Multimedia isn't making the world fall apart, photojournalism is just evolving

I have a lot of random thoughts throughout the day, today I had one that I just had to write down. It was supposed to be only one sentence and part of a new series I was toying around with, but as it so often happens I got on top of the soapbox and looking down realized I was afraid of heights. So I just stayed up there.

Remember how before everyone was asking should I learn html... and then it was Dream weaver... and now it's Flash.

Everyone is asking should I learn Flash (imho, it wouldn't hurt) and I'm already hearing whispers of should I learn Avid... should I learn ProTools? (I also hear, should I learn RSS... but that's another story.)

It seems to me that we keep getting caught up on the things that are holding us back, like learning how to hold and hammer with these new tools, and we keep losing sight of the thing that makes us who we are in the first place, our creative eye that was deemed special enough for a yearly salary.

Maybe we need to stop worrying about the medium and worry more about the quality of the content that flows through that medium.

During the NPPA Summit in Portland, Carolyn Cole, LA Times staff photographer and Photojournalist of the Year 2007, showed her piece from the Immersion course and despite having never done it before- she'd mentioned that she was unfamiliar with the process and the programs, and stories from others had confirmed it- on her first time at bat she hit one out of the park. Because she didn't forget that she's a photographer first and she knew how to ask those in the know for help and guidance in filling in the blanks.

I'd love to link to the piece now so you can see what I'm talking about for yourse;f, but they haven't been posted yet. But promises have been made.

I'm not saying don't learn Flash or Avid or CSS or whatever else is out there, what I'm saying is don't learn it if you don't want to. The foundation of this business is still compelling images and if you got that down, you got nothing to worry about.

If you don't believe me, just take a look at some of the other pieces (as soon as they're posted) that came out of the Immersion Workshop. And while it will get hard to tell, yes, they were all done by newbies.