Blog Archives

Ecclestone in court: off with their heads

25/4/2014

Friday 25 April, 2014
It's the Times again. And no, the picture editor didn't decide the lawyers were too ugly or to make a joke about Ecclestone's diminutive stature.
Michaela Rehle's photograph arrived cropped at the top as above, and the Times decided to give it some help at the bottom too.

Most papers went for more conventional shots, although this picture - full frame - also made the front of the Guardian's business section. Rehle, seen above at work in the same Munich court last year - is hot on tight cropping and composition. She won an award for her geometric photograph of Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande's kiss to mark 50 years of reconciliation between their countries. And the striking picture on the right was used to illustrate a report from NSA papers leaked by Edward Snowden that Sweden spied on Russian leaders.

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If it's going to stand alone, it's got to say something

24/4/2014

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The lion seizing the warthog on the world centre spread of the Times today was just one of several stand-alone pictures in the edition.
The use of such photographs can be tricky: too big and they look irrelevant and self-indulgent; too small and they look just what they are: space fillers, something pretty to fill the gap. The absolute worst kind of standalone is one of a celebrity just standing there doing nothing much in particular, coupled with a one-line caption that gives the sub no room to craft anything remotely interesting.
We see examples of these daily in the Telegraph. It didn't take long to find one - this is on page 2 today - although in this case there is room for a decent caption.

Here we are in the trusted territory of Downton Abbey for a picture of two not-in-the-first-flush-of-youth actresses. Can the caption whet our appetites for this rather static shot? You tell me:
It's a wrap
Downton is back
Dame Maggie Smith and Penelope Wilton wrap up warm on the set of the fifth series of Downton Abbey in Bampton, Oxfordshire. One of the new members of the cast will be the Withnail and I actor Richard E Grant.

Further into the paper we find this rather more appealing shot, although it is still nothing more exciting than a woman with a wheelbarrow. The headline is
Fifty shades of green
Fair enough, we see what you're doing there. Unfortunately, the heading halves the space available for the caption, which reads:

Charlotte Wood wears a Fifty Shades of Green hat for the Harrogate Flower Show, which starts today.

Oh, right. So is Fifty Shades of Green a brand name? We assume so from the caps, but there are no caps in the heading. And who is Charlotte Wood? Should we have heard of her? And even if she's not famous could we perhaps be told what she's doing in Harrogate please?

Such are the dangers of standalone pictures, which is why the Times's efforts stand out today. Apart from the lion, there were three or four others to catch the eye, starting with this, which took up half of page 4:

It's a dramatic picture and even in one line of caption we are offered something more than "here's a man surfing":

Tunnel vision The setting sun shining through peat particles creates the effect of a golden wave for Micah Lester, a professional surfer, off Thurso East, Scotland.

That's quite a difference. A few pages on we come to a half page of bluebells. This time the caption isn't quite so good - it but it's still an appealing sight.

The caption reads:

Rhapsody in blue A scintillating carpet of bluebells was lit up by a shaft of early morning spring sunshine in Arundel, West Sussex, yesterday. Bluebells have flowered early this year due to the warm weather

Again, at least we are given some explanation of what's going on, even if it's only that flowers are coming out early - which we kind of knew
And so it continues through the paper, Morris dancers, baby lemurs, the violence in Rio, every picture that isn't directly related to a news story is given some purpose. And there is a merciful absence of sexist eye candy until you reach the business front to encounter a lascivious-looking Titania who is, SubScribe thinks, standing up but who looks as though she's reclining in anticipation.
All of this is is marked contrast to yesterday, when the iPad edition displayed a story about a resurgence in medieval names thus:

Times ipad edition. Katie Price and daughter

The explanation is that fantasy names, such as Princess Tiaamii, daughter of Katie Price, "date quickly". The print edition did at least also pair up Katie and her Princess with Kate Winslet and her husband Ned Rocknroll.

It's a pity the paper had to resort to a man with a made-up name to illustrate the growing popularity of dear old Ned, but of course until the babies grow up, it's going to be hard to find examples.
Or is it? SubScribe may be way off beam here, but we understand that there is a popular book and television programme around these days called Game of Thrones. We also understand that the central character in the early episodes was someone called Eddard Stark - Ned to family and friends. This character was, we further understand, portrayed by one Sean Bean, macho hero for men, rugged sex symbol for women.
Could he possibly be the Ned who was the inspiration for all those new mums and dads?

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Times makes the running with Baywatch pic

19/4/2014

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The Duchess of Cambridge doing a Pamela Anderson Baywatch run was the main picture on four front pages today. But it works in only one - the Times. It is the only paper to let its photograph breathe and the only one to display it in the middle of the page. Nice kicker to the caption, too.
Three tabs used a different shot from the set, one that gives more of an impression of running, with Kate's hair bouncing higher.
But the Mirror and Sun both cropped theirs so tightly that they look more as though she is tripping up. And what's more they ran headings over the top. The Mail, meanwhile, was so attached to its formula design that it had her dashing away from the bad gas deals.
The Telegraph and Guardian also put Kate on the front but chose wide shots. The Telegraph's picture is jolly with the two lifeguards looking over their shoulders - pity they've lost the tops of their heads and that the small figure bottom left couldn't be cropped out without spoiling the image.
The Guardian's face in the crowd was a different approach, but the eye can't help but focus on the bum labelled "MANLY" in the foreground.
Goodness knows what the Express was doing with its postage stamp of
Duchess meets ram.

