Revisiting a post from a recent blog at a different address: "Old dogs gotta learn new tricks if they want to do business in a fast evolving economy. Can't rest on old laurels...."

It's human nature to find a way to do a job, have some success, and then doggedly try to do things the same way; over and over again. Some of us seem to be highly resistant to change -- no matter what that intransigence costs us. I remember, during my 40 year career, the transition from shooting everything on 4x5 film to shooting almost everything on medium format film, and then transitioning again to 35mm film. When we learned to get everything just right on our film cameras we barely had time to take a deep breath before we had to do the whole process again for digital. And we went through many iterations of digital before real innovation slowed down.  

Lighting too has changed. At the outset of my career studio electronic flash systems (heads and packs) were frightfully expensive, heavy as boat anchors and fraught with danger. Over time lighting units got smaller, lighter, less dangerous and more controllable. Then, all of a sudden, we were offered lots of units that had features like 1/10th of a stop power control, reliable radio triggers built in, and....big change....the ability to do powerful flash exposures with battery powered units. No more extension cords. No plugging stuff into the wall sockets and praying the circuit breakers wouldn't trip. Then we started experimenting with LED light, etc, etc. 

Now I am convinced that the majority of basic photography projects can be done and done well with a late model iPhone. But for some reason duffers want to make everything as complicated as it was back in the days of film, and lights that had few, if any options beyond on and off, full, half and quarter power. Most of the duffer-ism stems from a profound resistance to learning new stuff. On so many levels. 

Portrait photographers no longer delivery paper proofs. Wanna see which portrait you like best? There's a private web gallery for that. Want to deliver thousands of high resolution (big) files to your clients? There are inexpensive and easy to use file transfer apps you can use. But you'll need to upgrade your internet access if you are still locked into a cheap, slow service. 

Commercial photographers are transitioning to take advantage of newer file enhancement features that are made possible by A.I. which are being incorporated into existing programs as new features. And we use them more and more. I've hit a tipping point at which it's easier, better and more advantageous for my clients if I photograph their portraits against a neutral background and then composite them into an appropriate pre-shot background using some of the new selection tools in PhotoShop. Bitch all you want about A.I. but at this particular level what you are really doing is taking chance out of the equation for your business. No more endless location scouting for environmental portraits only to show up some place on a shoot day and find: The weather sucks. The building you were going to use as a background just got demolished. The shoot day "features" record breaking heat/record breaking cold/high winds/a protest march or something else that lays waste to  your clever schedule. 

The business of photography is, at its core, all about business. Offering products and services that clients need, want and value, and for which they will pay well. The new barriers to entry are no longer access to gear or access to start-up capital. Rather, the new barriers: are failing to understand how to incorporate new tech, new image styles and new points of view into work you want to sell to clients. How to shoot it all efficiently and how to bill for it.

There is a prevailing myth that no one is making money any more by creating and selling photography directly to clients  --- or through an ad agency or P.R. agency to clients. While it's true that anything which can be competently done with the camera in a phone will be done by the clients in house there are still enormous opportunities out there for people who keep up with the progression of technology and business practices. Our fees for creation and our usage fees for licensing have never been higher or met with less resistance. 

It's no longer enough to show up with an 11x14 inch printed portfolio of black and white images you did 20 years ago to try and secure a job. Nobody really cares about that. They want to see absolutely current work and they want to see it right now, and on their phones. Nobody is looking for your printed invoice to come in the snail mail. They want a digital invoice now and a way to instantly pay for your services with a corporate credit card. 

I had lunch this last Wednesday with an art director  who I have worked with on hundreds of assignments over the last 30+ years. We were sitting in a new restaurant here and he asked me to excuse him if he got a text. He was art directing a food shoot with a photographer in Houston, Texas who specializes in photographing seafood dishes in his well equipped studio. We ate our appetizers and he got a text with an attached test image on it. We looked at the image and bounced a few small suggestions back and forth before my art director friend sent the photographer some quick feedback. This happened several times more during lunch and by the time we left the art director felt like the food shoot a couple hundred miles away was going well. No need for travel. No need to wait around for approvals. 

Everything moves faster now. Everything changes now. Faster and faster. 

We don't buy the latest cameras just because they are pretty, we buy them because they have features we value which make the work faster, more efficient, easier to work with in post. 

And we're not buying into the idea that no one wants to pay good money anymore for good photography. In fact, we raise our prices by 7-10% per year and I will say that I've had zero push back on prices this entire year. Everyone gets that there's inflation. The clients charge their clients more. They expect the same from us. 

