What do you see?

A Newspaper in Education program for readers and students of all ages.

Developed and written by Joanne Walmsley

What do you see?

A program for students and readers of all ages from Newspaper in Education at the Hamilton Spectator.

Dear Educators,

“A picture is worth a thousand words.” Well in this case not a thousand but 50 or less!

In honour of The Hamilton Spectator’s 170th birthday and the City of Hamilton’s 140th birthday, Newspaper in

Education offers readers and students of all ages a chance to weigh in on what is happening in photographs

taken in Hamilton that have been published in The Spectator in the past. Each Friday from October 7 –

December 2, 2016 we will publish a photograph that was published in The Hamilton Spectator sometime over

the previous 170 years. For any and/or all of the photographs readers and students are invited to respond

online to the question ‘What do you see?’

Written submissions for each photograph will be accepted until the following Friday at www.thespec.com/nie

after which the submission page will be closed.

All photographs and a selection of reader/student responses as well as the back story for the photo will be

published in a pull out section in The Hamilton Spectator on Tuesday, December 13, 2016.

Teachers and students are also invited to use this mini-resource before or during the program.

Should you have any questions about this program or any other Newspaper in Education programs please do

not hesitate to contact me.

Your Partner in Education,

Joanne Walmsley

Newspaper in Education Business Development Co-ordinator

905.526.3286

jwalmsley@thespec.com

@HamSpecNIE

What do you see?

Although the accepted definition of a photojournalist is that he/she is a reporter who provides visual support for a story, photojournalistic photo essays and indeed many single journalistic photos tell a story all on their own and require little to no writing to back them up. And, many images shot by photojournalists are compelling works of art. Consider these award winning examples. Don’t read the descriptions provided with each photograph before you offer your ideas in response to questions like the following:

What do you see?

What do you think happened just before the photo was taken? Just after?

Does the photograph tell a story on its own? What is the story?

Do you consider any of them a work of art? Why or why not?

What mood or emotion does the photograph show / what emotion does the photograph make you feel? Explain.

Why do you think these photographs won awards?

Nikon-Walkley Photo of the Year Winner: Andrew Quilty.

‘Quilty captured a striking and powerfully emotive image that allows the viewer to gauge instantly the full magnitude of the little girl’s injuries. “That her burns are the result of a domestic accident and not military conflict increases the surreal impact – almost that of a fine art picture.”’

(https://decanteddesign.com/2014/12/18/winners-finalists-of-the-nikon-walkley-awards-for-photojournalism-2014-australia-a-link-to-the-awards-site-is-under-blogroll/)

National Press Photographers Association’s Best of Photojournalism 2014 Awards

Honorable Mention, Sports Feature.

Photo by Matt Gade of the Deseret News.

Ashley Christensen, left, celebrates her goal with teammate Rachelle Powley during a game in Alta, Utah.

(http://avax.news/pictures/99297)

National Geographic Channel and Canon Explore To Inspire Photo Contest

First prizewinner:

Kazi Riasat Alve (Bangladesh)

‘Kazi won judges over with an inspiring perspective of a young boy lying on his back in a muddy field, lifting one’s spirit with the quiet calm confidence of a smile, against all odds. Kazi captured the winning shot at Dhaka, in a school field where underprivileged children play after school.’ (http://photographynewsbd.blogspot.ca/2014/03/national-geographic-channel-and-canon.html)

The News Photographers Association of Canada’s 2015 National Pictures of the Year

Photograph of the Year : Craig Glover, The London Free Press

Native demonstrator Pierre George is engulfed in flames during a protest march at the entrance to the former

Camp Ipperwash near Kettle Point, Ontario, September 20, 2015. At the end of the peaceful march, intended

to bring elders of the Kettle and Stony Point First Nations to their former home, some residents of the camp set

a small fire to stop others from entering the area and to signify the return of the land from the government.

George’s brother, Dudley George, was shot and killed by an Ontario Provincial Police sniper during an

occupation of Camp Ipperwash in 1995.

