Writing a Book in the age of instant access.

Many of you know that I wrote a book last year on the phenomenon of small strobe lighting, as exemplified by David Hobby's blog, http://www.strobist.com .  The book is entitled, Minimalist Lighting:  Professional Techniques for Location Photography.  The book struck a nerve with two separate groups.  One group was the Strobist population which is largely self-taught and looks to various web gurus for more information and tutoring about things photographic.  Surprisingly, the other group is established photographers who have been in the game for over twenty years and who needed a push to change from the way they had done things to a new way that reflected the reduced indulgence of time and budget supplied by the new clients.

I'm glad the book has sold well and the feedback that I've gotten from readers is little short of a college education in the desires of the market.  But the real reason for this short column is to discuss how  I know what the market is thinking.....

Here's how I understood the publishing business in the past (read that to mean:  pre- internet):

The author writes a book and submits it to a publisher.  The publisher and writer come to an agreement of terms and the publisher edits the book.  The book is produced and marketed through a small web of interconnected distributors.  The book becomes available in book stores and in shops dealing with the specialty encompassed within the book.

Once a customer had purchased a book he had a very limited ability to give feedback.  His recourse was to write a letter to the editor or to the publisher.  He could also address a letter to the author, "care of" the publisher.  His address wasn't printed in the book, nor was his home telephone number listed anywhere on the printed product.  The letters were read by a secretary and passed along to the proper channel or into a circular file.

As an English major from a previous generation, this is what I understood to be standard practice and I didn't pay attention to the changes through the years until I had a personal stake in the game.  Now I have been tossed into the cold water of present day and have come fully awake to the new rules.

From the first day of publishing I started getting e-mails from places like Australia and Russia. Nearly all of them were polite and complimentary.  Most wanted to point out a typing mistake or bring my attention to a misapplied caption.  A few questioned my choice in one or another particular of gear selection.  And many wanted to know if the yellow "splotch" on the chapter pages was a printing mistake or an intentional addition.  (It was an intentional design element, honest).  Three or four people took me to task for things mundane (selection of type style) and things bizarre (why didn't I mention a certain brand of light stand).

E-mail made it easy to access me.  It made sharing opinions easy and it made sharing easy.  Then the really weird stuff started to happen.  I started getting e-mails asking for payment to write reviews about the book on Amazon.com (which I did not accept!!!!) and I started getting unsolicited ideas for incredibly impractical products, as if I had some connection to a giant photo gadget making company.  I also recieved one "hate" e-mail taking me to task for "destroying the high end photography market" by making "cheap crap" acceptable as professional tools (as if I had that much power).

But the really nice thing that happened was the extension of the original feedback loop that gave me really tremendous insight as to what most book buyers really wanted to see in a second book.  Turns out that "how well the book reads" is almost important as the content to some.  That preference by many of the reader/responders to the first book almost make me want to write a series of novels about the photography business.  The next thing they want is good, solid general instruction that they can overlay onto projects the readers are attempting.  Most said that straightforward examples that clearly show what can be done with modest gear easily trump more flashy examples that require dozens of fixtures and a crew of assistants and super models.

Finally,  I sense that they want to trust the writer and are more comfortable if the writer is an active participant of a bigger community of like-minded people.  They were proud that my book came out of my participation in the Strobist and Flickr communities.  Many were surprised and pleased to get a personal response.  But it felt so natural to do so.  I feel like I am nestled in part of a big Bell Curve in which we all give and take.  And the accessibility is all part of the organic mix.  I'm proud I was there before I wrote the book and I'm proud that I'm still there adding in my two cents worth.

When I saw how accessible my writing persona could be it triggered something in my mind.  I wanted to contact two writers who's work I really enjoy and give them both messages.  I wrote to Steven Pressfield, the wonderful novelist who gave us, The Gates of Fire and The Legend of Bagger Vance (among other great books).  I wanted to personally thank him for a little book called, The War of Art, which helped to cure my anxiety and dissolve my procrastination.  To my surprise, he e-mailed me the following morning with a wonderful message which I printed out and keep at my desk.

I also wanted to reach out to Jeff Abbott, a writer of exciting suspense novels, to let him know how much I enjoy his work.  He was also quick to personally respond which cemented my fan mentality where both of these writers are concerned.  

But more importantly these interactions convinced me that we work best in an informed feedback loop that constantly refines and corrects our messages and makes them both more rewarding to deliver and more digestible to receive.  I'm not sure why I'm sitting here writing this instead of doing the taxes, calling clients or trying to do some photographic work, but I know at some level I really want to thank everyone for the time they took to tell me where I slipped, pat me on the back for the stuff I did right/write and give me the energy to keep pursuing my writing about photography.

Thank you very much!  It's nice to be connected.

Kirk

Coming to grips with the changing landscape.

