Re-posted from 2011:
http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2011/04/eeyores-birthday-party-austin-2011.html
http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2011/04/eeyores-birthday-party-austin-2011.html
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Another post that is NOT about A camera. Re-posted from 2012. A good year for writing.
3.20.2012
Why are we afraid to make beautiful photographs?
I understand that it's fun to see just how minimal you can get with your gear and still pull out a recognizable image. Recently the combination of iPhones and Instagram has given rise (once again) to the aesthetic of the "distressed" image. It's like re-strip mining, in a sense, since Polaroid transfers already pulled up the richest lodes of the distressed movement years ago, before people got tired of squinting at the images to see what the hell they were really all about. Before that it was Polaroid SX-70 film that was reworked during its development with the business end of chop sticks, tooth picks and other implements of art. In the 1980's we all lived through "cross processing." It was a groovy way of fucking up your film to get a different look. Back then you did it through chemistry but now you can do the same amount of damage/inspiration? with the click of a button. And, of course, there are Lomos and Holgas, and before them the seminal Dianas. Plastic cameras that help you innovate by producing "distressed" pictorial results.
I think every generation goes through this kind of experimentation and then, realizing that it is as much of a dodge as any other technique practiced for the benefit of the technique instead of the subject, the real artists drop the schtick and the glitter and go on to create really original art or they move on to another hobby. Perhaps "action painting" or bead craft.
We seem to have hit a point in photography where it's not enough to just interpret beauty. If we photograph a woman we feel we must "enhance" her by smoothing her skin and using "liquify" filters to "thin her out." We seem immune to the charms of beauty that is too obvious and even an inch outside mainstream constructs. Same basic idea with men. We've hit a pothole in the road of photography and now were stuck in the low gear of insisting that all photos of men be rim-lighted and have the "clarity" sliders maxed out. Craggy skin tones and over the top lighting. For every male over 21.
If you like doing all the distressed stuff don't let me stop you. I'm not always right. You could be right. Instagram could be the reincarnation of Leonardo da Vinci made whole for the masses. But if you get a queasy feeling looking at one more "enhanced" portrait or one more Instagrammed snap shot. If you start feeling vertigo at the non-stop progression of overdone HDR landscapes and city scenes you might want to join with me and ask: "What's so bad about the reality of beauty?"
I think the appreciation of art follows the pattern of the pendulum. A gifted artist tries a technique. The technique is antithetical to the prevailing ethos. The technique finds popular and critical approval. There's mass migration toward the technique and the new practitioners lack the original, driving idea that acts like a motor to power the technique. Lots of derivative work is generated. The technique reaches maximum cultural saturation and like fashion it goes out. Old style. Last year's stuff.
If the race, for the last five or six years, has been toward the grunge-ing of images and the instagramming of images for maximum nostalgic distressed effect then it seems logical that we're on our way back to the opposite side of the pendulum where beauty is consumed raw and quality is a technique that society is happy, once again, to explore. Are we on the cusp of learning how to shoot well? Again.
How to use a tripod to gain clarity? How to use our cameras to convey the richest manifestation of beauty instead of looking at beauty through layer after layer of dissembling electronic filtration?
Count me in. I want to be part of the new trend. I want to aim higher than a lame display on an iPhone or a quick hit on Twit. How about you?
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
A re-posting of an essay from 2012. The role of criticism.
3.25.2012
The Vital Role of Critics and The Ongoing Sabotage of Art.
It's okay to say that a photograph sucks. If you put work in a gallery you are inviting the world to experience it and react to it. You get your shot. The critic gets his shot. And if you've spent money on framing and printing and boxes of mediocre red wine and baskets of chips and bowl of hot sauce and printed invitations, it can sting when a critic calls your work into question. But that's the nature of the beast and part of the function of having exhibitions. You get to hear or read an evaluation of your work that your mother would never give you. Either because she loves you too much or is indifferent enough to want to avoid having yet another difficult conversation. Your role, as an artist is expression. Not necessarily self-expression but expression that moves the dialog of social reflection forward by taking apart the cultural DNA in a new way. But there's a limited bandwidth of gallery space, attention and oxygen in the world of fine art and the critic is like the big bouncer at the velvet rope who helps keep out people who are just taking up space. And I am, of course, ignoring "decorative art" which functions more like furniture. Which is a wing of the decorative arts....
