These are video stills.
Posted 6 months ago
These are video stills.
Posted 6 months ago
I was hired (payment terms still to be confirmed) to shoot a band interview and some live performances at the Vanguard that would go up on their website. It was something different and I was very interested to see how the camera (and I) would go in a live situation like that.
Interview Planning
I didn’t know too much about the shoot before-hand. It wouldn’t have made a huge difference to how I would have gone about things in this case. I had the equipment that I had. I did ask whether there were some lights available and I should have known that even when the answer is yes, the answer really is no. It is never the right kind, or enough. Wesley lent me a key light but it was missing a diffuser. He also gave me some good tips in terms of really concentrating on the sound as the key to interviews. Although I had the sense to bring a pair of headphones with me, I didn’t have enough sense to make those closed, sound-cancelling cans, which is what you actually need.
Interview Setup
I arrived an hour and a half early, and that was a good thing because it took that long to get things looking right. The band room was a bit of a mess of stuff but there was a very interesting gold plated wall and a nice deep red on the other wall in that corner.
I tested the light that I had bought and it was nice and bright (too bright without the diffusor) and a nice tungsten colour. Good, at least everything could be seen. I set up the camera to point at the corner and set up the audio recorder.
Then we got down to moving a big piano out of the corner and thinking about what could be used as seats. Originally I was thinking about the couch but it was way too large and a hideous green. There was a shabby looking bench covered in a zebra print and a straight wood back which would work well with two people on it and then we needed something for the interview. In another room I found another of the same bench but also an inflatable yellow horse. Yup, we went with that.
The floor was vacuumed and things positioned and it was looking good. There was another light there that I tried to use as a hair light but it was too strong and it looked daylight balanced and made things look very funny. Decided to go with one light.
Next I tried out focusing, positioning a model in all the positions and the DOF covered everyone well. The zoom function at 10x magnification worked very well for getting focus
The problem was composition. There wasn’t much room to move back and still have a clean frame (doorways and other junk gatecrashed) so I was fairly close, the problem was that I had to cut off the legs to get the headroom in. In the end I lowered the sticks and managed to get everything in. The performers bought in their own guiters and really filled out the frame which I wasn’t even thinking about. It looked good.
I recorded some test video and transferred it to the notebook to have a look. It looked good. Especially the colours.
Next I tested the sound and very quickly realised the hopelessness of trying to monitor with open cans. Really need closed, even sound-cancelling headphones with the volume turned up higher to monitor independent of the real sound in the room compared to the monitor output. This is a crucial purchase.
Ok, everything was now ready and we were short of time as the performers had to do sound checks and the interviewer had to leave at a certain time.
We got going.
Interview Recording
Everything functioned pretty well at the beginning except sound monitoring and consequently the sound was a little low especially for one of the artists who was a little quieter than the others.
The light really did look harsh I thought. But that’s better than too little light.
The big problem occurred because of the heat in the room created by the big light and lack of ventilation etc. etc. The camera started overheating at around 7 minutes but kept on working. At around 10 minutes I asked the interviewer and performers to stop and that we’d need a minute. The moment passed pretty quickly but it wasn’t the most professional bit. One of the performers mentioned the continuity issues that would result from him drinking the wine. I realised this was actually a problem and how I was going to edit things together now with the break and not make it look cheesy and amateur.
The interview lasted just over 20 minutes and I didn’t have to shut things down. It visuals took up about 7 gigs. My battery was down to two bars (I didn’t start from full) I really need two batteries to do this kind of work.
Doing visuals and separate sound is a hard task for one person.
Concert Footage
An hour later I moved downstairs to film from the mezzanine levels the actual performances. I started late because I was talking to an old friend I hand’t seen for awhile.
The light levels were very low and I had to push up to 3200 ISO. which wasn’t actually that much of a problem. The other thing I unfortunately had to do was go down to a shutter speed of 60 when I was shooting 1280x720 50p. I should have been at 100. It resulted in some seriously unnatural movement. I’m not sure why the camera let me go down only to that. I also had to shoot at 2.8 and it resulted a pretty narrow DOF even at the 20m distance I was from the stage. Focus wasn’t a big problem though.
