Field notes and late night rambing

Dance like no body is watching when you know that they are watching

Well, I’m packing up for a week in NYC to bang on some doors and hopefully meet some new editors. This trip is a long time coming and I’m pretty excited. I’ve gotten some great response from my hand made promo dealy – Whoo-HOO! – and a couple of appointments before I even get on the plane. It’s all very encouraging. But the process of going and showing your folio isn’t like going to apply for one of those job things that I hear people talk about. No sir.

 

Ya see in a job interview you try to dress like you didn’t need your mommas’ help and hopefully look like you might not freak out the clientele.  Then you are polite, attentive and show enthusiasm about the job without seeming desperate for work even if you are. You try to present yourself on paper through your resume and hope that they don’t notice that bit you fudged to make the award seem more impressive than it really was. In essence you try to seem professional and have enough positive experience to handle the position. Pretty easy overall.

 

But when you are an artist looking for a new patron, wow it’s different. There is almost never an “opening” that you are trying to fill. Nope they already have people doing what you do. If anything they really don’t have the time to see if you are, maybe, a far better guy for the job then the dude they have been using for years. Maybe that dude isn’t really so hot but they are comfortable with him. He’s a known quantity where as you, Mr. Hotshot, could be a very talented but egoistical and artistically inconsistent flake. Even if you are cutting edge they will often continue to hire their old standby because he always comes through and is the nicest guy. Nobody takes chances and certainly not on you.

 

Consider this: your portfolio is your resume and you can’t very easily fudge that. If your work stinks it’s all right there for everyone to see. Ok as a photographer there is always the magic of Photoshop to help you fudge the fact that your exposure on that shot was off but if the image is boring, then the image is boring regardless of what you did to make it. Did I mention that they can tell if you “shopped it”? Boy-howdy does that say something about you as a professional.

 

There on that art directors desk is not just what you’ve been up to lately, it’s your soul and it’s being scrutinized. Joy! Every image you put before them and everything that is in that frame says a ton about who you are as a person and an artist. Your choice of subject matter, your physical approach to the subject, your tendencies both compositional and technical, how you relate to your subject and the list goes on. Heck just how you pair images together says something so the pacing of your book is in itself a small treaty on you. And you need to sell them on yourself in about a dozen or so images that they will go through flip-flip-flip … “thanks for coming by!”

 

It is good to know that every meeting to show my folio is like the “final interview” where they wouldn’t bother to give me ten minutes unless they were actually considering me for work. There just isn’t the time to meet with every Guy With Camera out there. Wheat from chaff ya know? For me it’s a pretty tough experience and I never enjoy going through it. Unless that is if the person holding my heart in their hands is enthusiastic about my folio and promptly decides to give me work. That’s the rush that all the pain and suffering is worth. He likes me! He likes me!

Doris ... take a memo!

Well my little promo is finished and out the door. I’ve spent two solid days just typing simple little promo cards with 2-3 sentences on them to try and set up appointments for my upcoming trip to New York.  I have such respect for the secretaries of the “old day” before word processors and “correct-o-type”. Those people were trained beyond what most of us would have thought possible. I’m so happy that some brilliant people have made spell check because otherwise I’m certain that my attempts at typed communication would make most people think that I’m, uh, “special”. Granted my hand writing is to some an unbreakable code but that’s another deal. Oh and just to make things harder on mu-self I couldn’t use correction stuff because my fancy-schmancy paper is not white, it’s tan with flecks of colored paper in it. One type-o and it’s start over. Gad I had a lot of those!

 

As I mentioned in a prior post I decided to type my promos on “Diana” the manual type writer that I got the other month. I wanted the editors who get these to know that I spent some time putting it together. Let me tell ya brothers and sisters did it ever. I am an abysmal typist but I got it done. My buddy asked me why I didn’t just use a cool type writer font and print them out Ka-ZAM! on my nifty laser printer. Well you can tell when it’s a font, you can see the perfectly even spacing and you can tell that it wasn’t written with the impact of the font hammer. All that stuff. With the promos I’m sending out you can see the delightful lack of accuracy inherent to Diana and that, I hope, gives it a hand made touch that makes them different. I didn’t just send out a bunch of cards from a database that rolled off the press at some slick print house which were summarily addressed and uniformly shipped out. Nope I labored over these babies – and how!