The web is the same as gallery space. Every entry either unconsciously dilutes the whole forward momentum of enlightened culture or adds another highly concentrated drop of "go juice" to the mix. The middle ground is just a waste of ones and zeros. Art should have something to say. It shouldn't just lounge around. But somehow, when we make the very public gesture of posting work in publicly accessible forums we have the expectation that everyone will play nicey-nice and say uplifting and positive things. Like the art teacher in primary school who is deathly afraid that any criticism will damage someone's self-esteem. Given the all but anonymous nature of the web (for so many years my readers have come to believe that I am a middle aged, professional photographer who struggles with issues of access and finance when, in fact, I am really a precocious 25 year old billionaire ex-pat living in my own building in Dubai surrounded by dozen and dozens of super-model wives while playing with hand made digital cameras from NASA while finger-painting over the tops of my collection of Picasso's and Renoir's. Go figure...) the minute anyone receives even a good natured critique that calls any facet of the work into question the original poster flies into a rage and goes into a defense mode akin to a dictator facing insurrection. He is protected by the wall of his own anonymity.
But critics serve a few valuable purposes. They point us toward really worthwhile work. They coalesce and put into words our subliminal understanding that some work is just unmitigated crap, and they help us to understand what works and what doesn't work in a piece of art. Our biggest problems as an "art" culture are twofold: 1. While there has been an exponential explosion in the number of people making and showing their "art", and a parallel explosion in the sheer quantity of "art" they are now creating, the number of critics has remained static or has declined. The number of critics with a grounding in both the history of Photography and general Art History has remained the same or declined. And as the sheer dilution by numbers and hollow mimicry of worthwhile work continues to move photograph en masse from art-to-craft-to-mindless automatic recording the talented critics remained leery of sticking a foot into this tar baby manifestation of declining culture and have chosen to work the more fertile and invested fields of painting, sculpture, performance art and the "photographic classics."
Our second problem as a culture, where critics are concerned, is that we don't want to believe that they have value. Just as a garden must be perpetually weeded to prevent its total overrun by predatory and unwanted tangles of hardy and invasive weeds, critics really do serve a valuable purpose. They metaphorically weed the gardens. When we dismiss their intrinsic value we are basically saying that photographic art is just about feeling good and that everyone should get a trophy. Especially now, in the age of the privileged amateur who wants all the benefits conveyed by the hard work of his predecessors with none of the heavy lifting. We, as a culture, have chosen to ignore our own art history so that the re-awakening (like zombies) of so many past styles and subject matters is embraced as stunningly new and innovative. We give more value to the retread than to the original because we have no understanding and no cognizance of what went before. And how current art stands on the shoulders of its predecessors.
Of course we'll believe that every thing we come up with is gold if we've never actually taken time to see and understand real gold. We don't value the good critics because we don't understand what they're talking about and we don't understand what they're talking about because we think our hobbies are shortcuts to relevant statements of art. Without knowing or understanding that what we're mechanically re-imaging has already been invented, shown, harvested and appropriated. And been done better.
We went to school to become engineers or doctors or lawyers and we disparaged learning about our own culture at our own peril ("why would anyone want to pursue the liberal arts? What will they do with that degree?"). By doing so, in the pursuit of commerce, we throw away the important messages attached to the past.
Maybe what modern photography needs is more, and more educated, critics. I've often stated my opinion that if work had to be shown in a physical gallery to be taken seriously people would put a lot more thought and care into what they showed. We'd raise the level of art and the level of discourse by several orders of magnitude because people would have real "skin in the game." And they'd have to confront a public and intimate encounter with their audiences. As it is now we hide behind the screens and can be as prickly and abusive to critique as our fragile egos demand us to be. If we were giving a gallery talk, in person, the discourse in both directions might be more disciplined and collegial.
I post photos here that, in retrospect, have no real value. I never get called on it because this is the web. I could pull a better construct out of an old camera bag. I think we all have a duty as artists to do several things. First, we need to understand the history of the field in which we want to do work. We need to read books like Beaumont Newhall's, The History of Photography. And we need to read the print versions so we can see the plates well reproduced. We all need to go to many, many gallery shows of both old masters and new, rising stars, so we can see what prints (the gold standard) really look like. They are the standard that we really work towards. We need to understand that the web is just a transitional tool that shows us a representation of what the final, physical art might look like. Once we understand where we've been, just how good work can look "in person" and what the manifestos around art creation and photography are all about we can then speak to new work in a language that has real meaning. It goes beyond, "great capture. All the kitty whiskers are sharp!" to a more adult dialog of understanding a work's resonance and messaging in the context of a complex culture, separate from reality TV and Facebook.
