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.

"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?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

Copy cat, copy cat!

“It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.” Herman Melvile

I had a very interesting thing happen the other day. I went to my mail box, the physical one, and on the cover of a publication was an image that stopped me in my tracks. So I went inside and showed it to my wife whose eyes got very large upon seeing it. “How can they copy you like that?” she cried. She was rather upset at it all and I thought it was funny. Why?

 

Well the deal is that the cover shot was what appears to be a poor imitation of one of my images. How can I say that? Well it goes as follows: I have a photo in my folio that I produced a little over a year ago where the same subject, but not same exact person, is standing in essentially the same spot, facing the same way, posed in a very similar manner, shot with the same angle of view, from the same perspective only without my better and more dramatic lighting.  Big deal - it’s a co-inky-dink. I’m not so sure.

 

Ya see I know the publication. I know the editor who assigned the photo. The editor has seen my folio. The person who made the image may not be fully aware of me and my work but the editor is. I’m not sure whose idea it was but the person in charge had to have known in the back of their mind that the image was familiar.

 

Or it was intentional but not as a “copy” so much as an inspiration. I get that. I have lots of inspirational images that float around in my head. Inspiration is important. I never tried to imitate anyones work let alone copy an image. I did and do look at other peoples work and learn from it. As I’ve said before I will sometimes think to myself “What would Joel Sartore/Albert Watson/Joey Terill/some other cool photog/ do with this complete mess of a situation?” Then I’d put my twist on that bit of inspiration.  

 

Truth be told I’m just about to go to a shoot that was inspired by someone else’s work. Well not a single image, more like 2-3 different ones from different photographers, and what I’m going to be doing will not look like the shots that gave me the “Ah-HA!.” Similar kind of location but, different lighting, different subject, different mood and my own twist on top of it all. That will end up being a shot that is mine and not one where you can say “Mmm, didn’t Whatshisname shoot something like this?”

 

Still for the photog who may or may not have been inspired by my image: either way I’m flattered.

I love the smell of fixer in the morning ...

yes because it smells like ammonium thiosulfate which is a bit like victory but mostly because it doesn't have to do with all the issues of color balance. Gad but I hated making color prints. I used to do it and frankly only moderately well. Not like my B&W printing prowess as I must say I can make a great looking print in that realm. With a B&W print it's all about your tones and there are loads of options in that negative for your interpretation. Ansel Adams said that "The negative is the score but the print is the performance". You can give the same B&W negative to any two printers and get different end results. It's pretty neat.

But then there is color printing and where B&W guys happily spend all their time being creative about how they are going to burn, dodge, tone and bleach their print to make it sing with their voice the guy over in the color darkroom is popping aspirin like it's coming out of a Pez dispenser. "AaaaGH! It's still blue!" he yells after his 27th test print where the subject has a distinct skin tone that is decidedly purple. Forget making the print "sing" with his creative vision he has to make the thing not look horrible first. Is it the color pack on his light source? Has the developer gone funky? Is the blix doing something wrong? I bet the temperature isn't stable! No that's not it. Is the paper bad? It's still blue!

So I learned a long time ago to leave those headaches to other people. It's lovely to just go to your pro lab and drop off your order and come back in a few days to lovely looking color prints. They spend all day keeping their system in perfect order with gear that we mortals could never afford to prevent them from dealing with all the crap-ola that we have to just to get a decent looking color print. Now the B&W stuff would always be my baby because I put the time, effort and vision into the print that all but the most expensive custom B&W print specialist would bother to do. For the last 15 years that's how it's been.

Then I decided to mess up a good thing. I was having good C-41 prints made for my folio and they looked good and I got them for a price that I was comfy with to boot. But my new folio books are a tidy 8.5x11" and that's an oddball size for a C print. I was making oversized prints and then cutting them down but that seemed like a kludge. So I did the unthinkable: I decided to make my own color prints.

Hold on. That doesn't mean going into the dreaded color darkroom - thankfully. Since all my color work is digital this means ink jet prints. I had tried my hand at doing ink jets a number of years ago when the "pro desktop ink jet revolution" happened and I was at the time disgusted. The printers were to me horrible, the paper was worse and they were really expensive to make. Well after a lot of research and talk to guys who know a lot more than I it seemed possible.

Thus over the last few days I've been making nice with my printer and while we are not totally friends right now we are coming to some mutual understandings. Over the last few days I have been making a bunch of test prints to dial in my settings and ICC profile. This process has been similar to the old days with the exception that I'm not spending long amounts of time in the dark waiting to see if the print is total whack and I have far more control than I ever did even with my pretty tricked out darkroom of yesteryear. Boy you don't get to use that word much anymore huh?

