The Online Photographer

Women Like to Look Good...Can I Say That?

I'm about to get myself in hot water. These days you're not supposed to make gender-specific pronouncements. It's not politically correct. By my experience has been that men and women tend to react differently to having their pictures taken.

As Atlanta, Georgia, photographer Kevin Ames says, "When I used to ask a potential client [if they wanted a makeup artist], women would answer 'No, thanks. I can do my own.' Men would give a look that said having makeup applied was an idea from a far distant planet." I'm male myself, and I have never had makeup on my face, not even when I played Gandalf in a school play in seventh grade, my one and only experience as a thespian. I have a friend (retired now) who was a TV weatherman and news anchor, and he went to makeup every night.

In fact, I could make lots of gender-specific pronouncements about photographing people, marking myself as an outdated troglodyte of an extraneous generation. For instance, with a male executive portrait or graduation portrait, you might have ten or fifteen minutes before your subject starts to look bored, whereas women tend to be comfortable being admired, and being photographed comes under the heading of being admired as long as that person doesn't feel insecure or anxious about her appearance. I encountered women and girls who seemed to have an infinite interest in being photographed, like that bear that was in the news a few weekends ago. (Now I'm making ursine-specific pronouncements. I'm bad.) I'm talking about normal citizens. Professional models—the highest level I ever experienced was one who charged $10k a day in the '80s, when the supermodels were making $25k a day—were amazing in their ability to turn it on and off.

I might point out that advertising for models is exempted from EEOC laws because discriminating by type is "job-related or necessary to the operation of the business." Saying you want to hire specific types of people isn't discriminatory. Maybe blog posts that are job-related could be exempted from being considered politically incorrect as well?

Anyway, here's what I wanted to say: I had a tendency to want to photograph people as they are. Men were typically okay with that because they didn't care (that was the sense I got, anyway). Women not so much. It's true, I am generalizing here, and people can be very different. But as a general rule, women tend to like to look good, and they don't mind if you take time and effort to make them look better.

But I got into trouble with this a lot. I used to ask high-school girls to come to their session with a hair brush and several different tops, and every now and then I'd have them re-do their hair—just so their hair wouldn't be exactly the same in every frame, just in case there was something about it they didn't like. One girl refused, saying she liked her hair being messy. Except she didn't—she hated her hair in all nine rolls I shot of her, and never bought a print. (That was before Photoshop when even small changes were difficult to make.) Another time, a man in a shirt and tie in a family portrait refused to pay for an expensive and time-consuming portrait session because the tab of his belt was outside of his belt loop instead of tucked underneath it. He ended up paying half. I lost $300, about $800 in today's dollars, for not hiring a stylist for the session. Although I've always wondered whether even a professional stylist would have caught the belt loop thing.

Atlanta photographer Kevin Ames solved this problem by making makeup artists mandatory in his portrait sessions. He was dissatisfied using Photoshop retouching only, so he uses both a hair and makeup stylist and Photoshop retouching. I didn't contact him to ask if I could use his illustration, but see his undated blog post "Makeup Artist Required!" and take a look at the three-frame comparison of Cheryl. I would be fine with the version on the left, "Clean face & hair." But most women, I believe, would be happier with the version on the other end, labeled "Retouched" (meaning hair and makeup done, and also retouched). (It's interesting how identical Cheryl's smile is in all three shots.)

It's been a long time since I did a portrait professionally—the last one was five years ago, and I probably went five years before that without doing one. I miss it. To be honest, though, I very seldomly sprung for stylists because I was working at a lower level than that. I wonder how much hair and makeup stylists cost to hire now?

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Paul Judice: "I've worked in fashion and beauty retouching for about 30 years and have always been conflicted by the way we create an unrealistic bar for physical beauty. Perhaps out of guilt, I went to career day at my daughter's school when she was in grade two or three. I showed before and after shots of a very famous supermodel (something that could have gotten me in very deep trouble) and let the kids look for the differences. Once all the changes were found and we discussed the process of creating false perfection, I asked the girls what they had learned from my presentation. The unanimous answer was, 'We want to look good!'"

Geoff Wittig: "In my limited experience, it's really not so much a gender-specific thing as personality-specific. That is, there are certainly women who are particular about their appearance in photographs, but plenty who aren't so concerned. And there are plenty of guys who are in their own way extremely particular about how they look. Plenty of business types really want to project dominance, to radiate being the alpha male. In my neck of the woods, it's most often a desire to project a bit of swagger and sneer. Call it the flannel 'n' mustache aesthetic.

"I get a skewed view of the issue, though. My lovely wife of 42 years photographs wonderfully...except that I have taken perhaps a half dozen good photographs of her in that time. In almost all the others she got her hands in the way or turned her back before I could trip the shutter. She's so attuned to the threat, she can hear the nearly silent focusing sound from my portrait lens and gets her hands in the way before things are sharp. Sigh."

Mike replies: I love that "so attuned to the threat." ROFL!

Seriously, though, you two might be good candidates for my "three-minute portrait" contract. See my New Yorker article under "Difficult Subjects."

Benjamin Marks (partial comment): "I always thought a portrait was a success if the subject either saw something authentic about themselves that he or she hadn't seen before, or if they felt it showed them as they thought of themselves, or the best selves. The problem is that none of us sees ourselves the way others see us. My own theory about this, at the most basic physical level, this is because we only tend to see reflections of ourselves, which are left-right reversed, whereas the rest of the world sees us as the eye sees us (right side on the right side). The other stumbling blocks are psychological. I, for instance, think of myself as a 190 lb. 24 year old, when in fact I am a 280 lb. 50-something. Photographic images of me insist on portraying the photons bouncing off the more well-padded current version of me, rather than the svelte version my mind is convinced I present to the world. Photoshop ain't going to do it, if you know what I mean."

Kirk: "I'm not ready to comment much on the basic premise of this blog; that women care more than men about looking good. But I can speak objectively about the costs here in Austin [Texas] of paying for make-up and hair professionals on a photo shoot.

"To keep to current times:

"In the first week of November 2022 I produced a job and photographed for a large medical/technology company which has an international reach. We spent several days on location at the client's Austin offices which included two complete operating suites. They use these to train doctors on cardiac procedures using their products.

"For the shoot we required two male and two female models which we got from a regional talent agency. The cost of the models for one day was $4,500 each. Or $18,000 for all four. Each talent or model was at the location for one day only. The fee included specific, limited usage rights. We hired a skilled make-up person and there was enough time in the schedule for her to also touch up hair. Her fee for each eight hour day was $1,250. She took an equal amount of time preparing the male and female models. I judged her fee to be in the middle-to-higher end of make-up artist's fees in Austin in 2022. You'll probably pay more for the same skills in film and video production....

"I should also mention that I did have one assistant on set. A professional who had worked for several years in NYC and who will probably transition to a full time photographer in 2023. His fee was $500 for an eight hour day.

"I recently (January) photographed both male and female attorneys for a different project. More of a conventional portrait shoot. Shot in their offices as environmental portraits. All came in business attire which meant suits and ties for the men and gender appropriate, corresponding attire for the women. All were impeccably dressed. None required any additional make up. The person most concerned with sartorial appearances was a male who was focused on the fact that his white shirt had 'wrinkles.' I think of a wrinkle as a creased bit of fabric but he was referencing the natural tendency of shirts to have undulating fabric instead of presenting as a fixed, single plane. I assured him that this would be easily fixed in Photoshop. He was relaxed after that conversation.

"I never, ever think of my subjects as 'being admired.' Which I interpret to mean 'judged by their physical beauty.' In my mind, after having done well over 10,000 paid portraits in my careers, my goal is to build a rapport with a sitter. To establish a give-and-take based on equal power. I consider a portrait successful when the sitter and I become comfortable enough with each other to move from 'posing' to the sitter feeling comfortable presenting themself authentically. It takes more time and effort to actually connect, but to my mind it's much more in line with what my clients want.

"Except that unlike your example of the sitter and client being one and the same, in my business the client is the corporate entity, publication or advertising agency that hires me. My hope, always, is that they hire me for both my style and my ability to look past physical appearance enough to establish a human rapport and relationship.

"I should also add that given our busy market, most make-up artists and stylists charge by the day, not by the hour. That means that successful studios that depend directly on individual customers as portrait clients can only cost-effectively use make-up people who are in-house, or the studios must be able to efficiently schedule a full day of portrait shoots to spread the costs across. It's different in advertising, as we can budget for a make-up professional to come in, hang out on set, and spend the day working in a few concentrated spurts. Clients are paying for these services as a line item in a much bigger overall budget.

"Family and friends? They're tough. They don't like to pay. I can't justify hiring a stylist when photographing casual images of B and B. (emoji implied)." [B and B are Kirk's wife and son. —Ed.]

The Fotomat

[Comments have been added.]

-

(Does anyone have a picture I could publish of a Fotomat kiosk back when it was open for business? Something you own the rights to. Apparently that was something almost nobody took a picture of. UPDATE: See this post.)

Only I would start an article with a paragraph in parentheses.

You won't remember Fotomats if you aren't of a certain age. They were small drive-up kiosks in the middle of suburban parking lots where you could drop off exposed film, buy new film (or sometimes get a new roll for free), and pick up your 3R prints 24 hours later—without getting out of your car. Picture a toll booth and you won't be too far off.

The bad old days
It was a good business model, at first: the kiosks took up minimal real estate, required only one on-site employee (apparently called Foto-Mates, although I'm not sure if that was a corporate term or not), and offered a service for which there was consistent demand. Wikipedia tell us the company reached its high-water mark in 1980, when there were 4,000 Fotomats in the USA. Not all that many, considering there are currently 33,295 Starbucks locations.

Fotomat Corporation lasted until 2009, but "One-Hour Photo" minilabs basically killed them off before the 1990s arrived. There was a time, though, when getting your film back in just 24 hours was cutting-edge convenience that beat the competition.

The primary driver of technological progress in consumer photography is largely convenience. I say "largely," because sometimes status/prestige are what drive certain trends. But it's mainly convenience. Fotomat's 24-hour turnaround time was fast when it was new, appropriating business from local drugstores and camera stores where you might have had to wait four days to a week for your prints to be "done." It lasted for a while into the era of the minilab only because one-hour processing was expensive at first. The early minilab machines were extremely costly and owners needed to charge more to make their money back—many of them didn't get it, because the machines quickly became cheaper and competition for the business grew fierce. There was a window of time in there when people got upside-down on their investment in minilab machines and never got right-side-up again. But I digress.

Basically the Fotomat gave way to the one-hour minilab for the same reason that the glass-plate stand cameras of the 1880s ("stand" in that term meaning tripod, mostly) gave way to the box Brownie, and that a perfectly good Canon "digicam" (digital point-and-shoot) of, say, 2005 has lost out to a miniaturized mass-produced module in a smartphone. Convenience conquers.

Not for us
Despite being self-identified as a photographer, I always felt separate and apart from popular trends in consumer photography. I did take six full rolls of 36-exposure color film with me when I went to Europe for four weeks when I was 14, on an inter-school trip (and bought two more rolls while I was there—wow, 288 exposures in only four weeks! That was heavy shooting). I got 4x6 prints back when I came home. And when I was very young I owned a Kodak Instamatic and got back the ubiquitous square prints with the date printed in the border.

But in between the Instamatic and the trip to Europe, most of the work I had done was to get black-and-white prints made from black-and-white film at the Bay Point Pharmacy, where I also eventually worked as a clerk and delivery driver. As with color prints, if a picture didn't "come out" you could request a do-over, for free, and I asked for so many do-overs that eventually the Pharmacy instituted a special rule just for me: only one re-do for B&W. I later learned, to my astonishment, that the Pharmacy's B&W prints were made not in some industrial high-volume facility somewhere (as was the case with the Fotomats), which is what I always assumed, but by a local guy with a darkroom in his basement who was doing a little extra work on the side. I wish they had told me that; I would have just cut out the middleman and gone over to his house so I could tell him what to do in real time. I'm sure he would have loved taking directions from a 12-year-old. On the other hand, I might have learned darkroom work a lot earlier than I did.

Back in those days, my memory is that hobbyist photographers and up—artists, pros, etc.—anyone more involved than family snapshooters—thought of themselves as separate and apart from the normal ordinary consumers. We didn't practice photography like everybody else. I never once had a roll of film developed at a Fotomat. I just didn't think of things like that as being for me.

Wrong envelope
When I was poking around the Web looking for Fotomat pictures, I came across a number of stories. One woman who worked as a Foto-Mate said that whenever anyone asked her where the film was developed, she would tell them that there was an underground photo lab right under the kiosk, under the parking lot, and she claimed most people believed her. (Actually the film was processed and printed offsite.) One person had a startling tale that somehow I can't quite see as funny: apparently a woman dropped off a negative to have an enlargement made (a "big" print in those days would have been 8x10), and she left the order in her husband's name. Apparently, unbeknownst to each other, her husband also dropped off a negative for enlargement at the same Fotomat around the same time, and also used his own name. When the poor woman returned and opened her package fully intending to see a group picture of her happy family, she was confronted instead with a pornographic photo of her husband with another woman. Wrong envelope.

That must have been in the '70s. By the '80s, photo processors were cracking down on dirty pictures and people had to be careful what they turned in for processing.

