The Heyday, by Kevin Moloney, January/February 2012

“This is a sermon, so feel free to mutter an occasional amen or shout hallelujah. And like any congregation of believers, you probably already know some of the things I’m going to say. But we are here to reinvigorate our faith, so please be seated while I take the pulpit, thump the mike and clear my throat. You are living in the best time in history to be a photographer.

It may not seem like it considering the ever-present industry bad news. But Horace Greeley, a 19th Century journalist and inveterate forward thinker once wrote, “The illusion that times that were are better than those that are, has probably pervaded all ages.”

So what makes now so great?

To start, you have an enormous array of tool choices. For a recent New York Times shoot I eagerly packed in my bag a vintage-1948 press camera, a medium-format TLR and a DSLR. I used all three on the shoot, swapping sheets through Grafmatic backs, cranking 120 through a Rolleiflex and twitching images through the pixel array of the little hi-tech wonder alongside them.

We are now deep enough into the digital age that the quality of that equipment has reached heights we could have only imagined a few years ago. And with the recent and expected announcements of new gear from the big digital players, we are in for astounding advancements this year.”

Kevin Moloney is a 24-year veteran photojournalist, 15-year journalism educator and is pursuing a Ph.D. in technology, media and society at the University of Colorado. Kevin’s photojournalism work has appeared on the front page of the New York Times more than 40 times, and has led section fronts and the NYTimes.com home page hundreds more.

His work as a writer and photographer has been published by the National Geographic Society, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, TIME, Newsweek, US News & World Report, Stern, Paris Match, The Washington Post and scores of other international publications. He has worked as a staff photographer for three daily newspapers.