Sure. If you want to take your Nikon FM out and shoot some office buildings with a 28mm lens and some color film, and then delivery machine prints from a warehouse store you are probably going to have big problems being taken seriously or being paid much of anything. And if you are inordinately slow because you've refused to adopt technology or advanced training in necessary processes you'll probably never be invited back to work with clients who endured your painfully slow processes again. 

I've said it a thousand times. Photography is like staying in shape for swimming. You can't go months or years without regular swim practices and expect to do much more than not drown. You can't go months or years without practicing the craft of photography and expect to do much more than waste everyone's time. The more you practice the better you get ---- if you practice the things that add value. For the client. 

My list would be: Use the right camera. If you need lots of dynamic range, the best image stabilization and class leading low noise at higher ISO settings you'll need to spend accordingly -- or suffer from painfully involved file salvation in post processing. You'll need the right lenses for your work. If you are an architectural photography, for example, you'll need lenses that are wide enough to give you some room for perspective control in post. You'll need lenses that are sharp all the way into the corners because clients want the corner details to be just as sharp as the center of frame details. If you need lights you need lights that are fast to set up, highly reliable and easy to control. A couple of Vivitar 283 flashes just won't cut it. And you need to have researched your field to understand what the clients who practice in it want from your engagement. They are not paying to subsidize your guess work. 

But you also have to stay culturally current. Constantly researching great work on the web. Embracing current movies, music, art and social structures. Being able to speak to people without showcasing anachronistic tells. Not playing too much Frank Sinatra at your contemporary fashion shoot...

My list of important stuff would include money spent on liability insurance. And a targeted web presence. And apps that make it easy to get paid. And a professional attitude. And lots and lots of ongoing training.

In the "old days" we'd redo botched shoots if we needed to and that might make the clients of that period happy again. Now with deadlines measured in hours instead of days it's more and more critical not to fail in the first place. Some clients have their backs against the wall and there's no margin for re-dos. No time.

I had coffee last Monday with a 62 year old event photographer. He's right up to speed. His latest client wanted images from on-stage speaker presentations as the speaker was still on stage speaking. He set up a connection between his camera and his phone that allowed for immediate transfers of the files he was shooting from camera to phone which he could them directly send to the client's marcom staff via the venue's high speed wi-fi. Result? Happy client who was posting to social media before the presenters even left the stage. No time spent diddling around with inconsequential edits or stumbling blocks. Happy clients pay quickly and then invite you back again for another round. 

Most of my clients are half my age. Most of them are up to speed on what can be done with A.I. tech and the latest tools in the Adobe Suite. Most of them grew up with constant phone access. Telling them how we used to do it in the old days is a ticket to irrelevance. And lost opportunity. 

If you aren't constantly learning you aren't running in place --- you are going backwards. 

Move fast. Don't break things. Don't look backwards. Staying current is staying profitable. 

Revisiting the VSL blog. Some notes. 2024 has been an interesting year.

I put this blog on hold back in July but the last five months seems like so much longer a time. I thought at that point that I'd said everything I had to say about photography and thought, perhaps, that it would spur other formerly interesting bloggers to renew their enthusiasm and provide me (and everyone else) with some new, good content. Something fun to read between appointments or while waiting for the sun to get in just the right position. But no. I fear most photo bloggers are just aging out, have lost their spark and are just settling in to doing the only thing they really ever mastered. Writing about writing.

It would be easy to blame it all on the camera companies for not coming out with marvelous new "treasures" every quarter. The equipment reviews are so much easier to write...  But many writers have just thrown up their hands and walked away. Mostly because the advertising revenues are drying up. The ones who remain seem to think that now is the time just for reminiscing. Gliding into oblivion while rummaging around in their closet of memories looking for a cozy cardigan, woven together with vignettes of the past, to keep them company while rocking in a favorite chair during the short, dark afternoons. 

Can some writing, no matter how detailed and punctilious, be well described as...sedentary? I imagine so. 

I was buying into the story that photography as it was meant to be practiced was in hastening decline. But then I took the cure. What is the cure? Suiting up in your favorite casual clothes, tying those walking shoes with double knots so they don't come loose just as something exciting happens in front of you, grabbing a well worn and favorite camera with a sparky lens on the front and heading out the door to walk the urban streets and see what's new. And on so many of those walks I encountered... real photographers. Not just keyboard jockeys writing multiple theses about those "golden years" but vibrant, young, old, and mostly enthusiastic practitioners who were just out for joyous walks in the real world. Well, as much as you could call Austin, Texas the real world. 