Left over
Parking lot Fotomat kiosks were later repurposed for a wide range of uses. One I saw a picture of became the tiny storefront for a fortune teller; others sold cigarettes or coffee. I saw a picture of one that became a watch repair shop (sort of doubly anachronistic, right?). I also saw a picture of one painted pink and white with a sign that said "Condom Hut." Is that really a purchase you want to drive up and make right out in plain view? Not if you were the guy in the incriminating 8x10, I would guess.

Here's an old ad for the company on YouTube. Digital is really much—much—more convenient.

Mike

Products of the Week

Which one is best? Panasonic S1R (47.3 MP), Sony A7R IV (61 MP), Canon R5 (45 MP), Nikon Z7 II (45.7 MP), or Leica SL2 (47 MP)? You know the answer.

The above are links to Amazon from TOP. Once you're at Amazon, anything you search and buy will be credited to TOP. The following logo is also a link if you click on it:

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

craig: "The store I used from to time was lifted up out the parking lot by a tornado."

Mike replies: Ah, but I want to know where it landed, and whether it killed a witch.

Lawrence Plummer: "My one (sad) memory of Fotomat was the day I eagerly picked up a roll of slides that I had wanted in a hurry. Each mounted slide consisted of half of one frame, followed by the half frame of the next shot!"

Nick Reith: "A really great post Mike. Nostalgia, humor and photo history all combined to put a smile on my face. As the British would say, 'Well played!'

"P.S. I wonder if the marriage survived?"

Mike replies: History does not record....

Roger Bradbury: "No Fotomats in England, but I used to get my films done at the local photographer's shop in Buckingham, where I worked. That business had been established in 1863 though it's gone now, and the building still has its North light skylight and window below it for the upstairs studio."

H Bernstein: "This post is The Online Photographer at its most online photographic. Congratulations, Mike, on TOP’s anniversary and for the distinctive blogging voice that you provide the online photographic community. I say community because this blog fosters that feeling of togetherness and conversation. It being too scarce nowadays makes your blog even more appreciated."

Andy Munro: "Wow. Nostalgia. That made me think of Truprint (postal prints UK based so not sure if they were a thing elsewhere). Ah, the anticipation of the prints arriving in the post was a really lovely memory. All gone now. Thanks for that diversion."

Centeredlens: "I grew up near the Fotomat/Condom Hut in Knightsville, Rhode Island. It's no longer there. I remember as a kid the parish priest making a thunderous condemnation of it from the pulpit, saying the Condom Hut was an abomination. (He was later defrocked for abusing his nephew.)"

Thomas Basista: "Back in the day I used Fotohut so much I was on a first name basis with the young woman clerk. She later modeled for me when I tried to do 'serious' portrait work. That kiosk is still there 50 years later, now selling coffee. Now that I think of it, I am surprised that the little building still is standing."

Bob Rosinsky: "There was a Fotomat a couple blocks away from my high school. A popular and pretty blond senior worked there on weekends and after school. As it turned out, she was selling bags of marijuana on the side. She eventually lost her job. I don't remember seeing her at school after that."

Dave: "What a 'blast from the past.' We usually just dropped our film at the drugstore because it was less expensive than Fotomat. Our parents grew up during the Depression, so the extra cost of Fotomat wasn't worth saving a few days."

Jim Palmer: "Today, after having read this yesterday, I noticed that the drive-up coffee shop in town was, in fact, a former Fotomat. I have driven by it for two years and it hadn't occurred to me it's origin. Thank you."

Sean: "A drive-up condom kiosk. Where the road meets the rubber."

Ed. adds: *Rimshot*

Jim Arthur: "I worked at a Fotomat in college but never heard the term Foto-Mate. It was a great gig because my booth was in an odd location in a fairly small town so I rarely saw a customer. I got paid to sit and study. I never had any film developed by Fotomat (which seems crazy now), and looking back I wish I had taken more photos during my college days. I’m sure they would be entertaining today. The haircuts alone would be hilarious. Back then, everyone’s hair made them look like a street punk from an episode of 'Starsky and Hutch.' Here’s Tommy Chong on That 70s Show referring to a picture of a Photo Hut as art. Tommy Chong’s performance here also reminds me of college.  :-) "

Mike replies: I really wish I had taken pictures in college.

Patrick Perez: "I used to work at a Fotomat in the 1900s and it was one of the best jobs I have ever had. In a five-hour shift, I'd interact with people for ~15 minutes. I brought in a stereo receiver and bookshelf speakers and listened to music all day while I read for pleasure. It was a time in my life where I frequently would find myself saying 'I read this really good book yesterday' meaning cover-to-cover."

Energy and Appetite

Tom Burke said yesterday: "Here's another thought to add: is it possible that when you stop feeling that you're learning new skills and gaining new knowledge but are instead just garnering experience, the passion for (whatever it is) just drops? Not just photography, but lots of endeavours? The 'Do I really want to do this for the rest of my life?' moment?"

A few thoughts about that. First, golf, exhibits 1, 2, and 3 (I'm going somewhere with this, so bear with me):

1. An old commercial: the professional golfer Tom Kite, then at the top of the game, and another golfer are seen getting massages. The other guy asks Kite if he's going to play in an upcoming tournament in Hawaii. They discuss it, sounding glum. Kite, in a resigned tone of voice, concedes that he's being paid an appearance fee to go and he's getting the trip for free, so he sighs and says something like, "I suppose I have to." The joke, of course, was that most weekend warriors would kill to get a free trip to Hawaii to play golf. To me, however, the advertisers' message backfired and an alternate moral was more clear: if you have to do something too much, even a thing that to most people is a special pleasure can become a chore.

2. Once I was out on a golf course with my brothers, playing 18 holes on a regulation course (as opposed to the adjacent par-three course which was more my speed). As the hands on my watch wore past three hours, I suddenly realized I'd had quite enough of golf: I was thoroughly tired of laboring against my own swing and would have quit for the day right then and there if it were easy and polite to do. Had to grind through two or three more holes after that, though.

3. After Vijay Singh won his Masters, tales were told of his epic appetite for practice. Legend had it that after his win, he went to the range and striped the tee until dark. Wikipedia says, "he is known for his meticulous preparation, often arriving hours before, and staying long after, his tournament rounds to work on his game on the driving range and putting greens."

All these things had a decisive effect on me: I never wanted to be a professional golfer. No, let me re-word that: I wanted to never be a professional golfer! Not that I ever could have been—I have slightly more talent for golf than an armadillo has for hacky-sack. But I never had the slightest desire, even in daydreams. No, thank you: I decided I was perfectly happy to blither my way around a par-three course a handful of times a year. That matched my appetite for the game. (I don't even do that any more, although I miss the camaraderie with my bros.) Sink to your level and embrace it!

It's the same way with pool, if the truth be told. I love pool, and I think it's a fascinating game and I'm better at it than most armadillos. But do I have the discipline and patience to run through my "daily" practice routine every single morning? No, sir, I do not. And I know lots of drills, but an hour spent drilling is fifteen minutes too long for me. Would I have wanted to be a pro pool player? Well, the level of skill of Jayson Shaw or Alexandros Kazakis would be great fun to possess, and it's thrilling to watch. (For me anyway.) But even if I were young I would never have the patience to put in the time it takes to get to that level. And I know it.

Be an amateur
I think I first applied this realization to photography following an after-dinner walk with my son, who was then about six, to get ice cream, back when we lived in the town where Groundhog Day was filmed, Woodstock, Illinois. I had along a Contax Aria camera and a Zeiss Contax 35mm ƒ/2.8 lens (still have the lens) and two rolls of Kodak Tri-X. The evening was beautiful and the light was particularly nice. When I got home I developed the film at the kitchen sink and the next day I proofed the two rolls and in my makeshift basement darkroom and made eight or ten nice prints on 8x10 paper using my amateur-level enlarger*. The handful of prints were a highly competent documentary of that particular walk, but beyond that, nothing particularly special.

I decided at the time that that was about the perfect level of involvement in photographing for me.

I like to photograph—it's an essential part of our medium's culture, and the culture of photography is one of my three or four main interests. But do I have the will and the desire to do it every day, all day? I've always been pretty clear that I don't. Note that there are critics who aren't photographers at all—A.D. Coleman comes to mind—so it's not essential to be a photographer to be immersed in its culture or to write about it.

After that, though, when parents would contact me asking if I thought photography school was a sensible investment for their children, it put me in a quandary. I loved photography school: I feel toward the Corcoran School of Art all the sentimental attachment alums are supposed to feel for their beloved alma mater. It was a great privilege to attend for three years and I enjoyed it intensely. Virtually all my experiences there and all of my many memories are good ones. But no, when viewed without rose-tinted glasses, actually art school is probably a particularly poor allotment of resources if what you're trying to do is equip your progeny to deal with the task of making their way in the world. I felt disloyal to the Corcoran in advising against all it had offered me, and I especially didn't want to pour cold water on any kid's dreams, so I avoided the question when it was possible; but on the other hand I didn't want to lie to parents. A genuine dilemma.

My recommendation to anyone who asks is that one simply should have a thick, tough skin in evaluating and appraising what to do for a living. Photography is more likely to be rewarding—and more pleasurable—if one's practice of it is somewhere in the range between dabbling and a dedicated long-term avocation. We all have to come to terms with where our photography fits in our lives.

Chase the dream
And if someone really wants to do it "all in," full-time, front line, do or die, the first questions to ask, and ask comprehensively, would be about a.) their energy level, and b.) their appetite for work. Those are the two essentials that must be present if you ask me. If both those things are genuinely high, they have a chance. In which case, I tip my hat to them.

Mike

*Which did however have a top-flight lens. I still have not one but two, one for each fist when they bury me I guess!

Book of interest* this week:

A Better Life for their Children by Andrew Feiler, University of Georgia Press, published last month. Read the description at the link—fascinating. It's the story of one of the earliest philanthropic collaborations between Jews and African Americans, one that drove dramatic improvement in black education. The story's told visually. *"Book of Interest" means I haven't seen it, but would like to.

The following image is also a link: 

Original contents copyright 2021 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Richard Skoonberg: "Mike, thank you for promoting Andrew Feiler's wonderful book, A Better Life for Their Children. The story and images describing the legacy of the Rosenwald Schools are both fascinating and deeply moving. Rosenwald was the CEO of Sears in the early twentieth century. He and Dr. Booker T. Washington created a plan to build schools in the rural South so black school children could attend school in the Jim Crow era. To build the schools, the black community put up a third of the money, the local school board put up a third of the money, and Rosenwald put in the final third. These were often one and two-room schoolhouses with one or two teachers with a K-12 curriculum. These schools helped to create a generation that provided the leaders for the Civil Rights movement. Andrew Feiler's book is the first photographic survey of these schools.

"As a side note, Andrew is a member of our local photo-crit group, so we were able to watch this book project from its inception. Currently, many of the images from the book are one display at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in downtown Atlanta."

Mike replies: Thanks for sending me the PDF sample pages from the book, Richard (downloadable here). I enjoyed that.

Geoff Wittig: "That's a perfect summary of what's necessary to find a calling in life. Energy and boundless appetite for work are prerequisites, but love of the process is also key. I love photography, everything from playing with the gear to image capture to making an excellent print. But I couldn't summon the constant energy and enthusiasm to make it a career.

"Medicine, on the other hand, continues to captivate me after almost 40 years. I was that annoyingly eager student you wanted to slap for being so perky. I loved working 100 hour weeks as a resident for the intellectual challenge and the satisfaction of mastering something difficult. I still find myself reading papers outside my specialty because they're so darned interesting. The challenge of being thoroughly competent and continually improving is just as compelling now as it was when I was a newly minted 26-year-old MD. I still love the work, every day. What I did not expect as a swaggering young doc was the emotional toll of seeing patients I've come to know so well aging, becoming frail, and dying. Which is where photography has been a Godsend for me. A chilly morning spent scouting, setting up, and capturing a perfect sunrise panorama grounds me and keeps me sane. So I can keep loving my calling."

A different Mike: "'And if someone really wants to do it "all in," full-time, front line, do or die, the first questions to ask, and ask comprehensively, would be about a.) their energy level, and b.) their appetite for work. Those are the two essentials that must be present if you ask me. If both those things are genuinely high, they have a chance.' You are correct sir. I've been fortunate to have made my living solely by making useful photographs for other people since 1979. The dedication and amount of energy it takes to be even moderately successful for someone without either a trust fund or a hook of some sort is beyond the ability of most people to comprehend. Over the past seven days I worked seventy-six hours covering twelve very important events for my main client. Each event was about two hours long. Then I had another two hours in which I would have to download, organize, rename, edit down from 3–5,000 images (people make funny faces when they speak, and people also blink, and when photographing an event with a few hundred people, having more of a selection is always easier than submitting photos of funny looking people with their eyes closed) a cull of about 120–180, adjust the raw files in ACR, convert to JPEG, and then upload to a web gallery. That gallery would then be linked to a story on their web site. And then do it again that evening, which would get me home at 9:30–10 p.m. after arriving at 8:30 a.m. that morning. The next day, do it again.

"Very few people can grasp the amount of physical work entailed in schlepping the gear, looking for angles, crouching down, hustling from one end of the field to another to get in position, and the level of concentration required to do this both during the event itself and afterward in the post-processing. Amidst all of this, three of the days were well over 90 degrees and very humid. To paraphrase Yogi Berra—photography is 90 percent mental and the other half is physical. You really have to be willing to put in the work that it takes to become proficient and develop a voice, to continuously stay up with the technical challenges and changes, and to always push yourself to do the very best work that you can on each and every assignment. If you don’t, then you’ll eventually find yourself doing something else down the line."

