Out of the frame: A longitudinal perspective on digitization and professional photojournalism

Introduction

Appearing throughout the 1990s, digital photography involved not only the death of film, the demise of the old darkroom, and the evaporation of chemical odors from the newsroom’s corridors, but also a transformation in the ways in which news photographs are taken, stored, selected, transmitted, edited, searched, and retrieved (Bossen et al., 2006; Cookman, 2009; Douglis, 2002; Fahmy and Smith, 2003; Levac, 2007; Ritchin, 2010; Wells, 2009). Contrary to the considerable ongoing interest in the impact of digitization on the routines of modern newsrooms (e.g. Boczkowski, 2005; Mitchestein and Boczkowski, 2009; Zelizer, 2009), few studies have explored its specific impact on the routines of professional photojournalism (e.g. Bock, 2008; Cookman, 2009; Fahmy and Smith, 2003; Russial, 2000; Zavoina and Reichert, 2000). These few studies have also not shown whether and how these new routines and practices are associated with the current threats to professional photojournalism (e.g. Mortensen and Keshelashvili, 2013; Newton, 2009a), such as the use of citizen photographs, massive layoffs of professional photographers, and their deteriorating working conditions (e.g. Allan, 2013; Greenwood and Reinardy, 2011). We use the term “threats” even though in recent years, some of these have already materialized, to one degree or another, in many newsrooms, culminating in cases such as that of the Chicago Sun-Times, which fired all its staff photojournalists (Memmott, 2013). The purpose of the current article is to try and fill this gap, seeking to associate the new “digitized” photojournalism production with the current threats to its professionalism.

Obviously, professional photojournalists can be distinguished from amateur photographers by several characteristics such as skills, ethics, motivations, and the restraint of emotional involvement (Yaschur, 2012b). For the purpose of this article, we conceptualize professional photojournalists as trained and skilled photographers, who have been working as staff or freelancers for about 10 years or more.

There are three major scholarly justifications for exploring the impact of digitization on the routines and practices of professional photojournalists.

The first lies in the crucial social, cultural, and communicative roles of professional photojournalists, as visual recorders of social reality (Bock, 2008; Newton, 2009a, 2009b; Sontag, 2003), in light of the growing threats to their occupational future (Allan, 2013; Mortensen, 2014; Mortensen and Keshelashvili, 2013; Newton, 2009a; Ritchin, 2010; Yaschur, 2011, 2012b).

Second, the central role that technology has always played in shaping and reshaping photojournalism, since the early days with the introduction of halftone, 35 mm cameras or flash photography (Brennen, 2010; Newton, 2008), or following digitization, as several scholars defined its impact on photojournalism as no less than “revolutionary” (Barnhurst et al., 2004).

Third, the changes of photojournalistic routines are far from obvious, as social and cultural practices are less susceptible to change (Swidler, 2001), particularly in journalism (Anderson et al., 2012; Reich, 2014; Ryfe, 2012). In addition to shaping photojournalists’ work and their visual output (Longton, 2009; Lowrey, 1999; Shoemaker and Rees, 1996), routines play a “constitutive” role (Ryfe, 2012), defining “what it means to be a media professional” (Shoemaker and Rees, 1996: 101).

Findings are based on a mix of methods, the main one being in-depth interviews with 15 photojournalists in leading Israeli national dailies who have experience in both the chemical and digital eras. To avoid excessive dependency on their versions, findings were triangulated with content analysis and participant observation on a small scale.

Literature review and conceptual framework

Although the first phase in the digitization of photojournalism took place as early as the 1980s, when “chemically produced” photos and films were scanned and converted into digital images, its second phase, marking the core phenomena, began only a decade later, with the adoption of digital cameras (Cookman, 2009; Newton, 2009a). Beyond the change in capturing and preserving light (Brennen, 2010; Messaris, 2008; Wells, 2009) and its ensuing dramatic epistemic consequences (Allan, 2013; Mäenpää, 2013; Newton, 2001, 2009b; Ritchin, 2010), digitization also induced a transformation in the routines and practices of professional photojournalism (Bock, 2008; Bossen et al., 2006; Cookman, 2009; Fahmy and Smith, 2003; Longton, 2009; Russial, 2000). And yet, an updated comprehensive empirically based mapping of the new routines has yet to be conducted.