So, I've spent the last five months not hunched over a keyboard and not occasionally having to toss out nasty anonymous comments from one particular person who has made it his new working from his parents' basement job to tell me I'm an asshole. It's been refreshing. 

Here I'll make a somewhat sad confession. I missed two things in the five month hiatus. One was good written content specifically about photography, taking photographs and playing with photographs. There is so little out there that I sheepishly, from time to time, took a break from endless YouTube scrolling to go back and read my own work from years or even a decade ago. And some of it was good. At least I thought so. The second thing I missed was the straightforward process of writing. Of sitting down at my office desk and "talking" to my vast collection of friends, peers, colleagues and strangers who used to come by this blog to agree, disagree, preach at me about manners, and generally supply mostly altruistic give and take. My fingers missed caressing the keyboard. I am in the process, here, of warming up the fingers and reacquainting them with the pleasures of typing with gusto. Most of all though, I missed the regular and well considered comments all these friends and peers left. Well, except for the aforementioned asshole...

What have I been up to? Mostly the same old stuff. Driving the new staff car around to little Texas towns to catalog their hurried transition into new bedroom communities. Working with the same clients I've written about over the years. Billing outrageous amounts. Spending most of it on new toys. Trying my best to understand investing and it's scary opposite, withdrawing my own money and spending it. Which is actually kind of fun.

Have I wholesale switched camera systems? Naw. Still soldiering on with the two Leica systems. One new camera has been added to the mix but also a current Leica model. So, I've been using one brand of cameras almost exclusively since 2020. It's a record of consistency in camera ownership for me. I thought I'd chaff at sticking with a routine --- but no. It's fun to lean on the familiarity of the cameras and menus when you might enjoy turning off parts of your brain and just using your gear via muscle memory.

I've come back online here (my intention is to be more sporadic than in the past) to talk about a few things that I, as a photographer, am grappling with. One is the glide into irrelevance that I think we all experience once we've logged enough years and lived through so many revolutions in our practice; our profession. Another theme is how to maximize the fun of photography in an age of distractions and the utter diffusion of individual work into the ever-widening arena of shared images. 

If you believe the propaganda from most hobbyists, bloggers, V-loggers, pundits, for profit photo websites, etc. You would think the entire world of photographers is hellbent on discarding all of their traditional, big tech cameras and rushing to buy the digital equivalent of point and shoot cameras as represented by popular models from the 1990s film days. A mad rush toward Ricoh GR111 variants and the ever elusive Fuji X100VIs. In the retro film space that would be a gold rush to find Contax, Nikon, Olympus and Canon point and shoot film eaters from the same time period. 

I won't be writing nice stuff. I won't spend much time here digging into the past. All we have and all we are able to work with is NOW. The past is gone. The future is not promised to anyone. Now is the only thing that really interests me. I don't care if you used to be the president of your high school chess club or if you made 10,000 8x10 inch prints of something in your old black and white darkroom. Tell me what you are interested in right now. Show me. Archiving is something to get around to after you are dead. 

One thing I'm really not tolerant of this time around is the idea that everything is too expensive. It is and it's not. If you are here and you have the time to read blogs about photography and other hobbies you are probably not a paycheck to paycheck working person anymore. You may think new cameras are expensive but you might also have just spent $50K on a new car without blinking. It's all about perspective. Not the skewed perspective of keystoning buildings and tilted walls but with priorities about what to spend money on. Let's not dwell on price here. Let's burrow down to the actual gear and not the perils of acquiring it. I think if you've made it to a certain age you might have more fun just saying, "Fuck it. I'll buy what I want." and be done with it. Life is too short to pinch all the pennies till they scream. 

I'm writing this blog as much for me as I am for you. I don't charge anything to you. There is no firewall.  No affiliate links to manipulate your buying business. No Patreon begging. But on the flip side I won't tolerate much nasty or uniformed feedback. Just sayin'

Hope life is treating you well. More mannequins and more tipping over high rise buildings to come...

But circling back to the current cameras markets... if you talk to working professionals and people who do photography as a real art, with a profit intention attached, you'll find that full frame and medium format, current, interchangeable lens cameras are still the mainstay. The world at large is actually filled with endless Sony A7, A-something variations along with Nikon full frame Z models and (hard to keep up with model designations) Canon full frame cameras. The one brand that consistently sells out of everything they bring to market? Well, statistically, that would be the Leica M, Q and SL cameras. Just try snagging a new model of your choice at any certified retailer's shop. Or online. I'm beginning to think they invented "the waiting list." And mostly you'll find that the good photographers are still working and making money. Weird, huh?