Kenneth Tanaka: "I do not completely subscribe to the vocational prep. I am one of those (old) people who still believes that the primary objective of getting an education is to learn how to learn. Still, one would be foolish to ignore practical economics. Consider that the annual tuition and fees at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) this year top $50,000. (And good luck getting accepted at all!) Now consider how many art jobs are likely to pay anywhere near that amount for an entry position (or even after three years). Now consider that an entry-level programmer at, say, Google will likely easily earn $120,000 or more. Yes, attending a school such as SAIC may enable you to make connections that will propel you after graduation. But not that much. Your best shot is probably to land a faculty job with benefits that offers you summers to pursue being that 'artist' you wanted to be. And some top art school grads do exactly that.

"But I gotta say that Mike's suggestion 'Be an amateur' is perfect advice especially where photography is concerned. Attending art school to learn a trade such as print-making or textile design, might pay-off (in 15–20 years). But it's a lotto-class long shot for photography. 'Photography is more likely to be rewarding—and more pleasurable—if one's practice of it is somewhere in the range between dabbling and a dedicated long-term avocation. We all have to come to terms with where our photography fits in our lives.' Truer words were never writ."

Wisconsin Mystery

Dave Schwarz asks:

Do you know anything about the history of Colony Camera in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin? The Colony Camera at North Ave and 88th St. has been out of business seemingly forever...maybe 20 years now? But up until just a couple of years ago the Colony sign (with the Minolta logo) remained standing at the corner, and from what I could see as I drove past the store still had furnishings inside. In the past couple of years the sign was removed and the interior cleared out, and sometime last year a 'For Rent' sign appeared in the window of the store. But there it sits, unoccupied still. I can't imagine why the owner let the store sit, seemingly untouched, for at least a decade...probably closer to two.

Does anyone know the story?

Something similar happened just down the road from me. A very old building, from the 1880s, sat derelict and decaying on a prime piece of lakefront property. Not long after I moved here, a local landlord who owns a handful of rental houses on the shore started work transforming it into a modern house (and he did a great job—my friend Dave, who you met in these pages, did the chimney). But I've always been curious about the circumstances that allowed the property to sit vacant for what had obviously been decades.

So many stories lie shrouded and obscured, from family secrets to corporate ones.

Mike
(Thanks to Dave)

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Kenneth Tanaka: "Idle properties are nearly always the result of title/ownership or tax issues. Perhaps the owner has died and the property gets tied up, perhaps the owner has fled back taxes and title reverts to a lender, perhaps it’s discovered to be atop a toxic landfill (OK, unlikely here). Etc. There’s a former rather ritzy Italian restaurant space a block from my home that’s been inexplicably vacant for 20 years. It must be worth millions. Anyway, back to the camera store, I found this in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal from 2016."

Do Pros Use Pro Gear?

Tim Bradshaw commented: "You are right about the 'professional' thing: everyone wants to be a professional, or perhaps to be able to pretend that they once were a professional. This is why you can buy 'road-worn' guitars and why brassed Leicas are so desirable.

"I'm a non-professional (non-gigging) guitarist and I occasionally find myself hunting for flight cases for my amps and pedalboards (a pedalboard is a thing to which you can attach a set of FX pedals and a PSU for them and it means you can drop the whole lot onto a stage in one go, which is vital for a gigging guitarist but pretty much irrelevant for anyone else). I have to catch myself each time.

"But there's an interesting thing. I've known some people who were professional guitarists and, while they would probably own a pedalboard, they very often would work with much less up-to-date and 'professional' kit than amateurs would. There seem to be two reasons for this. Firstly, if your gear is an expense which reduces your income from playing, then you tend to be a bit chary of just buying the latest thing, however 'professional' it is. Secondly, if you are playing every night then you want two things from your gear: you want it to work, every night, and you want it to do the same thing, every night. And that means that you tend to stick with the battle-tested gear you've had for quite a long time. And every time you get a new bit of kit, you have to spend time exploring it, during which time you are not getting paid.

"I wonder if that is true for photographers? I bet it is, especially in the digital era: how long, really, does it take someone to become really familiar with a digital camera? They have hundreds of parameters so the configuration space is just huge. And all the time you spend exploring that configuration space is time you are not getting paid (or time you are getting complaints because your pictures are bad). So my guess is that professionals either really do not explore the configuration space of their cameras and use them mostly on out-of-the-box settings, or they don't change cameras very often, and probably a combination of both. Compare this with a film camera from the heyday of film, where there are almost no configurable parameters.

"Except, of course there are: the combination of film, developer, processing practice, paper, paper developer, printing and paper processing practice also has a huge configuration space. And I bet people didn't change film/paper/dev/process very often (I know I don't)."

 

A few additional thoughts from Mike: When I did darkroom work professionally as a custom exhibition printer, I standardized on two photo papers. The only reason I didn't standardize on one was that I needed a fallback I was deeply familiar with in case one of them was discontinued or one of the manufacturers changed the formula on me.

Both of those things had happened numerous times—the most notorious example of the former was when Oriental Seagull suddenly stopped being imported into the United States, and the most notorious example of of the latter was when Agfa made a radical but unannounced change in the formulation of Portriga for environmental reasons.

I figured if I had two papers I knew well I was probably safe, although Agfa was, at the time, making a slow-motion change in the formulation of Multicontrast Classic—over the life of that paper, the paper base went from a rich warm cream color to a much whiter eggshell white that was barely warm at all. But that was for the most part a gradual change.

Another thing in support of your points: I worked for a studio pro in the early '80s who probably ~$200,000 worth of equipment in a studio that probably cost $10,000 a month to rent and run and staff. He naturally owned and shot with all formats, and his main cameras were all motorized Hasselblad 500 EL/M's, but his 35mm cameras were Nikkormats, not the pro F cameras. He was very scornful of the idea of paying for Nikon F cameras—that would have been when the F3 was current, I think—because the Nikkormats did the job just fine.

The only thing of substance I'd add to your comment Tim: you said "you want two things from your gear: you want it to work, every night, and you want it to do the same thing, every night." To that I'd add, you want to be working with (or playing) something very familiar to you, so you know its ins and outs and you're comfortable with it. I'm sure you were assuming this, but it bears saying "out loud."

On that heading, cut to the early 2010s for a third case in support of your arguments—I once found myself sitting at a sushi bar next to a professional photographer. Not an accident—the owner of the restaurant introduced us. He told me that he had recently bought the then-latest highest-end pro Nikon DSLR, a D4, which had only recently come out. But, four months after purchasing it, his D4 was still sitting in its box, back at his studio, unopened and untouched, because he hadn't yet been able to budget the time required to learn it. He figured it was going to take him three days to go through the manual and shoot his tests and get comfortable handling the camera. But that would have been three days of concentrated work, and no suitable three-day stretch had opened up. I was struck by the fact that he hadn't even unwrapped it to take a look at it, which I doubt is something that many amateurs would do with the latest hot new camera that cost thousands of dollars. But the "toy factor" was nonexistent for him.

Final thought: in the art-photography world I came up in, it was said by some that changing cameras would set you back a year—that is, it was a year before the new camera fully became second nature and you knew it inside out.

I don't know how long it takes to get "the feel of the wheel" with a digital camera, but I'm betting it's a year or two longer than people typically keep them. Just kidding.  :-)

UPDATE Tim Bradshaw adds: "You are right about the 'being familiar' thing, and I have a nice example of that. I've got several guitar amps (amplifiers), including a really beautiful made-for-me Supro-inspired one (shameless plug: if you want one of these, the 'Dirty Girl' amps person is who you want to talk to: he's very good). And I also have an early 1970s Marshall 'Artiste.' People despise these: it's often regarded as one of Marshall's failures (including, I believe, by Jim Marshall). There are articles on how you can gut one and convert it into a Plexi, because that's an amp you might actually want.

"But if I had to rescue one amp in a fire it would be that one, because I've had it for a long time and I know how it works: I know where the good sounds are, I like those sounds (perhaps I did not always...), and I know how it talks to guitars I own. If someone offered me a vintage Plexi in exchange for it I'd turn them down without a thought. In fact I live in mild terror that it's going to go wrong in some really expensive way, because if it does I will need to get it fixed, even if it costs more than its worth. Because I don't really know whether I could just buy another one (they're pretty cheap) or whether it's that specific amp I like."

(Posted by) Mike
(Thanks to Tim)

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Harsh reality

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Featured Comments from:

Michael Perini: "My experience agrees with this completely. Musician or photographer, at the professional level you don't change things lightly. You have to know that your learned inputs will produce the same outputs. They are results-oriented rather than process-oriented. Process needs to bee refined to the point where it disappears. Nice."

Edward Taylor: "I am not sure how much of this is really about photojournalism or street photography or sports photography or decisive moment type work, but for an awful lot of professional photography, these issues are not really that big a factor. I use new cameras out of the box frequently and have rarely missed a shot as a result. After all, if we are taking a portrait or doing a landscape, or doing macro photography or fashion photography, or anything repeatable, being totally familiar with all the controls on a camera and all its idiosyncrasies is really not necessary, and it is perfectly reasonable to learn that stuff on the go. After all, we get to see each picture after we take it. If you think your new camera is somehow preventing you from getting what you want, just pull out your trusted and familiar backup camera. We are not limited to one camera or one shot the way a musician is limited to one set up while live on stage."

cecelia (partial comment): "Well put! I have been using my OM-D E-M1 Mark II for about a year now and have finally gotten to the point where the camera has gotten out of the way. Even though there are many tempting new cameras, I am thinking that a backup OM-D E-M1 Mark II is probably the smartest investment."

c.d.embrey: "I learned photography while working in Hollywood. Everything, camera, lighting, grip and editing equipment, is so expensive that most gear is rented by the job. The producer's budget is the deciding factor on what you use. Regional commercials were shot in 16mm, national commercials in Super35 (DX). Feature films ran the gamut from 16mm to anamorphic 65mm. The first thing a tyro has to learn is the names of things, and the argot of the craft. A person doesn't have three months or even three weeks to learn the mechanics of a craft.

"If you are not a quick learner, you will be replaced by someone who is. Remember that one 'dumb-sh*t' will nullify three 'attaboys.' Journeymen need to master everything if they want to do to move to the top of the list. I've never met a concert violinists who couldn't play 'Orange Blossom.' The best people are problem solvers. Many times I've walked onto a set to find that the Director/Creative Director/Whoever has changed their mind about what they want to do. You have to think on your feet, and tell them 'no problem' without breaking stride. Many cameras have a C1/C2 etc. dial. You need to have them set in advance. Different scenarios that have been tested by you. Never ever experiment in front of the client. But it is OK to recycle something you learned 20 years ago—the client will think that you are an inventive genius  8-)  C1 and C2 are like a bassist having multiple basses with different tunings (for different songs) within arm's reach."

Jeron: "Oh, I bought a D7100 a few years ago, after shooting with a Nikon 1 V1 for four years almost daily. I know the V1 inside out. It 'just works' for me. I don't have to focus on the camera. The D7100 however seems to work against me. I did set aside time to go through the manual, but for some reason it doesn't stick, and every time I grab that camera, it's on some weird mode or setting and I need to fight it to change it back to normal. If my life depended on getting the photo, I'd take the V1. To be honest, that's the first time this happened. I use my cameras for several years, but they all became second nature quickly, film cameras and digital cameras. But that D7100, however, it's like we're not meant to be together. Needless to say, I haven't shot many keepers with the 7100...."

Eric Rose: "One of my last pro jobs was a contract I had with a local hospital to create images for an annual report highlighting the neurology department. I photographed brain surgeries, testing equipment, doctors using the equipment, and of course the usual head and shoulders shots. To a tee, each doctor as he or she came in said the same thing; 'hey, why are you using that old camera? I have the latest digi pro DSLR and the best glass money can buy; my camera is way better than yours. Maybe I should have been hired to do this gig ha ha ha.' Yeah, really funny. Most of my peers use cameras that are not the latest and greatest unless there is a compelling business reason to spend the money. For non pros it's about ego, for pros it's about ROI.

Mike replies: A nice comeback: 'You have a bigger stick, I just swing mine harder.' Or in that situation you might have said, 'if I had a better scalpel, would I be a better surgeon?' But sometimes with clients it's more politic to just think it.  :-)

Andrew: "For living proof among the highest levels of photography, one need only look at the annual 'Wildlife Photographer of the Year' competition. You've never seen so many 10-year-old DSLRs in your life. Good ones, no doubt (Canon 1DXs and 7Ds, Nikon D3s and D300s). But the serious folks at the local photography club wouldn't be caught dead with the gear these guys use. Not to mention, the number of amazing, winning wildlife shots stopped all the way down to ƒ/11. It's really an amazing contrast to the rhetoric you get on the photographic Internet these days. Truly a breath of fresh air."

Upshot

I had to laugh at JohnMFlores's comment to the last post, which was, in its entirety,

Yes

...But, overall, I think the point is made, in my mind at least: cameras don't actually cost all that much. I'm thinking that perhaps I should stop boxing myself in to one stratum of the pricing tiers by conceiving of things as "inexpensive" and "expensive." It's really just all relative.

