By ROB CAREW
NEWSPAPER photographs have been with us for more than 100 years.
Until then, only line block images had been used to illustrate the stories of the day.
It must have been a proud day in January 1911 when the first photo appeared in The Journal. It was of well known identity of the day W.H.A Rodd.
Wearing robes and chains, he looks every bit like the modern day Mayor of Dandenong but he was, in fact, about to be officiated as the District Chief Ranger which was then described as a “high and honourable position” certainly worthy of the very first photograph in the Journal.
It is interesting that even then, the word ‘photo’ was already commonly used for ‘photograph’.
This tells us that by that stage photos had made their way into readers’ hearts and had become a popular part of everyday life.
In the romantic age of wooden cameras with bellows and light sensitive film, when photographers always wore hats and tripods were commonplace, a photographer was an elegantly dressed man about town who rubbed shoulders with the dignitaries and stalwarts of the day.
By 1911, the iconic Box Brownie had already been a part of life for more than a decade.
Interestingly it is now about 10 years since the introduction of consumer digital cameras. After an entire century the only real has been film to digital and paper to screens.
Everything else is just detail; improvements in cameras, lenses, the printing process and viewing platforms.
The next major development in newspaper printing was to be the introduction of colour and in October 1991 – 80 years after the first photo, the first colour advertisement appeared in the Journal.
In line with progress and new processes, newspaper photographers moved from the darkroom onto the editorial floor to join journalists and the editorial team.
Computer screens replaced enlargers and the revolution of sending pictures wirelessly from the field has taken over – the age of online newspapers has arrived!
Newspaper photographers everywhere have embraced these amazing changes in particular the opportunity to communicate to the world from anywhere and in ‘real time’.
Nevertheless, those of us who were lucky enough to have worked through this time of transition will forever miss the heady days of the darkroom.
The dark room was a mystical place to work and see your pictures come to life.
It was an inner sanctum, a place to engage in lively conversations, and was generally heaps of fun… the home of the photographer, a room where journalist, editors and subs would find any reason to visit… it was a place of escape – a place where magic happened, another world.
Thankfully one thing never changed; our readers’ interest in photos has never waned.
In fact, today’s online audiences drive the need for increased photographic content which they consume in volumes never before seen.
Because of this, as they have done for more than a century, news photographers can still head out every day with a spring in their step knowing that this is still the best job in the world!
