The Year Of The Commercial Photograph

So this is the Year of the Commercial Photograph.

Brooke Embry of Tidepool and I have been discussing the year past, and have been pondering the idea that all the attention that ECHOLILIA has gotten, and that we have fueled for sure, may have derailed the commercial career a bit.

Is this true? Hard to say...especially in these current times when every consultant and every creative is asking to see "personal work". But it's a balance...once these images are identified with you, they become your brand...they become you, for better or worse. Alec Soth, in his first blog, wrote about this insightful sentence in 2007 in a post about a visit I paid to his class. He was referring to the book Sex Machines : Photographs and Interviews:

 "After publishing this provocative book, Archibald’s “sentence” was pretty much carved in stone. This seems to be one of the side effects of photographing something especially juicy."

His words actually rang true for years. But I kinda think ECHO eclipsed it, and my sentence may have gone from being the Sex Machine Photographer to being the guy who photographs his kid. The Dad Photographer. And of course there is now a new project that is odd and about family and really there is nothing commercial about it at all, but my energy is flowing there.

But oh...let's forget all of that work. That doesn't put food on the table. Let's now close our eyes, focus on craft, and steer our efforts toward the pleasure and joys of Commercial Photography. Will it rewrite my sentence? No. But balance is the goal that keeps all of these things afloat. 

Jonathan Saunders by Alison McCreary

These 7 Days, These 7 Nights, In This Order Of Things from Jonathan Saunders on Vimeo.

I was in NYC for a very simple photography story I was sent there to work on. Sitting in a booth at the Howard Johnson's in Times Square, I stand to shake hands with Jonathan Saunders, meeting him for the first time. The evening ends at The Carousel Club, and I then walk back to my hotel when that place closes.  I still have some money left...I'm going to stay out a while, he says as we say goodbye.

Jonathan moves to Texas and I try to interview him for my blog. The results are unpublish-able. Too personal, too complex, nothing that really seemed to fit into some idea I had of getting into his head about the move. Too many thoughts and ideas and I wanted like...the elevator pitch, the sound bite.

Allison McCreary reaches out to Jonathan for Photographers On Photography and really does what I could not: gets into his head and heart and deep into the creative process. I think it took them a year.

A year well spent. Read it all...every last word... HERE.

Portfolio and This Is The What

Tidepool is hitting the road later this month. Always a good time to purge stuff and add stuff to the dinosaur that is the printed portfolio. A dinosaur in all places except the rep road show, really.

A few months back Kate Osba interviewed me on her blog This Is The What. The interview covered a bunch of stuff that kind of took me of guard, and once it was published it had me spouting out about how we were trying to make the portfolio more "bloglike". So...now I guess I need to follow thru, you know? 

Dig into This Is The What. Read my piece, but read the rest of it too. Big things may be on the horizon for TITW...just trying to get y'all ready. See TITW HERE.

So Many Things All At Once: Some Related, Some Not

One day in 2010 I was driving across the Bay Bridge during some day of career turmoil: a shoot had gone bad, the client was angry, I was losing the client and the friendly vibes I previously shared with them...the easy breezy nature of our relationship was fading. People were getting fired. New regimes were taking over and they were no longer enjoying what I had to offer.

At that moment my car's rear view mirror snapped off and fell on the dash. Wow...a moment of clarity. Everything looked clear ahead. No looking back. No chance to linger on the past. Just look out into the wide open space before you...no mirror to distract the view. What did it mean? Maybe nothing? But maybe a sign to just keep moving forward.

I was walking on the sidewalk to Dogpatch Studios in SF for the lecture on Social Networking. I feel a pull of rubber and glue and feel the strange disorientation that occurs when your heel breaks off of your shoe. Uh oh. What does it mean? Is it a sign? Should I go home? Is there just too much going on right now...too many lives being lead? Is this telling me something? Most likely no. I loved the shoes but they were $20 dollars...sometimes things fall apart.

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Heather Elder, Miki Johnson, Josh Bob and Christian Peacock all worked to put together this event. Originally I feared this event would rub me the wrong way. I was afraid the vibe of greed and capitalism would taint the creative medium that this social networking thing has always seemed to me to be. Sitting there listening to Miki introduce the concepts of the event and of her philosophy, you realize that this Social Networking thing isn't very new at all. It is deep and rooted in what makes us human. These ideas and concepts it is based on are universal...and touch on things that are universally satisfying. Miki and Heather were on the same page here and seemed to echo these points in various forms. Me? I just tried to talk about what I knew. Here are some points that stuck in my brain and still resonated in the days following:

Humans have a need to communicate that never goes away.
Everything of value in your life has grown from a conversation...whether that was via a phone or cave writing or a note passed in class.
The hunger for the "story" is a constant over time and nothing is more powerful.
There are as many stories as there are people, and all of our stories are uniquely important.

As I'm taking this all in Brooke Embry of Tidepool sends me a snapshot via text of the ECHOLILIA event she is hosting in LA. Here is a gallery, filled with people, thinking and looking and discussing the images my son and I put together for our project. Here in the gallery it isn't the whole installation, but a short sentence of 7 big and bold images, melancholy and fleshy all at once. I can't be there..neither can he...but someone can, and we can now peek into their experience. Our life can be shared there in LA, shared here in SF, and really you never run out of things to share. A real time real life status update. Please share!

