follows a general trend instigated by Facebook’s misreporting of viewership statistics in 2015 and the mass pivot to video which followed. Around the same time, Buzzfeed contributed pioneering work in content mill style blogging where output and a snappy title were worth more than the actual integrity of a given article (they attempted to redeem this with their new division, that conversation is outside of the scope of this article but is well considered in this podcast).
But online photography journalism holds a unique place both in their origins and in my heart. Generally led by hobbyists and passionate professionals, the atmosphere in the early 2010s was that of a free flow of information from those in the industry who had the most to say. The traditional model of studying photography at a university, college or technical school followed by full time work in assistance to a working photographer were being upended by the internet selling what it advertised. A level playing field for photographers to share information, and where those who had knowledge were willing to share it for free.
The general scope of late 2000s and early 2010s blogging was didactic but personal. Bloggers wanted their specific expertise to be valuable, however they were tonally set-apart from stuffy online education. Photojojo was one of my favourite commerce driven blogs. In-between product updates they shared short tutorials on cyanotype, how to set up photo booths, photography-adjacent DIY. Aesthetically they fit into a sort of consumption-as-personality hipsterism which we’ve pushed away culturally, however the tutorials themselves were self contained, informative, and useful. Strobist remains the go-to resource for any new photographer looking to demystify the world of flash. Luminous Landscape was highly technical but thoroughly informative. PetaPixel, DIY Photography, and Digital Photography School still posted useful, novel, and informative articles.
“We have a problem, we have become too popular”
Fstoppers, the best of the big blogs, was two wedding photographers and a Nikon D300 creating videos of their process. Their early videos such as the now delisted Patrick And I go to Las Vegas/Shoot In A $15,000 Per Night Penthouse and The iPhone Fashion Shoot read like the general playbook for online virality now, but it’s important to note that the videos were self funded, and they were high quality. I feel as good rewatching their old content now as I did watching it the first time. Early Fstoppers was a platform for professional photographers to share how they worked to both amateurs and peers.
Three days after launching Fstoppers, cofounder Lee Morris wrote that their site was already experiencing money problems.
On day 1 we got 250 hits and I thought that was really good. On day 2 we got 4000 hits and I was blown away. Today we got 12,000 hits and I started to freak out. Why? Because we are running this site mostly through Vimeo.com which actually costs money (it isn’t free like Youtube). We like Vimeo more because it has a great community and the videos are higher quality and they stream better than Youtube but we can’t keep this up. I thought that we got 25,000 hits per month, I was just informed that we get 25,000 hits per year before we have to start paying more money. We already have 16,000 of those used up in 3 days and we still have 362 days left to go.
In order to stay afloat, Fstoppers needed to monetize. A page titled ‘Advertise Your Company on Fstoppers.com’ appeared boasting that “As of November 2010, more than 80,000 unique visitors visit Fstoppers each month with roughly 400,000 page views and 250,000 visits” with a media kit attached offering cpm rates, sponsorship, and product placement offerings.
By 2011 the site had a merch store, and collaborated with headshot photographer Peter Hurley to create The Art Behind The Headshot, a DVD course in which:
While filming Peter work for over 3 days with 9 paying clients, it was clear that this DVD was not only for photographers wanting to improve their headshot business but it would also help any photographer who places a stranger in front of their camera. Peter deals with all sorts of personalities, facial structures, degrees of confidence, and levels of expectation with his clients on a day to day basis. This DVD will not only expose Peter’s workflow and lighting, but more importantly, it will also teach you how to interact with your clients.
Why am I singling out FStoppers? I hold no personal gripe with their publication specifically, and I give their example specifically because I think they were one of the better publications out there. Their example is something every such website contends with: running a website costs money. What is generally obscured to the consumer is that hosting fees increase as your website becomes more popular. Revenue quickly becomes a necessity.