 

I hand cut the speckled paper, made and trimmed the prints, manually fixed the print to the upper flap and signed each one next to my biz card which is stuck to the lower flap. Doesn’t sound like much but to me it is. I just hope that the recipient “gets it”. I certainly put myself into it. But then, isn’t that the idea I’m trying to get across – that I put myself into my work? Either that or I’m just plain crazy. Hard to tell as they look a lot alike.

It's not magic, it's hard work

I was walking down the street yesterday pushing a cart filled with my strobe case, light stands and tripod, loads of power cables, oh and camera case too, when two ladies meet me at the crosswalk in the middle of a conversation.

 

The lady with the dark hair says to her friend, ”The problem with technology is the people who don’t understand it.” Well this gets me thinking so I butt in and say, “That’s because they confuse technology with magic”.

 

Well that gets a laugh from them and they agree. As we get across the street I mention that people who don’t understand what a technology, or technology in general, does is that they always seem to expect more from it than it actually does. With a nod of understanding we part ways. As I’m walking along my head is ticking away that I’m walking along with a lot of technology that those ladies most likely don’t understand: digital cameras, wireless digital triggering systems for my strobe lights, which use a variety of light modifiers – of which the grid spot always seems to get a “wow!”, so that I can do something that everyone takes for granted: make photos of something that looks better and more interesting than the subject itself.

 

Ok, by that statement I don’t quite mean the common thought that “Well, with Photoshop you can make the picture look like anything so what's all the fuss?” but the simple and quite old photographic aspects of lighting, composition and moment. The fact that basically everyone walks around with a cell phone and they pretty much all have cameras built in does not mean that everyone is a photographer. Rather it means that just about everyone has a camera. Big difference. You have a word processor on your computer so does that make you a writer? No? Ah.

Yet it has become so simple and common for people to make a photographic image that more than ever I have to explain to potential clients that professional photography still costs real money to do. The belief is that with our camera and processing technology that anyone can make great photos so why should I pay you all this money to do what anyone can do with their cell phone?

 

If we were still in the film era and everyone had a disc or 110 camera, you need to be an old dude like me to remember how horrible they were but they still took better quality pictures than most cell phone cameras do, people wouldn’t be feeling jaunty about how they are “a photographer”. Back then they knew better. Their pictures were awful but did capture a usable image regardless of its lack of artistic qualities. Now a days people produce loads and loads of poor photography but maybe it’s the immediacy of “point, click, look” that makes them feel differently about it. The technology hasn’t made their photography any better, only faster and the gear a bit smaller. Yet the way that they feel about what they produce with the new photo tool is very different.

 

I said tool because a cell phone camera is a usable tool. I’ve posted plenty of photos made with my cell phone that have artistic merit. I’ve made a little book with photos taken from my cell phone.  However putting a cell phone camera in my hands is different than putting it in the hands of, say my 9 year old nephew. In my hands it’s a photographic tool and with him it’s a toy and the results will dramatically different. Just like putting an average driver behind the wheel of a Ferrari F60 isn’t going to turn them into the next Formula 1 champion. If anything the poor fellow behind the wheel will find himself quickly in the ditch. It’s not the tool but the craftsman who is using the tool that makes the tool useful. But if that tool is small, sleek, digital and has a neat-o interface then why does it change it’s nature in the minds of so many people? It’s still a tool. A few years ago people would say "Huh, if I had a camera like that I could make great pictures but all I have is this little point-n-shoot" but now it's "Who needs to spend money on a fancy camera? I got one here in my phone!"

 

I was talking to my buddy a bit after that street side conversation about it all and he added an interesting aside. He was relating about how another photographer made a blog post with a very boring image from his phone and then proceeded to show how much more interesting it would be if he put some lens flair and a warm tone overlay on the shot. Now it was a jazzed up boring shot. Saved by technology. Yeah that’s the ticket!

 

We thought it was silly but the dude in question was absolutely serious about this bit of P-Shop fiddle. It’s a kind of “Oh, I don’t need to spend the effort to worry about lighting, background and all that, I’ll just “Shop it” into shape. Well it usually looks “shopped” after the fact so what’s the point of going through the effort to elevate the mundane? Oh right, because we can. (Shudder!)

