One of the things I love about Austin, Texas is the Blanton Museum. It's a great space and it's filled with lots of fun and engaging art. Sure, there's some conceptual stuff that I don't really get, and some pretentious stuff from the 1960's that wears thin quickly, but for the most part everything is pretty cool, right down to the furniture. I can be a cheap bastard so I tend to go on Thursdays when admission is free. And I always bring a camera along....but you knew that.
It seems as though my relationship with the Fuji X-Pro2 is getting more serious. I seem to bring one of the two that I own with me just about everywhere. And, bowing to peer pressure, as well as the persuasive set up of those cameras, with their optical finders, I find that one always sports the 23mm f1.4 while the other one is always adorned with the 35mm f1.4. The combination seems so Leica-like in that respect. They are devilishly good tools for convincing oneself that good work is being done when, in reality, you've just snuck out to look at art as an excuse to put off work that's no fun.
The cause of my procrastination is my huffiness about video editing. I just am not a big fan. I think if I did it more often I'd build up some sort of resilience but so far I just find most video editing to be tedious and boring. An apt occupation for people with different values. Or a punishment in some countries for shoplifting....
When I walked around the museum today my mind wandered and I found it loitering around ideas concerning what it is I do for a living and how much longer I want to pursue it. I've been an assignment oriented photographer for over 30 years and the sad thing is that creative concepting and budgeting seem to be going backwards; devolving. I keep getting comps to bid on that call for images that I would never want to put in a portfolio. Much less frame and put up on a wall. I'm in a bit of despair about the implosion (paucity) of cerebral quality I keep seeing from advertising agencies. At what point did the creative personal capitulate entirely to the business side of the business?
I recently watched a V-Log by James Popsys who is currently my very favorite photographer/v-logger. It's a video that explains why he exited the assignment arena to pursue self-assignment and direct sales and it's a video that spoke very clearly to me. Here's the link: Link.
Of course, this kind of thinking always occurs to me after I've volunteered for, or accepted, some project which sounds like so much fun when we're in discussions and turns out to be so much drudgery when we get down to the actual shooting and/or post processing....
I'm quite confused today so I'll default to my typical dodge: Wasn't the gear great? And yes, the X-Pro2 is a fun, fun camera. Even if the images are no better than any other camera with the same basic sensor configuration the more complex and selectable viewfinder at least gives me the feeling that I'm doing something serious and constructive. Even if I'm not.
I came back to the studio and got back to work on the videos. Typical client point of view: We need to include: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ in the video, and it needs to be no longer than :60 seconds. If you figure in the introduction and the art and logos at the end you have about 40 seconds left for content. How many thoughts can you convincingly cover in forty seconds? I'd say you're lucky to get two out. But 26? Pure fantasy.
Tomorrow I'll re-commit to doing nothing but still photography. The way God intended it...
12 comments:
Man I hear ya! I really enjoy the challenges of capturing great video and audio. I even enjoy most of the editing, though that statement is tinged with some caveats if the capture is interviews... But after shooting, editing and producing the video, any satisfaction I may enjoy as a result is typically outweighed by a sense of relief, and a reminder of how much fun it is to simply go capture some stills and enjoy playing with the photos in post. It's a reminder of why I started picking up a camera in the first place.
Love that Jerry Bywaters painting. I think Regionalist painting is starting to look very good compared to the post-WWII stuff.
JC
Punishment for shoplifting? Hilarious.
Remember the scene in Woody Allen's Sleeper, where the researchers in the future are asking Allen's character about things from the past that they don't understand. They show him a short segment of Howard Cosell speaking and wondered if watching Cosell wasn't some sort of punishment for people in prison. Allen answers, "Yes."
I clicked over to the James Popsys video. I was a little skeptical at first because it started out a bit too "lifehacker-ish" for me.
But the message was great and for a relatively young man, Popsys is wise to follow his own path.
He's right about the lowest common denominator and group-think that emerges in the form of ad agency briefs today.
Thanks for the link.
Stephen Kennedy
Jerry Bywaters "Oilfield Girls"
Considering buying a print.
Thank you for going to the museum.
Some belated thoughts. . .
First, if your financial house is in order, as you have implied, stop taking every job that comes along and take only those of real interest to you and that you will enjoy doing. For me, it's travel, books, magazine articles, and architecture. For you, it will be portraits and. . .
Second, since you used the term "cuddling," (although in reference to art), I will use it differently. I know you didn't hit it off with the X-Pro 1, but I very much like the camera. I don't have the diopter problem you had with it, so for me it is one of the most quirky, idiosyncratic cameras I've ever owned -- but in a good, even an endearing way. (Exactas and Exas are idiosyncratic too, but in a way that makes one want to beat them with a hammer!) This is the first camera in many, many years for which I feel genuine affection, as in, if it were a teddy bear I might take it to bed and cuddle it. YMMV, of course. :o)
Back again with one more thought -- Be thankful you weren't doing video in the days of analog editing. That's what drove me out of video production in the early '90s. On a scale of one to ten, going to the barber shop to watch haircuts would be a ten and editing analog video would be less than zero.
Dave, you forget, I ran an ad agency in the 1980's and we did a lot of TV commercials. I remember many, many days wasted, sitting in a swiveling office chair at VideoPost in Dallas editing down stuff that had be shot on 35mm movie film and then transferred to two inch tape. The days editing required an engineer. We'd scrub back and forth over the tape trying to get the machines "locked up" and the precise edit made. Excruciating.
I tried it again with tape when I played around with Hi-8 cameras in the late 1980's. We used LANC controllers to edit. Painful.
I've paid some dues. But I still like to bitch about the things that never seem to change...
Bad typing. My comment just above should have read, "...stuff that had BEEN shot on 35mm..."
Sorry about that.
Over the past few years I've been reading your blog, I was under the impression you somewhat promoted the idea of transitioning into video as a requirement of adapting to the evolving market in regards to commercial photography. Reading this, I get the feeling that while your head was in the game (as it should have been) maybe your heart wasn't so much into video, such that you've went astray from your true passion in order to put food on the table so to speak. I think it's common that as we advance towards the end of our careers, we tend to compare where we are, where we were, and where we expected to be at some specific milestone. Step back a moment to reevaluate, be completely honest with yourself, and your wife. Define a path forward, then execute.
Keith, I am still adamant that video can be an important adjunct to a photographer's business. I like video when all parties engage at a high level. Not so much when cost cutting rears its ugly head. I've spent the last 35 years trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up but I've never been dishonest with myself or my miraculous spouse. I just change my mind a lot.
All my problems at this juncture fall into the category of "first world problems." Angsty stuff with no really painful consequences.
I'm just making small disengagements from commissioned work in order to do whatever I want to do in the moment. Long term planning is great for actuaries. In the real world? Not so much.
Ah, so it's not a dislike for video, but rather a frustration of the changes in the market and relegating of the creative from a key role in the process to a commodity player. Well stated in regards to your reference of first world problems. I've spent my entire working life in manufacturing. I once got demoted due to changing technology and markets, the job simply went away. So I attacked it head on by moving into the field of industrial automation. I expect that should get me to retirement by the time robots can repair themselves. I have been working towards a goal of taking early retirement and spending a few years practicing photography as a business endeavor during my final 5-10 years before full retirement. But seeing as that is still quite a few years away (I'm coming up on 50 this fall) I expect the market may be mostly gone by then, replaced by AI and CGI.
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