As always, I have my teeth in to something and am trying to make sense or it, turn it in to something I can use.
Some history, as filtered through my rather distinctive and error-prone vision.
Prior to, say, 2000, we have essentially the Old Media. Books, magazines, print publications which, due to relatively high startup costs, are intended to reach as wide an audience as possible. There are rumblings between 1995 and 2000 that the old media is dead, that the web is the way forward, and so on, but the wide-audience print still rules the world.
Somewhere in the general area of 2000 we see the rise of what we now see are Transitional Media. LuLa and other web sites rise, essentially bringing the old print model to the new medium of the web and the internet. They are wildly successful, because they still have broad reach, they aim at that same wide audience, but the startup costs are tiny. The margins are incredible. Nobody knows what ads are worth, so there's tons of money to be made there, and you can now reach the world with your workshops, educational videos, books, and so on. This probably happens across all markets (fishermen, sailors, machinists, toy train enthusiasts, and so on), but certainly occurs in the world of photography.
But it cannot last. The old model is dead, even in new clothes. The extremely small (and dropping) startup costs means that new players arise constantly. Everyone wants to launch a web site, get 100,000 subscribers, and get rich quick.
A few people even manage it, we've seen a few newer sites hit the zeigeist. PetaPixel is, as far as I know, the most recent example of what is essentially an old school Photography Magazine re-tasked to the web. They launched in 2009, 6 or 7 years ago. Their model is to have people give them free content, which they turn in to advertising clicks. This is essentially what popular Photography Magazines did up until 1995 or so, except they paid a tiny pittance for content.
Online ads continue to astonish everyone with their ever increasing ineffectiveness, causing prices and therefore revenue to spiral ever downward.
The new model, the model we have now, is essentially social. You make some art, you get on social media, and you socialize the hell out of it. You follow people, you like their stuff, you make comments. You reach out to people in hopes that they'll reach out to you. A community organizes itself organically around your work as you find people, one by one, who like your art. They tell their friends and, if you're a little bit lucky and a lot hard working, you get a few thousand people following your social media. Then you print a book, or a 'zine, or something. Maybe you even make a little money.
Social networking is work. You find two new people to follow every day. Make a comment, Like something, +1 Something, do it a bunch of times a day. Don't waste your comments on corporate shit. The point of commenting is to get your name in front of people, the blogger, the tweeter, but more importantly their followers. Say something cogent, interesting. Make people want to click the icon and look at your twitter, your tumblr, your blog, your site. Do this a dozen times a day. It's your job. Do it enough, and a community coalesces naturally around your content, made up of people who think you are interesting. This isn't a popular blog, but there is a little community of people here. How you think that happened, eh? Magic?
This has nothing to do with the old media, in either the 1995 print form, or the 2005 web form. This is all about you, your art, and your niche. You're not trying to reach 100,000 people any more. You're trying to reach 1000. Or 50.
Chris Gampat tried to bridge that gap.
I don't know how he did it, but he got three plugs on three more or less "major" players in the transitional media. LuLa, Steve Huff Photo, and Imaging Resource. These are all Big Web Sites in some sense. Did he pay these guys? Did he just ask the top 100 "majors" for a plug and get 3 bites? Most likely, as a couple of the plugs suggest, he went out for beers at some get-together of these fat old dudes and bought a round or two. And then they lazily gave him a plug, without really looking over his work. "Sure, Chris, you're a good guy, whattya want me to say?"
It has fizzled. His Kickstarter isn't going to get funded, unless he finds a major pop from somewhere new, which means he gets $0. There are multiple problems with his attempt, here, and I don't know which ones are the important ones.
1. His content simply isn't that good. The prototype magazine looks lousy and is error-riddled and unprofessional looking. The pictures are uninteresting derivative work. I have seen several people state that "it looks great" which is bizarre, and I assume that they've simply glanced at a couple of pages and want to look supportive. He is neither curating well, nor presenting the work well.
2. He aimed too high, going for a big dollar amount. DIY is the order of the day, it's the brave new world. For $6000 you can pull together a bimonthly 'zine, print, for a year (6 issues) for 125-150 subscribers. Kickstarter levels of $10 for a PDF subscription, $50 for a year's print subscription, and on on up with prints, T-shirts, your name in lights. There are people doing this right now and succeeding. Picking a high-buck "platform" like Mag+ was just stupid, you're just pouring money down the drain. Mag+ is for corporate entities pushing high-cost high-value content into a large established subscriber base, although they're not averse to suckering a few dopes with a dream. $499/month is $499/month after all.
3. He didn't social network, like, at all. His "La Noir Image" tumblr has been up for 6 months and he's liked a total of 29 things on tumblr, mainly from major collective/corporate entities, adding his Likes to piles of thousands of Likes already there, on a tumblr the owner isn't even monitoring. His Likes were wasted. He has an instagram with 6 posts, and he's followed 45 people, some of which are Himself, and Tokina. He has a twitter feed, where he's followed a couple hundred entities, again leaning heavily on the corporate. Don't bother following National Geo, or Paul Buff, for chrissakes. This isn't doing you any good and it's cluttering up your twitter feed with junk you don't care about. And so it goes.