 

Anyhoo, it just compels and repels me this whole Church Of Technology thing. I’m a nerd and love high tech stuff don’t get me wrong but I don’t see it as anything other than what it is – a newer way of doing things. Any maybe that’s why we are seeing so much nostalgia these days. Especially the static composition, muted color, warm tone, late afternoon with glow-y lens flare images that has become popular in advertising. Maybe that is in response to all the shiny immediate go fast stuff that most people are agog with. I dunno. That feels false to me as well. A conceit. Trying to make us teary eyed for a time when we remember things being slower but being fed to us at our current high speed rate of consumption and often made with the latest gadgets. Now that’s a lovely dichotomy huh?

 

So I will leave you with two images both taken with my phone.

 

I saw this weathered bill board while I was walking down the street to an assignment. I had two cases of camera gear with me so I whipped out my phone and did this.

In the essence of the classic snapshot this is my good buddy Rylund and me at the Avery Brewing anniversary party over the weekend. Oh and ladies, he’s single!

All my bag-age

Ok I'm going to admit that I have something that I should get off of my chest. Ya see, I have a problem and it helps to be open and honest about it. Here goes ... I'm a bag junkie. Where some women have more shoes than they possibly need, kinda like my wife, but not as many as they want, I have loads of camera bags, keep getting more and lusting after ones that I don't have. When we are out my wife will gasp in delight of some woman's shoes while I will see some dude with a knockout satchel that leaves me breathless. Yeah, it's really weird.

I do have a practical side to it all, it's not just about more, I use them just not all of them all the time. I do have preferences: I like un-fussy bags. I quickly fell in love with Domke bags and have had a bunch of them over the years. I currently have 6 different Domke bags - from waist pouches to my cool Ruggedwear F2 that weathers in a lovely organic way but is nicely waterproof. I have found that they last forever, are easy to use, have essentially no bulk to them because they are minimally padded and when you move about don't hang on you like a piece of furniture. The stuff made by ThinkTank is superbly thought out. I have their card wallets, a great waist pack made just for audio recorders, a larger waist pack that I use often and their giant Airport International backpack that will house an enormous amount of gear. So much so that when filled it's hard to walk around with. I'm not so hip on their regular bags as they are very tall/square and don't move that well when I do. For the "wear and shoot" bag, Domke still rules. I have a LowePro waist bag, the Sideline Shooter, that is often use for sports work, and their Computrekker which is my "more gear than I want to have on my shoulders but also need to carry my laptop" bag. 

I also have a ton of Pelican cases for shipping my gear to and fro as well as a host of satchel bags from a variety of sources. But they all serve a purpose - get my gear somewhere in one piece and if I have to work out of it be easy to access and out of my way. That said I prefer not to have a bag on my shoulder ever. A number of years ago I went to a new chiropractor who took a look at me and promptly asked me if I wore my camera bag on my left shoulder. AAAK! Yep I did and it showed as my left shoulder hung just a bit lower than my right. From that time forward I resolved to put the weight on my hips or not at all. I also stopped hanging my camera from my neck but from my shoulder. Less neck pain and less day long strain in general. Huzzah! 

I'm currently on the prowl for the old Domke Emerald series bags. They were a lovely green and had brown leather trim. Yummy! I used to have one but it got stolen and I've never been right in the head since. If you see one, let me know.

Meanwhile here is something that I found regarding David Allan Harvey, a hero of mine, and his bag fetish. Makes me seem like a rank amateur.

Autumn in summer

I got sent off the other day to do a little human interest story on a local outfit that works with impaired adults and has put together a softball league for them. The idea is that getting to play softball helps the ones who are physically limited to get them some exercise and for the mentally challenged to learn to interact with others. They don’t keep score or any of that as the game is an excuse for them to not be shut in physically or mentally.

 

As I once was on track to become a psychologist the whole experience was interesting for me as I don’t have that much interaction with folks like them. I am far more often photographing people who have accomplished a whole lot but in a way I’m still dealing with people who are in one way or the other kinda fragile. I like that. Our personal frailties are much of what makes us unique.

 

There were four teams playing that day but I stuck to a few individuals in one game because I was able to see some kind of story within each player. Each player had a helper, sometimes a family member, who was helping them either move around the field or maybe stay focused, get out of their shell and, say, field the ball. There some nice quiet things going on. Definitely not a sporting event in any normal sense. I would like to maybe do a multimedia piece on them because there was some wonderful interaction that the camera doesn’t do justice. Sound would really help you hear the love in the tone of voice that a father used to help his son pay attention to the game rather than to retreat within himself. I found it pretty moving.

