What’s the need for images?
Something that happened to me a couple of days ago got me thinking hard on what’s the real need for images.
I got contacted by a press person from the Spanish Basketball Federation to do the pictures of a game. They wanted lots of images, some during the game and the others immediately after it to upload them as soon as possible.
No matter how much I wanted to see my pictures published at a national level, I rejected the job because I couldn’t accept the extremely little amount of money they offered. They hired someone else and that’s ok with me, I am not complaining as they clearly have the right to hire whoever they want.
The point I want to make is a slightly more philosophical one.
I guess I should first point out that I can reject a job like that because I don’t make a living out of photography; those who do, face a whole different problem here and, given the current situation, they probably have no time to ask themselves philosophical questions.
The things is: They didn’t know me, they hadn’t seen any of my pictures, they didn’t know what I could offer them. The images they finally published didn’t quite make it to a minimum standard for publication. So… I am sorry to say that the hard truth here is that they didn’t really care about the images as long as they had images. My big question is: if quality/content is not an issue, but just quantity and immediacy, what’s the real need for images? Aren’t the images supposed to show something? Or are they there just to not have a page full of ’boring’ text?