I see the world of photography on the web as so much adolescence. Not that the practitioners are teenagers but that the level of discourse is so course and simple and fractured. It's not an "us versus them" scenario with me being on one side of a technological divide and everyone else being a futuristic expert. I've been pounding away in the world of computers for decades, and bought digital cameras before the great majority of the Bell Curve had even heard of their existence. What I'm arguing for is the idea that, before inflicting on our shared culture, another meaningless rectangle of bouncy color and vacuous content that we all have a responsibility to understand what it is we want to say, why we want to say it and how well we can talk. Then art moves forward.
I would welcome more and more critics. We need people who can say, "You Suck." in a way that makes sense, moves the discussion to a level of higher quality and helps to weed our gardens so that visitors can more clearly see the beautiful flowers that bloom there.
Before you rush to respond and accuse me of being an elitist and an ego-maniac let me say that I felt compelled to write this because someone who likes my work, on a forum, posted a link to my website galleries and suggested that people go and look. One person responded that he didn't see anything special in my work and questioned the purpose of the link. The critic was attacked again and again for not seeing the value. But he made a valid point. The work I have on the web is series of tiny representations of images that are meant to be seen really large and in print. Reduced and denatured by the contraints of the web they lose the majority of whatever power they might have had. As does all work on the web. The naysayer was, in fact, assuming a responsible role as critic and showing that in spite of my rhetorical skills, which help to create fictive value to the work I've posted, the work itself didn't resonate as it would have in it's primary and physical iteration. He was right to force the question. And my defenders wrong for not pursuing the conversation based on the primary aesthetics of presentation and the value of an image reduced from 30 by 30 inches of selenium toned, fiber based print to an sRGB version at 1000 by 1000 pixels.
If I could wield supreme power over the internet there are a lot of things I would change. Like eliminating all advertising... But one of the first things I'd do is erase all the images from every website and gallery, stock file and sharing facility and let people and culture start all over again. But the TOS on every site would include, in all caps, "Please imagine that the work you are about to post could change lives, change minds, enliven culture and move our society forward in its understanding and compassion. Don't post random crap just to post it."
The hell with photographic workshops and seminars and tutorials and all the other mindless dreck. We have more than enough technically accomplished technicians. Now we need to concentrate on history and taste and aesthetics. We need workshops that take people out of their quantum jobs and immerse them in the "what and why" of our art instead of the "how to." And we need to cultivate workshops all over the map that teach people how and why to have critical exchanges about art that don't end in gunplay.
edit: an interesting, related article by Alain Briot: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/columns/artistic_license.shtml
edit: This is a brilliant take on photo criticism: http://www.photowings.org/pages/index.php?pgA196
William Gatesman wrote this wonderful piece: http://wmgphotoblog.com/2012/02/21/a-cubist-critique-of-photographic-art/
Unsure about critiques? Here's a good place to start: http://www.pixiq.com/article/doing-a-photo-critique
And here's my favorite intro book to criticism for photography: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0240516524/ref=oh_o02_s00_i00_details
read first, disagree second. If at all.
The web is the same as gallery space. Every entry either unconsciously dilutes the whole forward momentum of enlightened culture or adds another highly concentrated drop of "go juice" to the mix. The middle ground is just a waste of ones and zeros. Art should have something to say. It shouldn't just lounge around. But somehow, when we make the very public gesture of posting work in publicly accessible forums we have the expectation that everyone will play nicey-nice and say uplifting and positive things. Like the art teacher in primary school who is deathly afraid that any criticism will damage someone's self-esteem. Given the all but anonymous nature of the web (for so many years my readers have come to believe that I am a middle aged, professional photographer who struggles with issues of access and finance when, in fact, I am really a precocious 25 year old billionaire ex-pat living in my own building in Dubai surrounded by dozen and dozens of super-model wives while playing with hand made digital cameras from NASA while finger-painting over the tops of my collection of Picasso's and Renoir's. Go figure...) the minute anyone receives even a good natured critique that calls any facet of the work into question the original poster flies into a rage and goes into a defense mode akin to a dictator facing insurrection. He is protected by the wall of his own anonymity.