Personally, at this moment, I can tell you what seems reasonable to me: I balked at paying $1,649 for an X-H1 body (before the big price drop) and did in fact spend $1,213 for a Panasonic G9 body (when it reached its cheapest price during the holidays). So there's my own price sensitivity in a nutshell.

But that's just me. (And I'm still not sure I made the correct decision. I'm having opportunity-cost remorse over the X-H1, and half of me even thinks I should stick to B&W with the X-T1. I like color but I love B&W.)

I do continue to believe, and assert, that expenditures make much more sense if you get one of two things out of whatever you buy: One is "use," and the other is "joy," not that the two are mutually exclusive. I guess really the only truly wasteful way to spend money is to get neither use nor joy out of your purchase. Buy it and stick it in the closet and never touch it, and feel nothing but a pang of regret and guilt whenever you happen to accidentally lay eyes on it—that's how something really becomes expensive. Please don't ask how I know. And please don't tease me.

For pros AND...
I do have to object in part to the refrain common in our comments that the E-M1X is "for professionals" and if you need it for calculated business reasons then you'll make the buying decision purely on that basis. Yes and no. I've been in this game a while, and I can tell you that "professional" equipment is made for two categories of consumer, not one. One is, yes, pros who need it and people who will do a hardheaded cost/benefit analysis before investing; the other is well-heeled amateurs who want to use what the pros use...or who just want the thing, full stop. There's no telling what the percentage of each might be, as I'm sure it varies for each individual product, and by region, and based on what ideas are popular at any given moment in time, and even possibly by the state of the economy. And sometimes the two things are different facets of one and the same supernice Texan dude (cough cough Kirk LOL). But a little story along these lines: long ago, in Virginia, there was a professional camera store that catered to professionals. It was a very slick shop, stylish, and stuffed with exotic, expensive gear. It sold mainly studio lighting equipment, in the days when the average studio pro might invest $30,000 to $100,000 in strobe-and-head systems, light stands, clamps, cables, light shaping equipment (gobos, skrims, reflectors, softboxes, grids, etc.), flash meters, camera stands (the average hobbyist today has no idea what a camera stand is), backdrops, and so on. (A pro I assisted for claimed he had $30,000 worth of Matthews C [Century] stands, which in some circles used to be called "Hollywood stands.") Of course the store strongly emphasized the professional portion of its clientele. But the manager of the store, in an unguarded moment, confided to me that only 50% of its sales were to working pros; the other 50% were to wealthy people, some of them women, who had artistic inclinations and time on their hands and the intention to become fashion or studio photographers, and the wherewithal to outfit themselves to do so. The store downplayed this segment of its clientele, but, to paraphrase the manager (who was a woman), "without wealthy lawyers' wives I'd be out of business."

(This is an aside, but the same woman lectured on the use of the Minolta Flashmeter IV, which until the advent of digital cameras was the most complex device intended for photography I ever encountered, at least if you bothered to understand all of its functions. She also confided to me that if more than three weeks went by between these Flashmeter IV lectures, she had to brush up on its features and operation by rereading parts of the manual before her talk. Made me laugh...if the person who taught it couldn't even remember how to use it....)

So the E-M1X isn't just for working pros who need its capabilities and advantages, and you shouldn't believe otherwise. It's half* for pros who need it and half* for people who want to be like the pros who need it, or who want to be outfitted to try the things it's made to be good at. Those people are a very important part of any "pro" product's market, too.

That's my 2¢ about $3k. More mañana.

Mike

*Actual percentages may vary

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Harsh reality

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Featured Comments from:

Mike Plews: "As enthusiasts this discussion revolves around what we want versus what we need. Reality sometimes settles the issue for us. My way of dealing with this is to call things based not on what they are but rather on what they were supposed to be. For example, I have a Toro two stage snow thrower that can shoot a frozen dog turd into outer space. I call it my Epson 3880. If you look out over our back yard you can see my D850. It has a 750 gallon tank, a distribution box and three 80 foot laterals. Right now Mrs. Plews is waiting for the local septic service to come and pump out our Nikon. For much of the '90s we had a dog named Deardorff. Nobody in our family is named Deardorff but I asked for a Deardorff for Christmas and I got a beagle. It's all good."

Mike replies: Mike, I am going to have to come meet you and Mrs. Plews someday. It won't be to see your Nikon, though.

Øyvind Hansen: "If you can afford it it is very reassuring to own the 'flagship,' at least until the next version comes out. It keeps the upgraditis at bay. There´s still horizontal GAS to contend with though...."

John Camp: "I read all of Kirk's blog entries, and would comment there more often if I could only figure out how to do it. (Something to do with Facebook, or maybe Google, or maybe both.) In any case, he's down at his local camera store so often he ought to sublease a space in the back room and move in a bed and a microwave. Then he could try out cameras in the middle of the night, at his leisure. He also ought to give the occasional workshop on portraiture. I'd sign up in one minute."

kirk Tuck: "I'd love to reply to the mention of my buying habits, vis-à-vis camera gear, but I'm heading out the door just now on my way to the bricks and mortar camera store in order to buy a new Fujifilm 90mm ƒ/2 lens. Perhaps, finally, it will be the magic lens that makes my career mildly successful. If not, it may be another month in which we boil the leather camera straps to make soup...(sigh)."

Mike replies: Should we take up a collection for you?

Of camera straps, I mean.

I assume well-used, grimy, sweat-stained ones make better soup?

(Actually, I'd better watch myself here...best not provoke karma under this heading!  :-)  Or I'll be eating camera-strap soup myself.) 

What If You Hate Marketing and Sales?

Commenting on the Not-OT post, Robert Roaldi writes, "All these books are great, I suppose, but what if you really hate doing marketing and sales?" (I had passed along JH's recommendation of The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout and added How to Succeed in Commercial Photography by Selina Maitreya, and Stephen S. added Photography: Focus on Profit by Tom Zimberoff and Best Business Practices for Photographers by John Harrington.)

In answer, I'd say, well, you probably shouldn't be a professional photographer. Unless possibly you're a Mom 'n' Pop operation and your spouse or partner enjoys marketing and sales. Or you can afford to hire a rep.

Marketing and sales is one of a few things necessary to be a successful professional photographer:

• A level of constant and consistent personal energy and appetite for hard work that is well above average.
• Approximately the sociability, gregariousness, extroversion, and people skills of politician who has to campaign to be elected.
• A knack for problem-solving.
• Enough entrepreneurial spirit that you could run a dry cleaners, a gas station, or a fast-food franchise. Or two or three of one or the other.
• A chameleonlike ability to adapt your visual style according to the circumstances, and a cheerful willingness to let clients dictate your subject matter.
• A relatively high level of technical knowledge but with no particular attachment to specific skills, equipment, or techniques.
• Excellent organizing ability.
• A high comfort level with deadlines, strain, and pressure.

Oh, and...

• An interest and enthusiasm for marketing and sales.

In other words, nothing to it!* Simple, right?

Mike

*I have chronic, low-level intermittent unipolar depression, which tends to make my energy come and go, and, moreover, be deeply undependable; I'm introverted and shy and sometimes socially awkward; I enjoy open-endedness, adventitiousness, and serendipity; I'm an "Idealist" type and have little interest in monetary success for its own sake, so entrepreneurship often feels beside the point; what most appeals to me would be to develop a consistent, authentic personal visual style and stick to it; my tech interest is mainly result-based and need-to-know; I am inefficient and have a poor (though not the worst possible) level of organizing ability; I hate pressure and have almost a psychological block against meeting deadlines (really, if you want me to not do something, give me a deadline for it)—I can't even keep a calendar; and I have an abstract interest in marketing because I enjoy the inventiveness of it intellectually, but I'm not motivated by the challenge of closing sales.

Except for that the bit about marketing, it's possible that I might be reasonably close to the opposite of the personality type most suited to be a professional photographer. Although, mostly, I get along with those folks just fine.

Anybody can succeed—at something or other—but it's always essential to "know thyself."

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

B&H Photo • Amazon US • Amazon UK
Amazon Germany • Amazon Canada • Adorama

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Rob de Loe: "Right then, I'll be stroking 'professional photographer' off the list!"

Mike replies: I don't discourage people from turning pro, but I do tend to discourage people from turning pro if they don't have the proper aptitudes for it. But then, I believe that knowing what you're good at and whether a profession matches up well with your abilities is important for anyone contemplating any career.

Jim Richardson: "When predicting success of a photographer going pro it’s generally good to bet on superior marketing combined with adequate creative skills. Especially if you are trying to predict long-term success. But both sides of the business can be learned, so to me doggedness is the prime ingredient. The underlying saving grace is that many editors and art directors cannot tell bluster from talent. (Goes double in the art world.) So if you are going to be good at only one thing, be good at BS."

Mike replies: Re doggedness, I have this taped to my computer: "A man may write at any time if he will set himself doggedly to it." Boswell, quoting Dr. Johnson. Re BS, no comment.  :-)

Stephen Scharf: "In addition to being able to be an effective and efficient marketer, your point #1: 'A level of constant and consistent personal energy and appetite for hard work that is well above average' is really key to success. Many of the professional photographers I know who are successful and make a decent living as professionals work their frickin' tails off, frequently putting in 16-hour days, 5–7 days a week. And after years of doing this, many end up unhappy and burned out. One of the leading motorcycle racing editorial photographers I know, Brian J. Nelson, works incredibly hard covering all the motorcycle road racing test sessions, team shoots, practice sessions, and races throughout the year. He's typically only home for about 30 days out of the year, the rest of the time he's criss-crossing the U.S., and living and working out of his Mercedes Sprinter van. Another, Darren Miles, who lives in South Florida, has large portion of his business doing real estate photography. Darren photographed ~1,000 homes in the last year(!). These guys' capacity for hard work is off the charts."

Jeff Mellody: "I graduated with a degree in photography and I panicked at the time because I only had two business classes. After graduation I studied everything I could get my hands on about marketing. Photography is a totally different animal when done as a business. When the product is you, you have to sell yourself. It is a skill that can be learned if you put your heart into it. But it is crucial that it be mastered."

Counterpoint (and Some Casteneda)

After yesterday's post I got this wonderful response from my friend Kirk Tuck of VSL, which really provides the best sort of counterpoint:

I must be especially dumb. I've been doing this photography thing as a full-time professional since 1988. I worked in advertising and academia before that. I am so dense that I just ignored all the articles and talk about how hard it was to be a photographer and spent the time...being a photographer. While I'm not going to see my work in any museums, and no-one is rushing to make a monograph about my career, I never missed a mortgage payment, never missed a car payment, never missed a month of putting in a percentage of my income for retirement, and never went hungry. I've been to exciting places and seen exciting stuff. I've been offered a glass of wine by one President and photographed two others besides. I watched the birth of high tech from up close. I've watched nearly 500 live theater performances, either for free or while being paid to do so. Some of them were really good. I've had the opportunity to play with the most fun cameras and teach fun classes. I got to write, and get paid for, five books about photography. I've just finished paying for my kid to go out of state to a prestigious private college for four years, and did so without incurring any debt. I've put enough money in the bank to retire, but why would I want to when this is so much more fun?

Maybe everyone else is just doing it wrong...

If I had embarked on what I thought would be my first career, electrical engineering, I have no doubt that I would have not done nearly as well, would not have a flexible schedule that routinely allows for a mid-morning swim, would weigh five hundred pounds and would have consumed tons of bad take-out pizza at the tawdry desk in my shag-carpeted cubicle. And worse.

Not everything is about the money. You only get one go at life and if you aren't doing what you love you are only cheating yourself.

Retirement is only for people who didn't like their careers.

—Kirk Tuck

I also got this the other day from Dave Reichert, which seems especially apropos of Kirk's comments:

Anything is one of a million paths. Therefore you must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if you feel you should not follow it, you must not stay with it under any conditions. To have such clarity you must lead a disciplined life. Only then will you know that any path is only a path and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you to do. But your decision to keep on the path or to leave it must be free of fear or ambition. I warn you. Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary.

This question is one that only a very old man asks. Does this path have a heart? All paths are the same: they lead nowhere. They are paths going through the bush, or into the bush. In my own life I could say I have traversed long long paths, but I am not anywhere. Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't, it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn't. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you.

Before you embark on any path ask the question: Does this path have a heart? If the answer is no, you will know it, and then you must choose another path. The trouble is nobody asks the question; and when a man finally realizes that he has taken a path without a heart, the path is ready to kill him. At that point very few men can stop to deliberate, and leave the path. A path without a heart is never enjoyable. You have to work hard even to take it. On the other hand, a path with heart is easy; it does not make you work at liking it.

—Carlos Castaneda (1925–1998), from
The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge

-

Mike
(Thanks to Kirk and Dave)

P.S. The Wikipedia page on Castaneda is very interesting if you've never heard of him. The conundrum of the validity of received or "authentic" vs. invented wisdom is present in many religions and seems to be encapsulated in Castaneda.

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Gordon Cahill: "I'm with Kirk. 100% I've been as busy as I wanted to be for much of the last 25 years. Photography as a career has evolved. If you also evolved then you'll be OK. Being a photojournalist is a shrinking pool and Nat Geo don't want to give me a year to photograph sea slugs in Patagonia, but I do OK. By a small margin of skill and a bit of luck I've done my favourite thing as a job for so long I don't think I could do anything else. And I've loved almost every day of it."

How To Become a Professional Photographer

I heard a great joke the other day:

"I got a Ph.D. in philosophy. Which means I'm really smart. And also that I'm really not very smart."