(https://npac.ca/2016/04/2015-national-pictures-of-the-year-winners/)

Hasselblad 2014 Masters

Fashion/Beautycategory: Bara Prasilova, Czech Republic (http://www.bjp-online.com/2014/ 01/hasselblad-unveils-its-2014- masters/)

The Canadian Press 2013 NATIONAL PICTURE OF THE YEAR WINNER Category: Pictorial

Nathan Denette

People watch jellyfish during the grand opening of the Ripley's Aquarium of Canada in Toronto

on Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2013.

What do you see?

Without reading the descriptions provided, respond to some similar questions about some recent photos taken by Spectator photographers.

What do you see?

What do you think happened just before the photo was taken? Just after?

Does the photograph tell a story on its own? What is the story?

Do you consider any of them a work of art? Why or why not?

What mood or emotion does the photograph show / what emotion does the photograph make you feel? Explain.

Barry Gray, Hamilton Spectator 2013

“Model Laura Grace Laussier is painted by artist Vange Rodriguez at a body painting competition at the

Canada Haunts event held at the Sheraton Hotel. Photographer Baryy Gray says he chose it as one of his

favourites from 2013 because “the phot is so bizarre it forces the viewer to stop and look.”

Cathie Coward,

The Hamilton Spectator,

2015

“Window washers on the

east side of the Hamilton

downtown CIBC building

as the Piggott building is

reflected in the newly

polished glass.”

John Rennison, The Hamilton Spectator,

2014.

“A dump truck with its box open hit the

overhead truss of the Skyway Bridge

causing millions of dollars of damage and

days of traffic nightmares.”

Scott Gardner, The Hamilton Spectator, 2013

“A boat capsizes on the highway – enough said!”

Kaz Novak, The Hamilton Spectator, 2013.

“Supercrawl proved super once again. The three-day September arts and music festival drew more than

100,000 people to James Street North.”

Gary Yokoyama, The Hamilton Spectator,

2015.

“A bridal party poses for the photo drone at

McMaster University.”

Ron Albertson, Hamilton Spectator, 2006

“You never know what you will encounter at a Timmie’s stop in Hamilton. Aurora, a miniature horse is well

traveled as her owner says she goes eveyrwhere with him in the backseat of his minivan including making

regular stops at an east end Tim Horton’s parking lot.

A Brief History of Photography in the Newspaper

Newspapers were not always composed of multiple sections in which all manner of things were reported.

Neither did early newspapers include images. When the first issue of The Hamilton Spectator was printed 170

years ago on July 15,1846 it was one page in length and that page contained only text and in fact a lot of it.

As Spectator reporter Mark McNeil wrote of the first edition on July 15, 2006, “There are no pictures or

headlines as we know them today. The only typographical flourish is the occasional use of capitalized words --

such as "STATE OF EUROPE" or "ARRIVAL OF THE BRITANNIA" -- to divide stories.”

The front page (and the only page) of the first edition of The Hamilton Spectator, July 15,1846.

Although it is generally accepted that the invention of photography occurred in 1839 a process for printing photographs in a newspaper had not yet been invented. For this reason, when images first started appearing in newspapers they were drawings created by artists who had been hired by a newspaper to illustrate a specific scene or event.

Artists would first make a sketch of the scene, followed by a more detailed drawing. The image below shows

an artist’s rendition of the chaos and vandalism that erupted during the city's transit strike in November 1906.

To print this image in the newspaper the same method that was used to print text had to be used. The method is known as relief printing.

What is Relief Printing?

If you have ever made a potato print or used an old-fashioned typewriter you have used relief printing. The basic idea is that you make a reversed, sticking-up (relief) version of whatever you want to print on the surface of the printing plate and simply cover it with ink. Because the printing surface is above the rest of the plate, only this part (and not the background) picks up any ink. Push the inked plate against the paper and a right-way-round printed copy instantly appears. 1

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1, 2, 3 Woodford, Chris - http://www.explainthatstuff.com/how-printing-works.html

4 Fulk, Tim, ‘Beyond the Story – A Look into the Book Beautiful’, https://timfulk.wordpress.com/

So, to print a drawing in the newspaper a “reversed, sticking-up” version had to be made. To do this, a craftsman copied it onto a smooth block of wood. This wood engraving was made by cutting away all of the surface except the lines to be printed.