Let's face it.  If you started taking photographs twenty or thirty years ago you developed a "muscle memory" for film cameras.  You learn to assess the health of your camera batteries by the sound pitch of your motor drive.  You learned that your potential for shooting a number of photographs was constrained by your supply of film and you learned that the post processing required would also limit what you "should" shoot if you were to also have a life outside the darkroom or away from the lab that processed your color film.

Beyond that you also learned what worked in marketing by the same kind of practice.  The marketing tool of the time was print.  People saw your work in print.  Whether is was in a magazine, accompanied with a byline or credit or on a postcard that you had printed and sent through the mail.  You were constrained to edit your mailing list judiciously because each card mailed represented printing costs and postage in addition to your active participation in labeling, stamping, sorting and sending.  

Few were wealthy enough to be as promiscuous as even the least financially capable beginner, e-mailing with gusto, these days.  In many, many ways digital imaging, and the web, have flattened the playing field for professional photographers.  Or so it would seem.

There are advantages to the old ways and there are advantages to the new world of existing and marketing as image makers.

The Visual Science Lab research (data free....) finds that, while e-mails work in some instances, there is still more power in a finely crafted, physical direct mailing.  In a way it's like the difference between fly fishing and net fishing.  And therein lies the dissonance for old timers.

While a fly fisher generally brings up a nicer fish, with more weight, the net fisher brings up more quantity.  The fly fisher might land a juicy trout while the net operator brings up a large bucket of sardines.

We can argue that we'd rather eat the trout, and that fly fishing is a much more enjoyable diversion but the reality is blurred.  At some point quantity will trump quality.  The net fisher will, perhaps, have more financial success.  But only if they have a ready distribution network and an efficient way to process and ship their bounty.

The net fisher looks at the fly fisher in his waders, whiling away a bright summer day, half submerged in a cool stream and wishes that were his lot while the fly fisher, does not envy the network process but lusts after the raw income.

It's the same in the business of photography.  I have one friend who does three or four big advertising assignments per year.  He doesn't want to work every day.  In his little corner of the industry that would be impractical.  He sees himself as a whaler.  He sails through the deep oceans looking for the "great white whale".  And if he lands one he's set for months at a time.

At the other end of the spectrum are photographers who need a constant stream of small sales to survive from week to week.  They are busy all the time, but not on the kinds of projects that initially attracted them to the field.  They compete against an ocean of unremarkable but "bucket cheap" stock photography.

I was complaining about this dichotomy last week to a friend who isn't a photographer.  He makes money with a traditional. professional business.  He suggested that both participants I've described above might be misguided.  He said he aims for the middle way.  Happy to go whaling, fly fishing or anchovy harvesting depending on what's biting.

Knowing that he has more money in his Christmas account than I've seen in my lifetime I quickly asked for his advice.  Here it is:

1.  Plan for the long term but be flexible enough to modify for the present.   You may want to go fly fishing but the stream might be closed right now and it's good to know how to net fish.....

2.  Don't abandon old, proven marketing techniques (he still sends targeted mailings and correspondence through the mail to his clients and select, potential clients).  Most of them still work well.  New is not always better.

3.  Don't be afraid of new marketing opportunities.  This guy has a Twitter account.  I was amazed.  Just because your current marketing is working okay doesn't mean the addition of new tools wouldn't make things better.

4.  Don't stop whaling just because there was a storm.  He likens our whaling analogy to, well, whaling.  He said most failed whalers came in from the seas because a big storm was brewing and they forgot to go back out when the storm abated.  For photographers the big jobs and sexy accounts will come back with a pent up vengence as soon as the economic mess subsides.  If you've already put all your guns into net fishing you might be loath to return to the whaling ship and you'll miss out on the next big time harvest while you work full out on small fish.

5.  When you hit big save as much as you can.  

His last piece of advice was to stop fishing and get back to work doing what you know how to do in the most profitable way.  You must beat your own inertia if you are to make it to the next higher level.

So what does this have to do with old timers and new photographers?  Not much, other than I think the most important thing you can learn is if you are even fishing in the right pool.

Take a trip to the ocean.  Look at the pond in your backyard.  Don't limit your options but don't let your selected options slow you down.  Have a twitter account and an "A" mailing list to whom you send printed materials.  You're allowed to do it both ways.  

I stepped back in time yesterday and bought a Nikon F4

It's silly.  The tidal wave of progress long since ground the champion cameras of yesteryear to the ocean floor of photography to be compacted over time into an archeological layer that future scholars will dislodge with tepid interest.  I couldn't help it.  The Nikon F4 (film) camera represented a revolution in so many ways.  It was the first professional autofocus camera.  It was the first of the Nikon F series cameras to come with a self contained motor drive.  One of the first cameras to include "predictive" autofocus.