I spent a lot of time over the past five months working with and trying to play with the Fuji S50ii medium format cameras and a drawer that's filling up quickly with adapted Pentax 645 lenses as well as the occasional GFX lens. I've used the MF cameras on five or six daylong commercial assignments, mostly doing environmental portraits and I have to say that I much prefer working with the Leica SL variants for most jobs. The Fuji menus are a mess. The operational handling is profoundly middle brow. And worst of all, if you have the camera in direct sunlight and the temperatures are higher than 85° Fahrenheit you WILL get a temperature warning followed in short order by a complete camera shut down. Not a good thing in a "professional" tool. Added to that is battery life that makes most other cameras look competent in their power handling performance. 

If I get around to it I'd like to write about the differences in handling, and also end results, between the Leica SL,  the SL2 and the SL2-S. All different from each other but all the best but in all different ways. 

I'm still swimming every day. I walk a few miles most days. I have no medical issues. And I am happy.

Hope the same for you. 

 

Random display of images from today's walk with a Leica SL, a Voigtlander 40mm f1.4 VM and a black and white (mostly) setting... A pop-up post.

 

Proving that not all images are better done in black and white.

Bee Sanctuary.

Upbeat park decor for the kids...

This rich assortment of plants is all artificial. Plastic. Fake.

Looking back at our most read post. Prognostications from over 11 years ago. How much of it came true? How much different is the market for cameras and photography now?

Originally posted in October 2013

The graying of traditional photography and why everything is getting re-invented in a form we don't understand.


Gloria. Cropped image from Samsung Galaxy NX camera. 60mm macro lens.


On the last day of the PhotoPlus Expo I finally got why the camera industry has hit the wall and may never come back again in the same way. The folks who love cameras for the sake of cameras, and all the nostalgic feelings they evoke of Life Magazine, National Geographic, 1980's fashion, and 1990's celebrity portraiture, and other iconic showcases that made us sit up and really look at photography, are graying, getting old, and steadily shrinking in numbers.

I can profile the average camera buyer in the U.S. right now without looking at the numbers. The people driving the market are predominately over 50 years old and at least 90% of them are men. We're the ones who are driving the romantic re-entanglement with faux rangefinder styles. We're the ones at whom the retro design of the OMD series camera are aimed. We're the ones who remember when battleship Nikons and Canons were actually needed to get great shots and we're the ones who believe in the primacy of the still image as a wonderful means of communication and even art. But we're a small part of the consumer economy now and we're walking one path while the generations that are coming behind us are walking another path. And it's one we're willfully trying not to understand because we never want to admit that what we thought of as the "golden age of photography" is coming to an end as surely as the kingdom of Middle Earth fades away in the last book of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

This is not to say that photography is dying. Or that the generations coming behind us are doomed to failure and despair; far from it. They are living the golden age of photography from their perspective, and their heroes in the field are names we don't even know. This is a generation that values a personal vision that arrives as quickly as a phone call and has a much shorter half life than the one we experienced for our work, but then again, what doesn't move faster these days?


As I photographed in the booth for Samsung I looked out at the waves of people who were exploring the various products on the showroom floor and I became aware that most of them were well over 50 years old and the elders were carrying their big Nikons and Canons as badges of honor and with a smug attitude that their equipment choice was the one that would persevere through the ages.


But the very thing that makes a ruling party or a ruling generation is the same thing that will kill its paradigm. Our version of the market is almost a completely closed loop. At this Expo we worshipped at the altar of the same basic roster of speakers and presenters who've been speaking and presenting for the last ten years. We've closed the loop and the choice offered to younger photographers is to sit and listen to people old enough to be their grandmothers or grandfathers wax on about how we used to do it in the old days or to not come at all.


When I listen to lectures about how the market has changed what I hear from my generation is how to take the tools we programmed ourselves to love and try to apply them to our ideas of what might be popular with end users today. So we buy D4's and 1DSmkIV's to shoot video on giant Red Rock Micro rigs and we rush to buy Zeiss cinema lenses because we want the control and the idea of ultimate quality in our offerings while the stuff that the current generation is thinking about is more concerned with intimacy, immediacy and verisimilitude rather than "production value." To the new generations the idea of veracity and authenticity always trumps metrics of low noise or high resolution. And that need for perfection is our disconnection from the creative process, not theirs.


