TO FLICK OR NOT TO FLICK

After the furor over APE's choice of to use Flickr as his tool for his showcase, I came up against some of the same Flickr discrimination myself last week. After meeting a very nice photographer at the Blindspot auction, I emailed him some images based on a conversation we had on regards to alternative process. I sent him a number of images of mine using Flickr. Private, only he could see them, but he emailed me back and from the tenor of his comment was shocked and quite perturbed, that I would take the time to shoot 8x10 but then put them on Fkickr. We joked back and forth about it, but the underlying feeling was that this tool was so beneath me, I should be ashamed to be seen in its company. I was a little dismayed at this but it made me read over the Jackanory's comments about the resentment in some quarters to Rob using this program. What are people thinking? Its reminds me of the hue and cry on Photoshop's arrival."No way, I shoot everything in camera" Wonder if those guys are still saying that today. ITS A TOOL PEOPLE. Use it accordingly. Use your noggins. Nobody has to know you have stuff up on it. There are plenty of times when I need to put something together fast, other than my website for a potential client. You have another tool to show them work, that may tip the scales in your favor, great, thanks. Personally I think clients couldn't care less, they have a lot more shit to think about than Flickr. Use it for what it is and move on. Lets get pass this to more pressing and interesting subjects, like ......Polidori in Versailles. Now where's Soth when you need him?

HAIRCUT HAIKU from laurena

"no way about your hair!
is that a recent cut?
and do you think you have enough hair?
that is not your hair
did you get a blow out?
now i really have to see you."

laurena

Seriously, Who got the best haircut here

Found these sitting in drawer, with tons of other chromes, with the tag TO BE SCANNED. Never got to it, till now. I'm glad I did. How many of these do all of us have sitting in boxes, just that bit to busy to get to them. You happened to be in the right place, right time for nature to give you a private display but your working on a project and these just don't fit in, so they get relegated to some obscure part of the office, only to be happened upon years later. Happens to us all. These kind of finds make me happy.
Click on to enlarge

SURFIN' IRL

I saw this image and story, "ON FRIGID CELTIC WAVES" in the Times on Thursday and couldn't help but laugh. I Love the photo but the incongruous nature of Ireland and surfing makes me howl. Isn't everyones idea of surfing somewhere between Frankie & Annette and Big Wednesday. This is the home I left because the unemployment line trailed from one end of the country to the other, now scads of people are coming with the highest of techie surf gear, hangin' ten, checkin' the gnarly surf in the most remote regions. Well done. It takes a brave soul to go to Bundorran at the best of times, look at that image , doesn't that look fun. Glad to see the rain still keeping its word, that no matter what sport you take up it will be a willing partner

NOTHING IS FREE, and if it is, is it worth it?

1,314 photographers saw something last week and did something about it. Not to disparage our cities surveillance advertising, but that was some turnout for Rob " A Photo Editor". Now all we have to do is wait for Rob's decree and in the process do like CNN or MSNBC and break down the social experiment aspect of the whole schbang till we are blue in the face. But seriously, it was very interesting to see who showed up for the dance and why. There were some old names I hadn't seen in a while, quite surprising. Plenty of names that were not familiar at all, but it was what people decided to show, not who, that was so interesting.... actually confounding. Andrew Hetherington wrote about taking part in the experiment and what he felt were the ups and downs of such an exercise, all of it I felt was really pertinent to how we behave as professionals in our business. Sometimes our business feels like high school, not quite professional, but what you gonna do . What I found mystifying is how people made their decisions on what to show. Over and over people put up images that had no real connection to the work on their websites. What in heavens name is that about. Yes its Flickr but do you really think that someone editing is going to pour over your trip to Italy, even though you shoot high end Still life in the real world. Get a grip. Have people learned nothing from reading these blogs in regards to producing and submitting coherent bodies of work? Some people decided to partake but made the images private, isn't the whole idea for people to see your work, or is it only the right sort of people are given the privilege. And then some people sent their images to Rob via email so as not to dain mixing with the Flickr riff raff. Egalitarian my ass. Maybe its the free aspect, I would like to talk to someone at PDN and asked them if a $40.00 entry fee makes any difference. I don't mean to be doggin anyone in particular here but if I read one more blog about how hard it is to find work and how can we get in the door, and this is how the business responds to a free "get in the door", well. Lets hope it turns out to be what it truly was supposed to be, but as they say the proof will be in the pudding. I am excited to see the outcome but I'm positive we will not have heard the last of this once the envy'd list is revealed

OLAF OTTO BECKER

Olaf Otto Becker has a sublime show finishing at Cohen Amador in NYC on the 14th of March and then heading West to Stephen Cohen Gallery in L.A..This is well worth the visit. Jorg has nice interview with him here.