The finished block was then pressed into clay, making an impression of the image. Molten type metal was then poured onto the clay making a cast. The surface of this cast plate were the raised lines of the drawing. Ink was applied to the raised lines and the plate was pressed onto the paper.

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The first photographs printed in a newspaper also

required a craftsman to create a wood engraving.

The example below appeared in 1864 in a magazine called

Harpers’ Weekly. On the left is a photograph of General

Grant. On the right is an accomplished wood engraving

translating the photographic image for mass printing.

You can see that although the image made from the wood engraving is a good likeness, it does not show the

same depth and detail that is seen in the photograph.

5 https://drewkail.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/relief_print_methods_4.jpg

6 http://www.gasperini.it/en/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Comando_Interforze_cliche.jpg

7 https://www.quora.com/How-were-the-earliest-photographs-printed-in-newspapers

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Creating a wood engraving of a photograph was a laborious and time intensive task. It took much longer for a

craftsman to create a wood engraving of a photograph than it did to create one for a line drawing. This of

course, meant it was an expensive way to print an image in the newspaper. This combined with the fact that

the results were not always the best is likely why newspapers preferred to use line drawings versus

photographs.

That is, until a printing process better than relief printing that could be used at the same time as text was being

printed was invented.

Enter, a photomechanical process known as ‘halftone’ in which a photo is converted into dots of varying sizes or densities through a mechanical screen. This enables a photograph to be printed in black and white, with the illusion of different tones and, the photograph could be printed at the same time as the newspaper text.

The first half-tone image in a newspaper appeared in 1873 but the process was not adopted widely until the 1880’s. It took many North American newspapers much longer than that to use the process. And the use of colour photographs? Well, that could only be imagined!

The photograph below appeared in the New York Daily Graphic in December 1873.

Early Imagery in The Hamilton Spectator

Drawings began making an appearance in The Spectator in the late 1800’s while photographs did not make

their debut until the early 1900’s. The use of images and better defined columns helped make the quantity of

text appear a little less overwhelming and more readable than the text that appeared in the first edition of The

Hamilton Spectator.

The Hamilton Spectator, June 22, 1912.

Q The Hamilton Spectator, January 31, 1914

The Hamilton Spectator, 1872

At first advertisements in newspapers were composed

of just text. But, by the 1860’s drawings started

appearing which helped to make the advertisements

more eye-catching.

At right, is an advertisement from the December 21,

1869 issue of The Spectator that features a drawing

of Santa Claus.

Below, is an advertisement that ran in The Hamilton

Spectator on May 22, 1856 by a Dr. Francis Tumblety,

a quack doctor "snake-oil" salesman. According to the

1998 book Jack the Ripper: First American Serial Killer

by Stewart Evans and Paul Gainey, Tumblety is the

most likely suspect in the Jack the Ripper murders in

1888. Three decades before the murders Tumblety

spent time in the Hamilton area.

Photography and Lithography

When Alois Senefelder developed the printing process of lithography in 1798 the stage was set for newspapers to include more photographs.

Unlike relief printing where the image to be printed is raised above or sunk below the surface of the printing plate, in lithography the printing surface is flat with both image and non-image areas at the same level on the printing plate. Lithography uses the fact that oil and water don't mix as the basis of the printing process. A flat stone such as limestone or a metal plate is treated so that the image area attracts oil-based inks and the wet non-image areas repel the oil-based inks. Originally lithography was used to create posters, post cards and the like and was initially done by hand.

Eventually the application of photographic techniques to plate production and the use of new and improved mechanised presses made offset lithography the principle printing process of the 20th century and is the preferred process today.

Offset lithography or offset printing is the printing technique in which the inked image is transferred (or “offset”) from a plate to a rubber blanket, then to the printing surface. It uses the principles of the lithographic process.

Today, artwork is produced digitally with graphic design software. An imagesetter is then used to produce films (either positive or negative). When printing with more than one colour there is a separated film for each ink used. Each film is used to make a printing plate by a photochemical process. The plate surface has non-image areas which absorb moisture and repel ink.