Our generation's fight with digital, early on, was to tame the high noise, the weird colors, the slow buffers and the old technology which saddled us with wildly inaccurate and tiny viewfinders and batteries that barely lasted through a sneeze. We pride ourselves on the mastery but the market moved on and now those parameters are taken for granted. Like turning on a television and assuming it will work. We are still staring at the technical landscape which rigidly disconnects us from the emotional interface of the craft. If we don't jump that shark then we're relegated to being like the photographer who makes those precious black and white landscapes which utilize every ounce of his PhotoShop skills but which, in the end, become works that are devoid of any emotional context. In fact, they are just endless revisions of work that Ansel Adams did better, and with more soul, fifty years ago. Technique as schtick. Mastery for mastery's sake with no hook to pull in a new generation. Of course we like technically difficult work. It was hard for us to master all the processes a decade ago. Now it's a canned commodity, a pervasive reality, and what the market of smart and wired in kids are looking for is an emotional connection with their images that goes beyond the mechanical construct.

It's no longer enough to get something in focus, well exposed and color correct. It's no longer good enough to fix all the "flaws" in Photoshop. What the important audience wants now is the narrative, the story, the "why" and not the "how." The love, not the schematic.

So, what does this mean for the camera industry? It means that incremental improvements in quality no longer mean shit to a huge and restless younger market. They don't care if the image is 99% perfect if the content is exhilarating and captivating. No one cared if the Hobbit was available at 48 fps as long as the story was strong in 24 fps. No one cares if a landscape is perfect if there's a reason for the image of a landscape to exist. No one cares if a model is perfect if the model is beguiling.

My generation has long been fixated on "getting it right" and that presumes that our point of view is the one that is objectively right. But it's always been true that "your focus determines your reality."

What it really means for the camera industry is that the tools they offer the new generation must be more intuitively integrated and less about "ultimate." In this world a powerful camera that's small enough and light enough to go with you anywhere (phone or small camera) trumps the huge camera that may generate better billboards but the quality of which is irrelevant for web use and social media. The accessible camera trumps the one that needs a sherpa for transport and a banker for acquisition.

I look at the video industry and I see our generation drawn toward the ultimate production cameras. Cameras like the Red Epic or the Alexa. But I see the next generation making more intimate and compelling work with GH3's and Canon 5D2's and 3's. Or even cameras with less pedigrees. The cheaper cameras mean that today's younger film makers can pull the trigger on projects now instead of waiting for all the right stuff to line up. Cheaper good cameras mean more projects get made. More experience gets logged. More storytelling gets done. My generation is busy testing the "aspirational" cameras to see just how perfect perfect can be. And we're loosing ground day by day to a generation that realizes that everyone must "seize the day" in order to do their art while it's fresh.

If I ran the one of the big camera companies I would forget the traditional practitioners and rush headlong toward the youth culture with offerings that allowed them to get to work now with the budgets they have. Ready to do a video project? Can't afford a Red One or even a big Canon? How about a $600 Panasonic G6 and some cheap lenses? Ready to go out and shoot landscapes? Will a Nikon D800 really knock everyone's socks off compared to an Olympus OMD when you look at the images side by side on the web? No? Well, that's the litmus test. It's no longer the 16x20 gallery print because we don't support physical galleries any more.

So, there we were at the trade show and the majority of the attendees were guys wearing their photo jackets with a camera bag over one shoulder and a big "iron" on a strap over the other shoulder. And they had their most impressive lenses attached. And they walked through the crowd with pride because they were packing cool gear. And the pecking order of the old-cognescenti was: film Leica's, then digital Leica M's, followed by Mamiya 6 or 7 rangefinders, followed by Fuji Pro-1's, followed by big, pro Nikons or Canons and so on. While the few young people there zipped through the exhibits and took notes of interesting products with their phones.

The next generations aren't adapting to "hybrid photography" they invented it in a very natural way. We're the ones trying to label the intersection of video and stills and the co-opt it. But we keep overlaying our own preconditions to the genre.

If we understand that our focus determines our reality then we can try to change our focus and better understand where photography is headed, outside the parameters of our own little, private club. And that understanding will help us swim back into the current of current of photographic culture instead of swimming against the tide trying to get back to a place to which we can really never return.

Yes, some people will still use "ultimate" cameras to create "ultimately sharp and detailed" landscapes, cityscapes and artsy assemblages but their audiences will be constrained to other groups of aging practitioners. Art is a moving target. To understand the target requires a constant re-computation of the factors involved.

It's a hoary stereotype but we need to look to the music industry. The delivery systems have changed profoundly and the music along with it. We can cling to Stan Getz and The Girl from Ipanema but we certainly won't connect with the current market. I'm not saying we need to love hip hop or Daft Punk but we need to understand where the market is now. It's wonderful that you enjoy waltz music or polkas but if you want to swim in current culture you probably won't find those genres conducive to gaining general acceptance.

