Credit. The. Photographer.

We have all seen the image by French photographer Jerome Brouillet of Brazilian surfer Gabriel Medina.

It’s astonishing. Brilliant. A moment in time that even the TV coverage did not capture.

If it does nothing else, this image proves that the still image still holds a power that the moving image does not.

However thats a discussion for another day.

This discussion is about credits, brought about by an exchange I saw on threads…

The image was posted by a photographer commenting that the least the olympics social media team could do was to credit the photographer.

I’ve picked two replies but there were more asking “WHY?”

My response to these people..

This reply to my comment was actually the first person in the initial thread that asked why.. and it seemed he got it, he understood.

I guess many people in their working lives work in occupations where they are part of a team, where the result is part of a group effort, where being credited is almost abstract. They, in their occupation, might get a credit or thank you from their boss in a meeting for an outstanding piece of work, but no one outside the company would know.

These (non-media people) seem to get that a journalist / writer / author be credited as a matter of course, even if that writer is in the employment of an organisation. However it does not seem to apply to the photographer.

Why?

As I say in my reply. When this image wins an award (as it surely must), the award will go to the photographer. Yes in truth he was part of a team, there was an editor (maybe 100’s of miles away), cropping, fine tuning & captioning the image.

To use another analogy or two. The writer puts the words together but the final piece you see (be it an article in a magazine or a book) will have been put together by a designer or layout artist. An artist completes the painting/illustration but someone else might mount it, frame it and present it in a context.

In the same vain. The photographer created the image, the photographer will win the award. The photographer should be credited. Full Stop. End of.