Did Facebook Kill The Photoblog?

So....did Facebook kill the photo blog?

Do photographers even want to blog when the quick adrenaline hit of acknowledgement is met so quickly on FB? And even if you feel your ideas are best suited to blogging rather than status updates, its really the audience you can get on FB that is the treasure. That and the tricky systems it uses to wind viewers into your world and spoon feed them your new work...before they even know they are being fed anything! Now that is seductive. Who needs to read an essay?

And then there is tumblr, that can present the work with all of it's elegance...all the presentation you ever wanted really. Is that the new wordless blog to work with? Should everything shift over to that?

If the photo blogs aren't dead they certainly are quiet. My favs: Andrew Hetherington's What's The Jackanory? clocks in at April 11th, 2012. Ground Glass by Cara Phillips, December 7th, 2011. Juliana's Lovely Land of Neurosis, May 16th, 2012. Chase Jarvis, A Photo Editor, Strobist, all are still going along as if Facebook never happened. But the personal blogs, the ones that let you into the personality of the photographer, their likes and dislikes and tastes and process...the social blog...that seems to have have been dented by the FB bullet, as has this blog as well. Ahh...even as I say that I realize Chris Buck's blog is relatively new and has the buzz of enthusiasm that these things need. And Little Brown Mushroom's mix of commerce and art...oh yes, and now we have Straylight Press evolving out of Tony Fouhse's Drool. So I dunno...just as much rebirth as death? Should I have saved this post for Easter? Did Facebook initiate a rebirth of the photoblog?

But for now, I'll leave you with two dimensional and three dimensional recreations of the game Angry Birds. It just seems appropriate.

 

Workbook Ad That Never Was

Found this while trying to search for a stock photo earlier today.

A WORKBOOK ad that never saw the light of day.

See TA on Workbook.com HERE.

ECHO Spoken Word Narration / Elijah Archibald

This is the multi media piece Elijah and I created with LOOK3.
Shown on June 9th, 2012 as part of the WORKS presentation in Charlottesville,Virginia.
See it in HD on Vimeo HERE.

New Work / Forbes Magazine

Fascinating day with Dr. Robert Byers and his mineral collection out in Marin. All I needed to do was to focus the camera, these rocks spoke for themselves.

Father's Day 2012

I don't know how old I was here...maybe 10? Just found this shot of my Dad and I, taken by my Mom I'd assume. Or was it my brother? I don't know, but a family classic.

Happy Father's Day, readers.

NPR & LOOK3

National Public Radio writer Claire O'Neill was in the audience at LOOK3 this past weekend to take in the art, audience and everything. She dropped me a note on Sunday to see if we could work out a brief interview and slideshow for NPR's site this week. We dug into some of the audio Eli and I made and they packaged it up into an insightful story.

Sometimes you are surprised with what comes out of your mouth. This was one of those times.

Read it, hear it HERE.

Snapshots From LOOK3 2012

LOOK3 went off, and as with most photo events it was heavily documented.

Rich stuff in a post modern way? I dunno about that, but snapshots are always fun.

From top to bottom:

Holly Schumaker Pentax K1000, Bruce Gilden Alley, I Am An Artist, Sandra Lee Phipps and student, Andrew Hetherington, Patricia Lay Dorsey, Sol Neelman, Donna Ferrato Detail, NGS Profoundly Human Exhibit, The White Spot, Matthew Rond at LUCEO, Max Hirshfeld, Bruce Gilden, The Future Of Photography from SCAD, Rose and Alex, Big Love, and Holly's tattoo of the original patent for the self timer.

Also great to party with Mr. and Mrs. John Loomis, Michael Wichita, Nicole Fruge, Jasmine DeFoore, A Bunch Of Drunk But Passionate Photojournalists At The LUCEO Party, Molly Roberts, Sarah Leen, Erin Brethauer, Jennifer Whitney, Robert Wright, and wow...just too many people to remember...so sorry if I missed ya!

Whew.

 

God Laughs at LOOK3

Andrew Hetherington and Robert Wright came to the LOOK3 Festival Of The Photograph armed with a custom made WTJ TV ( What's The Jackanory Television ) iphone motion/sound system that transformed the duo into the defining Man-On-The-Street interview team. Always ones to enjoy the process of analyzing the scene and being in it at the same time, AH and RW allowed me to share my thoughts as well as premiere my new fully actualized head of hair.

Earlier in April I was pondering whether or not to attend LOOK3. Shouldn't I attend some NYC portfolio review or something? Shouldn't it be more about business than pleasure? I gotta bring home the bacon you know...

Hetherington responded to my desperation and soul searching in an FB post stating :

I remember a time when TA was less about the bacon and more about doing whatever it took to save contemporary photography for future generations...

With that in mind I booked my flight.

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Greed surfaced once again, as I headed to LOOK3 with a suitcase full of new shoes, new clothes, a box of copies of ECHOLILIA, a box of copies of Sex Machines : Photographs and Interviews and a Square One system that allowed me to make credit card sales on this stash of books.

Upon arriving it was clear that my luggage was so solidly lost I really was never going to get it back. And that luggage included all of the above. The joke is on me.

Sitting in the audience of the first nights' lecture, I hear photographer Stanley Greene tell a story that ends with the following line: You try to make plans and lock them in place, and sometimes God just says NO.

And that was the lesson of the day. Amen.

Great photograph below of Wright, TA and AH by Max Hirshfeld. See the interview produced by WTJ TV HERE.

Look3 : Echolilia Spoken Word

I'm Eli Archibald. I'm 10 years old and live in El Sobrante, California.

This is a project my Dad and I did that kind of gets into my mind abit.

And my mind may be different from yours, so you might find it interesting to look at.

Eli and I were seated in my office trying to create a library of stories and anecdotes to accompany our project ECHOLILIA. We had done this before, a year ago, and he didn't really seem to have much to say. Since then he has spoken on the project to university art departments as well as medical students. He'll essentially answer any question, but seems to have little interest in the end result. Today though, he seems to be touching on some good stuff.

Look3, the photography festival in Charlottesville, Virginia is presenting ECHOLILIA next Saturday night, and we were working with them to make it a multimedia production.

I just got an early peek at the audio/visual piece they wove together and couldn't be more excited. Eli's 10 year old voice, very unique to him, is a perfectly curious compliment to the photographs. And his words are more a reflection on that time period, a looking back, rather than a view into him at the time.
The combination is exciting to witness.

See ECHOLILIA at Look3 Festival Of The Photograph, Saturday June 9th, 2012.