4. He has no plan. The "magazine" is going to be an all-singing all-dancing wonder. It will have photo essays, interviews, tips and tutorials, videos, hell it'll have singing cows if you want it. He doesn't even know what it is, let alone who might want to buy it for how much money. He just knows he'd like to be a publisher and he's hoping that the fat old men will get him there if he buys a few more rounds.
In short, he's trying to leverage the new digital world to produce yet another old media.. thing. A digital magazine, it'll be an app! Yay! But he wants to do it the old way. He wants to raise a bunch of money and then, somehow, turn that in to a major magazine with 10,000 or 50,000 or whatever subscribers, that advertisers will want to place ads in.
The old model is dead or dying. The fat old men are tapped out. Kevin Raber, Steve Huff, and Dave Etchells can't actually get dollars out of people's pockets. They're scrambling to keep their web sites on the air at this point, because the Transitional Media is dying. There will be survivors, of course. People like a single site they can go to for Major News Events and whatnot. The sites that survive will be the ones that figure out how to operate with a staff of one, that being the smallest possible staff size, and with minimized additional costs. If you can't run your site without two staff, you're dead, eventually, because someone's gonna figure out how to run with half that staff, and they'll eventually eat you up.
Trying to launch a Major New Magazine in this era, or even a Successful New Magazine, is a bit like launching a new enterprise to build buggy whips for the new millenium. I know, we'll put a chip in it, then people will flock to buy our buggy whips! Quick, is whipwithachip.com available?
Monday, May 16, 2016
Saturday, May 14, 2016
La Noir Image
This post will take a familiar format. I'm going to gripe about some things I disapprove of, and then try to segue into some sort of generalized commentary that might be more generally interesting.
This Chris Gampat character already has an online version of his "Magazine" which is just a tumblr, it turns out. You can submit to it, (using a Contact) link, but there's no discussion of copyrights or anything you'd expect from an actual publication. The prototype magazine available through his kickstarter indicates that photographers retain copyrights, images used with permission. No discussion of payment, although his kickstarter makes some sly remarks of the general form "don't you think it would be fair to pay so and so and such and such?" which, because it falls short of actually being a committment to pay anyone, I interpret as "me too, but obviously I am hoping to get away without paying them a penny" because I am a cynic.
ETA: Actually his kickstarter is completely silent on where the money might go. It's the announcement on his phoblographer site that makes the sly remarks. Inquiring directly via his kickstarter, I find that his $35,000 is divvied up: $5000 for video production, $450/month for Mag+, and $1550/month to pay some helpers, and the rest is misc fees and taxes. The whole operation appears to me to fall into a half-assed zone between Going Big and DIY.
Having now spent some time with his little (incredibly unpopular) tumblr, and his prototype magazine, I can tell you this much. He's not finding any fresh new voices, he's finding people copying tired old voices, incoherently. The only "voice" exhibited in the black and white work he's showing is "shall I print on grade 4 paper, or grade 5?" His prototype magazine is a mess, with stupid layout problems, and weird inserted hyphenations that indicate some problems formatting text. A totally unprofessional looking mess.
This only bits that don't look unprofessional and messy are the dummy ads. Hmmm.
In short, this is some kid on the make, who cannot be bothered to get anything right. He's just slapping up free pictures that people send him, and hoping to get a job running a magazine out of it by networking with Internet Photography Bigwigs. A bold dream, Chris, but not a very savory one.
Onwards to the more interesting general observations.
One could claim, and I have seen it claimed, that there's no harm in trying to get more work out in front of more people. Indeed, I see one or two people arguing, the more the merrier. I take specific exception to this idea. There is more excellent work out there than we can possibly look at. While some jamoke trying to shove more third-rate stuff down our throats is not a sharp stick in the eye, he's not helping. He's actively making things worse.
We need more curation, not less. We need expert curation, and a lot of it, not tasteless amateurs just hucking whatever shit they get sent to them up.
We need, in fact, smaller communities with higher signal to noise ratios. This, of course, is me rationalizing what I am doing while simultaneously cutting down people doing other things, but damn it, I think I'm right. There is more value in a small community of like-minded people sharing carefully considered bodies of work. Trying to reach the world with work is almost a dead concept. There are too many artists, too many superb artists, trying to reach the world. If a million artists try to reach everyone, the result is chaos, cacophony. If a million artists each try to reach 10 people nearby, the result is that everyone gets to experience some excellence.
We need small communities of artists targeting small communities of art consumers, creating small local ecosystems. But, you say, nobody can make a living that way?!! And I reply, "nobody can make a living the other way either, and mostly they never could." The internet and digital technology enable extremely small costs of production, if you want to make money you do it not by generating massive amounts of revenue but by minimizing your costs. There simply isn't much revenue to be had, and trying furiously to pry large chunks of it loose from one another is a game in which everyone loses.