But critics serve a few valuable purposes. They point us toward really worthwhile work. They coalesce and put into words our subliminal understanding that some work is just unmitigated crap, and they help us to understand what works and what doesn't work in a piece of art. Our biggest problems as an "art" culture are twofold: 1. While there has been an exponential explosion in the number of people making and showing their "art", and a parallel explosion in the sheer quantity of "art" they are now creating, the number of critics has remained static or has declined. The number of critics with a grounding in both the history of Photography and general Art History has remained the same or declined. And as the sheer dilution by numbers and hollow mimicry of worthwhile work continues to move photograph en masse from art-to-craft-to-mindless automatic recording the talented critics remained leery of sticking a foot into this tar baby manifestation of declining culture and have chosen to work the more fertile and invested fields of painting, sculpture, performance art and the "photographic classics."
Our second problem as a culture, where critics are concerned, is that we don't want to believe that they have value. Just as a garden must be perpetually weeded to prevent its total overrun by predatory and unwanted tangles of hardy and invasive weeds, critics really do serve a valuable purpose. They metaphorically weed the gardens. When we dismiss their intrinsic value we are basically saying that photographic art is just about feeling good and that everyone should get a trophy. Especially now, in the age of the privileged amateur who wants all the benefits conveyed by the hard work of his predecessors with none of the heavy lifting. We, as a culture, have chosen to ignore our own art history so that the re-awakening (like zombies) of so many past styles and subject matters is embraced as stunningly new and innovative. We give more value to the retread than to the original because we have no understanding and no cognizance of what went before. And how current art stands on the shoulders of its predecessors.
Of course we'll believe that every thing we come up with is gold if we've never actually taken time to see and understand real gold. We don't value the good critics because we don't understand what they're talking about and we don't understand what they're talking about because we think our hobbies are shortcuts to relevant statements of art. Without knowing or understanding that what we're mechanically re-imaging has already been invented, shown, harvested and appropriated. And been done better.
We went to school to become engineers or doctors or lawyers and we disparaged learning about our own culture at our own peril ("why would anyone want to pursue the liberal arts? What will they do with that degree?"). By doing so, in the pursuit of commerce, we throw away the important messages attached to the past.
Maybe what modern photography needs is more, and more educated, critics. I've often stated my opinion that if work had to be shown in a physical gallery to be taken seriously people would put a lot more thought and care into what they showed. We'd raise the level of art and the level of discourse by several orders of magnitude because people would have real "skin in the game." And they'd have to confront a public and intimate encounter with their audiences. As it is now we hide behind the screens and can be as prickly and abusive to critique as our fragile egos demand us to be. If we were giving a gallery talk, in person, the discourse in both directions might be more disciplined and collegial.
I post photos here that, in retrospect, have no real value. I never get called on it because this is the web. I could pull a better construct out of an old camera bag. I think we all have a duty as artists to do several things. First, we need to understand the history of the field in which we want to do work. We need to read books like Beaumont Newhall's, The History of Photography. And we need to read the print versions so we can see the plates well reproduced. We all need to go to many, many gallery shows of both old masters and new, rising stars, so we can see what prints (the gold standard) really look like. They are the standard that we really work towards. We need to understand that the web is just a transitional tool that shows us a representation of what the final, physical art might look like. Once we understand where we've been, just how good work can look "in person" and what the manifestos around art creation and photography are all about we can then speak to new work in a language that has real meaning. It goes beyond, "great capture. All the kitty whiskers are sharp!" to a more adult dialog of understanding a work's resonance and messaging in the context of a complex culture, separate from reality TV and Facebook.
I see the world of photography on the web as so much adolescence. Not that the practitioners are teenagers but that the level of discourse is so course and simple and fractured. It's not an "us versus them" scenario with me being on one side of a technological divide and everyone else being a futuristic expert. I've been pounding away in the world of computers for decades, and bought digital cameras before the great majority of the Bell Curve had even heard of their existence. What I'm arguing for is the idea that, before inflicting on our shared culture, another meaningless rectangle of bouncy color and vacuous content that we all have a responsibility to understand what it is we want to say, why we want to say it and how well we can talk. Then art moves forward.