I wonder if you could say something similar about pro photography these days. Being a professional photographer means you're really skilled and smart...and, also, it may not be a very smart thing to be.

It's a tough profession, one that requires a multitude of competencies, wide-ranging expertise, and more energy than most ordinary people possess. Also very good work habits, very good basic organizational skills, and, almost always, great people skills. It's challenging. It requires many aptitudes and mastery of many things. You really have to be well above average (no Lake Woebegone joke) to even make it as a pro photographer. And yet one could argue that it's also kind of a questionable choice of profession for anyone with that many skills and assets.

At this somewhat advanced point in my life I know a lot of people who were professional photographers for five or ten years and then quit and went on to something that made a little more sense as a career. This includes the hot-shot, high-dollar pro from whom I took an intensive, expensive seminar back in the '90s. (He billed $1.6 million [gross] in '93, "and that was a lot of money back then," rimshot.) He's been in high finance for the last twenty years. That is, unless he retired already, I don't know. I finally tracked him down a few years ago, and he wasn't very chatty.

The subject of the seminar? How to become a professional photographer!

Mike

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Josh Hawkins: "You need to be smart enough to be a photographer and dumb enough to not realize you should do something/anything else. It's a very narrow range to fit in."

Dave Polaschek: "Perhaps the good business to be in is selling seminars on how to be a professional photographer!"

Ken Bennett: "I've been doing this for a living for 31 years next month. For the last 21 I've been the staffer at a university. I often get students asking me how they can 'travel the world and take pictures.' (I swear that every single one of them has used that exact phrase.) I laugh and ask them how large is their trust fund.  :-)  Then I stop laughing and ask them the same question again.

"I have a pretty good idea how to become a professional photojournalist—in 1985 or so. Start at a small newspaper, work up to a midsized daily, then win some awards and move up to a wire service or a major daily. Easy—except that the pipeline is now in tatters. Heck, the most recent Pulitzer prize winner for spot news shot it on his last day at the paper—before leaving to work at a brewery.

"I know that a handful of my students have gone onto successful photo careers (we did an entire issue of the alumni magazine dedicated to them.) but it's not something I can recommend to anyone in good conscience. For those who are trying, good luck and I hope you make it."

Gordon Lewis: "I agree. It seems almost as questionable a choice as being a photo blogger. (Heh, heh....)"

Funny Photo Rant

[Ed. note: Our friend JG, he of the Frankencamera, sent me this little rant the other day. Does what happens to him happen to you?]

Words and valuable photo by JG

You know what is really annoying about being a hobbyist photographer these days?

Having friends who sincerely believe that every halfway decent photo is saleable and that I must be a lazy ass because I'm not interested in even trying to sell my recent bobcat photo.

They don't have a clue about what's involved in actually selling a photo, how stock and micro-stock sales work, how much money any given photo is actually worth in today's market, or the minimum technical requirements for the file behind the photo (which my bobcat photo doesn't even remotely meet, because it was so heavily cropped.)

Yet four of them persist in encouraging me to get off my "lazy ass and start promoting it" because they're convinced I can make thousands of dollars for doing next to no work selling it.

And when I attempt to explain to them the reality of the situation—i.e., that a single, cute photo that is passable in quality only as an email attachment is commercially worthless—they simply scoff at me.

When did photography become so focused on making money from sales instead of spending it on gear...? LOL.

And why are so many otherwise smart people ignoring the effects of practically unlimited supply and very limited demand?

Apparently, "every photo is valuable" is the logical, perhaps even inevitable corollary to "everybody is a photographer"? [Rolls eyes.]

JG

[Ed. note no. 2: Do you remember l'affair de Harlan Ellison? Just for fun, I took $25 from the soft money account and sent it to JG. The note with the payment said "One-time First North American e-publishing rights to The Valuable Bobcat photo." I just thought it would be funny if he could tell his friends that he sold the photo. He doesn't have to tell them how much he got for it....]

JG adds: "Actually, my 'rant' wasn't a rant at all, but a very clever marketing plan I devised that targeted one particular potential buyer...and it worked! Of course, now I have to come up with a new plan so I can sell my next photo to somebody else. Surely, there must be an easier way than this to make thousands by selling my photos? Otherwise, it's going to require far more work and take a lot longer than I initially thought...sheesh."

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MikeK: "It's even worse you're a very average hobbyist photographer. When people tell me I should sell my photos, my stock answer is 'To whom?' People seem to think that there is a massive marketplace for selling prints, and if I just had a website I'd be raking in the cash. It doesn't seem to occur to these people that none of them have ever bought a photograph in their life, and most of the people they know haven't either.

"Self-satisfaction is not enough it seems."

John Camp: "Along with mine, that's two bobcat photos in a month. You're becoming a cat photo site, which I somehow find pleasing. Anyway, my shot looks like a standard wildlife photo, though it was taken at the end of a neighbor's driveway with an iPhone. JG's is far better, and suggests to me that perhaps wildlife photographers aren't getting the most for their talent by shooting only in wild-looking scenes. Wildlife in the city sounds like a pretty interesting book...."

Mike replies: That's a fascinating idea for a book. Wildlife, only not idealized. The possibilities for photos would come tumbling along so fast they'd pile on top of each other. Of course I can think of historical and already-existing photos that would fit, like the photo on the cover of Fay Godwin's Bison at Chalk Farm.

jim: "I have a bobcat picture as well but I'd have to go through thousands of files to find it so I just had my wife take this one of me and my tomcat. He could probably beat a bobcat anyway!"

Mike replies: I hope I have not given people the idea that I am going to pay $25 for any picture with any sort of cat in it. LOL!

You guys look like friends, though.

Dan Gorman: "Re 'Does what happens to him happen to you?' Only about every other day or so. I have a dozen or so of my better shots on display in my home and in my office, so I get this same piece of friendly 'advice' fairly often. I know they mean well, but I've long since given up on trying to explain the commercial realities JG outlines so concisely. I just smile and say 'Thank you! I'm glad you like it.'"

Craig A. Lee: "Yes. It happens to me too. Sometimes it even works out to a sale. Last week I showed my composite image for the recent total eclipse progression to someone visiting my day job's office. A couple of questions led to a couple of links, and he bought a print then and there. It will at least cover part of the expense for the website. Shameless link."

mike plews: "I have a lovely shot taken from our back deck of the yard just after a bobcat ran through. I wonder what that might be worth?"

Mike replies: Priceless?

Jeffrey MacMillan: "I have a cat named Robert. Bob for short. I'll send a photo but I expect payment upfront."

Mike replies: Wait by your mailbox. Be very patient.

Ed Hawco: "Not necessarily (or as we say here in Montreal, 'Oui, mais non.' ['Yes, but no.' —Ed.])

"As someone who worked for several years in a stock photo agency that specialized in wildlife, I can say that yes, this photo of a bobcat is pretty unsalable. The drawers in all such agencies are packed with beautifully composed and perfectly exposed bobcat photos in all imaginable lighting conditions, compositions, etc. So it's worthless...until that day when an editor calls and says 'we need a photo of a bobcat peeking around a corner in a built environment, preferably with a window or two behind it. Oh, and we really need to see a plastic garbage bin.' You laugh, but I took calls like that, and it explained why so many of the photos in our collections were very lame—but they had some characteristic that someone somewhere might be looking for.

"That said, the odds of getting exactly that call are so slim that you're better off spending the time at a casino, or buying lottery tickets."

Roger Moore: "I've had some success getting people who want me to sell pictures to shut up by saying that I see photography as an enjoyable hobby, and that if I tried selling my photos, that would turn it into a business, which would sap all the fun out of it. They seem to be willing to buy that argument even if they won't accept the basic economics of the situation."

How I Practiced Portraiture

I love portraits, and used to do them, both for pay and for art. I got a nice "blast from the past" last week when when I did a senior portrait for the daughter of a friend of a friend. (Or at least I think I did—they have the proofs now and so far so good.)

I can't remember now how I learned about what constituted conventional practice. But what I did was to work with the subject or subjects in several different scenes or situations, almost always using natural light and "found" backgrounds. I would take several hundred shots. From these I would edit my selections and give the client/subject small proof-prints of six or eight choices. They would then pick their favorite, and I would make the final print. (This was when I was working with B&W film and making fiber-base silver gelatin prints.)

Sounds simple, but I experienced innumerable problems.

The most basic one was "who owns the picture." Of course, you know that the photographer owns the rights to his or her work, and retains them until specifically relinquishing them. Technically, legally, the client only owns the print or prints—the physical object—and doesn't have the right to reuse or re-purpose the image in whatever way they see fit. This is difficult for clients to understand, and if they do understand they often don't respect it because it seems unreasonable to them—they paid for the picture, it's a picture of them, and they think that means they own it. ("A dog with a pullet in his mouth owns the pullet," said the redoubtable Scotsman David Hume.)

You do not own images of yourself, however. The person who made the image owns the rights to it. This seems counterintuitive to many people hearing it for the first time. That doesn't mean the owner of the rights can do anything he or she wants to without the subject's permission; but neither can the client do anything he or she wants to with the images without the photographer's permission.

I never had "big" problems where this is concerned, just little ones, although I've certainly heard of big problems. My little problems included people refusing to return the proofs, framing the proofs (which were usually 5x7 or 4x6 RC prints), or having the proofs copied and enlarged as an alternative to paying me for a finished print. I solved the framing-of-proofs problem by having a mask made that put my name and logo on the bottom of each proof. This didn't work in one case, because the client framed the proof logo and all.) Because of that last, I finally resorted to including two finished prints in the sitting price (my last sitting price was $675 in the early '90s—and I photographed some prominent people, including a sitting U.S. Supreme Court Justice, a U.S. Senator, a television star of the era, several members of recognizable political dynasty families, and a number of prominent citizens in and around Washington D.C.). Once, I sent a small JPEG of a portrait to a friend (of his mother) asking him if he wanted a print. I heard nothing back. Some time later, visiting his house, I found a framed inkjet print of the JPEG (which looked terrible, of course) on display! He had printed out the JPEG on his all-in-one dye inkjet printer, on bond paper. Yikes.

Framing was another headache. I was a custom printer and a recognized darkroom expert, and I put a lot of effort into making excellent fine finished prints. I included detailed framing instructions with the prints. I have no idea how many people took the next step and had them framed, but I know it wasn't everyone. For a while I would drymount the trimmed prints to heavy Rives BKF paper*; once, I visited a friend/client's house, and found my carefully-made, selenium toned, archivally washed fine print attached to their refrigerator with a magnet, among all the color snapshots and cute sayings. Yikes again!

But offering only framed prints is not an ideal solution, because peoples' homes are furnished in different styles and to different tastes, and there's no reliable one-size-fits-all framing option. People will prefer different kinds of frames.

I handled this problem in a neat way. I simply dropped off the finished prints at a framing shop (owned by a friend). Then I called the clients and told them their prints were ready and they could pick them up at their convenience at the shop. Most of them got the point and ordered framing for the prints they picked up.

Another problem, of course, which many of you (including wedding photographers) will be all too familiar with: they want to see all the shots. Editing photos is one of the hardest things about photography, even for experienced photographers. I've heard of wedding clients who complained that they "only" got 500 proofs when they "knew there were thousands of shots." Like the photographer is holding back all the good ones?

This problem probably gets down to who controls the image. The photographer thinks he or she gets to say what the best/final image is; the client thinks that's their right. The way I look at it, providing an edited selection of proofs is a compromise between these competing interests. If it were up to me, I'd just pick the best shot and the client would never see any of the others. If it were up to the client, they'd get everything (never suspecting how difficult it is to edit and choose for the simple reason that most people don't edit and choose: they just pick everything that strikes their fancy. That's why you see dozens of similar shots posted on photo sharing sites—the person who posted them "liked them all").

My experience was, the more proofs, the longer it took to get a print order. You can offer to help, but then you find you're teaching "Editing 101" to every new client.

The last problem is that most people are very picky about images of themselves, and quirky about what they want to see. Some people are sensitive to a certain perceived defect in their appearance, and they will pick a photograph of themselves that doesn't show that defect even if it's far from the best picture overall. Or they will pick a straight-on frontal picture simply because that's what they're used to seeing in the mirror.

Once, a few years ago, I will admit to making fun of an unknown woman for the picture of herself she posted on Match.com. There was only one single picture, and it showed her sitting on a porch, holding a beer, dressed in an impressively filthy T-shirt. It made her look like she had just come from spending a long period of time underneath a car. I made a joke of this to my brother, privately, but the thing is, my years as a portraitist gave me the insight to understand why she had posted that particular picture. Most likely it was that it either showed some little idiosyncratic feature of her face that she liked, or concealed some such feature that she disliked. And never mind the dirty T-shirt.

Anyway, for whatever reason, people often pick the wrong proof. You might say it's just a matter of taste, but I say no—it's my work, and I'm a better editor, and I know best. Anyway, I often made two finished final prints: one of their choice, for them, and one of the correct choice, for me.  :-)

Anyway, I always used to tell portrait clients to let their friends and families decide which one the best picture of them was, rather than doing it themselves. I'm sure that worked.

I've never worked as a portraitist in the digital age. I'm sure things are different now. I also suspect a lot of things are the same.