With the introduction of digital technology, professional photojournalists faced several challenges, having not only to master the new technology (Greenwood and Reinardy, 2011; Russial and Wanta, 1998), but also to adopt new strategies for taking photos, launching them immediately to the newsroom, as well as coping with new responsibilities formerly performed by news organizations, such as managing personal archives and digitally editing their own photos (Bock, 2008; Bossen et al., 2006; Cookman, 2009; Fahmy and Smith, 2003; Newton, 2009a; Yaschur, 2012b). Nowadays, professional photojournalists have to muddle through mounting challenges, such as the massive pressures of time, workload, job insecurity, and the pressing need to redefine their professional identity (Bock, 2008, 2011; Buehner, 2013; Greenwood and Reinardy, 2011; Mortensen and Keshelashvili, 2013). These challenges are exacerbated by news organizations’ growing use of visual user-generated content (UGC), alongside massive layoffs of professional photojournalists (Buehner, 2013; Greenwood and Reinardy, 2011; Yaschur, 2012b).

Although these pressures have risen dramatically in recent years, they are far from being entirely new. Since its inception and institutionalization in the mid-20th century (Brennen, 1998; Zelizer, 1995), professional photojournalism has had to struggle not only for recognition but also for its very existence (Brennen, 1998; Zelizer, 1995), remaining to a large extent an inferior journalistic practice (Reich and Klein-Avraham, 2014) and among the weakest links in the modern news chain value (Lowrey, 2002).

Earlier studies suggested that digitization is not necessarily all bad news for photojournalism, since it might help mitigate the time pressures of chemical photography (Fahmy and Smith, 2003), take photojournalists out of the chemical darkroom and increase their immersion and cooperation with other newsroom staffers (Bossen et al., 2006; Fahmy and Smith, 2003). Contrary to these optimistic forecasts, some of the effects of digitization on photojournalism have been undeniably negative, for example, the unprecedented easiness of manipulating photographs (Mäenpää, 2013; Newton, 2009b), or the deletion and poor archiving of photographed materials that threaten collective visual memory (Davenport et al., 2007).

Although some routines and practices have been identified in the literature, they still need up-to-date and “wide-angled” exploration since early studies were distracted by the “teething problems” of the immature technology such as limited storage capacities or the coarse resolution of digital frames (e.g. Fahmy and Smith, 2003; Meyer, 2003). Later studies, on the other hand, tended to focus on narrow aspects of photojournalism, like archiving or mastering video (e.g. Bock, 2008; Davenport et al., 2007; Maurantonio, 2014; Yaschur, 2012a), ignoring the broader picture. Other publications often preferred a conceptual rather than an empirical stance (e.g. Messaris, 2008; Wells, 2009), or focused on personal experience of master photographers (e.g. Levac, 2007; Meyer, 2003) and specific case studies (e.g. Dorfman, 2002). Furthermore, previous publications tended to overlook the potential link between the new routines and practices of digitization and the eroding status of professional photojournalism.

The current study wishes to enrich the spectrum of existing research, using a 10-year perspective after digitization was adopted, trying to explore the potential association between the new routines and the current threats facing professional photojournalism. The study also wishes to add to the existing research dominated by American case studies (e.g. Bock, 2008; Fahmy and Smith, 2003; Ritchin, 2010) by focusing on the Israeli case. The international relevance of the Israeli case is manifested in a series of similarities such as the evolving status and the authorship of photojournalists compared to their textual counterparts in other Western countries (Reich and Klein-Avraham, 2014), as well as in the correspondence between our findings and descriptions in the scholarly literature in other national contexts, as described below. Despite its significant national and cultural role (Berger and Naaman, 2012; Meyers, 2002), Israeli photojournalism has so far not been studied from any sociological aspect (Reich and Klein-Avraham, 2014), let alone regarding the specific realm of digitization.

Israel’s national media is dominated by privately owned, competitive, profit-oriented news organizations, highly centralized in their ownership and geography (Caspi, 2008; Ezrahi et al., 2003; Imerglick, 2009; Reich, 2009). The national daily market is dominated by four major Hebrew dailies for the general public, three of which also existed before the digitization of photojournalism ¹ —Yedioth Aharonoth, Ma’ariv ² and Haaretz ³ —and hence were included in the current study.