How to Succeed in Advertising When All You Have Is Talent

Alright, so you want to be a big time advertising shooter, get some of that cash that's floating around. Sick of editorial day rate and PE's yankin your chain, well here's a story of how it can get squirrelly when you play with the big boys even if you have 20 years experience.
A friend of mine who has been in the advertising game for that lenght of time has a client, national brand, six quality shoots a year. Nice base to keep his Manhattan studio open and collect other clients along the way. Nice working relationship with the agency and client, though just like any work relationship, one month they love you, next cant stand you, one day your a genius, next a hack. But this has been going on for years and everyone gets what they want. Sooo, the brand gets bought out by another company about six months ago. Will that have any effect on my friends job security? who knows, but he's been doing this so long that if things get hinky he feels he will be able to suss it out. Along comes another shoot, nothing strange, this one quite big, keep three weeks on hold. That means 20 freelancers. This is a pretty fair amount of responsibility and production to get this together. Now its getting closer to the supposed shoot day, stylists are calling hourly to know if the job is officially booked. At this point it hadn't been, which is a bit strange, but no biggie. He uses 5 stylists, 5 assistants, 2 producers plus numerous other people depending on the shoot. Some are beginning to get other jobs which means trying to find replacements, the core group stays but they need to know whats happening, like now. He's shooting another job so all these people calling becomes a royal pain. Anyway, a couple of days before the job he gets a call from the agency. Are you free this week, the client wants a SHOOT OUT, between him and 2 other photographers. A shoot out, how fucking corporate can you get, a nice way of saying you might be getting the chop. The new people at the top want a new direction. They want to see what you can really do, as if the last six years working on this account was shot by some imposter. What a crock, but you gotta play the game up to a point. Some of you might say you've had your run, move it, but its his living and he's worked damn hard to get where he is. You got to pay the bills. But he tells them not a hope, knowing that he is the incumbent and hasn't a chance of winning that game. If the client feels the need for change or the agency is feeling the heat, your dead. Apologies all round, but still the agency wants to keep the hold, (in case the other shooters suck). Imagine calling all the freelancers up and telling them you want to put them back on a three week hold but my job is in jeopardy and there is a really good chance its not going to come in anyway. Click!!!!, is what you hear on the other end of the phone. So sorry my guy says, can't do the SHOOT OUT, everyone has to move on and get other work. He leaves with his dignity and a couple of months short in mortgage payments. He's feeling some serious pressure though. How will this play out with the client, how are the agency going to feel, freakin landlord's going to looking for his, etc. Everybody who has been waiting around for weeks for this to happen is pissed but that's the nature of the game. Its called freelance for a reason.
Fade to two days later, he gets am email from the agency seeing if he was available for a Pre Pro the following Tuesday. "Of course the first week is off, can't get layouts together, but we will have the meeting and firm everything up". Emails back, "that sounds great". Now to any normal person this would sound like game back on right?, he stood his ground and they blinked. But this is advertising photography a little bit like black magic, lots of deceit cloaked in fairy dust. He stops short of trying to get everyone back on hold till he hears from the client. Good thinking, because the Tuesday comes and goes and not a dickybird from anybody. Wed. Thur. Fri. also. After some back and forth he finds out the agency went ahead and shot with someone else. Led him on to think everyone was working feverishly on the said layouts. Not one call from anybody at the agency, or the client , who he is on very good terms with. Not a care for all the people who lost out on other jobs while waiting for the OK. If he had not been so savvy he could have been out serious cash, not to mention the mindfuck of trying to figure out if you have lost your bread and butter for good. Of course there is always the chance they will go to another shooter when you call their bluff but still.... give the guy a call.
Maybe you have noticed I really haven't once mentioned photography in this post, not a word about cameras, prints vs web, film vs digital. It all has little or nothing to do with the time of day, its business pure and simple. So if you like the idea of twenty of thirty people screaming at you and blaming you for the loss of their income, the downfall of their product, and not having the imagination to follow their Michelangelo like layouts, then for sure, this is the career for you.