 

But my favorite shot is this one.

 

Autumn, at right, is almost totally blind and also mentally challenged. She has a long standing relationship with her helper Taylor and they were whispering and giggling the whole game like the best of friends or maybe with the kind of closeness that only sisters know. I noticed that a few times Taylor would blow onto Autumn’s palm and it apparently tickled because Autumn would get this blissful look and then start to laugh. The next time they did that I just quietly walked up, held my camera very low with it pointed up at them and the sky. The fact that they were playing softball didn’t mean anything. It was about their interaction, their relationship and how when they were together like that they seemed to be in their own beautiful world.

"Uhmph! You would never know that you are a photographer ... "

Wayne said over my shoulder while I gleefully made photos of the cup in front of me. Two weeks ago Wayne was actually the subject for an assignment but this time he was just the guy next to me as we sipped some very nice mead.  Turns out that he and I are members of the same home brewing club the Indian Peaks Alers. He's a board member and I'm the new guy. I've been a home brewer for about two and a half years and I decided to take it more seriously by getting involved in my local club to get more feedback on my little hobby. Some of the guys there have won serious medals for their beers so I'm in good hands.

We were at the monthly meeting last night and while we were tasting club members samples of their meads and beers I was wandering about making photos with my phone. I have the superb camera app called Vignette for my Nexus One and it's the only app that I've spent money on. But let me tell ya brother it's worth it. Superb controls and like so many Android applications it just gets better. I can now make custom camera effect presets. Whoo-hoo! Thusly armed with my preset "Funky B&W" as I chatted with members and enjoyed some tasty stuff I happily snapped away. While everyone else was focused on the guest speaker who was talking about the experiment that she did with five different yeast strains and how it changed the character of the mead I was enthralled with the light pattern on the place mat. It's just how I am, ya know? BTW I'm pretty thrilled with the quality of images that I can get with my phone. It's the artist not the brush. But if you have an interesting brush it makes you want to, uh, paint. Right?

 

 

 

 

 

 

My new little friend - read as: a personal touch

I'm not much of an ego kinda guy so I really don't like "tooting my horn". Thus marketing myself is always tough when I'm not meeting someone in person. It just feels, well, impersonal and that puts me off. So I have been thinking of some way to make my meager attempts to get new business more personal and more like, well, me. Sending out postcards and e-mailers really has a mass produced feel to me. I mean if you are going to print out, say, 500 identical cards with the same image on them how do you get around the cookie cutter aspect of it? Well you can, as I do, write a note directly to the person. That's cool but writing 200+ little notes reminds me of some kind of penal sentence rather than some form of human outreach.

But the little things matter. Editor who gets something like this knows that even if the image isn't quite what they are looking for you took the time to pick up a pen and jot something down.

Even a: "Hey there Mr. Gill. Loved the April issue. That feature on autism was amazing. Would love to work for you. Cheers!" let's them know their work and that you are paying attention. It's the little things. You aren't going to get that from a service that mails postcards from your database. Nope.

But the rub is: I have to hand write them and my handwriting has been called many things except for "elegant". Scribble, chicken scratches, not-so-short-hand, a total mess, illegible ... that kind of thing. So when I'm writing out my cards I'm printing so slowly and concentrating so hard that it not only takes me a very long time to write out a few sentences but after a dozen or so cards my hand is cramping and I need a nap. Well maybe not that bad but still!

So enter "Diana".

I picked her up today. She's a little green Royal model "Diana" from the early 1960's and came complete with the neat brown leather clam shell travel case. Twenty bux! I'm going to do my next promo deal-y on her. It will be just as personal as doing it by hand but might give people the idea that I am eccentric. A plus! Artists are supposed to be quirky right? Most importantly they will be able to read what I'm sending. Super bonus with that.

When I get my next promo going I'll post it here. Should be fun.

I’ll cover your flank or not a back seat driver

I met Lindsay Lack about 3 years ago, I think, when I put together a gathering of local news and documentary photographers for a night of drinking and pictures. She and her hubby had just recently moved to Denver from Iowa where she had finished a few internships after graduating from the Missouri journalism school. Great gal, good shooter. I kept in touch with her and she quickly became my assistant and friend.

How did I get here?

