The worst articles are by Headrick - practically undecipherable. But his photos are great - in fact guns usually look better in the photos than in real life.
Keep in mind that Headrick was an art teacher, not an English major. When I was a start-up operation back in 1995, Bill helped me decide on a camera (Ziess-Contax), and he assured me that 35mm slides were a valid, sufficiently-large format for magazine work. The cover of my new book is a "blead," meaning the image goes to the edges of the 12 3/8 x 9 3/8 boards. The image is taken from a 35mm slide; good advice from America's
numero uno gun photographer! Yet I often find his images too technically correct. Dan Cote once told me that they were "as if taken from a deep freeze," which is good for still life work, but not to the taste of those who appreciate the impressionists. As for Bill's appendant commentary...well, I really like his photography. Terry Allen's too.
In the final analysis, producing killer photos is
almost as easy as the
simple capture of light on an appropriate medium by using expensive equipment to establish proper high-resolution focus, plus you'll need cost-effective access to interesting guns and associated background memoribilia, coupled an artistic sense of layout and proportion, refraction, shadows, nuances of texture, highlighting...so, not surprising,
DGJ pictures run the gamut of amateur-hour to top-of-the-trade, and perusing each issue of the
DGJ will show glaring examples of both extrenes. Not everyone has the talent and resources of Headrick and Allen.
So whenever you see a bad picture consider it an opportunity to do better in the next issue. Pictures sell articles; really good pictures can often be a "photo-article" without associated text (except for cryptic captions). The Fall 2008 issue shows a lack of well-photographed submissions; hark back to the Spring 2004 issue for some of Terry Allen's best work, and compare to Headrick's "out of the freezer" photos; different but Great! Charlie Semner has mastered technical photography against a blue background (never use red!). Notice the images on p.53 and 65, 71 and 77 of the Spring 2004 issue; these are what I mean by "impressionist." Notice the technical prefection of Headricks work at pp. 89-90-91-93, and compare the image at p.94 to Semner's at pp. 80-81. Good stuff, but different.
Now check out the David McKay Brown ad on p.8, which really sucks. Who in their right mind would deliberately photograph an $80,000 product image out of focus and pay top $$$ for a full page ad in an "eye candy" magazine. What a turn off! And parting shot:
I don't write for
Hunting & Fishing Colectibles anymore. I wrote good case-on-point stuff and submitted good slides of worthy guns and shooting memoribilia. But the editor balked. Slides cost $$$ to read into the electronic medium, thus making my high-resolution images "less valuable" than those submitted from digital cameras on disc. But some of the digital-decoys pictured in the magazine looked like they were wearing fur coats; fuzzy home vidios trumped professional work. So we went our seperate ways. Be thankful that Dan at the
DGJ favors high quality when available, and hope that more will be in the offing in the future as the next generation of author/photographers work to improve their words and images. EDM