The big problem was the battery running out over such a long period. Deciding what songs I actually wanted to shoot and running out of space on the two 16GB cards for the 3 hour set from three performers. Sound monitoring was also an issue.
Can’t use exposure compensation when on M and shooting video.
I was able to get a CD from the sound guy which should be far better quality that then the very hollow stuff that the recorder got.
Matching up all the disparate video and audio (sometimes I’d shut down video and leave audio on) is going to be a pain but not impossible. Better synchronicity between the two would be better for next time.
Pack up was efficient and I didn’t leave anything behind.
All in all, the work is pretty boring and doesn’t need much creativity at all. Will see if there is any payment involved. It was of course, excellent to try it. Not really the direction I want to go in. Main limitations were overheating, sound monitoring, battery, and card space.
I will be editing over the next couple of days and will write up that experience separately.
Posted 2 years ago
Photo by Unknown
This is an excerpt from an email to a friend explaining what I want to do for the next seven or eight months.
I walked the streets of Paris tonight thinking about what I should do next. I’ve been thinking about this a lot since leaving Berlin.
Bangladesh was a huge success, even if the fruits aren’t ripe enough to eat yet. I took the first steps in learning to work hard, and I have started to find out how I look at the world that is different to everyone else’s. Next, I was confused between going to New York to try to sell what I have (which would mean spending 6 months there making contacts) or coming home to Australia to first learn to print, second get a gallery, and third a grant to do the printing, a beautiful catalogue and a show and if I’m lucky a bit left over for the next trip.
I will be getting a tattoo on my arm which says ‘work.’ It will be in the clearest of typefaces, the most unadorned, Helvetica. It will be a centimetre high and run down my wrist. It will only say ‘work.’ It will be with me for the rest of my life. It describes my greatest weakness, and it will describe how and why I became great. I want to see that word for the rest of my life. I haven’t talked to many people about it but others who do not make art don’t understand why I’m doing it. I was initially going to get ‘Arbeit macht frei’ which is what the Nazi’s sarcastically (or maybe in a bout of compassion) wrote above the entrances of many of the concentration camps. It transliterates as ‘Work makes free’ or ‘Work will set you free.’ Garry Winogrand when interviewed and asked why he did what he did replied ‘because when I’m photographing I forget that I exist. And for me that’s very attractive.’ I didn’t know it, but I’ve always felt the same way.
And so I let the as yet imaginary mark (I have been writing it on my left wrist in pen) be my guide. Where can I be which will get me closest to working again? And the answer for now is that I’m most excited about Australia. The home my dad chose for us in 1982. My uncle told me in Dhaka, “you know, I really wanted to send your dad to America, to New York, but for some reason he really wanted to go to Australia, he was set on it, and so he went. I couldn’t stop him.” I want to explore the impact of that decision. I want to explore what country my dad bought us to. I have been working on some ideas which are more specific:
The work needs to be new, new, new. It’ll be a personal reaction and that’ll help but I also need to make sure it has never been done before. Need to research what photographs of Australia have been taken before but be able to resist that work when I’m out there and make my own thing. Maybe I will get ideas from historical photographs and paintings. Also need to see the work of the great American lanscape photographers and painters from the 19th century. Also would like to reread my history books from year 7 and 8 on Australian outback history if I can find them!
On whether I will be bored out in the outback. I want to find that out. It is the big unknown, just like it was for Cook when he sailed past these mostly barren shores. I want to be in this state of ambiguity and then see what my reactions are. It is something I have to try. But I believe “there are pictures to be made out there.” I also have a healthy respect for boredom (but not for being uninspired). I think boredom is important in the creative process. Whether you can work through it is a good determiner for whether the work will be good or not. There were times I was really bored with the work I was doing in Bangladesh and didn’t think it was any good, but I pushed through that.