Whether your profits depend on advertising slots, DVD sales, workshop tickets, or affiliate links, your site will profit more from jamming in as many eyeballs as possible with new content and clickbait, than it will with methodical and high quality content. Search Engine Optimisation demands clicks, links, and time spent on-page. And while quality, engaging content is one path toward optimisation. The cheapest, simplest, and fastest route is its dark inversion.
SEO Hell
“The goal is to tell the algorithm whatever it needs to hear for a site to appear as high up as possible in search results, leveraging Google’s supposed objectivity to lure people in and then, usually, show them some kind of advertising. Voilà: a business model!… Perhaps this is why nearly everyone hates SEO and the people who do it for a living: the practice seems to have successfully destroyed the illusion that the internet was ever about anything other than selling stuff.“ — The Verge, The People Who Ruined the Internet
Our engagement with the modern internet is mediated through social media and search engines, all with specific flaws and a host of bad actors eager to exploit these weaknesses. An article which wastes your time shoving ads in your feed can be just as, or more profitable than a blog like Fstoppers or SLR Lounge which, while beholden to unrealistic output expectations, at least care about staying on topic.
Searching “[any camera model] V [any other camera model]“ will inevitably bring you to sites like Camera Decision, a database with a dedicated page for seemingly every combination of any two cameras. I cannot speak to Camera Decision’s specific approach, but if I were to create such a database, I would feel compelled to leave the sysiphean task of creating pages, maintaining their database, and inputting data to either AI, code, or cheap labour from an offshore virtual assistant. In my experience Camera Decision, with uniform articles neatly comparing camera spec in a uniform way, is not specifically sinister. What it does do is push down articles from smaller blogs which may contain specific insights outside of parotting specs.
“There’s been a veritable avalanche of AI-generated content online since the dawn of ChatGPT, with many turning to machine learning tools to try to make a quick buck off the back of Google search traffic. Sites like the aptly named Robots.net are designed to churn out articles that target popular search terms, trying to draw traffic away from legitimate reviewers and journalists. These articles are assembled from the actual work of product reviewers and buying guide editors, scraped from dozens of reputable sites, and smashed together into something the AI thinks will please Google. Algorithms trying to satisfy algorithms… it’s a weird world, isn’t it?” Christian Guyton, Google search might be getting worse — and AI threatens to ruin it entirely
Sites which refuse to use AI must still compete with bad actors, and unfortunately the immediate answer may be flattening their own content. When the result is the same, and competition is stiff, it should be no surprise that every successful photography news site has adopted the high throughput, low quality strategy.
There is something inherently broken in our brains, or our algorithms. The internet has optimised itself around what best grabs our attention, but what best grabs our attention is a car crash.
Clickbait
“I was assigned to “write” seven posts a day by a team of editors who between them had no previous editorial background whatsoever. My task was to take content from other viral sites that were shared and liked a thousand times over, save the images and videos from those posts, and write “stories” around them — repurposing the works of our competitors. I would also write headlines in a very specific style (“You Won’t Believe So-And-So Did This! AMAZING! LOL!”) and include images that would get people to click on the article. The reason for including various images and headlines was to test them on a select number of readers, and the best-performing ones would automatically end up on our Facebook account to ensure maximum clickability.“ Anonymous, The secret life of a clickbait creator: lousy content, dodgy ads, demoralised staff
A catchy headline doesn’t become clickbait until the promise of the title is revealed to be absent in the content (and for this reason it is up to you, at the end of the article, to decide whether my title was catchy or clickbait). You know clickbait when you see it. The problem however is that successful clickbait hides the fact that it’s clickbait until it’s too late: articles which successfully hide the fact that they are all chaff still get the eyeballs they are looking for as far as their advertisers and SEO are concerned.
What even is Photography News?
The laws of physics and the technology of photoelectric capture are not prone to daily change. The bloggification of the internet has mandated that articles stay fresh and that new content is prioritised over old content, but the advice which would benefit a growing photographer has not changed in a long time.