Cameras are and will get smaller and lighter. The lenses will get smaller and lighter and easier to carry around. The gear will get easier and easier to use. And why shouldn't it? The gear will get more and more connected. Maybe the cameras don't need to master the entire internet on their own but it will get easier and easier to move images from camera to phone or camera to tablet. And why shouldn't it get easier? Making the process harder for the sake of artisanal martyrdom doesn't move the art along its way. And why should it?

Where is photography going? Where it always gone. It's going along for the ride with popular culture. It's the traditionalists that feel a sense of loss but the sense of loss is from the constant evolution of tastes and styles. If you look at photo history you'll see generational warfare at every junction. Resistance to smaller camera formats! Resistance to color film! Resistant to SLR cameras! Resistance to automation!

And in the art you see Robert Frank as the foil to the arch perfectionism of Group 64. You see William Klein as the antidote to the preciousness of Elliott Porter. You see Guy Bourdin as the antithetical anti hero to Snowdon and Scuvallo. Each move forward was contentious and cathartic. Just as Josef Koudelka was the revolutionary to Walker Evans.

The camera market is in the doldrums now because it is conflicted. Go with the aging money? Or go with the maturing new markets? Go with a shrinking but loyal market or blaze a new trail based on new cultural parameters? The spoils will go to the companies that get it right.

What do I see as "must haves" for the industry to resonate with the new markets?

Cameras must be smaller, lighter and more accessible.

Cameras need to work with less nit picky intervention on the part of the operators.

Whole systems must be smaller, lighter and more financially accessible.

Cameras should be interconnected with phones and tablets in an almost mindless way.

Cameras must no longer be precious and coveted. They need to be more like phones. A commodity that gets replaced as new stuff comes out with feature sets more conducive to the mission.

Apple has it just right. Make things that are simple to own and simple to use. Make menus easier and not harder. Eliminate the need to make unnecessary decisions. Make design more important and ultimacy less important. Change the focus of consumers in order to own the markets.

Is my advice any good? Naw. I'm as trapped into my generation as anyone else. But I do know that the first step to freedom is to throw off the resistance to change. You'll never change the momentum of the overall market but you can always change your own focus. And then you may open new doors of perception that allow you to do your own work....but in a new way. Like a bridge.

Continue to tell your story. But make sure you are delivering it in a way that people will be able to understand. Change is inevitable and fighting it is the first step to failure.

For a while my markets drove me back into full frame cameras. But those markets have changed so much that it no longer seems to matter. Now I'm just looking for cameras that are fun and easy to embrace. They all take good enough images now. Ultimate quality is now taking a back seat to intimacy and immediacy. A big camera is no longer a prerequisite for a place at the table.


Edit: go see what Michael Reichmann has to say about all this: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/pdn_photoplus_2013.shtml


Edit: Just read this at the NYTimes and found it .... familiar: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/27/opinion/sunday/slaves-of-the-internet-unite.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20131027&_r=0


(EZ reader translation for people who have forgotten how to read long stuff....


All cameras now good. Technical Mastery not as important as in year's past. Old guys love technical mastery. New guys like making different style images and don't care about image perfection. Aesthetic pendulum swings from perfect to emotive. Some camera makers evolve. Some not. Cameras getting smaller and easier to use. Old styles of shooting fading. New styles emerging. Good time to be a photographer. Change is inevitable. Change is good for young people. Change harder for some old people. Kirk is happy and now goes off swimming. May toss all old gear and just get better phone. short enough?)


In other news: Belinda and I finished working on, The Lisbon Portfolio. The photo/action novel I started back in 2002. I humbly think it is the perfect Summer vacation read. And the perfect, "oh crap, I have to fly across the country" read. It's in a Kindle version right now at Amazon. The Lisbon Portfolio. Action. Adventure. Photography. See how our hero, Henry White, blows up a Range Rover with a Leica rangefinder.....

Remember, you can download the free Kindle Reader app for just about any table or OS out there....


Edit: Added 11/6: Here's another one that will make you gnash your teeth: http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2013/08/has-bubble-burst-is-that-why-camera.html

For a limited time only the VSL blog is accessible in a "Reader Only" mode. If you wanted to save an article now is the time.

 We aren't coming back just temporarily sharing posts the have been repeatedly requested by chagrined former readers. See the previous post for details and the address of a fresh blog. 