I would welcome more and more critics. We need people who can say, "You Suck." in a way that makes sense, moves the discussion to a level of higher quality and helps to weed our gardens so that visitors can more clearly see the beautiful flowers that bloom there.
Before you rush to respond and accuse me of being an elitist and an ego-maniac let me say that I felt compelled to write this because someone who likes my work, on a forum, posted a link to my website galleries and suggested that people go and look. One person responded that he didn't see anything special in my work and questioned the purpose of the link. The critic was attacked again and again for not seeing the value. But he made a valid point. The work I have on the web is series of tiny representations of images that are meant to be seen really large and in print. Reduced and denatured by the contraints of the web they lose the majority of whatever power they might have had. As does all work on the web. The naysayer was, in fact, assuming a responsible role as critic and showing that in spite of my rhetorical skills, which help to create fictive value to the work I've posted, the work itself didn't resonate as it would have in it's primary and physical iteration. He was right to force the question. And my defenders wrong for not pursuing the conversation based on the primary aesthetics of presentation and the value of an image reduced from 30 by 30 inches of selenium toned, fiber based print to an sRGB version at 1000 by 1000 pixels.
If I could wield supreme power over the internet there are a lot of things I would change. Like eliminating all advertising... But one of the first things I'd do is erase all the images from every website and gallery, stock file and sharing facility and let people and culture start all over again. But the TOS on every site would include, in all caps, "Please imagine that the work you are about to post could change lives, change minds, enliven culture and move our society forward in its understanding and compassion. Don't post random crap just to post it."
The hell with photographic workshops and seminars and tutorials and all the other mindless dreck. We have more than enough technically accomplished technicians. Now we need to concentrate on history and taste and aesthetics. We need workshops that take people out of their quantum jobs and immerse them in the "what and why" of our art instead of the "how to." And we need to cultivate workshops all over the map that teach people how and why to have critical exchanges about art that don't end in gunplay.
edit: an interesting, related article by Alain Briot: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/columns/artistic_license.shtml
edit: This is a brilliant take on photo criticism: http://www.photowings.org/pages/index.php?pgA196
William Gatesman wrote this wonderful piece: http://wmgphotoblog.com/2012/02/21/a-cubist-critique-of-photographic-art/
Unsure about critiques? Here's a good place to start: http://www.pixiq.com/article/doing-a-photo-critique
And here's my favorite intro book to criticism for photography: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0240516524/ref=oh_o02_s00_i00_details
read first, disagree second. If at all.
Monday, April 25, 2016
I'll be taking a few days off from blogging this week. We seem to have too much actual work to take care of. Jobs stacking up.
I'm busy setting up a lighting design for some jet black, techie products. They should come rolling in on a Fedex truck this afternoon. At least that's what the tracking information tells me. I'm trying to get organized and pre-light because tomorrow afternoon (when I was originally scheduled to be working on this project) we may get a severe weather storm and a different client called to make sure I could "stand by" in case we have some power outages, flooding, etc. that might make good video for an another upcoming project.
I could be standing around in my yellow pancho with my steel-toed, waterproof boots and a hardhat shooting video of "weather events" by dinner time tomorrow. (Rain covers and a waterproof bag at the ready).
But we still have to ship back the tech product and then spend Weds. doing post production on everything.
That, and a dual-natured (photo/video) project on Thurs. are tightening my schedule like a set of vise grips.
It's all fun and practical work but something has to give. I'm afraid it's going to be the VSL blog.
I should be back on Friday. Until then we have over 3,000 blog posts in the vault and you have the keys. I'm pretty sure that a few of you have read them all. I'm pretty sure the rest of you haven't. But then Michael Johnston is back at the keyboard over at theonlinephotographer.com so I'm not worry you'll get too bored.
See you at the end of the week.
A few years back with yet another small camera...
One of my early forays into small, mirrorless cameras was a dip into the Nex line from Sony. The Nex 6 was a pretty decent body with a 16 megapixel camera but my favorite was the Nex 7. The finder was good, the dual dials were good and the low ISO, 24 megapixel performance was great!