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8 http://www.mdpi.com/sensors/sensors-14-08217/article_deploy/html/images/sensors-14-08217f1-1024.png

9 http://pirate.shu.edu/~mckenndo/Offset%20Lithography.htm 10

http://2gjjon1sdeu33dnmvp1qwsdx.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/litho-1024x682.jpg

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A lithoprinting plate is flexible and can be made of a variety of materials. The plate is attached to the plate cylinder. From there the ink image is transferred to a rubber surfaced blanket cylinder and from there to the paper. The blanket cylinder's flexibility both preserves the delicate plate and conforms to the surface of textured papers.

A press can be fed with one sheet of paper (sheet fed) at a time or from a large roll of paper (Web.) The newspaper industry uses the web process in which a large roll of paper is fed through a large press machine in several parts, typically for several metres, which then prints continuously as the paper is fed through.

See appendix 1 for additional images.

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11 http://pirate.shu.edu/~mckenndo/Offset%20Lithography.htm 12

http://il3.picdn.net/shutterstock/videos/3414017/thumb/1.jpg?i10c=img.resize(height:160) 13

http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/offset-printing7.jpg 14

http://druckzentrum.tagblattmedien.ch/graph/produktion/druck/druckmaschine_600x414.jpg

The Rise of Photojournalism

A photo journalist can be described as a visual storyteller. Photojournalism then, can be described as a form of journalism (the collecting, editing, and presenting of news material for publication or broadcast) that employs images in order to tell a news story.

The field of photo journalism was born in the 1920’s when printing technology was capable of mass production and the small light-weight Leica camera and the first commercial flash bulbs were introduced.

The early 35mm cameras were small enough and light enough that a photographer could easily carry them around. And, with the added convenience of flash bulbs the cameras could be used in both exterior and interior environments. This allowed a more photographic freedom than ever before and photojournalism become a powerful and common way to convey newsworthy events around the world.

Various magazines began publishing photos of events that until that time would never have been seen by the general public. By 1920 Germany produced more illustrated publications than any other country including the Berlin Illustrated Newspaper - the newspaper which pioneered the format of the illustrated news magazine.

Some images from the April 23, 1933 issue of the Berlin Illustrated Newspaper.

15 http://www.moonwheel-historical.com/images/Magazines-08-05.jpg

16 http://www.moonwheel-historical.com/images/Magazines-08-06.jpg 17 http://www.moonwheel-historical.com/images/Magazines-08-04.jpg

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During the 1930’s and 1940’s picture magazines thrived. Titles such as Britain’s Picture Post, America’s LIFE (probably the most famous of its time) and Sports Illustrated along with Paris Match, were incredibly popular and influential in moulding public opinion.

This was the cover photo on the first issue of LIFE magazine published on November 23, 1936. It was taken by Margaret Bourke-White and shows the Fort Peck Dam over the Missouri River, Montana.

Other photographs in this issue included: A one-legged man on a mountain, Mrs. Nelson with two little children at Nelson Laundry, St. Mary's Chinese school in San Francisco, the greatest living actress, Helen Hayes, and the Grentonas in their high-wire bicycle act. Also included was a photo essay of Brazil, a two-page colour ad showing Chesapeake and Ohio Railway and a full page colour Lucky Strike cigarettes ad with woman in red and Dalmatian dog.

Various covers of LIFE magazine.

Various covers of LIFE magazine.

The front cover of the British Picture Post magazine, November 16, 1940, featuring British wartime evacuee Michael Bedwell. Bedwell is one of a thousand British children living in the US under a scheme devised by the American Committee for the Evacuation of Children.

Photojournalism in the 21st Century

The popularity of illustrated newspapers and picture magazines waned in the 1950’s as advertisers abandoned them in favour of advertising in the relatively new medium of television. Britain’s Picture Post magazine closed in 1957 and the Berlin Illustrated Newspaper ceased publication in 1958.

When LIFE announced it was ceasing publication in 1972 many people claimed that photojournalism was dead. However, photojournalism is alive and well in print media as well as online. In fact, in addition to news websites that rely heavily on the use of photographs and videos to report the news, there are numerous other websites that provide a platform for displaying the work of photojournalists. Without having to rely solely on print as a platform coupled with the fact that readers/viewers have come to expect photographic documentation of what is happening in the world around them it is clear that photojournalism is more alive than ever.

Appendix 1