Hope you had a great Summer. You can always see more of my pix at Instagram: @Instagram.com/kirktuck

Added on November 16th: I've been getting a lot of mail and calls about re-starting the blog. Apparently photo oriented people like blogs about.....photography. Not table tennis, router hubs, or entry level, minimum wage projects, etc. Mulling over re-starting in January but I may get over-ruled by common sense, my CFO and bandwidth. Thanks for dropping by and reading all the stuff that's still here. Aren't you glad you don't have to leave comments?

"Slacker-tum" Based on a philosophical inquiry of laziness in the pursuit of photography.

A satirical post based on odd things written about photography by 

out of touch "experts." 

This discussion brings back memories of the time when I was so poor I had to use the community blender to make daiquiris for my fellow students at M.I.T.'s wedding photography program. In which I was a star pupil until I challenged our professor, Mayer Von Troppinhagen about his theory that all photographs have some sort of meaning to someone. Even the images accidentally snapped while placing a camera back into a leather case for transport to a more fertile photographic location.

But Troppinhagen had to admit that I was a stellar student. In fact, many of my classmates clamor to stay in touch with me hoping to glean insight into the basic nature of black and white photographs. Was it Winston Churchill or Disraeli who said that all color photography was Satan's work? One momentarily forgets. 

Your French philosopher was on to something though. Something gallery owners around the world were longing to discover. I don't speak much French, although my uncle on the Amos Tuck side of the family translates it roughly as: "The faux philosophy of anchoring art to the market depends on rambling pronouncements in order to fleece the weak of mind." Now, mind you that this is just a "soft" translation. But essentially, after years of studying nonfiction sources of philosophical story telling I believe it to be: "We put labels on lame crap in order to have an easier time selling it to the rubes." 

Photographers, he thought, were easy marks because each of them has, knowingly or unknowingly, embarked on a mission to attach some sort of whimsical and fallacious value to every damn image they drag out of their God forsaken cameras. Otherwise they'd understand the futility of their narcissistic self-expression, sit in a warm bath tub and slit their own wrists. But not before at least meeting the FedEx driver today (one last time?) to see what might have come in order to save their "careers" at the last moment…

So, what is the current practice amongst "art" photographers? First, one must spend time on the analyst's couch in order to ferret out whatever personality defect they would like to bring to the fore and have a hope to monetize. This self-directed epiphany is followed by months, and sometimes years of preparation. Many treatises are read concerning the transmutation of candle sticks into penises, Jello moulds into representations of indecision, skyscrapers into stolid defenses of traditional beauty. A woman's back into a viola. Or was it a cello?

Then comes a period of finding just the right tools to satisfy the indescribable demands of the physical undertaking of making the well-considered photo. The camera must be simple to use and yet provide an enhanced friction when in use; which the artist must overcome to do his/her work. Too many buttons and features imperil the thought process while an insufficiency of controls and parameters hobble even the most sincere pursuits. Equally, the lens selected must have certain qualities. It must have a "magical" glow which can never be explained by physics. It must, at the same time, be highly corrected against any optical imperfections. It must be handmade by a German or an aesthete from the mountains of Japan.

(There is some confusion about the impact of modernism in the form of aspherical elements and rare earth elements being used in the optical construction of the chosen lens. Too much reliance on science robs the out of focus areas of their authenticity while too little correction results in missing the rigid targets exemplified by the idea often postulated as: sharp, even wide open! And please, don't blame the exclamation point on your author as it is generally added to every description of lens performance in western culture).

The search for the tools which most convincingly match the pathos derived from the initial psychological inquiry and the satori of self-discovery can take months or years to divine and generally require much trial and error. Rending of clothing. Draining of financial resources and a profound loss of friendships and close relationships. But one reminds oneself about the nobility of the pursuit and the ingrained idea that making the successful image; one that just guts you like a deer in Texas hunting season, is worth hurdling any obstacle. Be it mental, social, physical or divine. 

Once the perfect – holy? -- gear is acquired and vetted the artist begins the elastic process of making those tools bend to his/her preconceived, previsualized inspiration. Again, a process encumbered by all manner of doubts, sweat, tears and even potentially credit card fraud and an addiction to Diet Coke. 

Finally, the artist fully pre-visualizes his perfect creation and sallies forth to joust with the demons of doubt, and the vagueness of the weather, to make his opus magnum. He has pre-visualized an image of a lawn sprinkler of a certain kind, spinning and bobbing in a vast desert with puffy and oh so dramatic clouds skating through jet black skies while the scene itself is rendered in actinic daylight. Cue harsh shadows and strong backlighting. Now the artist must search for the exact location and angle from which to approach creation. He is driven by his knowledge that the sharing of the resulting photograph will puncture the chaos in most peoples' minds and bring balance to the force which is fine art. 