… I plan to come back within a week, or at a maximum, a month (If I go to Egypt). I will probably spend a couple of weeks at home with my parents whatever I do and then I’ll need to decide where I want to be based for a guerilla art attack on the establishment:
So that’s another 2 or 3 months in either Sydney or Melbourne. Hopefully Melbourne because I really don’t want to stay with my parents, but that’d probably be the cheapest, most sensible option. It would be fun to be based in a vibe that isn’t Sydney, but the galleries that actually sell anything are probably in Sydney so I don’t know. More thinking and research required.
I also would like to go on a trial attempt for a month maybe in NSW and see if it will be fruitful. Prototyping. I’ll probably do this on my motorbike and so on.
…
Also, as you can see I’m really directed about what it is that I want to do and the time frames I would like to get things happening by. The actual trip can be fairly open-ended. I want time to be open hearted to the country and have all my plans and expectations and research totally upturned and thrown out. But I want to have good stuff to try to do another show and have enough money to get to New York for a while after that. … (Secretly I’m thinking 4 to 6 months for the actual trip. I know that’s unromantic to have a timeline, but that’s roughly what I’m thinking.)
The other issue I’ve been thinking of is that of loneliness. It’s strangely important in my work and is intimately tied in with my current ideas about Australia and the work I’m planning to do. I wonder if I need to be lonely when I’m doing this work? I wonder if I want to be lonely?
…
Posted 2 years ago
What is new about me as a street photographer is that I am getting closer to another human being on the streets than anyone ever has with a camera. There are some reasons why I’m doing that.
One is because by getting closer you feel more. Your senses perceive more from being closer. And feeling is a key part of understanding. Two, is that by using a short lens and using depth of field as a hint, I can show heads which look three dimensional. Like something real instead of something flat (flatness being the essence of a photo that I wish to resist in this case). A third reason, is less idealistic. I want to do something that will be hard for anyone else to do. A white person, with the visual sophistication required, couldn’t get as close to Bangladeshis as I’m able to with the colour of my skin. And a Bengali (with some notable exceptions) doesn’t have the visual sophistication. In Bangladesh the photo training is woeful, but worse, there are no books and resources here, and even worse, there isn’t a culture of intellectual visual innovation (mirroring the rote learning taught in schools). So, the third reason is competition.
But in the Architecture of the Human Face, a fourth very simple reason is the most important, detail. Looking at a close-in of the first photo allows the stories of this man’s face to flourish. You notice the number of times he has fixed his glasses with his pins. How did he break them? How poor is he that he has to do this to such a cheap pair of glasses. Looking at the glass, how can he see through such cloudiness? Was he blind? And there are aesthetic stories. Looking at the colour of the frame, at the patterns etched on the glass. And then larger issues develop out of the detail. Looking at his nose and the chunks that have been taken out of it through age. Is that what will happen to me? There are more stories. Both in number but also in extrapolation and in the differences between the people who will be looking at the photos. Perhaps for someone this picture reminds them of their father. Or the gasping mouth a reference to the moment of death. I don’t know. What I do know is that I have to show as much of the detail as clearly as I can so that people can start telling stories from the pictures.
There is yet another advantage to the detail. It’s attractive. It’s interesting in an aesthetic sense. The first job of art is to make you look at it. Seeing these faces like this, lit like this, coloured like this should draw you in. When printed larger and with care it will be even more attractive. All of the deeper meaning will only be accepted if you can attract (or at least interest) the audience.
So, detail is important to me for various reasons; so that I can feel more and understand, so that I can hint at three dimensions, so that my art is new and hard for others to replicate, and lastly and most importantly to create a density of narrative, to have enough detail to tell the vast stories of age and difference and destruction, and emotions that I want to tell.
Posted 2 years ago
Earnest
If you do not come from Berlin, it will take you fair amount of time, and a fair amount of your will to resist Berlin. I mean, to avoid its Sirens of a good time, of good things, and good people. This is a great place to be, but not to become in because it is just too joyfully, too overwhelmingly distracting. Too seductively alien. This would be a place where you’d need to invest time into settling. Learning the language, making friends, building a network for your art, finding out what art you could make here etc.
Hipster
What do you mean ‘become’, I don’t even know what you’re talking about.