A second, completely unrelated remark. Several of the artists Chris has featured on his tumblr are primarily color photographers, and some of them are excellent. The black and white work is phoned in. Boring, generic, "street" or "abstract" or whatever. Nothing we haven't seem 1000x before and much better. Often, though, I found really fresh and wonderful color work on the artist web site. Skateboarders in India? What the hell? How awesome is that!
I have to wonder if this is some general theme. Is it common for serious photographers to, for whatever reason, go off and check some boxes in the land of black and white? Is this to make themselves seem more credible, more serious? "Look, I am so a real boy. Look, here's a some bullshit pictures of guys leaning against a shadow-dappled wall, smoking. It's b&w! I am a Serious Artist!"
Anyways. Here is Chris's Kickstarter page. Don't take my word for it, go check it out. If the prototype magazine speaks to you, by golly, back that kid.
This Chris Gampat character already has an online version of his "Magazine" which is just a tumblr, it turns out. You can submit to it, (using a Contact) link, but there's no discussion of copyrights or anything you'd expect from an actual publication. The prototype magazine available through his kickstarter indicates that photographers retain copyrights, images used with permission. No discussion of payment, although his kickstarter makes some sly remarks of the general form "don't you think it would be fair to pay so and so and such and such?" which, because it falls short of actually being a committment to pay anyone, I interpret as "me too, but obviously I am hoping to get away without paying them a penny" because I am a cynic.
ETA: Actually his kickstarter is completely silent on where the money might go. It's the announcement on his phoblographer site that makes the sly remarks. Inquiring directly via his kickstarter, I find that his $35,000 is divvied up: $5000 for video production, $450/month for Mag+, and $1550/month to pay some helpers, and the rest is misc fees and taxes. The whole operation appears to me to fall into a half-assed zone between Going Big and DIY.
Having now spent some time with his little (incredibly unpopular) tumblr, and his prototype magazine, I can tell you this much. He's not finding any fresh new voices, he's finding people copying tired old voices, incoherently. The only "voice" exhibited in the black and white work he's showing is "shall I print on grade 4 paper, or grade 5?" His prototype magazine is a mess, with stupid layout problems, and weird inserted hyphenations that indicate some problems formatting text. A totally unprofessional looking mess.
This only bits that don't look unprofessional and messy are the dummy ads. Hmmm.
In short, this is some kid on the make, who cannot be bothered to get anything right. He's just slapping up free pictures that people send him, and hoping to get a job running a magazine out of it by networking with Internet Photography Bigwigs. A bold dream, Chris, but not a very savory one.
Onwards to the more interesting general observations.
One could claim, and I have seen it claimed, that there's no harm in trying to get more work out in front of more people. Indeed, I see one or two people arguing, the more the merrier. I take specific exception to this idea. There is more excellent work out there than we can possibly look at. While some jamoke trying to shove more third-rate stuff down our throats is not a sharp stick in the eye, he's not helping. He's actively making things worse.
We need more curation, not less. We need expert curation, and a lot of it, not tasteless amateurs just hucking whatever shit they get sent to them up.
We need, in fact, smaller communities with higher signal to noise ratios. This, of course, is me rationalizing what I am doing while simultaneously cutting down people doing other things, but damn it, I think I'm right. There is more value in a small community of like-minded people sharing carefully considered bodies of work. Trying to reach the world with work is almost a dead concept. There are too many artists, too many superb artists, trying to reach the world. If a million artists try to reach everyone, the result is chaos, cacophony. If a million artists each try to reach 10 people nearby, the result is that everyone gets to experience some excellence.
We need small communities of artists targeting small communities of art consumers, creating small local ecosystems. But, you say, nobody can make a living that way?!! And I reply, "nobody can make a living the other way either, and mostly they never could." The internet and digital technology enable extremely small costs of production, if you want to make money you do it not by generating massive amounts of revenue but by minimizing your costs. There simply isn't much revenue to be had, and trying furiously to pry large chunks of it loose from one another is a game in which everyone loses.
A second, completely unrelated remark. Several of the artists Chris has featured on his tumblr are primarily color photographers, and some of them are excellent. The black and white work is phoned in. Boring, generic, "street" or "abstract" or whatever. Nothing we haven't seem 1000x before and much better. Often, though, I found really fresh and wonderful color work on the artist web site. Skateboarders in India? What the hell? How awesome is that!
I have to wonder if this is some general theme. Is it common for serious photographers to, for whatever reason, go off and check some boxes in the land of black and white? Is this to make themselves seem more credible, more serious? "Look, I am so a real boy. Look, here's a some bullshit pictures of guys leaning against a shadow-dappled wall, smoking. It's b&w! I am a Serious Artist!"