In the end he/she finds a rotary sprinkler with a weak spray wobbling in the yard of a neighbor. There is no vast swath of brightly described sand; only dead brown grass interspersed with cracked dry soil and a few scattered cigarette butts... and some dog poop. But didn't one of the artist's heroes, Irving Penn, conceive of a universe in the minutia of just a few cigarette butts writ large and immortalized in platinum? 

The artist, driven by the desire to create something with extreme cultural stickiness circles the scene as would a wary predator. Lunging and retreating. Lunging and retreating. Frame after frame. Until, finally spent, and with the last whispers of light abandoning him like a virus leaving a battered host, the artist decides that he has succeeded --- for now --- and he begins his perilous journey of self-discovery through what is now called post production but which we will call final realization. Actuendum.

Potentially, this process can go on for a long, long time. Current photographic philosophy holds that only the physical print has agency. Only the print has the gravitas to encompass the TRUTH that the final image demands. All other permutations are way stations like the descending circles of purgatory. 

In this process there is much handwringing. New papers are auditioned. New printers mulled over. Perhaps a return to the traditional "wet" darkroom --- which requires its own period of inquiry and doubts faced.

Finally, the absolute perfect print is made and prepared to be unleashed upon the world and, on any given Tuesday, Saturday or random Monday the artist hangs the print and waits for the accolades and recognition to pummel him like a tropical down pouring of rain. And the print hangs on the wall in his study. And his last two remaining friends come by and one of them stops in front of the print for several seconds and says, "That sprinkler shot would look a hell of a lot better in color. You know that, right?"

Confidence unshaken, the artist decides that his work needs and deserves a much wider audience and since his uncle, a professor at a prestigious university, helped to invent the internet before going bankrupt, the artist decides that a universal audience awaits his ultimate presentation. On the internet. 

Removing the double weight, selenium toned, archivally washed fiber print from its imposing titanium frame and its luxurious twelve layer over matte he/she carefully places it on a copy stand. After months of research he returns with the perfect copy camera and makes a series of images using the latest multiple shot techniques and proudly creates a 10 Terabyte image of the wobbling lawn sprinkler surrounded by dead grass and dried earth. Which he then struggles to "map" to the web. Only to find that .... it must be....resized. Eventually he/she is able to put the image on Instagram and that program reduces it even more. But the power of the image, the artist is convinced, truly remains as potent as ever. A slam into the guts of the audience from the top rope of the ring. Just like wrestling on TV. 

At the end of the year a handful of people have glanced, in passing, at the image online but in the mind of the artist hope springs eternal because, in the ensuing year he has created a manifesto carefully outlining the actual meaning behind the mundanity of the image. Its a whimsical and searing "jackpot" of allegory.  

He is invited to lecture about his photograph on a Zoom call with a group of like-minded artists who spend most of their time measuring how many Ansels can dance on the aperture ring of an enlarging lens. They fawn over the artist's ability to encapsulate all the pain and terror of modern romance in one dramatic image. But one member dissents (!) and insists that the image needs more contrast to fulfill its role as a stand in for individual, human isolation.

Another argues that less contrast would make the image more accessible and accent the underlying hope that gravity in all of its earthly forms will continue. A third member of the group, still in flannel pajamas insists that it's Edward Steichen all over again, and then hesitates and looks at the collage of faces on his computer screen to make sure they all get his historical reference. A fight about the nature of contrast versus meaning ensues and the Zoom conference fades away. 

Five hundred years later the print made by the artist is resurrected by a group of enlightened psychiatrists who decide that this image and all of its baggage are the perfect representation of sociopathic narcissism which ran rampant in wealthy countries in the 21st century. They place the image next to several by William Eggleston and close out the Wiki page on aberrant thoughts about art from five centuries earlier. This leads one of the psychiatrists to muse: "People of that period sure loved a bogus rationale for self-indulgently wasting their time... didn't they?"

Taking this blog offline on Friday (July 12th). Limiting reader's access to one administrator only. Before you write me offline and ask to be an administrator the answer is NO. I'm the only admin. No exceptions. It will be set up this way so I can access all the old stuff and archive it. Which will take time. After It's archived all the content will be offline.

 It's been a fun ride. Most people are nice. I've poured a ton of time into the Visual Science Lab blog (6,000 posts and 92,000,000 "reads") and "met" a lot of really bright and interesting people.  I am effectively retiring from blogging. And from moderating comments. 

You can always see more of my pix at Instagram: @Instagram.com/kirktuck