Earnest
Well, to become something. An artist, or musician, or taxidermist. To start out in and learn the skills to do what you need to do.
Hipster
Well then. You’re totally wrong.
Earnest
Oh yeah?
Hipster
For so many reasons that I can’t even order them in my head properly. One, let’s talk about being an artist. It isn’t just about technique in the hands and in the head. It isn’t all just mechanical. It’s about who you are and what you’ve seen and the way you interpret that world and then express that interpretation. Being somewhere like Berlin, where the best of what’s being made is collected, in great bookshops, libraries, galleries, in good internet access is crucial. But even more important is the ‘scene.’ The shitty party scene, or the art scene, but the scene made up of 5 or 10 other life changing people that you are going to meet, be around, compete with, antagonise, help, be helped by, learn and teach to. This place is a fly trap for intelligence, beauty, and sophistication. Just being here is going to fundamentally improve your aesthetics. You will become a better person.
Earnest
But what you see as advantage can also be seen as disadvantages. There are many artists who worked at a distance from the cultural centres. Some of them were the most original and had the unique beauty of Galapagos flowers. Is a library going to make your sculpture? Is minimal techno going to make your painting? Is that cute girl you’re seeing that you met at 10am at a club going to write your novel for you? Maybe all these things will help, but they have the potential to hurt. To take you away from the lonely, hard, rejection filled process of making art. You don’t actually need much to make art. And constraints are like candy to a good artist. Art comes from these constraints.
Hipstser
I see what you mean, but I still contend that Berlin is good for some. Let me be narrower then. Berlin is great when you are starting out. When you need to learn the history of what you make, when you find out how an artist lives, and live that lifestyle (and learn to survive on kebabs), it’s also important to kick you up the rear if you need it. When you start seeing all of the galleries full of art (you only have an inkling at that point how truly bad and not new or original all that art is) you come to a fork in your life. Are you going to play hard or are you going to go away and play something else.
Earnest
I can agree with that. I think you have to come here, spend some time, soak it up, and even, shock, horror, enjoy the aesthetics, the environment, but then when you need to make you need to get out of here and be either somewhere quiet if you make the plastic arts, or somewhere loud if you make photography.
Hipster
I do still think that there are real advantages to having to adjust to life here. Learn a new language, see a subtly different kind of life, be ‘central.’
Earnest
I know that all sounds very sensible, but it does also come down to your individual case. I can’t work here. I’m not excited by what I’m seeing, and I don’t feel like pointing things out, and by that I mean, taking a photograph. For me all of the other great things about Berlin are actually a cancerous growth, slowly taking over the healthy, productive aspects of my art.
Hipster
Right. Of course it’s different depending on the work you’re doing.
Earnest
It is also a question of degrees. All those are good things, but you have to ask how good. So much of that stuff is about consumption. And consumption is the lazy way out. You avoid the hard work of making or doing something yourself. You get the end product and there is a modicum of skill in knowing how to enjoy and use that product but you don’t get as much out of that, you don’t learn as much as you would if you had to make that thing from scratch and make all the mistakes and success and the deep understanding of the problem that comes along with that process.
Hipster
But you aren’t going to just go and make some minimal techno are you? You’re not going to put that into a railyard club.
Earnest
But minimal techno isn’t my art. It’s nice. It makes me happy. It may even effect my art. But the point is that the affect is too low for the investment of time that I’d have to make. The investment is too low in comparison to me clicking the shutter release in the Congo.
Hipster
I can see that. But life isn’t just about working.
Earnest
Yes. For me it is. It is what makes me happy in the long run. That important happiness that comes from taking stock of your life. I want to come to places like Berlin for the fun of it. To get a quick taste of what is considered normal now, but in the end I have to go beyond in.
Hipster
But here’s my point number two, you need to survive. And a key drive for an artist is to have your work shown right? To have people see it and react to it. You can’t get that out in the Australian outback.