So I've pretty much tamed the magenta skin tone issue which is important since nearly every photo I will show to a client has a person in it. If they look extras from the movie Attack of the Strawberry People then it's not likely that I'll get the job. 

Onward!

I'm not Gary Larson, or "How big of a pigeon do you think I am?"

I'm in the process of putting together some new folios for the spring marketing push and as chance has it there has been some interesting talk lately about promotion on the interwebs. I was reading how one photog mentioned that he annually spends enough promoting himself to buy "a nice German luxury car". Zounds! I think to myself, "Self! If you had $50,000 to spend every year just to let people know that you exist and do good work I'd think that you already have loads of people who are paying you good money to do what you do." I mean I'm talking about photographers here not companies with production lines and distribution networks and dozens of people on the payroll. The big car companies spend 3-5% of their annual budget on advertising and it's thought that 10% is a big amount for marketing your biz. So even if this guy and his buddies are spending 10% to keep their rep going they are still billing a half million dollars a year. Excuse me buy my head is swimming here. (Deep breath!)

So the whole idea is to reach out to potential new clients to let them know that 1) you exist and that 2) your work is good and 3) they should hire you because you are better and more interesting than the guy that they currently use. Something like that. Also to keep you freshly in the mind of the folks who already adore you. That's important too ya know!

But that is where things get funky. The people who hire photographers seem to have a funny way of seeing us creative types. They want to hire the guy who does that thing. Ok, cool. But if said guy decides that "that thing" is now kinda boring and starts changing up his style it can freak out the guys who hire him because he's not doing that thing anymore. Or the hiring guys get bored of "that thing" and stop hiring the guy who does it because, well we've seen it already! Can a brother get a break?

So this one shooter who mostly shoots lit location portraits gets the idea that it would be funny to shoot some farm animals in the same style as his people and does it as a lark for a promo piece. In one he shoots a cow and up to that point was the only cow he's ever photographed. Well low and behold that little post card gets him a job because to the art director at the ad agency he obviously knows his cows! (giggle)

He hires the same animal wrangler as the promo shoot and even uses the same cow for the big job. All goes well. Then the ad person moves to a different company and he sends a note to say something like "congrats on your move". He gets a reply that says "If I need any cows photographed while I'm at this agency I'll be sure to call you." Wha? Right. Check the guys folio, website and all his promo material and except for that one cow there are no animals to be found. He shot one cow twice and now he's pegged as The Cow Specialist. (Are you on dope?)

Right. A folio full of portraits of people and all he's know for at that agency is a guy who photographs cows.

They want specialists because it's easy to figure out. Need a cow shot? I know the dude to call! Need the guy who does that thing? I've got his number. Easy as eating pie. Or not. It's a bit of a catch 22: if you shoot cows, or any one kind of subject matter usually in a particular way, you can get work for doing that one thing but if you don't shoot that subject matter in a particular way you won't get that work even though you can shoot it and well. The blinders are on it seems.

But where does that leave guys like me who have to be able to shoot just about anything at any time? How do we fit into the ultra narrow vision of the people who hire us without becoming artistically leaden?

It all reminds me of this quote:

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

-Robert A. Heinlein

That sums it up for me as I sit here writing, sipping one of my fine home brewed beers (a Belgian golden), having finished a nice dinner that I made for the wife and yes my gravy is that good, and am putting together a set of fashion images for the a few lifestyle magazines that I'm targeting. Tomorrow I'm shooting a video in the morning and then in the afternoon doing a portrait of a guy who in an inventor. If I can do all these things, and if you can too, why is that not an asset but instead a hindrance to getting a broader client base?

I think that it come down to risk. We as artists risk all the time. We risk emotionally with each piece of work we take on. We risk financially with every project we do because we believe in it. We risk creatively to push ourselves as artists. But the ones on the other side don't want to risk. They want a sure thing. If they hire the guy who does the thing they get exactly that and it's comforting. 

The only ones who don't seem to have this problem are the newspapers. They expect their photographers to be able to do anything they throw at them and at any time. If you are, say, a large format portrait photog who only works with available light you will never get work from the newspapers because you can't shoot sports, news, features, food/product or any of the other things that will come you way on any given day. But if you are a news guy and are therefor not a specialist you are locked out of work that you surely can do because you don't have a book that is essentially the same shot over and over. Gad!

So I will be stubbornly me. I will show what I do and what I can do and if they don't get it - fine. In that spirit I the guy who photographs people will submit another of my still life camera-phone-o-roids.

Freedom! (or cookies. That's good too.)