Visual communicator: Philip Douglis reflects on photography, purpose and passion

Communication World, Nov-Dec, 2004 by Raha Naddaf

With this issue of Communication World, columnist Phil Douglis, ABC, crosses a 40-year milestone of writing "Photocritique" for CW and its predecessor publication, CW executive editor Natasha Spring and assistant editor Raha Naddaf caught up with Phil to talk about visual communication, digital photography, ethics and his contributions to the profession.

WHAT IS YOUR PERSONAL DEFINITION OF EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION, AND WHAT ROLE DOES PHOTOGRAPHY PLAY IN THE PROCESS?

Language is a bond, a way of getting ideas across. Visual literacy involves visually literate photography, photo editing and design in a visually literate publication where the photograph is held in the same esteem as words. I have long maintained that a publication that people get in this day and age should be a visually literate publication because people look before they read. And you have to go out and reach and grab them by the eyeballs and then by the brain and by their emotions and imagination.

WHAT HAS CHANGED WITH THE ADVENT OF DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY?

Everything has changed. Digital imagery has changed our ability to make content more effective. In other words, when we can look at our camera the instant after we have made a picture and evaluate the results, we can then take that information and improve it. If you are a conscientious photographer working on an idea, immediate feedback is an enormously effective tool.

Today, most photographers make the picture and edit it in Photoshop. They can control all the variables. To be able to have a digital darkroom on your desk is unbelievable. The cost savings, the creative control you have--half of the picture is made in the camera and half of the picture is made in the computer.

WHAT ROLE SHOULD PHOTO EDITING SOFTWARE, LIKE PHOTOSHOP, PLAY IN A PHOTOGRAPHER'S WORK?

Photoshop is a marvelous tool in the hands of an ethical and resourceful communicator. It is a disastrous tool in the hands of an unethical person. It's easy to cheat with Photoshop. A few clicks of the keys and you can do anything you want to do. And it's seamless, no one will know.

It's also an extremely helpful tool that allows you to make your images work much more effectively. We can simplify images by cropping, changing the levels of contrast, changing the color balance, sharpening them and increasing the saturation. These are all technical tools that up until 10 years ago would have taken very extensive and highly specialized work to accomplish, not to mention cost. Today, anybody with a few hours in training can learn how to do this and do it well.

YOU MENTIONED ETHICS. WHEN IS THAT LINE CROSSED?

The line has never changed. In the darkroom, we have always been able to crop and retouch pictures--not retouch to change the facts, but if there is a defect somewhere. We can take our cloning tool today and click out the defects.

As to where the line will definitely be drawn, it depends on the nature of the publication, the audience and, most importantly, the subject. In other words, is it fair game to take out a telephone pole? It's unrealistic for me to say that, because most companies would be taking out the telephone pole because it's distracting. But come back and ask yourself, are my reasons valid? Are my reasons ethical?

WHAT IS ONE OF THE BIGGEST MISTAKES MADE IN CORPORATE PHOTOGRAPHY?

It's an opportunity lost. Institutions spend tens of thousands of dollars publishing pictures. Very few of them say anything. A lot of them show things, but they don't make a point or convey an idea. They simply describe the subject. Or even worse, they are pictures that pander to people--cliches, grip and grins, line ups, mug shots and awards that mean nothing to the people who are reading the publications, just to the people who are in the pictures.

Just as you wouldn't publish words that are meaningless, why would you print pictures that are meaningless? I would be willing to say that 80 to 90 percent of photographs published by corporate publications don't stir the reader's imagination, intellect, and certainly not their emotions. It doesn't help them understand something and act on that understanding. In other words, it is nonfunctional photography.

IF YOU HAD TO GIVE THREE PIECES OF ADVICE TO AN ASPIRING PHOTOGRAPHER JUST STARTING A CAREER, WHAT WOULD THAT BE?

I do this all the time. I'm a mentor to photographers all over the world on the Internet, The first thing I tell them is that you've got to have the passion, Without the passion, you're nothing. You have to throw yourself into it and be willing to take the risks to grow. You also have to be willing to put in the time to learn by trial and error. You also learn by creating a network of like-minded people who are doing the same thing. We've all learned communication through the years from our peers through institutions like IABC. If IABC didn't exist, we'd all be working in a vacuum.

ARE YOU CONTINUING TO LEARN AND GROW IN THIS FIELD?

I am 70 years old, and I feel like a kid. I am just starting out in my own mind. When I started The Douglis Visual Workshops, I began featuring outstanding images in my column taken by in-house photojournalists and designers who were participating in my sessions. I eventually expanded my workshops to three days and offered them in every major U.S. city, training thousands of communicators. When I retired from the workshop circuit, I created a new four-day, three-night workshop for corporate communicators and began offering it twice each year in Sedona, Ariz. I also increased my personal travels significantly, and I now post my travel pictures in PBase galleries online to extend my teaching worldwide.