There were a few downsides that led me to move on. One was the horrible state of the menus in those two cameras. It was sheer chaos. And the main issue I had with the Nex-7 was its temperamental interaction with various wider lenses. Magenta splotches were rampant and the edges of most legacy wide angles were soft. When you piled on with lots of noise at 800 ISO and above you essentially were working with a compromised camera. That being said, it was a nice shooting machine if you stuck to normal and longer lenses and worked in the same, basic fashion most of the time.
I've recently bought a Sony a6000 and an a6300 and I'm loving them. The menus are much better and the sensors are leaps and bounds better. My one wish? I'd love body with the dual dials we had on the Nex-7 camera. Those felt great and were quick and functional. It was an elegant design.
The Sony RX10ii is a good working camera.
Just some event documentation with a Sony RX10ii.
I've worked events with every kind of camera you can imagine. Lately I used a Sony RX10ii to capture an open house at a new, corporate headquarters office here in Austin. I brought the RX10ii along just as my "fun" camera and I carried a bag with all the usual, stereotypical DSLRs with their assorted lenses, flashes and accoutrement. I'd planned on using one DSLR body with a 80-200mm f2.8 lens over one shoulder and a second body with a 24-70mm f2.8 lens over the other shoulder. Flashes at the ready on both of them. At least that was my plan...
I arrived early (personality glitch) and pulled out the "fun" camera to play with until all the action started. But a curious thing happened; I started shooting the catering set ups, the decor, the signage and the overall environment before the guests showed up, and every shot I clicked off just looked exactly like I wanted it to look. At first I thought it was just "screen hypnosis."
I get "screen hypnosis" a lot when shooting big, DSLR cameras. What it basically means is that the screens on those cameras make the images taken look really great. The exposures look perfect, the colors rich and accurate. The downside is that there's a depressing letdown when you finally get home and look at the images on your computer screen. The exposures can be darker, the colors muddy, and there are even awkward and unpleasant moments when one blows up the images and is confronted by the reality that some lenses (no matter how often you try to tune them) are still front focusing or back focusing. Not enough to totally ruin the shot but enough to suck the fun out of shooting.
I knew from experience that what I see on the rear screen, or the EVF, of the Sony RX10ii is pretty much exactly what I am going to see when I get home. I took a few minutes to zoom in as far as the RX10ii would allow me on a review shot and everything still looked great.
I pulled a small, manual flash out of the big bag and stuck a bounce card on it with a fat rubber band. After a few minutes of trial and error the flash, used in "guide number" mode, gave me wonderfully consistent light. By the time we finished up with the event I had done the entire assignment solely with the small, all inclusive camera.
While the RX10ii might not be the right camera for you, or the type of work you usually do, I am finding that for everything but portraits that require thin depth of field, this camera is a good fit for lots of day-to-day work.
I don't know why I should be surprised that the Sony worked well, I was able to do large parts of a three day event back in October of last year with two similar, Panasonic fz 1000 cameras, with good results. The performance of these cameras in every regard except for high ISO performance (over 800 ISO) is as good or better than the cameras we had at just at just about any price as recently as a few years ago.
The benefits of having one system that gets me from 24-200mm at a constant f2.8 is wonderful. 20 megapixels of great detail is most welcome. The ability to hold it, easily, in one hand is also good.
But when you add to this the ability to plug in a microphone, switch on good 4K video, and knock out a quick video/sound bite with a client, it is like whipped creme on the top of a hot fudge Sundae of tasty camera fun.
These are good working tools. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Are they the best choice for everything? Naw. It's nice to have something like a Nikon D810 or a Sony A7Rii for more traditional, high resolution-driven assignments. That, and when you need some narrow depth of field.
I can hardly wait to try out the RX10iii...
Sunday, April 24, 2016
Cleaning up the studio and setting up for next week. A (almost) weekly tradition here for the last 20 years. Why should this week be any different.
I couldn't help posting this as I love all the intersecting lines and the oval.
Of course, I could never have a creative conference in here; it's too bright!
When I moved into my current studio space nearly twenty years ago is seemed relatively spacious. Nothing like the East-of-downtown space I left behind but uncluttered and of a good volume. The walls were white and the ceiling was high and the studio was about 20 feet from the kitchen in the house. The nicest part was going from paying an exorbitant rent of $2,200 per month to, basically....free.