The study addresses two major questions:

Methodology

The timing of the fieldwork, 2009–2010, enabled us a decade-long perspective since the emergence of digital photojournalism, once the technology and routines of its operation have matured. The study combined three methodologies:

Revolutionizing digital routines and practices

In relation to the first research question, our findings clearly indicate that the implementation of digital technology not only brought a new set of routines and practices, but also revolutionized the entire production process of photos, across four phases: starting with taking photos, through the following stages of initial gatekeeping, online transmission, ending with pre/post publication activities (i.e. Photoshopping and archiving). This subsection maps the new routines and practices according to these phases.

The first phase of taking photos underwent a revolutionary change, reducing and sometimes even eliminating the need for technical skills such as accuracy, immediate response, and frugal shooting, which were absolute preconditions for chemical photography.

Interviewees indicated three prominent new and interrelated practices that changed picture taking. First, digitization enables photographers to shoot continually—theoretically endlessly—thanks to the release from the limitations of film and the need to stop and reload every 36 frames (the prevalent quota of frames per film). “Usually,” said one of the interviewees, “the issue was not to be stuck on frame number 36. You had to calculate your work so that you wouldn’t run out of film in the middle [of things, like] exactly at handshakes [between convening leaders].” Moreover, the camera motors enable photographers to capture semiautomatically sequences of five or more frames per second, by holding down the image capture button. A seasoned photographer likened this practice to firing an automatic rifle: “with [these] new motors … they [the photographers] just shoot, frrrrrrrrrrrr.”

The combination of a semiautomatic, continuous photo taking with a virtually unlimited number of frames, led not only to the rise in the number of frames per assignment (as was apparent in the content analysis), but also to the change in the nature of the decisive moment and the strategies for its capture. One interviewee explained,

take for instance the concept of decisive moment. [Before digitization] the photographer had to decide what was the right moment to click [the camera], […] without having the moment after [to get it right], because that required winding the next frame. [But] if it’s the [digital camera’s] motor shooting … he can afford to choose the right moment not on the spot but on his computer [in retrospect].

In other words, instead of consciously identifying the decisive moment and immediately reacting to capture it, digital photographers can produce numerous frames semiautomatically and then search for the decisive moment retrospectively, free from the pressure and noise of the news scene itself. The content analysis also showed a dramatic rise in the number of decisive moments per assignment, as well as in the number of frames per each decisive moment.

Picture taking was reshaped by a third new practice: the real-time monitoring of the freshly obtained frames that allowed for on-the-spot quality control. Using the LCD monitor at the back of the digital camera, photographers can examine whether the existing frames are satisfactory or require additional shooting, while they still have the chance. One interviewee explained,

sometimes I find it hard to estimate whether I’m cutting [out] the hand or the leg [of the person photographed], if the eyes are shut … but now, I can see and fix it all on the spot. It’s a huge advantage.

The immediate monitoring not only releases photographers from the obsessive uncertainty as to whether they have accomplished their assignment goals, but also helps them minimize their stay at news scenes: “once I see I got what I want, I’m done.”

In the second phase, initial gatekeeping, the selection of frames, once the exclusive domain of photo editors, was delegated to the individual photojournalist, who now chooses and sends to the newsroom only a subset of frames from each assignment. The new practice not only limits the jurisdiction and overseeing of the photo editor that once scoured every frame but also delegates greater control to the photographer over their published photos: “They [the newsroom] are always asking me to send more [photos],” said one interviewee, “and they end up using the one I didn’t want them to have in the first place. So, I try to narrow it [the number of frames sent] down as much as I can.”

The third phase of online transmission rendered the delivery of photographs to the newsroom instantaneous, enabling photographers to simply shoot and send their photos instantly, anytime wherever they were. The digital transmission, which takes at most a few minutes, replaced the long hours of chemical photojournalism—the physical transportation, the afternoon bottleneck in the darkroom, and the development process. This impressive immediacy could not be ignored also during the observation, when one assignment lasted less than 45 minutes from initial assigning by the photo editor until he received the frames on his computer.