From a manufacturing point of view it was the pinnacle intersection of mechanical and electronic symbiosis.  A blend of 1700 parts.  Each chosen to be the best ever crafted for this kind of tool.  The inner shell of the body was constructed with a specially concocted alloy that boasted incredible strength while also dampening vibration and shock.  The view through the eyepeice was designed to introduce as little dissonance between the object as it was and the object as it was observed.  Even the metering was new and spectacular.

But why would I fling $200 away on a piece of antiquated industrial art in the age of digital?  Well, precisely because this is the age of digital.

Let me explain.  In one or two generations the camera manufacturers will advance the craft of digital camera making in a number of ways.  One of which will be the removal of the moving mirror which must lift up to make an exposure and then drop down again into order to allow the photographer to see through the finder.  SLR cameras that still feature this sort of "thru the lens" viewing require precision ground, silver pentaprisms of extremely high quality glass.  The best are still pretty much hand finished.  The mirror mechanism in the professional cameras has to be engineered to rise and fall up to 12 times per second which requires appreciable mass to be started, accelerated and then stopped in milliseconds. The mirror mechanism also requires a highly precise shutter to shield the sensor from light until the exact moment of tightly timed, and highly repeatable exposure.  All this costs money while introducing less reliability than a totally electronic camera.  It costs lots more money.

So the drive is on to drive cost from professional grade cameras.  The first thing to go will be the pentaprism and the beautiful image projected optically through the finder.  The next thing to go will be the mechanical shutter.  In one fell swoop every mechanical connection between man and camera will be eliminated.  Withdrawn.  And this is generally a good thing for both camera manufacturers and people who will never experience a "real" camera because both will save money.  And the difference in images may not even amount to a hill of beans.

But it seems as though the tactile integration of man and machine will be greatly diminished.  Like a race car driver who can no longer shift gears.  A mechanic with computers but no tools.  A chef with a microwave.  The Nikon F4 represents to me the collective drive that existed in the last cenury to make a machine that wasn't sensible and efficient (or worse, cost effective), not the best in a category,  not just "good enough"  but the very best machine that could be built, for its intended purpose,  with no holds barred.  And in my mind it's come to represent something that's missing from our digital culture:  The Pursuit of Creating the Most Excellent Art Possible.  No excuses.

Since we capitulated to the power of the web, and the implied cost effectiveness of digital cameras, we've gone down a sinister path that may be more devastating to our culture than the present economic disaster.  We've allowed ourselves, collectively, to be subdued by the economics of process progress.  The web represents the lowest common denominator of quality precisely because every image placed upon it is a compromise between size and quality. Resolution and loading time.  Color depth and quickness.  Surrendering to the idea that color is just relative since no two monitors will perform identically.  We work with the expectation that everything will turn out to be crappier looking than ever before so we aim for that target.

The economic fear that we live with is already reducing the number of printed magazine pages, month by month. The driver of the professional digital camera market has been a relentless pursuit of higher and higher resolution but that will become increasingly meaningless as the drive to the web accelerates.  Even ad agencies are finding ways to make "social marketing" and "networking" profitable (in direct opposition to the intention of social networking......) which will further decay the need for true quality.

As the demand for large prints diminished so will the demand for the last remaining photographic labs and their master printers.  All photographic art will be destined for the screen or the wild interpretations of ink jet printers on papers of dubious quality and keeping potential.  We, as a culture, will have done to art exactly what we have done to the DVD player and the hamburger:  We will have commodified it, driven it brutally to it's lowest price with all the attendant compromises and we will have sucked the "humanism" out of the process in a vain and egalitarian attempt to make all things accessible to all people.

So, the F4 convinces me that the expedition in search of excellence is still part of human nature....even though it is temporarily in hibernation.  The feel of the camera is superb.  The feedback of the shutter and mirror noise is sensuous.  And the looks of my photographic peers are priceless as they try to figure out just what the hell I'm up to now.

Bottom line:  You owe it to yourself to go out and buy the industrial art of your era.  The Nikon F2's, F3's and F4's.  The Leica M3's, M4's, M5's and M6's.  The portable Hermes typewriter.  The Linn Sondek turntable or the Luxman tube amplifiers.  Once they disappear, like spirits and whimsy in old fairy tales, they disappear forever.  And over time the tool, and the imperative it represented recede and finally vanish.

That's why I bought a used F4.

Note.  I'm doing a little experiment.  I'm buying color film from Costco.  It's Fuji 400 speed color print film and it can be had for around a dollar and change per roll.  Each roll gives you 24 individual frames to fill.  When you've got a handful of the rolls shot you take them back to Costco where their lab develops the film and color corrects and prints the film and finally puts all the images on a disk for a very low price.  Then I'll come home and look at them.  And I'll be happy that the images exist in a physical form.  That they can be physically cataloged and reinterpreted.  It's comforting.