Anyways. Here is Chris's Kickstarter page. Don't take my word for it, go check it out. If the prototype magazine speaks to you, by golly, back that kid.
Friday, May 13, 2016
This is Weird
LuLa's featured article is a plug for some guy who runs a pretty generic photography-themed clickbait site called "Phoblographer.com" who appears to be running a kickstarter to create a knockoff of Lenswork magazine.
Is this guy for real? Is he anyone at all? Based on the number of comments left by readers at phoblographer.com (i.e. none), my blog, is more popular and influential the phoblographer.com, and let me tell you that's bloody well saying something.
What on earth is this doing on LuLa?
What am I missing, is Chris Gampat actually a mover and shaker, a relevant personality, a serious artist, critic, editor? Or is he just another dope like me with a dream to scam $35 grand off some kickstarter who has, somehow, gotten a plug placed on what is still a tolerably credible photography web site?
Did someone hack LuLa?
The piece starts out with this oddity, which is really what caught my eye:
Which strikes me as the exact opposite of reality.
Is it April again?
ETA: I guess I should say something along the lines of "Ok, well, more power to 'em" and stipulate that LuLa can publish whatever it likes. Maybe Chris is an incredible whatever-he-is, maybe he's a personal friend of Kevin's, and so on. Go for it, guys. And I do support anyone who's trying to get more great work out there, good for you, Chris.
It just seems inconsistent with LuLa's standards, and I am dubious about the kickstarter. Sure, it will legitimately cost $35,000, easily, to put together a high quality magazine, even an electronic one. Virtually all of which is spent keeping the editor fed. This is essentially cyber-begging and as such is disingenuous. Contrast with This Kickstarter which is up front about itself. "Send me to Antarctica, and I will write about it."
If you're doing a kickstarter to pay yourself a salary while you do something cool, just say that. Don't say, "Help me to fund a written-word based exploration of Antarctica" say "I want to go to Antarctica. Send me to Antarctica, and in return I will write about it."
Is this guy for real? Is he anyone at all? Based on the number of comments left by readers at phoblographer.com (i.e. none), my blog, is more popular and influential the phoblographer.com, and let me tell you that's bloody well saying something.
What on earth is this doing on LuLa?
What am I missing, is Chris Gampat actually a mover and shaker, a relevant personality, a serious artist, critic, editor? Or is he just another dope like me with a dream to scam $35 grand off some kickstarter who has, somehow, gotten a plug placed on what is still a tolerably credible photography web site?
Did someone hack LuLa?
The piece starts out with this oddity, which is really what caught my eye:
Publisher’s Note: The community for providing photography based internet content is rather small. Several times a year most of the top sites owners or representatives are invited to manufactures press conferences.
Which strikes me as the exact opposite of reality.
Is it April again?
ETA: I guess I should say something along the lines of "Ok, well, more power to 'em" and stipulate that LuLa can publish whatever it likes. Maybe Chris is an incredible whatever-he-is, maybe he's a personal friend of Kevin's, and so on. Go for it, guys. And I do support anyone who's trying to get more great work out there, good for you, Chris.
It just seems inconsistent with LuLa's standards, and I am dubious about the kickstarter. Sure, it will legitimately cost $35,000, easily, to put together a high quality magazine, even an electronic one. Virtually all of which is spent keeping the editor fed. This is essentially cyber-begging and as such is disingenuous. Contrast with This Kickstarter which is up front about itself. "Send me to Antarctica, and I will write about it."
If you're doing a kickstarter to pay yourself a salary while you do something cool, just say that. Don't say, "Help me to fund a written-word based exploration of Antarctica" say "I want to go to Antarctica. Send me to Antarctica, and in return I will write about it."
Thursday, May 12, 2016
New Project
I had a revelation that. An epiphany, if you will.
I want to see people's work, but I don't really want to own it. It takes up space, I probably won't do it justice, as it'll mostly just lie there on a shelf. I want to look, touch, hold, ruthlessly steal ideas from, but I don't want to keep it forever. I also cannot stand looking at online galleries, sorry, it's personal quirk. I want to see what you do when you're forced to lay out real pictures onto a real object of some kind, and spend money, time, or both, creating that physical thing.
The solution is obvious! Some sort of circulating library. Send a book, get a book. An understanding that you will be gracious and send things on eventually. The cold reality that books (or whatever they are) will just vanish from time to time.
Here is my plan. If you want to participate, you will of course need to share some sort of physical mail address. Many of you may be OK with simply letting it be widely known, but not everyone. Therefore, if you are willing to share your address with me, I can offer three Levels Of Security, if you will.
Obviously I don't want to become a massive book-forwarding service, so option 3 I hope will be reserved for the truly paranoid, ideally people with tangible concerns. But if you do want to participate, and are that concerned, don't be shy. Let me know. If there turn out to be Too Many People who really want forwarding service, we shall cross that bridge when we get to it.
