Professional or serious historians or researches like Max Holland, investigative journalists, people like Fred Litwin here, spend months and years, sometimes even decades, researching an issue or topic. They travel around the country, interview people, locate primary or original sources like photos, letters. Then they take those materials to experts who analyze them, authenticate them. The photos or films are given to labs to evaluate. Digitized, enhanced, made, if possible, clearer.
They spend thousands of hours and thousands of dollars on their topic. Again, Fred Litwin is a perfect example. He travels to the archives, to libraries, and finds the primary documents.
Or you can sit behind a computer, roaming the internet, and find a boogeyman in a obscure, fuzzy photo and consider that and that alone serious research. Where did the photo come from? It doesn't matter. What do other photos and films reveal? It doesn't matter. What did the people who were there say? It doesn't matter. One image alone is sufficient.
If you think the second approach is better than the first, that the first is antiquated and no longer useful, then, well, you really are fooling yourself.