Beyond the dramatic cost-cutting for the news organizations (saving on taxes and couriers up to a US$1000 per day, according to a former director of one photojournalism department), online transmission revolutionized the deadline for photos. The shift from a single daily deadline towards the end of the workday, to multiple and immediate deadlines for every assignment, was detected also in online news production (Karlsson and Stromback, 2010; Klinenberg, 2005). The delayed deadline was especially dramatic for photojournalists working in outlying areas, who no longer had to stop working at midday, to allow physical shipment of their films to their newsrooms in Tel-Aviv. On the other hand, photojournalists from central Israel used the new routine to “rarely come to the newsroom, maybe twice a month,” as one interviewee put it. Hence, contrary to scholars who envisioned that digital transmission would eliminate the distance between photojournalists and other newsroom staffers (e.g. Fahmy and Smith, 2003), our findings indicate that its impact has been just the opposite, encouraging photojournalists to stay away from the newsroom.

Although news work was always a “stopwatch culture” (Schlesinger, 1987: 84), according to the majority of our interviewees, news organizations have become obsessed with speed after digitization. One interviewee said,

Nowadays, you haven’t even gone out to shoot, and they’re [the newsroom] already demanding the photos. I’m still at home! I haven’t switched on my camera yet. It got to a point when they [news organizations] gave us camera-phones, and, when I get to the news scene I’m supposed to take a frame or two with that mobile phone, send the photograph to the newsroom, and [only] then start photographing with my equipment.

In the last phase of pre/post publication, additional organizational roles were delegated to the individual photojournalists. Since news organizations avoided issuing clear policies or new standards to regulate the new tasks, photojournalists were forced to mold their own modes and standards during the crucial and sensitive stages of digital editing (“Photoshopping”) before the submission of their frames and the archiving of photos after publication, according to their individual background, motivation, and disposition.

Lacking any organizational regulation, photojournalists use Photoshop to fix and improve their photos in retrospect with practically no limitations. Interestingly, the testimonies of our interviewees regarding the use of Photoshop epitomizes a “third person effect,” as most of them claimed that other photographers used it extensively in ethically dubious manners, while they themselves used it carefully and in a limited manner without violating professional and ethical norms. The following testimony was typical:

I hardly touch news photographs. [Only] color corrections, fixing contrast […] that’s all. And I’m very strict about it;

[…] I think that they [other photographers and newsroom workers] manipulate photographs, as simple as that. I even saw it happening in other cases, when facts were distorted.

The “third person effect” was evident in most interviews, indicating not only the ethical and professional sensitivity around Photoshop use (see Becker, 1991; Newton, 2001, 2009b; Ritchin, 2010), but also the likelihood that it is used far more often than interviewees were willing to admit.

The absence of organizational guidelines was no less evident after publication—during the stage of archiving. News outlets still maintain their organizational archive; however, their digital content is limited only to the subset of frames preselected and sent by the photojournalists, while most visual memory, at least as much as the numbers of frames is concerned, remains in the hands of photographers.

Thus, while digitization offered better searchability of archives, the ways in which archiving was implemented created paradoxically the opposite. Each photojournalist manages his or her own archive according to idiosyncratic methods, which often hinder a quick and rich retrieval. One interviewee explained,

I realized that for me, this kind of work [managing a searchable and organized archive], is “Sisyphean,” so I don’t do it, because I’m not an organized and pedantic guy, I’m quite disorganized. I did some backups [in the past], put it here and there, you know … [But today] I lost trace; I don’t know what I have and where it is.

Except for a few photojournalists who do maintain a well-organized archive, most of them said that retrieving past photographs is a complicated challenge: “it might take me a day or two …”

So far, the findings indicate that the implementation of digitization fundamentally altered photojournalism production, reshaping the routines and practices in all four of its phases. Nevertheless, the question remains—how, if at all, these new routines have contributed to the erosion of the status of professional photojournalism.

Fertile ground for current threats

In relation to the second research question, most of our interviewees suggested a direct causal link between the rise of digitization and the deteriorating job security and working conditions of professional photojournalists, while also referring to the escalating crisis in broader media industry as a complementary cause. In the words of one of them,

Digitization brought many [new] photographers to the business, and now there are many photographers and little work. […] In addition to the [unskilled] photographers around us [professionals], the newspapers themselves […] started to lose money […] Now, these things have their consequences.

A former head of photojournalism department described, “In Ma’ariv [daily paper] in order to save money, one day they [the management] fired all the local press photographers […].”