For option 2 what I will do is send you proposed Upstream and Downstream people, we we can devise a setup for mutual approval, as follows:
Suppose I am proposing that Alice and Bob should know each other's addresses, and both are cautious people. I assume that Alice and Bob both have exes or something. I would send both just the names and cities: Alice L in Tucson, Bob G in New York. If everyone is OK with that, no alarm bells, then perhaps full names, and then if everything is still looking good, both parties get addresses. This, presumably, lets people identify (silently) cousins of ex-wives before anything gets leaked.
A daisy chain of names and addresses, in any case, is constructed. One or more per country, I think, so avoid international mailing costs. I can provide a somewhat slow-speed USA to Canada interconnect as I travel across that border regularly. The chain goes around in a circle so, if everyone forwards appropriately, everything eventually comes back. Everyone has a single Upstream supplier, from whom they occasionally receive a package. Everyone has a Downstream recipient to whom they, from time to time, send a package. That's it.
I will commit to seeding the USA chain with something half decent, as well as with a known failure. I have a couple copies of a thing lying around that I consider failed. The bar shall thus be set Very Low! This will encourage you! Any idiot can do better than Molitor's thing, and I am that idiot! That sort of thing.
If you take part as a recipient, consider that there's an expectation that you will, eventually, contribute something. Anything. Staple some prints together. Buy a $1 spiral notebook at the drugstore and glue some cheap drugstore prints into it. Buy the most expensive blurb book there is and put 400 pictures into it. I don't care. You should be mentally prepared to construct, somehow, an object as follows, and send it whirling down stream, and maybe some day it will come back to you.
More than one piece of Art (photos? Drawings?)
... selected with care
... and placed into a considered sequence with the other pieces
... generally flat and of a reasonable weight to pay postage on
... that, ultimately, you don't mind never seeing again.
Do consider that people will be paying to mail your thing, so think smaller and lighter. If you receive an anvil with photos glued to it, you are allowed to sell it for scrap.
You should be mentally prepared to receive pretty much anything. Let us try to avoid purely provocative Art, I suppose? If you just want to piss people off with gruesome pictures or whatever, please don't sign up? You'll have more fun sticking them up around your town late at night, anyways.
I envision this as a "once every month or two you mail a little box of stuff on to your Downstream Address" deal. So, not a massive time or money commitment, but not trivial either.
I think a "no critique" rule is probably wise. If you really really want people's reactions, perhaps include an explicit request. But keep in mind that your book or whatever is may never make it home anyways. I really don't see this as a "help me improve my photography" thing, I see this as a series of lustful people fondling one another's Art privately, and then passing it on. Yes. I want to fondle your Art. Send it to me.
As for other countries/regions, I will cheerfully design the daisy chains and do any administration required.
Is "Europe" feasible as a single zone for mailing stuff in, or is it ridiculous mailing a small package from one country to another? Assume, correctly, that I am an ignorant American, and provide guidance for how large of a zone makes sense for you to be mailing to and fro within. I am pretty confident that nobody wants to be mailing even small packages between Los Angeles and Perth with any sort of regularity, for some sort of casual project like this. I am seeing rates like $25 minimum.
Daisy chain(s), where possible, will be designed to have people mail things to people closer rather than farther, to spread shipping costs around.
And I apologize in advance to people who live in faraway places where nobody else wants to participate.
TO SIGN UP just email me, amolitor at gmail dot com, with a note indicating interest, the country you reside in, and if it's not the USA or Canada, please spend a few lines on what kind of mail system you suffer under to guide me. If this crazy scheme gets any traction, I'll start asking people for their mailing addresses (that way you can go out and get a PO Box if, after due consideration and consultation with one's spouse, that seems wise), so you do not need to share your mailing address with me straight away.
I want to see people's work, but I don't really want to own it. It takes up space, I probably won't do it justice, as it'll mostly just lie there on a shelf. I want to look, touch, hold, ruthlessly steal ideas from, but I don't want to keep it forever. I also cannot stand looking at online galleries, sorry, it's personal quirk. I want to see what you do when you're forced to lay out real pictures onto a real object of some kind, and spend money, time, or both, creating that physical thing.
The solution is obvious! Some sort of circulating library. Send a book, get a book. An understanding that you will be gracious and send things on eventually. The cold reality that books (or whatever they are) will just vanish from time to time.
Here is my plan. If you want to participate, you will of course need to share some sort of physical mail address. Many of you may be OK with simply letting it be widely known, but not everyone. Therefore, if you are willing to share your address with me, I can offer three Levels Of Security, if you will.
- None.
- Your address and name are known only to 2 other people in the system, the one you receive from, and the one you send to. See below for more detail.
- Only I know your address. I forward everything on your behalf. I am only willing to do a little of this.
Obviously I don't want to become a massive book-forwarding service, so option 3 I hope will be reserved for the truly paranoid, ideally people with tangible concerns. But if you do want to participate, and are that concerned, don't be shy. Let me know. If there turn out to be Too Many People who really want forwarding service, we shall cross that bridge when we get to it.
