Cataloging The Catalogues - The Paper Salespersons

Anyone over the age of 50 remembers paper - that stuff they made out of scrunched-up trees that came in big flat sheets. Sometimes you even see it in the digital era - they spray ink over it to make pictures that look a lot like the computer screen...

Well in the 1950's they even used it for making up illustrated lists of products for sale. These were called catalogues and were frequently given out to prospective clients to aid them in selecting products - or so it was said. In reality the catalogues were sent out as silent agents - paper assassins programmed to attack the nerve centres of the victims and render them helpless. They did this by several means:

1. They were illustrated well. In a era that had rather poor reproduction standards in the newspapers ( I'll explain what newspapers were in a future post.) the catalogue provided first-class images. Their black and white pictures were frequently taken with 4 x 5 or 8 x 10 cameras and were professionally lit and posed. The block making and printing was superb. Colour was even more spectacular, though it might not pass muster today as far as actual fidelity - it depended upon strong contrasts and startling inks. Just the fact of colour in a printed image was a seller.

Note: Australia missed out in this to some extent as overseas catalogues were sometimes rendered in monochrome when they came here. The same applied to comic books - a travesty of the artist's work. Gordon and Gotch have a lot to answer for.

The pictures were taken by professional photographers - frequently in proper studios. You got to see expert illustrations. You got to see exploded diagram photos.

2. They were accessible. Catalogues were a respectable form of publication - sanctioned by retailers and wholesalers alike - and you could safely give them to children. The underwear section of the Sears and Roebuck catalogue bordered on the risqué only if you exercised an unhealthy imagination. Page 82 was really good...

3. They were always there and always on. Paper catalogues never needed to have their batteries charged and no-one needed to remember a password to read them. You could take them into the can and study the goods without fear of dropping $ 1000 worth of electronics down the pan.

4. They were focussed. If the manufacturer wanted you see their range of products, you saw just that - no side-ads scrolling down as you read - no temptation to poke off into another page. They showed - you looked.

Today there are a number of manufacturers in our trade who follow the paper catalogue route as well as using the internet websites. They either put out a comprehensive publication like the Gitzo tripod people or a series of separate pamphlets like the Nikon people. Both approaches score attention from buyers and a credible response.

Their message drives deeper than the pure-computer approach - and I think they score more sales from it. Let us hope that other manufacturers adopt this idea - catalogues are a good idea.

Vale Photographic Trader

When I write this blog, there is a pallet on the side of the screen that contains brand names like Nikon or Canon and other terms that apply to photography - I click whatever is appropriate for the post and it trumpets it out to the web searcher. Easy. This posting is tougher because ALL of the things on the pallet would have gone out.


You see, the subject of the post - The Photographic Trader - was a publication that dealt with absolutely everything in the imaging line. All the brands and all the processes historic or modern. It was a trade-and-sell sheet as well as an advertising platform as well as a focused magazine for collecting enthusiasts. Lots of good writers told the stories of cameras and camera makers of the past and posited new fixes and processes for the digital future. Not a few of the writers could cross over from one area of the discipline to another without breaking step.

I wrote a column in it and was delighted to receive payment each two months. Whether others were delighted to read it is another thing but I did ask the editor to print my page on absorbent paper so at least the budgie cage was taken care of for a few days. It was great fun to tell jokes to strangers all over Australia on a subject that I love - now that the magazine has ceased publication I will have to fall back on this blog to do it. That and stapling photocopy pages to strangers in the railway station.

I guess it was economics - perhaps the distribution system contributed to it, and perhaps the fact that all the reader advertisements were for free. I wonder what some of the regulars with big listings are going to do now - not that they seemed to change their stalls much from one issue to the next. Perhaps they will be taking bigger tables at the camera society swap meets.

I do hope that the people who run the meets, or are conducting darkroom classes, or have the arcane little sales and repair shops, ( Umm...gulp..is that us? ) can find another way to let the public know what is going on. There is a vast connected web of photographic knowledge out there that won't be addressed by chain store kids. And there is a real comfort about getting a paper magazine in hand that you can peruse wherever and keep for future reference. I've got all my Traders and I'm keeping them.

Thanks Cole - we loved your work.

Make Me A Sandwich

A friend of mine - see photo - rang me up and told me there was a great new girly magazine out on the stands. And as she was a girly she wondered if some of my pictures would go well in it.

Good idea. She pointed me to the publisher's website and I cruised on over to see what was needed. There were the usual bits advertising their magazine and telling us that we should go out and buy it or subscribe to have it sent to us. There was a page on the site that invited girlies to send in photographs of themselves. There was page with a model release form that you could download, sign, and return.

At this point I started reading carefully - the model release form was written very well, and may have been the product of actual legal consultation. It asked both the model and the photographer who submitted the image to relinquish ALL rights to that image - not just in the form that it was to be submitted, but to any future use or modification that the publisher cared to subject it to. And there was to be no consultation or argument.

Hmmm. Well, I guess if you were selling the image and the write-up about it you would factor this into the price. I mean, if they were getting complete sale of the image in perpetuity that would mean a higher price than if you just licensed it for one mag - right? I was curious to find out what they were willing to pay for the images on that basis - I sent them a formal request for this information.

At the end of the week I received a very pleasant email. All chirpy and cool. They said that they were more than happy to receive images or articles for publication and would not charge the photographers to submit them. Of course, if we wished to take out an advertisement with their magazine, then they could send the rates for full or part page...They also sent along another page of requirements for the submission - technical stuff like 300 DPI and CMYK colour space ready for their printer. I suppose this saves their compositor from having to further re-size or modify the images.

I thought about the whole situation and tried to remember where I had seen this form of commerce before. Then it came to me - the crayfishing industry. You set out a pot, put in a little rotten bait, and whatever crawls into the pot is boiled up and served with melted butter and crispy bread.

No mention of paying the crayfish, but then no mention of paying the photographer or model either.

Beware.