This bind presents three potential solutions to satisfy the algorithm: First, a drip feed of specific tutorials and editorial content aimed at encompassing a range of situations, techniques, and styles; second, gossip; and third, parroting press releases and speculating on new camera models. No major publication deals in any one solution exclusively (The [Brand]rumours.com associated with each manufacturer may come closest to a singular focus), but for good positioning on google, every publication’s content eventually settled into or is drowned by these types of content.
Cohesive tutorials are unambiguously a good thing, and publications like FStoppers and SLR Lounge still use this content to supplement a feed of otherwise lower quality content. This sort of content is expensive however, and requires, if not just the time for a photographer to go out and generate new work, often a supplementary video production.
Gossip is a dual edged sword. While it can be useful for professionals to follow ongoing developments in their industry, more often these articles seem to describe legal disputes. While it would be largely thankless, I believe a regular publication from someone who could stay abreast of developments, personalities, and gossip in the photography industry and set them into a useful context and perspective would be a genuine service to the medium.
But ask a blogger or YouTuber why so much of their content focuses on gear and they will all likely give the same answer: Gear content gets the most eyeballs. Even my own article on prime lenses is my most popular article. For this we as viewers do need to take some responsibility: If we want to see deeper articles we need to keep reading them. I have included a list of great online photography articles, videos and resources at the bottom of this article to start you off. From here, if you recognise a good article, bookmark it and return to it. Share it on aggregators like reddit if you are inclined.
Gear articles follow a set of perverse incentives which short circuit the traditional model. Whereas an article which works hard to talk about truths in photography must get eyeballs and direct those eyeballs toward adverts in order to generate profit, an article parroting a press release for the latest whatever can embed the advertising directly in the article. That these articles which are essentially just ads then perform better than challenging and worthwhile writing on the topic is a failing of ours as readers. We need to reprioritise around thoughtful reading- to work toward stopping instinctively clicking on articles suggesting that this new lens will finally deliver optical nirvana.
Why are photography news sources so mediocre, and how do we fix them?
To recap: Online photography news must make income to survive. Income means advertising, advertising means eyeballs, and eyeballs means SEO. Search engine algorithms currently have no safeguards against low quality content provided the low quality content gets eyeballs, and so strategies have emerged around writing low quality content in a way which hides its lack of depth- keeping viewers on page not because they are taking value but because they have been over-promised and under-delivered.
So where can great photography tuition be found online? When I was starting out, it was via blogs which linked to other blogs. With enough attention and judicious bookmarking, a web of great online resources could be built. That has become more difficult than ever, and so in an attempt to rebuild, here is my blog’s list of blogs worth pursuing. Rather than scrolling through an aggregator, I recommend you bookmark the following list of sources and fully exhaust them.
Strobist — This is the resource for off camera flash. Start and finish here and you’ll achieve more with a bedsheet than any expensive influencer-pushed modifier.
Marc Levoy’s Stanford & Google Courses — The patron saint of this blog, Marc’s courses walk through the mechanics of sensors and optics in their entirety. They presume no prior knowledge but get incredibly detailed as you move through the course. Download a flash browser extension and the applets will still work as designed.
Specific Rob Hall Videos — Rob is one of few photographers peddling the old model of talented working photographers sharing what they’ve got. His regular beat is the Godox lighting system, and for information on their offerings, he’s particularly helpful. Some of his videos take on a broader scope and are even better including 10 Things I Use to Enhance Story in Photography and Off Camera Flash Photography Tutorial.
Stunning Digital Photography by Tony & Chelsea Northrup — Tony and Chelsea may be stuck in YouTube’s equivalent of the trap mentioned in this article, however this resource at under $10 for the eBook proves that they are talented and thoughtful educators when given a blank canvas.
Fstopper’s Original Articles — If you’d like to see what Fstoppers still does have to say, you should bookmark and read only the section where they post originally written articles absent of rehosted YouTube videos.