For option 2 what I will do is send you proposed Upstream and Downstream people, we we can devise a setup for mutual approval, as follows:
Suppose I am proposing that Alice and Bob should know each other's addresses, and both are cautious people. I assume that Alice and Bob both have exes or something. I would send both just the names and cities: Alice L in Tucson, Bob G in New York. If everyone is OK with that, no alarm bells, then perhaps full names, and then if everything is still looking good, both parties get addresses. This, presumably, lets people identify (silently) cousins of ex-wives before anything gets leaked.
A daisy chain of names and addresses, in any case, is constructed. One or more per country, I think, so avoid international mailing costs. I can provide a somewhat slow-speed USA to Canada interconnect as I travel across that border regularly. The chain goes around in a circle so, if everyone forwards appropriately, everything eventually comes back. Everyone has a single Upstream supplier, from whom they occasionally receive a package. Everyone has a Downstream recipient to whom they, from time to time, send a package. That's it.
I will commit to seeding the USA chain with something half decent, as well as with a known failure. I have a couple copies of a thing lying around that I consider failed. The bar shall thus be set Very Low! This will encourage you! Any idiot can do better than Molitor's thing, and I am that idiot! That sort of thing.
If you take part as a recipient, consider that there's an expectation that you will, eventually, contribute something. Anything. Staple some prints together. Buy a $1 spiral notebook at the drugstore and glue some cheap drugstore prints into it. Buy the most expensive blurb book there is and put 400 pictures into it. I don't care. You should be mentally prepared to construct, somehow, an object as follows, and send it whirling down stream, and maybe some day it will come back to you.
Do consider that people will be paying to mail your thing, so think smaller and lighter. If you receive an anvil with photos glued to it, you are allowed to sell it for scrap.
You should be mentally prepared to receive pretty much anything. Let us try to avoid purely provocative Art, I suppose? If you just want to piss people off with gruesome pictures or whatever, please don't sign up? You'll have more fun sticking them up around your town late at night, anyways.
I envision this as a "once every month or two you mail a little box of stuff on to your Downstream Address" deal. So, not a massive time or money commitment, but not trivial either.
I think a "no critique" rule is probably wise. If you really really want people's reactions, perhaps include an explicit request. But keep in mind that your book or whatever is may never make it home anyways. I really don't see this as a "help me improve my photography" thing, I see this as a series of lustful people fondling one another's Art privately, and then passing it on. Yes. I want to fondle your Art. Send it to me.
As for other countries/regions, I will cheerfully design the daisy chains and do any administration required.
Is "Europe" feasible as a single zone for mailing stuff in, or is it ridiculous mailing a small package from one country to another? Assume, correctly, that I am an ignorant American, and provide guidance for how large of a zone makes sense for you to be mailing to and fro within. I am pretty confident that nobody wants to be mailing even small packages between Los Angeles and Perth with any sort of regularity, for some sort of casual project like this. I am seeing rates like $25 minimum.
Daisy chain(s), where possible, will be designed to have people mail things to people closer rather than farther, to spread shipping costs around.
And I apologize in advance to people who live in faraway places where nobody else wants to participate.
TO SIGN UP just email me, amolitor at gmail dot com, with a note indicating interest, the country you reside in, and if it's not the USA or Canada, please spend a few lines on what kind of mail system you suffer under to guide me. If this crazy scheme gets any traction, I'll start asking people for their mailing addresses (that way you can go out and get a PO Box if, after due consideration and consultation with one's spouse, that seems wise), so you do not need to share your mailing address with me straight away.
Wednesday, May 11, 2016
On Cropping
This is a thing that pops up from time to time. I'm pretty sure that if you search this blog you'll find me talking about it, possibly saying contradictory things. The argument, when it's stated coherently, goes something like this:
If you find yourself cropping after the shot is made, in the sense of trying to find a way to crop the picture so that it works properly, then you have failed. This is because you did not get a functioning picture to start with, when it was possible to change certain elements (your position, the timing) to make the picture as much as it could be. If you happen to find a crop, now, that functions, it is extremely unlikely that the picture is all that it could have been. Had you seen the best crop in the moment, you would likely also have seen that a slight movement to the left, and exposing a beat earlier, would also have improved the thing.
This is a fine argument. I have made it myself.
It contains a planted axiom, to wit: every picture you make should be as good as possible in and of itself. This is the "single iconic image" fallacy.
The single iconic image is dead, it's an irrelevancy. Almost no serious photography is presented in this way any more. Everything is a series, a porfolio, a book, a sequence, a collection of related pictures. There are exceptions, of course, but they're rare, and often as not they're simply a single picture removed from its context because 20 Important Pictures sells more easily and for a larger gross amount than an Important Collection of 20 pictures.