Telegraph: figure bottom left is intrusive

Guardian: Bums take your eye off Kate

Express: hunt the front-page picture

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The runaway rhea

16/4/2014

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Wednesday 16 April, 2014
Today's picture of the day competition has a runaway winner - a runaway rhea to be precise. The photograph above of it looking like the Rapeseed Ness Monster was taken by Tim Bradshaw and distributed by the Mercury Press. The bird, as every paper is eager to tell us, is 6ft tall, and has 6in claws that are capable of disembowelling a human - whom it could catch easily, should it be so minded, since it can sprint at 45mph. Quite scary then.
The bird has been missing from its home in Brent Pelham, Herts, for a month. Her owner, Jo Clarke, says it was spooked by a hunt and escaped. She spent four hours trying to find it, but then gave up. "I got it to follow me, because you can't herd them, but it got away. I haven't really bothered since. I can't outwalk it. I can't outrun it. Since then, there's been no point."

A cyclist spotted the bird "trotting along" the edge of a field near Nuthampstead last Thursday, and Bradshaw saw it on Sunday near his home in Anstey. He took the photograph at the top and the one on the right.
The Times used the picture above across the top of page 4 - by far the best display for that photograph - but it was accompanied only by a two-line caption.
The Telegraph led page 3 with the story and chose the picture on the right as its main image, with the "monster" photograph much smaller directly underneath. The two didn't sit happily together and double column seemed too small. The paper did, however, give us a map so we could trace the bird's flightless flight.

Of the papers that ran a combination of two pix and a story, the Express seemed to come out best - and put it in the most appropriate place on page 9.
The Mail surprisingly ran it way back in the book, and under a heading that told us a man was on the loose in Hertfordshire.
The most bizarre treatment came from the Star, left.
Killer bird from hell? It comes from South Africa. Invading Britain? It lived in Herttfordshire. And what's with the giant kitten in the middle of the rape field?
The rhea was competing for "fancy that" space with Kim Jong Un's attack on a British hairdresser and for "jolly picture" space with the red moon.
The Mirror and Independent were far too busy with hungry Britain for such frivolities. But were they right to write it off?
Isn't this just the sort of picture story that's going to capture the readers' imagination and have them talking about your paper in the pub?

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The equitecture of the Kelpies

15/4/2014

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Saturday 12 April, 2014
These magnificent beasts are the Kelpies, a pair of 30-metre high horse heads created by the sculptor Andy Scott. They stand at the gateway to the Forth and Clyde canal at Falkirk and open to the public this week.

The artist writes on his website: "The materials are deliberately those of Scotland’s former industrial heartland, steel construction on an architectural scale: equitecture. The towering horse heads have an industrial aesthetic with structural columns and beams visible through the riveted laser cut steel plates of the skin, the manes rendered as geometric overlapping slabs of steel."

The photograph above, by Murdo Macleod, appears on the Guardian's centre spread, labelled pictures of the week. The horses are joined by Ukrainians manning barbed wire barricades, Maria Miller driving away from Parliament after resigning as Culture Secretary, and a blazing lorry and coach after a crash in California that left ten dead, including five teenagers. The Indian election and a photograph of Peaches Geldof as a baby along with a number of tweets posted after her death run across the bottom. Top right is the sea lion photograph that appeared in the Times and Mirror earlier in the week. Once again, the caption here refers to the tunnel created by swirling fish as being the size of a football pitch.
For SubScribe's thoughts on this, please click here

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As big as Wales? or whales? or a football pitch?

7/4/2014

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Monday 7 April, 2014 The Times unusually gives a big chunk of its opening World spread to this photograph by David Fleetham of a sea lion off the Galapagos islands. The fish are black-striped salema, which apparently formed a massive spinning tunnel to avoid being eaten. The Times says the tunnel is the length of a football pitch, so presumably about 100m. The Mirror also used the photograph, and also made the football pitch comparison, so it probably appeared in the supplied caption.
Football pitches, Olympic swimming pools, Nelson's Column and Wales are common visitors to news pages for reasons of comparison - as though we all go round with their dimensions clear in our minds. SubScribe suspects that most readers could visualise 100m more accurately than they could a football pitch - and certainly a quarter of a mile more easily than four football pitches. We can create our own comparison: the distance to the pub, the bus stop, the corner shop or whatever.
Bigger areas pose a bigger problem. The hunt for the missing Malaysian airliner was at one point focused on "an area the size of Alaska". How big is that? How many Waleses, for example? And, for that matter, how big is Wales? SubScribe would love to hear suggestions for more sensible yardsticks.
In the meantime, a football pitch is between 90 and 120m long; an Olympic swimming pool is 50m long and contains about 2.5m litres of water; Nelson's Column is 52m high (so roughtly an Olympic pool or half a football pitch turned on its end).
Wales is just over 8,000 sq miles; Alaska is 663,000 sq miles, so about 83 Waleses or - just to add to the confusion - two Texases, or about 10% of Russia.

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The look

This page is for jottings about use of pictures, spreads and general design. The emphasis here is on the appearance rather than the content, although they often cannot be separated.
The narrative here is even more of a personal opinion than on the rest of the site. Your thoughts and contributions are invited. Thank you.
(Titlepiece photograph:
cinemafestival / Shutterstock.com)