DEATH IN THE FAMILY

The news that Polaroid had decided to close down their Massachusetts site didn't come as any great shock but as practicing Large Formatist it broke my heart. There are plenty of people still in the business who remember the days before instant film but for myself Polaroid was thriving and King when I entered the game. I remember my first job at a big time advertising studio, putting the the order to Alkit for the new batch and had to ask the first assistant three times, if in fact this was correct. I couldn't imagine anyone would use that much 'roid. And the price, suffice it to say they spent more on Polaroid in one order than on my salary for half a year. We ordered Type 55 B/W Pos/Neg, we had to have the neg. How could you tell it was in focus if you didn't close down to 32 or 45 and pull the neg and look at it on a light box. When I was first shown this I thought this is the game for me, all these little nick/knacks, love it. Type 59 Color, Type 809 Color and the great Type 803 B/W. Cross processing the B&W and Color became a bit of a thing for many photographers. Robert Maxwell, Jose Picayo among others were all great practioners. Whenever I shot people I always tried to get the people in charge of the dough to try cross-processed. Can you imagine if you based your look solely on that, you would be up shit creek? But most people were smart enough to see all this coming. I stopped using 803 on my personal work a while back, because a) with Time exposures it was kind of pointless, and b) the real reason, I just couldn't afford it unless someone was paying for it. I adopted the slogan ©Polaroid is for Pussies, you should know how to expose at this point, but that now seems a little harsh in sight of our great loss. My fave Polaroid story comes from a few years back, I was shooting Lou reed, who would rather have been anywhere but getting a photograph taken. He wanted it done at the double. No problem, only two shots I told him. Great!. Only one camera, no back up so this was it . Ready and......Anyone who has ever heard Polaroid getting stuck in the processor rollers knows from where I speak. Think large cats in heat but with a little added crunch. This did nothing to bolster Lou’s view of me and when my assistant put it in the second time and it happened again, this only louder and longer, you can only imagine the faux look of "no big deal ' on my face. He's a mean bastard Lou, so I had to grab a quickie while he wasn't looking. Not my greatest, but these things happen.
Now it seems like I also now have 3, door stop like Processors for sale. Who knew it would all end like this. From the heady heights those greats have fallen.

Mr New York

The Museum of the City of New York has many photo goings on this month, but front and center is the work of iconic New York photographer Rudy Burckhardt, his show Street Dance opened Feb 1. Also added to this is a film series of his, 15 shorts he had made over his illustrious career, this Sunday coming. The above image is from his book Afternoon in Astoria, a project near and dear to my heart. Check out the cool MOMA album designed in 2002. Could that image have been shot anywhere in postwar Europe? Wow. No its Queens. Antonioni eat you heart out.

50th Anniversary

Stan B over at Reciprocity Failure read my post on Azo film and recommended looking at the work of Joseph Mills. He uses outdated paper with a specific toning technique which includes varnish and achieves a beautiful washed out look, not unlike 8x10 cross processed Polaroid. His work Inner City can be seen here, represented by the Cohen Amador Gallery in NYC

SNOWJOB

With the blizzards Upstate today it reminded me I hadn't posted our own New Years Eve snowfall.

BLACK MAGIC JOHAN: Santana comes to NYC

My last posting on the New York Mets was in reference to their historic meltdown at the end of last season, so I'm sure this will once again be the kiss of death as the best pitcher in MLB, Johan Santana, in his prime comes to the Mets in a four way trade from the Minnesota Twins. I say this because just like the Democratic party the Mets have a way of shooting themselves in the foot, of turning a sure winner into something, completely...not a sure winner. Visions of Frankie V "Sweet Music" Viola, come churning into my head. The last great Twin to arrive back home with all the credentials for an amazing run. Twenty game winner, Cy Young Award winner, World Series winner, New Yorker and a lefty, what could possibly go wrong? Lets hope we don't have a 36 degree April day and Willie decides to leave Santana out there to pitch 158 go 'rounds. A late season collapse of 2-11 in his second year does not a joyous homecoming make. As Dylan says "Don't fall apart on me tonight babe, I just don't think that I could handle it". So here's to our new arrival and may all the good magic, whether it be white, black or from Carlos himself, be with him and our team.

ABOUT FACE

Putting together a cohesive body of work can be daunting and end up taking what seems like forever but here is Bill Bernstein with not one but two completely different portfolios, both coming out in under a calender year. One of my first posts was for his Paul McCartney show last Feb in Soho. His new one is at the Bowery Mission opening on Thur night called "About Face", an essay on the men who daily try to turn their lives around using the Mission as a starting off point. Bill has volunteered at the mission for many years and knows many of the men personally so look forward to seeing this intimate insight into what can sometimes be a heartbreaking or heartwarming endeavour.

OUT OF DATE

I'm a big fan of using all sorts of outdated film, paper etc, just to see what you will get, most of the time not much, but its worth a try. This present from my friend Lori was even too much for me. Check out the date.

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY: THE CHRISTMAS CLASSIC

For all, not just the Irish, who will not be going home for Christmas. Fairytale of New York in twenty years old this December. I know you've heard it a million times already but you can watch how all the boys looked in their prime, yes TWENTY YEARS. I have very fond memories of the song itself as I returned to Ireland, for the first time in five years, the year it was released. There was little or no crossing of the cultures at that time, very little MTV, little in the computer world and certainly no Internet. I had not heard it in NYC. I don't know if it was even released that first year so to arrive in Ireland and find some old mates with the # 2 song in the UK, #1 in Ireland and for it to be set in my new home town, in the middle of Christmas, seemed right and fitting indeed. It was being sung in every pub by every man, woman and child who had any kind of a voice at all. The fact that it has held up so well is a testament to Jem Fenner and Shane for writing a brilliant and poignant piece of music. That it has reached the heady heights, in terms of its Christmas legacy, makes all us Pats and exPats and New Yorkers a little proud, a Christmas song of our own. It was voted the #1 Christmas song of all time in the UK the last 3 years running. And of course here's to Kristy, who must be looking down on all this and wondering how that old " cheap lousy faggot" is still alive and singing that song. She must be thinking "Happy Christmas me arse" is right.

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA WILDFIRE REMNANTS

Here are some of the images from my series of the California wildfires. I set out on this project with very little preconceived ideas about what it might look like except I wanted to shoot large format(naturally) and give it my own spin. Shot over a period of three days, just as if it was an assignment, I covered a fair amount of territory and captured varying degrees of destruction and how it affected its surrounding environment. My wife's family and many friends all live close to the firing lines so I'm reasonably familiar with these deserts, which was a help and it also made it more personal as we followed the coverage very closely as the fires themselves were raging. Unlike Katrina, this is such a personal almost individual catastrophe. Not everyone was touched by the blazes, the randomness at which the fires touched down meant people from the same street shared very different experiences. Your house burned to the ground, your next-door neighbor's fine, not a scratch (plate 1). How do you get your head around that? Living in the desert the blaze could pass you by 10 feet and your safe, or pick you out like a heat seeking missile and torch you (Plate 3). On the photographic side, after looking at 30 or so images I found some familiar threads running though this and my previous series which was pleasing, but it feels unfinished so a return in the new year is in the works.

THE WEEKENDER (Yuletide Edition)

The Weekender and wife took the ludicrously scenic Route 22, up New York State, instead of the Taconic to Old Queechy last Saturday in hopes of procuring all thinks Kringle. On leaving Millerton and coming over a hill we were offered this Grandma Moses vantage of the most beauteous Taconic Hills. It really doesn't get any more Yuley that this. Go here for larger view

A CHRISTMAS TRADITION

This is one of the many thing I love about being a New Yorker. I heard this show the first year I arrived in the city and thought I'd found everyone I had been looking for.

"Just before Christmas in 1970, Jonathan Schwartz decided to do something a little different for his morning show at the late, still-lamented WNEW-AM.

He asked his father, songwriter Arthur Schwartz, to fly in from London and join him to talk about music, play some of that music and sing songs.

Thirty-eight Christmases later, Arthur Schwartz is gone. But the show goes on, and Sunday on WNYC (93.9 FM), Jonathan will host what has now become his annual Christmas talk-and-music gathering, noon-4 p.m.

This time around, guests will include Andrew Bergman, John Wideman, Charles Osgood, Tierney Sutton, the John Pizzarelli Quartet, John Guare, Jessica Molasky, Tony Monte, Mark Simone, Hillary Kole, Mike Renzi, Jay Leonhart, Judy Carmichael, Harry Allen and various members of the Schwartz family - which in a real sense, says Schwartz, describes everyone there.

"It's a show that's about family," he says - a family that makes music and talks about a wide range of subjects in a way that makes the listener feel part of the family, too.

It's one of New York radio's warmest holiday traditions." NY DAILY NEWS.

Along with Phil Schapp he has probably the greatest encyclopedic mind for American Popular Music but in terms of broadcasting he has no peer

This is simulcast on XM Satailite radio

Along with Aimee Mann's 2nd Christmas Extravaganza on Friday night, this will get me totally in the spirit of the season.