Caleb brought up a good question from my last post: what made me want to not pick up a camera for fun but with “serious” intention? I’ll give it a go. Here’s the long form answer:

 

You see I had been making photos since the age of 8 due to the fact that I went to a school that was a kind of experimental deal where they were trying to push the boundaries of education. This was in the middle 1970’s. The thing was they ran the school like it was a university in the sense that they let the kids determine their class schedule. Well one semester I was putting together my class schedule and I had it all figured out except for my required art class. I think that I wanted another pottery class, read as an excuse to get my little hands filthy for an hour, but it was already full. All that was left was something like dance – yeah right! – and photography. Pictures seemed interesting so …

 

A love story

Alright folks it’s time to warm up the Wayback Machine a bit. Ready? Whirrr-ZaM! Ok here we are in the long forgotten time of 1993. I was still working at the camera store but had used my employee discount to get me my first serious camera, a Nikon N90. I had a Minolta, remember them?, with a useful but admittedly crap lens. I knew that the future of photography, and thus my future, lied in equipment that was faster and more flexible than what I had prior. Autofocus was now a useful professional tool and not just an interesting gadget. Film winders were built in and the ability to crank out five frames a second was perfect for the direction that I was heading: news photography. Also the flash system that Nikon came out with was dazzling everyone so that combined with my preference for the Nikon system led me to that N90 which I still have sitting on a shelf under a protective layer of dust.

 

I knew that I needed a good basic all around lens but it had to be a pro quality piece of glass so I got the Nikon AF-D 35-70 f/2.8 which I knew would do the job. One by one I lovingly took my gear out of their boxes, the body, the zoom, the flash and then I came to my wild card: the AF-D 105mm f/2.8 Micro.

I got the chills looking at it. No that’s not right, I went into a cold sweat. “What was I thinking?!?” I thought. “I’m never gonna use this. The focusing is slow, it’s not much longer than the other lens … I just wasted $700 on this. I’m an idiot!”

 

Well the truth is that I had a fascination with that lens ever since we got one in the store about a year prior. I would take it out of the case, mount it on a camera and wander about the store in amazement at how things looked at life size magnification. The macro world was, and still is, strange and wonderful. So of course I had to have it but as a budding photojournalist what was I going to use it for? I wasn’t doing nature and landscape anymore. I needed lenses for shooting people on the fly in dreadful lighting conditions. Oh the dilemma!

 

So I kept it. At the time I thought that it stayed with me only because of my emotional attachment but it turned out to be a smart move. Over the years that lens has made me a lot of money. I’ve shot loads of portraits, details shots and used it in ways that I never would have imagined such as food photography. Food? I’m a news guy! Yep.

 

 

When I’m assigned to do photos of some chef or hot new restaurant I can pull that little gem out and do portraits of the tasty creations. This lens gave me more flexibility within the assignment and broadened my appeal to clients. I’ve gotten commercial work to do small product photography of micro chips, tiny video displays, jewelry, rock climbing clamps and wedges … all because I knew how to shoot in the macro world. So rather than being an oddity in my kit the 105mm Micro has become a lovely asset. In fact when the Jonbennet Ramsay and Columbine massacre stories were happening out here my agency loved the fact that I had the Micro to do quick copy shots of family photos.

 

Oh and the glass within is superb and for some subject almost too good.. Back in the 90’s portraits were expected to be softly lit and the Micro would often be used with a diffusion filter to cut it’s sharpness into a flattering rendition. The sharpness is stunning and now that loads of sharpness is in vogue in the editorial portraiture world the razor edge that this lens gives is a strength

 

So a bit ago when I was packing up from a job where the Micro was the lens of choice my heart sunk – I dropped it. I never drop gear. Everyone who knows me understands that I treat my gear with love and respect and thus my gear basically doesn’t break. But this time I wasn’t so lucky. The aperture return mechanism was damaged and I felt like I had betrayed an old friend. So in a box it went to and Nikon Professional Services got it back to me in their usual timely way. Thanks guys!

 

But in the meantime I got another gig where the Micro was the go to lens. Thus I rented the new version with the VR. That one is just as lovely but I felt like I was cheating on my wife. It just didn’t feel right to use that lens when my baby was at the doctor. Please understand that I don’t get personal with my gear - they are all tools. However I’ve had this lens for 17 years and it came to me when I decided to stop being a guy who makes photos and instead become a photographer. When I got it back there was a sense that all was right again.

 

Oh and just got a call for a shoot in two days where the Micro clinched the deal.