Despite these honest and intuitive claims, our interviewees were not entirely aware of the sensitivities of establishing causality (Hume, 1902) and of the less visible and more general forces involved in undermining their status and job security. Among these were the traditional structural weaknesses of photojournalists compared to their textual counterparts (Reich and Klein-Avraham, 2014), the broader impact of digitization on news consumption and production (Anderson et al., 2012; Buehner, 2013; Ryfe, 2012), and broader trends in labor markets and other fields of cultural production, as elaborated in the discussion. Hence, we suggest that although digitization and the current threats to photojournalism were unequivocally successive and by no means unconnected, the associations between them are neither direct nor necessarily causal.

Beyond the new routines and the mass invasion of less-skilled photographers (see Buehner, 2013; Longton, 2009; Ritchin, 2010), the ways in which digitization was implemented have transformed the traditional hierarchies—not only empowering non-professionals but also weakening the status of professionals. As one interviewee put it,

newspapers don’t look for quality these days […] it’s entirely related to budgetary considerations. There’s no money, so you can’t get the best photojournalists. If a [professional] photojournalist charges US$5,000 [per month], while an amateur agrees to US$1,000 […] the editor will pick the latter.

Worse still, in the words of another professional photojournalist,

Nowadays young photographers come and work free of charge [just] for the byline, in order to progress [and get paid] later on. After a while, they understand they’re not getting anywhere and they leave; and then, new students come […] making the same mistakes all over again.

Indeed, equipped with digital technology, less experienced photographers were not only able to put their foot in the door of the newsrooms (e.g. Buehner, 2013; Mortensen, 2014; Mortensen and Keshelashvili, 2013; Ritchin, 2010), but—more significantly—to stay there, while using the new routines to conceal many of their blunders. Unlike their chemical predecessors, who had to send their superiors entire assignments for selection, including frames that viciously expose poor performances and limited skills, digital photojournalists can not only send a small subset of what they consider as best frames, but also Photoshop at least some of their technical mishaps easily and quickly. “Even if you’re not talented,” explained one interviewee, “and even if you don’t know what you’re doing, you can use it [pre-selection and Photoshopping] for fixing [photos] so your editor won’t see your mistakes.” These digital routines and practices that strengthen unskilled photography simultaneously had an opposite effect on professional photojournalism.

The steep acceleration of the news cycle contributed to the erosion in the status of professional photographers, as both experienced and novice photojournalists were expected, according to our interviewees, to conform to the supreme dictate of urgency, opening a broader door for publishing photos that were not necessarily the best ones. The following complaint was typical: “They [newsroom staff] already want the photos to be on their desks. The photographer is irrelevant. He’s a technician, he’s not a photographer […] No one cares how the photo looks, […Just] send the photo already.”

The digital routines and practices were also involved in weakening the already inferior status of professional photojournalists, transforming their physical distance from the newsrooms into a symbolic detachment. “Today it’s much more distant,” said one photographer, “Physical distance that caused detachment.” But this detachment ran much deeper. Indeed, another interviewee described an institutional form of alienation, with photographers excluded from organizational activities, losing sight and voice:

[Before digitization] photographers attended editorial meetings [in the newsroom], sitting with the editors, reporters, and graphic designers. […] Photographers had the right to comment, or even be a part of their photo selection. […] Now it’s just phone calls from the production.

Recontacting all our interviewees in the spring of 2014 to ask them about their current employment and working conditions, we realized that out of 15 people, only 5 still work solely as photojournalists, 2 of them as freelancers. At least 4 had been fired and 3 left for other reasons. Overall, 10 interviewees told us they either had, or were looking for, another avenue to earn their living. One of them explained,

a professional photographer can’t work like this. Mentally even. It’s a complete set [of conditions]: They [organizations, currently] take our copyrights, the payment is reduced, the photos don’t necessarily get published, and the kids [young new photographers] are constantly looking for a job. […] So, those who are willing to work free of charge get into the system, and professional photojournalists start to teach photography and do other stuff.