My portrait clients this past week were lovely people—friendly, gregarious and warm—and their confident and nice-looking daughter had the self-assurance of a well-raised child. She did a splendid job posing, and her mother acted as a stylist and did a very nice job of that! They were great to work with and I had fun doing the portrait. I do hope it suits their needs. I charged the price of a box of printing paper, and the gentleman kindly gave me a generous tip. So far I've send them un-watermarked small JPEGs as proofs with full permission to post them anywhere they want to. If/when they make a final choice, I'll send them a prepared full file for printing, and the name of a recommended printer.

The next thing I want to try is to hire a model for a portrait. I want to experiment with what it's like when I'm completely in control and the subject doesn't have any say at all. Should be an interesting experiment, and add to my lifelong learning about this kind of work.

The payoff in portraiture is when you happen to make a picture that the subject really likes. My '90s portrait of photographer Sally Mann that I showed in this post in 2015 (it's one of the few of my portraits I have in digitized form) was one of those—Sally really liked it, so much that she asked for the negative so she could print some promo pictures for her own use.

And she never returned the negative, of course. Sigh.

Mike

*This was self-defensive, mainly: it prevented framers from dry-mounting the print using too hot a temperature, which could impart the texture of the release paper to part of the surface of the print.

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John Camp: "Most people don't understand this, but they are brilliant judges of faces—most people have a forehead, two eyes, two ears, a nose, a mouth, a chin, etc., yet we are able to instantly pick out acquaintances from the thousands of possibilities we see passing us every day. That expertise is exercised with portraits: a good photographer gives us a professional example of a subject we're interested in from birth, and because it's a portrait, rather than an actual living face, we have no inhibitions about studying it closely, every pore and freckle. And we make judgments about them too: is it possible that the woman on Match.com did just crawl out from under a car, and was perhaps interested in attracting, say, a Harley owner? The beer and t-shirt would hint at that...."

The Ultimate Nightmare Clients

This is a pretty involved story, but if you've ever been a professional photographer you will be sucked into it with a mixture of horror and fascination. And probably some level of familiarity.

The vindictive wedding clients deliberately ruined the reputation of wedding photographer Andrea Polito of Dallas, Texas, with an Internet and social media campaign that advanced an easy but false narrative. Andrea's prospering business withered and she was forced to close her studio.

But Andrea got the last word when a jury awarded her more than a million dollars in judgement, finding that the couple, Andrew and Neely Moldovan, were guilty of malicious defamation.

As with many such judgements, Andrea might never collect, but at least the truth is out now, and known to the world. 

The article is called "They trashed their wedding photographer over a $125 fee, so a jury told them to pay her $1 million." Reading it is like watching a train wreck. (You'll find more articles if you Google "Andrea Polito.")

Let's all be careful out there.

Mike
(Thanks to Scott Kirkpatrick)

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toto: "Some bloggers will try and ruin other people just to attract readers. (TOP not included, of course) Here's another case."

Mike replies: Great link, but it seems like that's a case of a blogger/photowriter (Gary Fong) coming to the aid of a persecuted photographer (Nelson Tang). The villain in that case was a lawyer/client.

Client ≠ Subject

Photographer Rob Strong (of the School Street School School of School Photography*) came by for breakfast the other day, on his way through the area on a Christmas journey. He said something very interesting. Something I don't think I've ever heard before quite the way he put it.

It sounded like things are going well for him and his business. Here's his current website; it's about to be replaced by a new one. Naturally he has a lot of work to sort through in deciding what to present on the new site. We were talking about how you should put in your portfolio or on your website the kind of work you want, not necessarily the kind you've done. You want to encourage clients to think of you for the kind of work you'd like to do more of in the future.

Rob said it wasn't so simple in some ways. For example, he does about five weddings a year and really enjoys doing those, but doesn't want to do a whole lot more than that.

The thing he most wants to do more of in the future? Editorial portraits.

For those who don't know exactly what that means, it's when a client assigns you, and pays you, to go take a portrait of somebody else. Usually it's for some sort of media—newspapers, magazines, or for a book jacket or website or perhaps an annual report or institutional publication—hence the name. (Rob does a lot of work for the Tuck School and the Hopkins Center at Dartmouth College.)

Talking about editorial portraits, what Rob said was, "I've noticed I enjoy portraiture more when the client and the subject aren't the same person."

I've never heard it put quite like that, but yeah. I used to do portraits in Washington D.C., but my clients were often the subjects—or closely related to them. It removes a certain amount of control from the photographer, and dictates, to varying (and unpredictable!) degrees how you have to work and the kind of results you have to create. Rob's right—when the subject is paying you, then the subject is your boss. The work will go better if you're the boss on the set or at the location.

Speaking of portraits, I remembered to have Rob sign the mighty TOP Guest Book but for some unaccountable reason it didn't occur to me to make a quick portrait of him, which I usually do when guests visit TOP. My apologies, to he and thee.

(I know that last phrase is not grammatical, but it rhymes, and that wins.)

Mike

*The first time we met he described settling into his new studio in Lebanon, New Hampshire, which is located in a former school. The presence of the school caused the street it's on to be called School Street, and the influence then turned around the other way and caused the school to be known as the School Street School, because, of course, it was the school that was on School Street. Rob then realized that if he gave some photography classes at his studio he could call it the School Street School School of Photography, at which point he realized that to complete the name he would naturally have to include school photography in the curriculum; hence the name. There is, however, no actual School of School Photography in the School Street School.

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An Alternative to Professional Certification (Weddings Are a Big Thing)

The whole discussion of making photography into a true profession like law or nursing might be missing the obvious solution. I think what's needed is simply an Angie's-List-style clearinghouse for reviews and ratings. I've approached Angie's List with the idea but they were not interested.

This would only be for photographers doing business with the public. Professional buyers have their own means of vetting if they themselves are professional. Experienced repeat buyers doing business-as-usual aren't really the problem; the problem is matching up expectations on both the buyer and seller sides in transactions between photographers and people (the public) who only seldomly buy photography, and don't know what it costs, don't know how to choose a provider, and don't know about the potential pitfalls including scams or the cost of incompetence or failure on the part of the photographer.

Such a clearinghouse could provide a wealth of detail about photographers for consumers, but it could also easily serve to educate consumers about what's possible and what various things ought to cost. When I researched this years ago, it wasn't just customers who had problems with bad photographers; it was also photographers who had problems with bad customers.

My idea would be to establish tiers for various levels of cost/professionalism, and create standards for what services each tier provides for the cost range and how much experience they need to bring to the job.

This might also eventually serve to guide practitioners as to what's expected of them in order to move up in the market. (For example, maybe one capability offered by the top tier might be a willingness and ability to travel internationally; an individual practitioner might not have considered such a service, but if it were part of moving up to the highest tier, then he or she might then consider it.)

Weddings are not as small a thing as many people here seem to think they are. For many people, a big wedding is a big deal—one of the top five or ten most expensive things they'll ever buy in their lives. Some weddings can be more expensive than a new car or any single vacation. And the circumstances for most people are not replicable; when you have dozens or hundreds of friends and loved ones coming from all points of the compass for the big day, there is no possibility of a re-shoot if you choose the wrong photographer or the photographer has a breakdown and can't provide what was promised.

I could do a cracking good job of setting up such a service from the conceptual and leadership side, but I lack the software know-how to implement it and the business skills to market it and keep it healthy. If I were young right now, instead of looking at retirement age hull-down on the horizon and headed my way, I would find two partners and go into business. We would revolutionize the wedding and portrait photography business and make modest fortunes, I'm almost certain. (Ah, another road not taken. There sure are a lot of those at my age.)

Someday, somebody will do this, and make it work, and make a lot of money. I hope they do it right for all concerned.

Mike

[UPDATE: Some of the early comments are still railing against "certification" programs. Evidently I didn't make it clear that I'm suggesting this instead of any professional licensing or certification, making the latter unnecessary. Sorry for the lack of clarity. —MJ]

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Speed: "Mike wrote, 'I've approached Angie's List with the idea but they were not interested.' Apparently they've since become interested." 

Mike replies: Hmm. Apologies for the mild paranoia and possible hubris, but this has happened to me rather a lot—I pitch an idea to a company, they say no thank you, then some time afterwards they implement that very idea. My past experience predicts that if I went to the company and said, hey, this was my idea, they would a) claim never to have heard of me, b) claim to not have any record of my proposal (even when I supply copies), and c) reply that it was total coincidence that they happen to be doing just what I proposed. Which I suppose could be true, but probably not every single time this happens. I once pitched three separate ideas to a company, and they claimed no interest, yet by the end of 14 months they had implemented all three ideas, in different areas of their product lines. Seems a bit much to believe that that was mere coincidence.

On the other hand, my ideas were responsible for several photographic products, including a camera variant, and none of them turned out to be moneymakers.

The lesson seems clear—I should stop doing that kind of thing!

Wes: "No one will ever convince me weddings aren't a big deal. I worked as a photographer for a number of years and refused to shoot any weddings; even for friends and family. Messing up a wedding isn't the same as messing up a commercial shoot. Most of the latter could be redone. I knew I couldn't handle the pressure of weddings so I never shot one. Secondly: I was married six years ago and we spent a significant sum on photography and video. My mother-in-law was dying of cancer and we knew we had to hire someone with years of experience with weddings because we only had one chance. And it was money well spent. She died four months later and those images and videos are our most prized possessions. I know not everyone feels they way we do about our wedding photos. And that's a shame."

Tom Kwas replies to Wes: "Weddings are certainly a big deal for the participants, especially as it's a once in a lifetime event (hopefully) that you want to capture for posterity. It takes the ability to deliver photographs of a fairly creative nature, under an ever-changing set of 'inputs'...

"BUT...

"Let's not claim that it can be more disastrous than a commercial or advertising shoot. Photographing for a client last minute, mostly due to their malfeasance, with no chance for re-shoots, to fit a $50,000–$75,000 ad 'hole' that's being held open in a high-end magazine, while you're out of pocket thousands for premium stylists, techs, etc. is just a whole other 'thing.' If you blow the photography at a wedding, your client's still alive, and they still got married, although they might have had a $20,000 wedding with no successful pictures. If you blow a last minute high-end advertising photo shoot, your client is going to be out that $50–75k for a magazine running a white space (for which your client will never use you again and badmouth you to more premium clients), and you're going to be out thousands for freelance personnel that you're never going to get paid to reimburse!

"I was working for a wedding place in high-school and college, and I realized fairly shortly into the process that I was never going to get into that end of the business, but it was because I realized I had an amateur for a client, not because I didn't think I could do it or it had a high level of stress. What you realize is that you've spent your beginning career studying beautiful photography, and 90% of the time, you now have a client you're trying to please who wouldn't know a good pic if it bit them! Now that is a formula for failure!"

Mike adds: Yeah, how many times have you heard someone say they want to 'fire the client'?

Patrick Perez: "When we got married last year my fiance put me in charge of selecting the photographer. We considered several and settled on our choice. We budgeted 20% of our total wedding budget for the photographer (but no photographs) and I felt a bit bad when we were negotiating because as I explained to him, it wasn't that I considered his pricing too high, recognizing that talent and experience merit what in hourly labor terms is lots of money; but we only had a set amount to spend. We ended up getting the price point of one 'package,' but with two extra hours. I firmly believe the fact that we were appreciative of his rate schedule being appropriate, and the fact that it was a Friday wedding, leaving him available for Saturday and Sunday weddings, helped us negotiate.

"We just celebrated our first anniversary two days ago, and I gave my wife the wedding album we couldn't afford last year. $500, and it looks great. I regret nothing!

"I can't recommend Gabriel Van Whye highly enough. He had the experience we lacked, and frankly was as key as our wedding coordinator in making the day a success. He's done more weddings than the coordinator, so that only makes sense."

'Anybody Can Be a Professional Photographer These Days!'

Two excellent comments arrived in response to Friday's "Two Links" post. Although they reach different conclusions, both are drawn from direct involvement:

From Darlene Almeda: "The commercial photography profession is in desperate need of a certification process much like other vocations. I have known this for decades and, in my opinion, the ease of digital erasing some of the technical necessities film had has only made this clearer.

"Recently I had a new-to-the-neighborhood neighbor approach me about my employment as a full time commercial photography instructor at a local vocational-tech school (post secondary). He said he did not think it was necessary to teach photography anymore since most everybody can do it with digital these days.

"I paused and smiled and asked him if he thought he could do it? He said he thought so. I asked him if he could photograph a six-hour wedding on Saturday and have the images ready for delivery on Wednesday. He stared intently and said he thought so....

"I said okay, let's talk about the wedding since I shot them for years and they are part of what I teach. This is a typical wedding and requires special event lighting, classic portrait lighting, multiple setups and backups, fashion quality formals (advertising usage in local magazine has been pre-planned), wedding directing experience, and a storybook approach to coverage.

"You developed the photography schedule, printed it and met with the bride-to-be a week before the wedding at the various locations to discuss what she should expect for her pictures and how the event will unfold.

"You have expert level Photoshop certification (not the high school level certification) and as soon as Adobe gets Lightroom CC to an expert level, you will pay to sit for that exam as well.

"Your Professional Photographers of America Certification (CPP) hangs in your sitting room and it took you five years to finally achieve it. Some of your art photography work is hanging in City Hall after the mayor's team has selected it for their conference room this year and you are waiting for a print that will hang at the airport for even more local coverage of your photographic artistry (lucky to have been chosen). You must advertise your work through as many art and business-related venues as possible so that your base price of $2,500 per wedding is well known, accepted, and will eventually become part of the wedding/special event carriage trade fabric in the area. Is your work good enough for this, I ask?