I take in this moment and swallow it, cherish it. It is not epic and it's not mundane either. But it'll never really happen just like this again.

Top: APA Social Getworking Panel, Miki Johnson, Josh Bobb, Heather Elder and TA.
Bottom: Hazelle Withers at the ECHOLILIA show, 728 Alley in Santa Monica.

The Social Network / Thursday, July 21st at Dogpatch

Heather Elder, Miki Johnson and I are featured in Thursday's APA event unfortunately titled "Social Getworking". The name implies that this blogging, Facebooking, Twittering thing is not just fun...but is a serious tool used to leverage your business, stand out in the market place and somehow "get working"? Is it or is it not? Oh...it is different things for different people and that is really what I'm trying to figure out how to express as I'm preparing for my part of the talk.

Friday afternoon I posted a call out to FB essentially wondering what people were interested in hearing about. Generating buzz, creating an identity, getting followers, finding topics, separting personal stuff from business stuff...all of these thoughts came to the surface and all of these things made me realize just how I am so not the one to handle this lecture....I really have the answers to none of these things. But I better make something up quick.

But...it has helped me answer a few things by pushing me. Like the obvious question...what is your blog about? For me it is about the mix of things that make up my life: the creative path, parenthood, commercial photography, and the work of other great photographers I discover.

Why do people tune in? They most likely like the other photographers I celebrate and they are on a creative path themselves.

What price do they pay? Oh...well they have to endure me promoting my commercial work and art work and my various forms of self celebration.

What is the end goal? Build a community, get hired more, and share my creative path.

Is it working? I think so.

But more work to be done so I do not blow it at this event. More to come, I'll share it all here...as well as these two shots of my kids. Cuz with this social networking world, I'm nothing notable without those kids.

Buy tickets / more info on the event HERE.

Colin Asks Some Questions

from "Sofa Portraits" by Colin Pantall
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Psyched to see WIRED magazine's Rawfile take the time to shine a light on Colin Pantall's blog a few weeks back. "Get To Know Our Favorite PhotoBloggers" by Pete Brook directed all those not in the know to all that is Colin.

I was happy to answer some questions Colin threw at me the other day in the wake of ECHOLILA...and having worked similar photographic territory over the years, I knew he'd have some insights. We engaged and I learned something upon exiting. A snip of it below:

One thing someone did mention on the NYT’s letter section was that people shouldn’t romanticize the images. The story of a dad building an emotional bridge to his Autistic son is a very attractive one, but the reality of the relationship, how challenging it is on a daily basis, how it can still drive me crazy, is something I wish the project acknowledged a little more. The other week I found myself telling my wife that I wanted it to be more like the photographs were: dreamy, romantic, quiet, poetic, organic, this whole inner emotional journey where I was in control and he and I were equals.. She laughed and reminded me that it never really was like that. That was a fiction made out of the conflict….and it made some intriguing photographs. But the reality was always harder and messier. ---Interview with Colin Pantall 11/30/2010

Read It HERE.

The Day Before Thanksgiving

Wilson's Hair, 10/2010

I thought this was a work week...and for me it was, but really the holiday kicked in for everyone on Monday. The market was packed, kids were home from school ( not mine thank god ) and people were not picking up their phone. I have a massive spam campaign just waiting for the moment everyone lands back at their desks, FYI.

What are you thankful for? That's a question for Facebook, where instant gratification works it's charms most successfully. There is a restaurant here in SF that asks you a question like that before you order...and it always takes me by surprise...always makes me think. No answers here today.

Everyone by now has seen Damon Winter's Hipstamatic photographs from Afghanistan in the post Finding The Right Tool To Tell A War Story, on LENS correct? Even the most anti - Hipstamatic folk seemed to love these images. Take a look and read the dialogue HERE.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Candidates, Redux

Julia DeJesus for Secretarym

Jenna for Vice President

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Jahnvi Doshias for Vice President

Bloggy Review

So...

I essentially started this blog to promote my commercial photography career, and kind of disguise all the promotion by showing other curious photographers work that I was discovering, and then sharing new projects I was trying to dabble in and get off the ground. What was the idea. I hoped that photo editors would like to see the photogs I was writing about, they'd like to see my new work, and then they would stomach all the self promotional stuff that I wedged in the middle. Sound fair?

It evolved into an odd combination of all of that, as well as an excuse to share and solidify the new personal project I'm working on, tentatively titled "Weird Pictures of My Kid", which are the photographs and scans done over 2007 that kind of reflect on the journey that we've been on while trying to diagnose our eldest son. The doctors say he is Autistic, we think sometimes he is just mischievous and creative. None the less, that situation is fueling that project and directing the images.

The way it has evolved is that the blog audience seems to like engaging with "WPOMK", and then simply tolerates all the embarrassing self promotion I engage in. Hmmm...I guess magazines have ads that we all tolerate, so...this is like that, huh?

A great blog that I'm way into now and reads like a great photo magazine is Colin Pantall's blog.
Bookmark this thing: http://colinpantall.blogspot.com/. It's what I'd want my blog to be like if I was just more....pure or something. Check it out and engage with the conversation. There is a thread that Pantall's writing is following, from project to project, and its competing with Conscientious for my serious blog time reading. Check it out HERE.

Then...my last commercial plug for a while...here are some shots from the fat Monster.com photoshoot we wedged in after Thanksgiving...in case y'all were curious: