CHENNAI: Marc Serota is an award-winning photographer who specialises in sports photography. He has worked for over ten years with Reuters news agency, covering big stories from around the world. He has most recently been contributing to Corbis, the AP and Getty Images. On world photography day, Serota speaks to Express about the digital revolution in photojournalism...
You were among the first photographers to adapt to digital. How did you warm up to the transition?
I remember the day I first got a digital camera. Elian Gonzalez, a Cuban emigrant who hit international headlines was found dwelling in Miami where his house was about be raided. It was a Pulitzer-winning story for Reuters. Tens of photographers waited outside his house and the night before the raid, I was given my first digital camera.
It was big and would wait for a whole second to get a picture. It would clunk and clog noisily. It had a 16kb memory card that was as big as my phone. The output was grainy and had blue noise. Other photographers laughed at me because weight in hand is a valued possession (referring to film cameras). But I knew that this was revolutionary. When I entered volcanic zones to click pictures on analogue cameras, I carried satellite devices as big as my luggage to send a single photograph. From prayer photography (where one hoped the negative yielded good pictures), digital photography gave me instant gratification.
How have you survived competition?
Photography is all about capturing the right moment. The picture that’s made me the most money is a picture of a piece of paper. It was during the butterfly ballot disaster when Al Gore contested in the presidential elections. The votes could not be counted because of a certain design confusion in the ballot. While photographers were fighting to get the right picture, I simply asked a lady at the counter to show me an empty ballet and I put it on the floor and got a picture. Higher authorities quickly told me that it was government property and asked me to return it and I did. And that’s the only picture of the empty ballot we still have and that picture has earned me most. The competition forced me to get better.
While photography was going digital, journalism too shifted from print to digital. How did that impact photojournalism?
It was the delivery method that changed the most. Usain Bolt could not reach the finish line as fast as I can now. It took four seconds for the picture I just clicked to reach my news bureau in Washington DC. Bolt took twice as much time to finish his 100m. What matters is getting it out first now.
Would you like to go back and retake a photograph on your phone?
I was at New Orleans taking pictures of cyclone Katrina. I was standing in the winds watching a man disappear into a tornado. I just watched him get sucked. Before I could pull out my camera, he was gone. Media houses had reported about his disappearance and his wife asked me if I captured his last moment on earth. As a journalist, we bear witness to history and I thought I had done disservice to this woman who thought I had her husband’s last moment. I would’ve got that picture for her, if I had a mobile phone I could’ve wielded.
How personal has digital photography gotten for you?
I got first camera in my twenties. My 7-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son together own about 30 cameras now. They’ve got iPads, phones, polaroid camera and even watches that click pictures. My daughter has turned out to be my trusted critique.
Marc Serota is in India to launch Polaroid University; He is also available for educational institutions that need him.