"After the Saturday wedding you are exhausted, but come Monday you have to start to work on the 600+ images, complete your sales tax for the month, process print orders, catch up on your Quick Books, and meet with a prospective client for a special event planned many months in the future after their workday is done.

"Now it is Tuesday and you have to get back to the 600+ images you must deliver finished tomorrow. But you have appointments, shipments, and more business to do. Looks like you'll be calling in for one of your part time assistants to see if they can help with the post-processing. After all, you know your clients are the reason your business continues to grow, so Wednesday is delivery day.

"You have two weddings this coming weekend and a couple of portrait sittings before then. Gear needs to be shipped out for repair and Fuji has a fire sale!

"My neighbor has embarrassed himself, but I assure him it is okay. (Just do not ask me to take pictures!)

"I love my job. I had four graduates in May (many do not complete the program). Derek got employed as a commercial photographer for an eCommerce company three weeks after graduation. BJ recently got hired as a part time portrait photographer for a studio business; Jamie's studio business began growing a year before graduation (two year program) and Tatyana works part time for herself as a portrait and food photographer while raising her children and helping her husband build his construction business.

"Believe me, there is a profession in photography if: you understand the business and run it as such; are consistently good in the technical and aesthetics of the profession; are people-oriented; and work very hard because your passion guides you.

"Now if the G-men would get the facts straight and turn photography into a reputable profession worthy of certification, it would benefit all involved.

"I have stepped off my soapbox. Thank you."

And...

From s.wolters: "The financial crisis of 2008 also turned the world of visual communication into a slaughterhouse. The change of media from print to digital did the rest.

"I was lucky and sold my design business in time, but so many colleagues, photographers and illustrators et cetera that I worked with lost their work and had to start a different kind of business. But it’s not all sadness. I still have contact with three photographers I loved to work with.

"Photographer 1 once had an enormous photo studio. Large enough to store a lorry and he always had tons of advanced equipment. I used to hire him for technical work. He sold everything and now uses one camera for everything and does his post processing with his laptop at the kitchen table. He changed from commercial studio work to documentary, mainly for cultural clients. By working hard without having to pay assistants, and with overhead costs that are next to nothing, he still makes a good living. And he is much happier now.

"Photographer 2 always worked exclusively with 4x5 film. She excels at portraits. Sells her few long-lasting projects to galleries and international magazines.
She survived because instead of working local she now operates worldwide.

"Photographer 3 was the one I used to ask for difficult concepts. Annual reports mainly. He says that nowadays there are no such fat assignments anymore. He was lucky with one project that made him so famous that he sells his independent art photography all over the world now and he’s earning more than ever before.

"Don't believe that anyone who buys a DSLR can become a professional photographer, just as it is nonsense that anyone who learns desktop publishing will be a good designer. Free professions all right, but that does not make everyone professional. Malcolm Gladwell is probably right. To become good at something one needs talent and at least 10.000 hours of practice. That’s what schools are for. Giving people time to develop and stopping the ones without enough talent. It’s not about certificates, it’s about what you create. It’s much easier to find a good photographer or graphic designer than a good lawyer, doctor or cab driver."

When it comes to business, it's usually best to hear directly from people who have real-world experience. Thanks to Darr and s.wolters.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Jayson Merryfield: "I'm going to buck the general trend here and mention my own thoughts as a part-time wedding and portrait photographer—the wedding situation that Darlene outlines above is (in my experience) an outlier. One that certainly does require a professional photographer of her caliber, but an outlier all the same, and I believe it to be an intentionally hyperbolic example of what a wedding photography client would demand and/or expect from a photographer.

"I don't know of any professional wedding photographers (local to myself anyways) who regularly turn around their wedding images in four days, and have never encountered a client who balked at my rough guideline of six weeks to deliver a client's images. That does not mean that these clients do not exist, but rather that they are far from the normal wedding client. I admit, my name does not circulate through the upper echelons of photography...but the majority of people who are getting married don't shop in that market either.

"Does enforced scarcity of photographers through a certification process ensure that all people wanting photographic services can obtain them at price points that are feasible and realistic? I meet with many young couples who are in love, wanting to be married, and who are struggling with the costs of getting married, and only want at the end of the day some good-looking pictures that are sufficiently professional looking, taken by someone who has a clue what they are doing. They don't need (and certainly can't afford) the uber-professional that Darlene has outlined above. And so, they contract themselves with less experience, less equipment, a smaller client roster, and longer delivery timelines, and with that accept the risks of paying less and potentially getting significantly less.

"I guess my overarching point being that, like the cameras that people use, the photography that the less-than-trained photographers Darlene describes has reached the point of sufficiency for a large part of the wedding market, for better or for worse.

"It's also worth mentioning that licensing laws and onerous certification processes aren't generally aimed at protecting clients from poor service providers, but more often work to protect existing service providers from competition, and that protectionist stance proportionately harms younger workers trying to get into a market."

John Robison: "I like dinking around with cameras but realized early on that going professional was way too much work. Reading Kirk Tuck's Visual Science Lab has reminded me just how much work. I think a large measure of his success is that he really does like his clients and gets to know them on a personal level; it's not just a show to get their business. Sure, he has the technical chops and art talent, but it is his basic personality that keeps his business going strong."

Steve D: "I'm conflicted on the certification theme.

"My profession is in high level three dimensional CADD (Computer Aided Drafting and Design)in Civil Engineering and BIM (building information management) fields.  GIS [geographic information systems? Steve didn't define this one. —Ed.] is merging heavily with CAD and is a profession all it's own, but it's fantastic to know both. After 35 years I've done a lot of hiring and (with a few notable GIS-related exceptions) I don't put a lot of weight on certifications.

"If you've made it to the interview with me, the 'fundamentals' have been filtered through by HR (background checks, etc). I am not a tough interview. Sure I have expectations that are probably considered old fashioned by today's standards, like decent attire for the interview...and being a little early is always nice. Once settled in I probably come off  as almost slow-pitch softball, but the truth is I'm really looking hard (I think of it as mining) for two qualities that are very hard to fake: real enthusiasm for the craft (do they think what they want to do is really cool or just a good-paying job...both are fine but the former is critical) and, most importantly, does their interest make them hungry to learn more, learn quickly, get their hands on the bigger more interesting projects, equipment etc.? And someday do they hope have my job?

"Honestly, and as hard as the industry keeps trying, I'm yet to see a certificate that can even hint at that."

Adrian Malloch: "These sort of discussions can best be cut down to size by using the 'Is it necessary or is it sufficient' argument. For example; a camera is necessary to be professional photographer, but not sufficient. Talent is necessary, but not sufficient. And so on with business acumen, marketing nous, curiosity, organisational skills, technical expertise, willingness to take creative risks, accounting skills, personal skills, and so forth. A certification process ought to be a necessary requirement, but by itself it is clearly not sufficient."

Specialists

It's easy for humans to be dismissive. It's an integral feature of human nature.

I am not good with plants, so I've always been happily dismissive of flower pictures. But in buying a new house I have inherited the previous owner's garden, which I have to say has been an ongoing surprise and delight throughout the whole Spring. There is always something new coming along, sometimes where you least expect it.

So naturally I have been taking pictures of it. Not because I have any deathless need to commemorate flowers, but because I tend to take pictures of whatever interests me at any moment.

And I have to say, it's not actually that easy.

Who knew? I always assumed taking flower pictures was sort of drop-dead easy. Wrong-O, tulip-bulb-head. I've actually had kind of a hard time with it.

As with anything else it requires observation. Flowers come and go. You basically get to say, "Oh, that's nice," and then a few days goes by and you forget to look at them again and that's it, they're gone.

And everything's sort of chaotic, too. But if you stay sharp-eyed, you can kind of guess that something might be about to happen.

I'm no expert, but doesn't it look like something's about to happen here? I'm keeping my eyes on these bad boys, and will keep you posted.

Specialists
I had occasion to exchange words yesterday with a reader named Tony Roberts, who is a very accomplished golf photographer. (Check out his CV—if you follow golf, you've seen his work.)

Specializing has always struck me as a smart business strategy, and one that has the potential to make your life more fun, too, because you get to spend your life around what really interests you. I've known of people who specialized in thoroughbred racehorse portraits, motorcycle racing, cars (for advertising), cars (for editorial), sailboats, weddings of course, portraits of children, portraits of babies, architecture (interiors, exteriors), all sorts of things—the list is probably very long. I probably wouldn't have made a good specialist, because I'm distracted easily and have lots of interests. But the idea has always appealed to me.

Even art photographers specialize, in a way, some of them. Amateurs too—you might know people who are passionate about landscapes or trains or animals or something else.

I wouldn't want to specialize in flowers, myself. But I have more respect lately for those who do.

Mike
(Thanks to Tony)

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

jeffdmontgomery: "I consider myself to be a generalist as a photographer because I am a university photographer. I shoot athletics, grip and grins, theater, campus life, portraits, summer camps, architecture, food, and the list goes on and on. However when I take photos for myself I tend to point my camera in the direction of flowers. I like all kinds of flowers from wild ones growing on the side of the road to those in gardens. I really believe that being a generalist at work helps me be a better flower photographer."

Rene: "Mike, Over the years of reading your blog, I must admit that I did notice your distain for flower photography which always rankled me as I spent a solid decade doing mostly just that. I'm glad you've finally seen the light, as it were.  :-)  Shooting flowers (especially macro shots), particularly in the wild, can be devilishly hard. I've frequently spent as much as an hour and a half or longer on one flower, just waiting for the wind to die down and the light to be just right same time. After obsessing on flowers for a decade, I finally did burn out on them and couldn't shoot another one no matter how nice."

Kenneth Tanaka: "Specialization is very much essential to achieving success in many (most?) fields, particularly photography. Within what most people would call "flower snapping", for example, there are folks who specialize in photographing gardens and those who are expert in botanical documentation. I've met one of each and can tell you they are just as manic as neurosurgical specialists, particularly the botanical shooters. Then, of course, there are art photographers who shoot flowers, usually dead ones. LFI has a very nice feature on the work of such a photographer named Mike Tinney."

Steve Jacob: "To be financially successful as a photographer it's almost compulsory to specialise in one area, understand the market thoroughly and make sure you know where the commercial meat is. Only then is it possible to define a strategy and build up the competence, contacts and client base necessary to make money.

"The problem is that it becomes very hard to do anything else. You become type-cast, you are constantly competing for work, and if the market turns down, you can't reinvent yourself easily.

"Moreover, constant repetition of the same routines can become boring, and it gets increasingly hard for some to maintain any enthusiasm. A well established market is generally conservative. Taking risks is, well, risky.

"If you are one of those at the top of your game, you have some scope for taking the odd risk, in which case everyone else will soon follow, but in the main your paycheck still depends on giving customers what they want. I think many well known photographers are in that very rut—Steve McCurry included.

"Being an artist by nature makes it even harder. The market for 'art photography' is predominantly one of well worn stereotypical clichés of the kind you see on the walls of coffee bars and new apartments. The main market is interior decorators.

"To be a successful artist on one's own terms requires an extraordinary level of integration with the art establishment itself, which creates a market for you through its contacts with wealthy patrons. It is very seldom something you do in isolation, and in its own way, it is just as prescriptive. 'Be different' is just as tedious as 'be the same.'

"Hobbyists have no such concerns. Much of the time, hobby photography is just an extension of another consuming interest (or set of interests) such as your kids, travel, ornithology, motor racing, trains, horticulture, etc. It's a way to be involved in an activity you love, as is blogging or writing books.

"It just so happens that some hobbyists are also exceptional artisans and artists, and having complete freedom to do whatever they want, they sometimes come up with ideas and styles that are truly interesting. Not often perhaps, a very small minority possibly, but it does happen all the same. You just have to do a lot of trawling to find them."

JOHN GILLOOLY (partial comment): "I believe in most cases the type of job you end up in is a direct reflection of your personality type. For me specializing would not work as I need to be doing something different all the time. I would assume I first chose photography as a profession because it satisfied many of my needs as a person. Then once a photographer, you gravitate to certain areas of the business based upon what is suitable for your personality."

If You're a Pro, What Would You Think—?

Just a brief idle question. Last Friday I posted a link to "Frecklehead Goes Global," a post by English professional Chris Floyd about a personal iPhone snapshot of his, originally posted on Instagram, that was chosen by Apple's advertising agency for use in Apple's global "World Gallery" campaign, "which shows work by 41 photographers across 85 cities in 26 countries." He didn't mention if he'd been paid anything for the usage, but the general assumption seems to be that he wasn't. Probably because pros know that Apple's agency didn't need to pay for the work, and ad agencies don't tend to pay for things unless they have to. There's supply and demand to consider—the agency was looking for iPhone snaps on Instagram, so it's unlikely they were hard up for choices.

Now, I'm not judging, so don't kill me. It's a campaign using mostly amateur work, and amateurs aren't in business to be paid. Still, Chris happens to be a pro. Even so, he was clearly excited and delighted by the attention the photo received. Let's assume for the sake of argument that he and the other 40 photographers weren't paid. (Other than being covered in glory and honor...sort of the ultimate instance of the old adage "you'll get good exposure from it" much dreaded by exploited "creatives" in many fields.)