Discussion

Based on a triangulation of three research methods, this study indicates that digitization had much wider ripples than just accelerating the speed and efficiency with which news photos can be taken, transmitted, selected, manipulated, stored, and retrieved. Digital technology, and the routines and practices built around it, is a tectonic shift that has encompassed every potential stakeholder of photojournalism. It enabled news organizations to withdraw major outposts which marked their traditional involvement and commitment to photojournalism, outsourcing them to individual photographers, to invite a massive invasion of less-skilled or unskilled (and cheaper) photographers, and it has made the news industry a much less friendly and less rewarding workplace for professional photojournalists. Digitization did not “cause” the threats to professional photojournalism, in which photographers are increasingly alienated, underpaid, and unemployed. In some cases most, or even all, staff photographers were laid-off (Bock, 2008; Buehner, 2013; Memmott, 2013). However, the ways in which digitization was implemented evoked a negative synergy of old and new weaknesses of photojournalists as visual creatures in predominantly textual kingdoms (Lowrey, 2002; Reich and Klein-Avraham, 2014), leaving them in one of their most vulnerable positions to face the broader crisis in news business (which was itself accelerated by trends of greater digitization).

In comparison to other professions and cultural industries, the impact of digitization on photojournalism was among the most severe cases. In other professions too—such artist managers in the recording industry or junior researchers in the broadcasting business (Hesmondhalgh and Baker, 2011)—a general decline in the “quality of work life” or “job quality” and in the well-being of the worker can be discerned. Scholars in the fields of labor studies and cultural production attribute this decline to the accumulation of rising workplace exigencies, pressures of optimization, erosion of wages and job security, shift to contingent labor, weakening trade unions, and blurring of boundaries between life and work (Green, 2006; Hesmondhalgh and Baker, 2011). Moreover, other professions—such as assistant camera operators and assistant editors in the movie industry, or draftspersons in architecture—have gradually disappeared (Sperlich, 2011). Entire cultural industries, such as the music industry, lost their traditional business model (Hesmondhalgh and Baker, 2011). Even broader journalism is undergoing a sea change (Mitchestein and Boczkowski, 2009; Örnebring, 2010), and yet the routines and practices of textual journalists—in contrast to those of photojournalists—remain disturbingly stable (Anderson et al., 2012; Örnebring, 2010; Reich, 2014; Ryfe, 2012).

What made photojournalism so vulnerable to digitization? We suggest five interconnected dynamics accountable for this phenomenon:

This analysis marks at least three forces involved in the erosion of professional photojournalism that can be harnessed to its rehabilitation. First, the weakening of photojournalists in relation to their employers, evident also in broader labor markets (Connelly and Gallagher, 2004; Green, 2006), and may indicate a shift in the balance of power between management and workers, in their struggle over the social construction of technology (Örnebring, 2010). Hence, this case study suggests that to counterbalance the relative dominance of news organizations and its potential to enforce efficiency interests over professional interests (Lacy and Simon, 1993; Örnebring, 2010; Schudson, 2005), photojournalists should avoid acting as a collection of agenda-less individuals and instead collectively promote a coherent professional agenda in coordination with external factors such as professional associations, academics, experts, and so forth.

Second, since disruptive innovations can undermine not only firms and corporations (Christensen, 1997, 2006; Christensen et al., 2001), but also professions and occupations that are technologically driven like photographers, professional photojournalists should be more prepared to identify and mitigate future disruptions. Instead of belittling the new competitors and what is often thought to be their typically lower professional standards (Mortensen and Keshelashvili, 2013), professional photojournalists should consider moving sooner to these “emerging or insignificant markets” (Christensen, 1997: xvii), and searching for creative and profitable ways to utilize their advantageous knowledge in the new growing niche.

Third, additional changes of routines and practices may help regain at least some of their superiority as providers of news imagery, especially if harnessed to re-emphasize their reskilling and upskilling. Besides reshaping their routines (e.g. by organizing and enriching their personal archives), professional photojournalists should enrich their output, not only with current technologies, as some scholars suggested (see Bock, 2011; Lee, 2014), but also with emerging ones such as three-dimensional (3D) or 360° images.

Limitations and future direction

Although our findings rely heavily on in-depth interviews, conducted about 4 years before the writing of this article, they are no less relevant or applicable. The inherent biases of the methodology (i.e. subjectivity, nostalgia, and idealization), as well as the time of research, pale in light of the findings’ high correlation, not only with the triangulated methods or among interviewees but also with their current employment situation, and—more importantly—with the global scholarly literature, referred to in this article.

Future research should include players that were out of the realm of this study, such as news organizations, online photojournalists, or “digitally-native” ones, who have never experienced chemical photojournalism. However, a future study focusing on the reshaping of photojournalistic routines would be of more significance, as it could practically and positively affect the future of professional photojournalism.