But one habit didn't change; I'd work through the week, going from job to job, and changing gear to match the parameters about as often as most obsessive people change underwear. By Friday of most weeks the floor, and other horizontal spaces in the studio, were covered with spent cameras, props, lenses, abandoned coffee cups and bundles of extension cords, running hither and thither.
The floor from my door to desk generally looks like an obstacle course by Friday at "closing time." Unless I'm working under a tight deadline I try to ignore the mess on Saturdays. That's the day of the week when we do our longest, hardest swims in the mornings, have lunch as a family, and generally get the shopping and external stuff done. In the evenings we try to do anything but work...
By Sunday, right after the morning swim practice and coffee, I'm ready to get back in and straighten out the mess. Well, it's not that I'm very motivated to do this but I know that if I don't get a jump on it the rest of my week will be.... trying.
My new downsizing fad hasn't been visited upon the lighting gear (yet) and I was sorting framed art all of last week, so the studio looked like some mischievous giant had turned the space upside down, given it a good shake, like a Snow Globe, and then set it back down again. I looked at my schedule and realized that I'd booked a day and a half of studio still life shooting early in the week, a day of fast turnaround post production, followed by a Thurs. shoot that would involve location still photography and studio based videography (against a white background). I needed to get organized. And that's pretty much how I spent today. Studio Dog was unamused and refused to step into the studio, demurring simply because it was the "weekend" and the cock of her head at my request for company made clear that, in her mind, some things are just not done on balmy Sunday afternoons.
We take delivery of five high technology products on Monday which all need to be photographed from multiple angles by Tues. At the end of the day the products have to be repacked and turned over to Fedex to be overnighted home to their masters. I'll spend Weds. grinding out beautiful clipping paths and other wise dropping out backgrounds. Since the products are all black I will spend (too much) time dust spotting in PhotoShop as well.
Since I won't have time to clean up the studio on Thurs. (the shoot starts early) I wanted to try and bring enough order to the space now; up front, in the hopes that I can spiff the place back up on Weds. evening.
Most of the people I talk to who are not in the advertising or imaging businesses don't seem to know that so much of our time is spent doing mundane domestic tasks, and very little of our time is spent casting for high fashion underwear models, or sipping Cuba Librés on tropical beaches. When I mention the time we spend "refreshing" the studio they are shocked, presuming, of course, that all the drudgery is done by my entourage. I would love to pretend that it's been years since I've had to load my own memory cards into cameras and that my assistants make sure the cards are formatted but....we're well into 2016 and I've yet to hire any other assistant than Ben. And since he left to go back to college around the third week of January... well.... let's just say I wear multiple hats.
The only saving grace of doing the cleaning and straightening myself every week is that I've learned by muscle memory and reflex to put everything back exactly in the same place from which it came. The monolights get packed with the correct sync cords and the right reflectors. Extension cables go back into the cable bag. Etc.
I'm sure some efficiency expert out there has been bar-coding their gear and scanning it by way of running inventory, but I think that may just be a little bit too organized. At least this week, with all the other camera gear gone, organizing the Sonys in the camera case was much easier than it's been for years.
Since I won't have time to clean up the studio on Thurs. (the shoot starts early) I wanted to try and bring enough order to the space now; up front, in the hopes that I can spiff the place back up on Weds. evening.
Most of the people I talk to who are not in the advertising or imaging businesses don't seem to know that so much of our time is spent doing mundane domestic tasks, and very little of our time is spent casting for high fashion underwear models, or sipping Cuba Librés on tropical beaches. When I mention the time we spend "refreshing" the studio they are shocked, presuming, of course, that all the drudgery is done by my entourage. I would love to pretend that it's been years since I've had to load my own memory cards into cameras and that my assistants make sure the cards are formatted but....we're well into 2016 and I've yet to hire any other assistant than Ben. And since he left to go back to college around the third week of January... well.... let's just say I wear multiple hats.
The only saving grace of doing the cleaning and straightening myself every week is that I've learned by muscle memory and reflex to put everything back exactly in the same place from which it came. The monolights get packed with the correct sync cords and the right reflectors. Extension cables go back into the cable bag. Etc.
I'm sure some efficiency expert out there has been bar-coding their gear and scanning it by way of running inventory, but I think that may just be a little bit too organized. At least this week, with all the other camera gear gone, organizing the Sonys in the camera case was much easier than it's been for years.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)