So I'm just asking—if you're a professional now or have been in the past, how would you feel about that if it were you? On the one hand, it was a personal snapshot, and yes, it's fun and gratifying to have something you did seen on such a scale. 

On the other hand, your picture is being used in a global advertising campaign by one of the richest corporations in the history of the world—in a straight-up professional rights contract, that would easily be worth tens of thousands of dollars. Which Apple can certainly afford.

How do those scales balance in your head?

Reason I ask is that when I was a pro—basically from '88 to '93—I did a lot of little jobs, some of which were almost more work than they were worth, but occasionally I would score a bigger, fatter job, and those occasional "scores" more or less kept me afloat. (Although, after the still-mystifying market downturn of '91—sort of the 1929 of professional photography—those good, "rich" jobs suddenly got fewer and further between).

Again, I'm not judging. There's no controversy here and I'm not trying to manufacture one. It's a hypothetical question—I don't even know the facts. And let's not speculate about Chris per se...he posted his thoughts and he's clearly happy about the whole thing, and he doesn't owe us any insider information about his compensation or lack of it. It's just that this seems like a sort of "signature case," an extreme version of an old, old issue that photographers have been bedeviled by literally since the 1800s...rights and payment, remuneration vs. intangibles, benefit vs. exploitation.

Just curious about how you'd feel about it if it were you.

Mike

UPDATE: It appears Apple did pay for usage rights, but participants were asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) regarding the particulars. This might have been because the professionals negotiated better payment than the amateurs and the agency didn't want the amateurs to know about it? (Again I'm speculating. I should stop that. But it's always troublesome when there are disparities like that.) Several commenters had more about this. —Ed.

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Jim Bullard: "I'd want to be paid. Just because something is 'personal work' or a snapshot doesn't lessen its value to a worldwide ad program for a huge corporation. They are, in effect, making money off my work through the sales it generates and I'd want a cut. That's just fair. If I found a new iPhone in its packaging on the street that a delivery guy dropped, they'd want it back or to be paid for it. Why is my photo that they found on the web any different?"

Thomas Fitzgerald: "Apple does pay for those images. The terms are under NDA which is why anyone who was in the programme can't talk about it, although some did. (I was in the first round last year). Apple was in no way taking advantage." 

Jim Richardson: "I wasn't involved in Apple's World Gallery campaign, but I was involved with Apple when they used one of my iPhone pictures (from Scotland) during the launch event of the iPhone 6. Apple paid for use of the image. The rate my agency (National Geographic Creative) negotiated was appropriate for that kind of usage. We were happy with the transaction. In the case you are talking about for Apple's World Gallery my own opinion is that of course they should pay. It's an advertising usage, multiple countries, prime display, highly valuable to Apple.

"Usage rates should always be determined by the value of the picture to the client, not the value to the photographer."

Arthur: "There's never a bad time to remind people of the classic Harlan Ellison interview on the subject of 'publicity' vs 'pay.'"

Mike replies: Yes, everybody should see that at least once. I've posted that video on TOP...and eventually decided that, given the subject, I should pay Harlan for it. I did, and I got a great reply from him. Here's the post.

David Paterson: "Speaking as a retired professional photographer lucky enough to have enjoyed a 35-year career, I doubt if there was a single year during which I was not asked several times to work for nothing, or next to nothing. The question always came from some ad agency and instead of cash there would be—as you say—'good coverage' or 'prestige,' or they might say they regard this client as a 'charity.' The calculation you had to make was not 'can the client really afford my fees' (they always can), but 'how much do I value my relationship with this art buyer or art director' (who is doing the asking). If I thought there was the potential for good, proper, paid-for work I would go along with it once, but if the same outfit tried the same play again, I would reluctantly turn down this 'opportunity.'

"The problems of obtaining payment in the modern Internet age come down mainly to supply and demand. There are billions of images out there available for free; this echelon of photography has effectively been de-monetised and all photography has been de-valued; why would any corporation pay for something they can get for nothing? Right and wrong no longer come into this; we're beyond that; it's just how things are."

Lorne Black: "According to this year-old article at Cult of Mac the photographers are paid, but sign a non-disclosure about the terms. Dunno it the same is true for this year's ad campaign."

Warren: "As you mention, 'you'll get good exposure from it' is a manipulative abuse heard in many artistic fields. As a musician who has heard this and seen it, this sort of thing makes my blood boil. Anyone who allows their work to be exploited this way does their profession serious harm, victimizing themselves and their peers. Businesses which seek to use this strategy deserve contempt and scorn. While I strive to avoid rudeness or hostility I am always blunt about rejecting such offers. I am also not shy about expressing my thoughts to colleagues who perform for hypothetical incentives in lieu of real compensation."

Richard Parkin: "Don't you think it's interesting that out of the zillions of images on Instagram they picked one by a professional photographer? I don't know how many images they are using in the campaign or whether any/all are by professionals but it tends to show that maybe the camera is not so important.  ;-) "

Jake: "I'm certainly happy that I decided against photography as a profession when that option existed many decades ago but as a happy snapper today, I'd be more than pleased if Apple would use a photo I'd made with one of their iPhones. That is, if I had an iPhone."

Richard N: "Chris Floyd isn't stupid. Of course he got paid."

cameraman: "You can't eat a blue ribbon."

Bob Rosinsky: "Back in the day when I was getting commissions to photograph dogs, the Museum of Modern Art gift shop contacted me. A buyer asked if MoMA could reproduce my dog photos to insert in their new line of picture frames—the kind used for family photos, vacation snapshots, etc. I asked how many different images they wanted to use. The lady listed five or six different pictures. She added that MoMA would be marketing the frames in its catalog, so my pictures would be seen there too. I quoted $500 per photo—a reasonable price. She said they had no budget, but they would give me photo credits, and I'd be getting a lot of exposure.

"I asked if in lieu of payment, MoMA would loan me a few paintings from their collection to decorate my living room. I explained I would paste a card next to each artwork: On loan from MoMA, NYC. I explained it would be good exposure for the museum—a lot of people in central Florida are not aware of MoMA.

"She said 'forget it.' I told her, 'you're passing up a great opportunity for free exposure.'"  

Tim Swan (partial comment): "In my experience as both a designer and a photographer, ad agencies and large companies are the most likely people to not use art without payment or clearly negotiated compensation. They fear copyright lawsuits, and—especially designers—know what it's like for people to want free work in exchange for the exposure."

Camera Department (More Idle Daydreaming)

I said two days ago that if I won the lottery I'd buy three cameras, and several people asked, "which three?"

Okay, here's what I'd really do if I suddenly had truly excessive amounts of money:

I'd start a camera company.

I don't know how much it costs to develop a digital camera model, but I remember hearing in the '90s that a new premium model of camera cost $10–20 million to develop. If those amounts of money were trivial to me, I'd just pay existing companies to develop cameras to my specification and according to my ideas. Then I'd play Steve Jobs and say "yea" or "nay" to what their designers and engineers came up with, and we'd keep working on it until they got it right. Then I'd fund a marketing group to market the products I paid to have created.

Several of my company's products would not cost nearly as much as $10 million to develop.

My company's cameras would not be cutting edge. They would not be calculated primarily to inspire sales. They'd be designed to be used...by photographers, to make the kind of work I tend to care about; and to be fun, since that's what cameras primarily mean to me. (Cameras, that is, as distinct from photography.)

They wouldn't be very much like anything that exists now. Certain of my plans would be considered, shall we say, quirky. And iconoclastic. And not very closely related to current trends.

I've carried my three main ideas in my head with me for many years. As to whether they would sell...no idea. But I guarantee you, you could, and you probably would, have a whole lot of fun with what I would come up with.

So that's my lottery daydream, comma, camera department.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Michael Perini: "Ok, fun daydream, what happened to 'I'd never want to win more than 4 mil, maybe 6'? Now you've in 'if 20 mil were trivial' territory. What percent of our net worth do we consider trivial enough to blow on an idea that may or may not be successful? 1% ? 5%, 10%...? You might need the whole 1.3 billion. That was fast.  ;-) "

Mike replies: You caught me being inconsistent. Okay, if I were to get my 4 million-after-the-dust-settles desire, what I'd do would be to buy SEVEN Fuji lenses, and three different bodies (all the styles—one compact, the SLR-style X-T1, and the rangefinder-style X-pro[x]) and then keep updating the bodies as new ones appeared. I could actually theoretically do that today, without winning anything, but it just seems too indulgent. Sybaritic, even!

Mike the Devil

Got myself in trouble yesterday.

So all right, I admit it, I didn't actually talk to the actual Devil. I was just being a "little devil" myself (it's what my dear mother, now sadly wrestling with dementia, used to call me when I was a small boy). Sorry if I offended anyone. Just trying to be entertaining, as usual.

But the thing is, for better or for worse, "back in the day," to use that horribly hackneyed expression—back when Kodak was the Big Yellow Father and SLRs had ten controls instead of five hundred—National Geographic magazine used to be a prominent and important showcase for photography in the United States and the world.

It wasn't that big a deal—even at its peak, the magazine was not universally revered. "National Geographic" style was a subject of condescension where I went to art school in the '80s, for instance. If someone said of one of your photographs, "It looks like something from National Geographic," it wasn't necessarily a compliment. It might mean the photo was too conventional, and slick and anonymous. Of course that attitude in itself was conventional in a way.

But at least if you said "National Geographic style," most people—not just photographers—knew what you were talking about. The magazine in its heyday was important as shared experience, important for generating original photo essays long after the other photographic newsmagazines had departed. And in some ways it still enjoys the afterglow of that hard-earned and long-deserved reputation.

I'll give the floor on the subject of National Geographic's sale to a media monopoly to Doug Thacker, whose comment was waiting for me when I got up this morning:

National Geographic has been in bed with Murdoch for a long time now. I think it was back in the early '80s (when it was Morning in America) that 'non-profit' got a bad rap (implying as it did that there might be something wrong with profit)—and thus non-profits started calling themselves 'not-for-profit.' In the bargain, attendant to it, boors of the business world said, hey, why aren't you running these things like a business? Here, we'll do it for you. Let's form a partnership. We'll set up profit-making businesses in your name. You'll get additional revenue from the follow-on—and we'll keep the profits.

For at least the last thirty years, National Geographic properties have been mostly indistinguishable, in their appearance and their content, from a for-profit business. I had occasion recently, while traveling, to watch a lot of the National Geographic cable channel, and I was shocked at how frankly insipid most of the programming was. The cable channel, it turns out, is owned and operated by, you guessed it, Rupert Murdoch's company, 21st Century Fox.

This new deal puts not just the magazine but all the NG properties in Murdoch's hands—websites, maps, merchandise, licensing rights, etc. I was a little bit shocked that he got it all (or 70-some percent, anyway) for only $725 million. Seems it ought to be worth quite a bit more. So, good deal for him, I guess.

In any event this deal is a logical conclusion of the non-profit bad, corporate profit good refrain. High noon in America.

Now you might think that rampaging corporatism and the attendant oligarchy it engenders is good, or you might think it's bad. I think it's bad. Media monopolies, especially, are a bad idea, in my opinion. That just isn't how society ought to be arranged. They don't accord with the fundamental principles of American democracy, which traditionally included equality as a foundational aspiration, even though that word has quietly been expunged from patriotic jingoism over the past several decades. I think the rules should be changed, that's all. In a democracy, many voices should be heard. The rules should be changed so that if one "individual" (person or corporation) owns a few newspapers or magazines or TV stations or movie studios or radio stations, we say, collectively, in effect, okay, that's enough, that's all you get—leave the rest to others.

It's just my opinion, and you aren't obligated to agree. And I know you might not. That doesn't mean we can't be friends.

Now back to regular programming. I'll be back tomorrow with an "Open Mike"—unless you think this is one, in which case I'll be back tomorrow with another one. On a completely different subject. Hope you have a nice Saturday.

Mike
(Thanks to Doug)

Original contents copyright 2015 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Gary: "There are some people who are widely revered by those who have never actually met them, however those close to them often have a far less flattering opinion. Here in the UK Richard Branson and Boris Johnson would fall into that category. On the other hand some people are widely reviled by those who never met them, and this is where Rupert Murdoch resides.

"I however have met him, I worked for him for many years and met him regularly. And just to complete the symmetry of this story, I actually found him polite, reasonable, approachable, grounded, intelligent, honest, loyal, fair, and even on occasions exceptionally considerate and understanding! But we're all happier with well compartmentalised heroes and villains, so I guess poor old Rupert will just have to remain reviled."

Mike Fewster: "I'm an Australian and I loathe Rupert Murdoch. He has consistently blighted journalistic ethics in his newspapers. If one looks at the 'job' his media has done on climate change and the potential cost to the planet, he is arguably the most evil man of the last 100 years. It fill me with horror that an institution as well regarded scientifically as National Geographic should now be in his clutches.

"If you have any doubts on this, do some Googling for the writings of his star hatchet man, Andrew Bolt. You may not have had the pleasure in the States of coming across this extension of Murdoch (yet)."

Quote o' the Day: Gordon Cahill

"I'm a full-time photographer. That means I spend nearly 10% of my time taking photographs."

—Gordon Cahill

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[Gordon commented on the "Diversions" post. Truer words.... This is a big shock for a lot of people when they first innocently "turn pro." —Ed.]

Posted by: Mike
(Thanks to Gordon)

Original contents copyright 2015 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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