Earnest
Now, here you’ve found a conflict in me. I think that a really good, original artist has no need to for an audience. Or if he does, he is happy with an audience of one, himself. I think most great art has come from the depths of the individual to please and allay himself and his complexities, his urges, his failings. Now it is true that we need to live. But do you need to live from your art? It doesn’t take much money to live. And, as a photographer you are decidedly reality based, isn’t it interesting to have jobs and be in places where you see a different reality to the artist that is supported by a gallery.
Hipster
That’s all important, but you want to be seen right? Let’s go further, you want to be remembered by millions!
Earnest
We humans are such a failed, fallen species. And artists are the most fallen of all, the weakest in dealing with their desires and wants. Of course I want to be in the biggest gallery in New York, and earn enough to live just decently. And for that reason to I think you have to come to a place like Berlin. But really Berlin is a kids playground, you may learn here, but you don’t trade. The places to go to sell yourself is New York, and London, and Paris, and Koln. And make no mistake you have to go there and you have to be there for a little but, there is no jet setting in as a new artist and having it all happen, no matter how good your work. You have to settle and make some friends, and go to the galleries, the openings, and make opportunities to show your work. The magazines I think are very important because they are seen my the most people. Sending emails is the creation of the devil. It is a supremely ‘low-touch’ method of selling and doesn’t work well. It’s as easy to delete an email as it is to sneeze. You’ve got to turn up at their doorstep and beg with your eyes for them to see your photos. Of course once they see your photos it’s a done deal. And yes I want my opening with people spilling out into the street.
Hipster
But this is where the conflict comes in again right? Is that where important art comes from? Hipsters like me in galleries?
Earnest
No. But it is important indirectly. An artist needs hope more than nearly anything else. Not constant, ever lasting hope, just enough to get him to the next work. Like gas stations and petrol. You can be out there in the middle of nowhere working your butt off but you really don’t know whether you are producing something great. You have inklings, but you’re not sure. Being in a place like this allows you to test that.
Hipster
But perhaps the test is a poor one?
Earnest
Yes you could be right. There aren’t that many people here who have really studied, and who’s heart really feels what art is for. That it must be new, and not just competent. Or even a lack of people that believe that art needs competence! But there are those people, and you can find them here. But the thing to know is that as humans you are essentially finite in your memory and your time. You don’t need a hundred of these people. You need some good ones that you like, and want to be around and can trust. Those people live in other places to, and although their numbers may not be as high, they are more ‘earnest.’
Hipster
So are you going to get out of here?
Earnest
Soon, soon. I need to get a tatoo. And there is an amazing exhibition of the Flemish masters that I want to see. But after that and Paris I need to get back to harsh realities of life at its basic. Go to North Africa for a bit and then go home to Australia, and figure out what home means. New York will have to wait, as much as that hurts to say. I will need to show, but I will try doing that through magazines and shows in Sydney (where people will actually turn up) and Melbourne. After that I’ll make an attack on New York. God it hurts to say that. I feel like just going there now with what I have and making it big, but realistically I need to do more work. Work.
Hipster
Here, have a joint you serious motherfucker.
Posted 2 years ago
New Work - The Horse-like Mystery of Welding (link)
It’s that time again. A time we all awkwardly wait around for—new work! This time it’s some ‘seriously awesome’ pictures of dare-devils welding in Dhaka without following any safety procedures whatsoever. Well, they are wearing highly flammable ski masks, I guess.
Here’s some mandatory ejaculate (used as a noun) about the why:
We are all inclined to be quick with the verdict that ‘things do not look like that’. We have a curious habit of thinking that nature must always look like the pictures we are accustomed to. It is easy to illustrate this by an astonishing discovery which was made not very long ago. Generations have watched horses gallop, have attended horse-races and hunts, have enjoyed paintings and sporting prints showing horses charging into battle or running after hounds. Not one of these people seems to have noticed what it ‘really looks like’ when a horse runs. Pictures and sporting prints usually showed them with outstreatched legs in full flight through the air—as the great nineteenth-century French painter Théodore Géricault painted them in a famous representation of the races at Epson, figure 13. About fifty years later, when the photographic camera had been sufficiently perfected for snapshots of horses in rapid motion to be taken, these snapshots proved that both the painters and their public had been wrong all the while. No galloping horse ever moved in the way which seems so ‘natural’ to us. As the legs come off the ground they are moved in turn of the next kick-off, figure 14. If we reflect for a moment we shall realize that it could hardly get along otherwise. And yet, when painters began to apply this new discovery, and painted horses moving as they actually do, everyone complained that their pictures looked wrong.