Given that, we now have a situation in which exploration after the fact is a vital part of the process.
On the one hand, you probably need to (eventually) have some sort of coherent idea when shooting, otherwise your pictures are just a jumbled mass of unrelated crap. Which you still might be able to dig something out of, to be fair, but it's probably harder, and it's not likely to be as good as if you'd shot with an idea in hand.
On the other hand, in the detail of work of building sequences and collections, you will almost certainly find that the original crops were frequently wrong. Frames which anchor the idea, or set a theme, might be perfect as-is. Frames that provide the harmony, that connect one motive to the next, frames that echo a theme, these will probably need to be reworked.
This same applies to all aspects of the picture that can be reworked in post. Indeed, it would often be advantageous to reshoot the thing entirely, but this may not be possible. When not possible, a re-crop, a rework of tonality, a different dodging scheme can come in to help a picture pull its weight in the context it finds itself.
In a way, these two statements are the same:
The first applies to what I maintain is a nearly dead form, and the second applies to what I claim is the universal form of modern serious photography.
However, let me remark that the single iconic image lives on, at least for me, in those anchor frames, the pictures that set the themes and ideas. It is the other pictures that must be bent to fit.
I think. Not sure. But it sounds good to me at the moment.
If you find yourself cropping after the shot is made, in the sense of trying to find a way to crop the picture so that it works properly, then you have failed. This is because you did not get a functioning picture to start with, when it was possible to change certain elements (your position, the timing) to make the picture as much as it could be. If you happen to find a crop, now, that functions, it is extremely unlikely that the picture is all that it could have been. Had you seen the best crop in the moment, you would likely also have seen that a slight movement to the left, and exposing a beat earlier, would also have improved the thing.
This is a fine argument. I have made it myself.
It contains a planted axiom, to wit: every picture you make should be as good as possible in and of itself. This is the "single iconic image" fallacy.
The single iconic image is dead, it's an irrelevancy. Almost no serious photography is presented in this way any more. Everything is a series, a porfolio, a book, a sequence, a collection of related pictures. There are exceptions, of course, but they're rare, and often as not they're simply a single picture removed from its context because 20 Important Pictures sells more easily and for a larger gross amount than an Important Collection of 20 pictures.
Given that, we now have a situation in which exploration after the fact is a vital part of the process.
On the one hand, you probably need to (eventually) have some sort of coherent idea when shooting, otherwise your pictures are just a jumbled mass of unrelated crap. Which you still might be able to dig something out of, to be fair, but it's probably harder, and it's not likely to be as good as if you'd shot with an idea in hand.
On the other hand, in the detail of work of building sequences and collections, you will almost certainly find that the original crops were frequently wrong. Frames which anchor the idea, or set a theme, might be perfect as-is. Frames that provide the harmony, that connect one motive to the next, frames that echo a theme, these will probably need to be reworked.
This same applies to all aspects of the picture that can be reworked in post. Indeed, it would often be advantageous to reshoot the thing entirely, but this may not be possible. When not possible, a re-crop, a rework of tonality, a different dodging scheme can come in to help a picture pull its weight in the context it finds itself.
In a way, these two statements are the same:
Re-cropping in post is bad, it indicates a failure to have a clear idea of the frame when you shot it. Dodging, burning, tonal adjustments and so on, however, are OK when used to clarify the original idea. The clear idea allowed you to properly place the elements in the frame as it shot, post processing should merely clarify, refine, expand upon, and emphasize the important aspects of the idea(s) you started with.
Trying to find an idea in a mass of pictures indicates a failure to have a clear idea of the work when you shot it. Cropping, tonal adjustments, and so on to individual pictures in post is OK when used to clarify the original idea. The clear idea allowed you to correctly shoot material to support it, post-processing of individual frames as well as arranging those frames should merely clarify, refine, expand upon, and emphasize the important aspects of the idea(s) you started with.
Trying to find an idea in a mass of pictures indicates a failure to have a clear idea of the work when you shot it. Cropping, tonal adjustments, and so on to individual pictures in post is OK when used to clarify the original idea. The clear idea allowed you to correctly shoot material to support it, post-processing of individual frames as well as arranging those frames should merely clarify, refine, expand upon, and emphasize the important aspects of the idea(s) you started with.
The first applies to what I maintain is a nearly dead form, and the second applies to what I claim is the universal form of modern serious photography.
However, let me remark that the single iconic image lives on, at least for me, in those anchor frames, the pictures that set the themes and ideas. It is the other pictures that must be bent to fit.
I think. Not sure. But it sounds good to me at the moment.
Saturday, May 7, 2016
Anti-Technique
Starting off with today's think piece from Ming, go give it a glance. It's worth reading. There's nothing particularly new in there, I've said most of it myself which you may take as a solid guarantee that these ideas are well worn, which isn't the same thing as wrong.
