Lloyd is the guy who does the super technical gear reviews. Mostly behind a paywall. Which has pretty much characterized him for me as someone I don't much care about. The general consensus always seemed to be that Lloyd's work was really solid and that if lens resolution was your jam, Lloyd was your man.
Fair enough.
Today I clicked around to something something somehow and I wound up on some page of Lloyd's pertaining to his new Sprinter van.
The Sprinter is the official vehicle of the hipster dillweed. It's a medium duty truck, made by Mercedes-Benz, intended for commercial use. It's a big-ass delivery van. Hipsters are having them fitted out as RVs for some incomprehensible reason, and then going camping in them. Lloyd seems to have been bitten by this particular bug. I guess they make an OK platform for an RV? Pretty sure Mercedes sells them with a blog and a 'gram, though.
Ok, whatever.
Check this out: Mercedes Sprinter Issues. It's somewhere in Lloyd's maze of interlocking web sites in which he rambles on about his expertise in Photography, Computers, Biking, and now Sprinter vans. He's like Thom Hogan, with a whole shitton of domains, each for hosting a slightly different brand of bloviation, and all linking together to artificially jack the ol' SEO.
What I loved about this page was the combination of the content ("my van is doing a weird thing and I have no idea what the hell is going on") with the advert for his new consulting service. Yep, Lloyd will now consult at his usual rates ($280 for the first hour, $200 an hour after that) about Sprinter vans, a topic which he manifestly knows nothing whatever about.
If you poke around he's got all kinds of mumbo-jumbo about how Mercedes is making terrible recommendations in its manual and this fuel good, that one bad, the usual maze of semi-mystical shit that some credulous goober who's spent a year on some internet forums acquires.
Lloyd has clearly decided that he's an expert on anything that he touches, even for a moment, because of his tremendous smartness. I mean, I'm right there with ya, Lloyd, but I'm not quite arrogant enough to charge consulting rates for my pearls of wisdom on random shit I know nothing about. Also, I think I might be slightly more aware of the limits of my knowledge.
Anyways, maybe he's joking about the consulting? I dunno. I'm not buying any of his services, so what do I care.
Hah, Lloyd Chambers of the razor-sharp bristlecone pine photos fame. I peeled him off like a pair of soiled gloves quite some time ago and never looked back. He's simply too smart, too sharp, too commercial and too technical for my kind of photography. I don't take many pictures of bristlecone pines anyway.
ReplyDeleteOh, Andrew... So sorry you missed the days when the only suitable vehicle for his excursions was a Porsche Cayenne, BUT it had to be a pre-20XX version because Porsche in it’s foolishness had changed its transmission design thereby rendering it vastly inferior to his current model andfor the needs of Mr. Chambers. If only Porsche had sought out his opinion...
ReplyDeleteStrangely, I find myself OK with that! I did read Ming's lengthy essay on the merits of this Porsche over that one, which surprised me because most Professional Photographers find themselves unencumbered by such questions in these desperate days. Apparently we should all go re-read his somewhat less recent missive on pricing, because he's clearly doing something right.
DeleteI confess that on the first run-through I did not notice the part of is pricing strategy on "selecting suitably wealthy parents"