Ming exhibits a common and somewhat touching faith in technique, stating that his favored methods work (minimalism, leading lines) and others don't (selective saturation etc), which let's just ignore for now. The point he's making is that "photographic technique" is largely unnoticed by the viewer, and yet affects how the final picture is read, is understood. This is a commonly held belief, photographers tend to believe that they can, merely by working hard enough, can control much of what people see in the frame. They obsess over details.
We see over on PetaPixel some sort of scandal with Steve McCurry's photos, where apparently someone's photoshopping out people, and moving crap around in the frame. Presumably this is because someone (let us be honest here, it is almost certainly Steve despite his protests) thinks that the picture will be better if you move the lamppost over a little, or delete the boy in the background. What's startling to me is how little this is actually true. It just doesn't matter. Yes, the new picture is a little cleaner, a little more "McCurry", but it isn't any better and it's not really even different.
As I age I am becoming increasingly convinced that fine-grained technique is mostly pointless. Not only does nobody notice, it also doesn't matter. Big-strokes stuff matters. Is it Dark, Medium, or Light? Is it High Contrast, Low Contrast, or Natural Looking Contrast? Bright Colors or Not?
By all means, suit yourself. Fiddle with those tiny details if you like. Just don't kid yourself that it's going to matter much.
But here's a counterpoint, and I'm not sure what to make of it.
Ansel Adams was, as we all know, a fine detail kind of guy. He had these incredibly complex dodging/burning sequences, which he used to create and emphasize rhythms of light and dark across the frame. This is finicky BS that doesn't matter, according to what I have written above. Except that it's not true. Go find an Adams landscape and go flatten the contrast out, and the thing utterly disintegrates. It turns into a boring, incomprehensible, jumble. This is not true of most of the pictures I actually like, but it seems to be true of Adams.
I have no idea what this means.
Anyways, I am almost anti-technique these days. I stick to big controls like "level or tilted" and "how violently harsh should the contrast be" and "how dark can I make this without becoming a sort half-baked Rauschenberg?"
Ming exhibits a common and somewhat touching faith in technique, stating that his favored methods work (minimalism, leading lines) and others don't (selective saturation etc), which let's just ignore for now. The point he's making is that "photographic technique" is largely unnoticed by the viewer, and yet affects how the final picture is read, is understood. This is a commonly held belief, photographers tend to believe that they can, merely by working hard enough, can control much of what people see in the frame. They obsess over details.
We see over on PetaPixel some sort of scandal with Steve McCurry's photos, where apparently someone's photoshopping out people, and moving crap around in the frame. Presumably this is because someone (let us be honest here, it is almost certainly Steve despite his protests) thinks that the picture will be better if you move the lamppost over a little, or delete the boy in the background. What's startling to me is how little this is actually true. It just doesn't matter. Yes, the new picture is a little cleaner, a little more "McCurry", but it isn't any better and it's not really even different.
As I age I am becoming increasingly convinced that fine-grained technique is mostly pointless. Not only does nobody notice, it also doesn't matter. Big-strokes stuff matters. Is it Dark, Medium, or Light? Is it High Contrast, Low Contrast, or Natural Looking Contrast? Bright Colors or Not?
By all means, suit yourself. Fiddle with those tiny details if you like. Just don't kid yourself that it's going to matter much.
But here's a counterpoint, and I'm not sure what to make of it.
Ansel Adams was, as we all know, a fine detail kind of guy. He had these incredibly complex dodging/burning sequences, which he used to create and emphasize rhythms of light and dark across the frame. This is finicky BS that doesn't matter, according to what I have written above. Except that it's not true. Go find an Adams landscape and go flatten the contrast out, and the thing utterly disintegrates. It turns into a boring, incomprehensible, jumble. This is not true of most of the pictures I actually like, but it seems to be true of Adams.
I have no idea what this means.
Anyways, I am almost anti-technique these days. I stick to big controls like "level or tilted" and "how violently harsh should the contrast be" and "how dark can I make this without becoming a sort half-baked Rauschenberg?"
Thursday, May 5, 2016
Leibovitz
Lewis Bush over on disphotic deconstructs an Official Portrait of Queen Elizabeth II and her grandchildren. He's got a lot to say, some interesting, some less so. My response boils down to "sometimes, Lewis, a picture is just a picture. Or mostly, anyways."
What I noted specifically here, though, is something I never had before. That distinctive Annie Liebovitz look with the people popped off the background by lighting (and, probably, compositing) is incredibly painterly. The background isn't actually out of focus, or just sketched in as a few line, but it is wildly de-emphasized, and often kind of monochromatic.
I feel rather stupid, since in hindsight it's absurdly obvious.
What I noted specifically here, though, is something I never had before. That distinctive Annie Liebovitz look with the people popped off the background by lighting (and, probably, compositing) is incredibly painterly. The background isn't actually out of focus, or just sketched in as a few line, but it is wildly de-emphasized, and often kind of monochromatic.
I feel rather stupid, since in hindsight it's absurdly obvious.
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