- Gombrich, E. H., The Story of Art, p.25.
Cameras do some things very well. One is freeze time. And when time is frozen we get a nice collection of truths that we couldn’t have imagined before (and a healthy dose of lies we are eager to believe). Sometimes this works just like magic and the world is filled with child-like wonder. And that is what I present to you.
Click on the link in the title. Or just click here.
Posted 2 years ago
New Work - An Architectural Survey of the Human Face (link)
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Oh my god, oh my god. You’ve been pinching pennies for this all winter: the hottest new work from the depths of Dhaka. It’s here, in all its manic glory. Faces, millions of new faces.
I cut down from about 900 photos. As usual, I don’t know what’s it all really about but maybe it’s about this:
The pictures are a hedonistic burrowing into the crevices, pits, and cracks of the human face. Revelation floats slowly and with effort to the top of the detail.
or
There is a restrained focus on the structure of a face. The camera looks closely, calmly, and reveals the foundational bone and cartilage below the battered skein. Shows how the face has been put together to sense and respond. To see, to hear, to taste, to smell, to feel. How vital the face is to the relationship between the self and the other. It’s the filter through which we perceive, but also how we are perceived.
but that’s probably all wrong, it’s may really be this
The photos aren’t a lament, but a warm appraisal. The colours are vital, healthy. Blue skies and muted buildings provide blurred, restful background for the shock of information that is presented about the human head.
Sure, sure, but it’s most likely this:
Resisting assimilation, the faces are different to what is seen in the West. These faces are archaic. Faces that have aged and weathered under the harsh climate of chance, of disasters and tragedies, of small kindnesses, and luck. It is encyclopaedic at a micro level.
Anyway, they’re important and new. Bon apetit.
Click on the link in the title or just click here. (There’s a lot of goodness so it may take a little bit of time to load, it’s definitely worth it.)
Posted 2 years ago
New Work - Sightings of Some Guarded, Shapeless Emotions (link)
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It has been a while coming, but part of the last month and half’s work has ended in a set of photos titled ‘Sightings of Some Guarded, Shapeless Emotions’. I think it’s all about desire, or the profane, or power, or who knows really?
(If you’re one of those people who can’t help but ask, ‘but what does it mean? What are you trying to do? Why are we here?’ I have no answers but here are some clues. Also here’s how I go about making a series.)
Click on the link in the title. Or just click here.
Posted 2 years ago
A portrait of the famous photographer
All my friends (except one cunt) and loved ones think what I’m producing is getting better, is good. I’ve been working hard. But they are supposed to say placatory things like that so I don’t reveal their despicable secrets. Also, they’re all very nice and all have great taste (except one cunt), but they don’t work at this everyday, so the advice they can give is limited.
So whilst I’m in Europe I’d like to hunt down some photographers who’ve established themselves and see if they’ll have a chat with me about what I’ve been doing and plan to do. I’m a bit anxious about how I should go about doing that. So I’ve interviewed a famous photographer:
Adnan: Yo.
Famous: What’s uuuuuuuupppppp.
A: Listen, how should someone contact you if they’re just starting out and want some advice? Thanks for seeing me by the way.
F: I didn’t have a choice fuckrod, you’re making this up. As to your predictable question: they shouldn’t contact me. I’m busy. The economy is collapsing. I’m sleeping with my best friend’s husband, and I have these nasty, nasty sores that are killing me. People should just stop sending me crapmail that I automatically trash and go away and do their own work. You wouldn’t believe the pure unadulterated shit that turns up in my mailbox. ‘Here’s a picture of my horse. Do you think I should contact Steidl?’ Umm, hell no bitch. Go to law school and start a fucking revolution.
A: Right. Sure. I see what you mean.
F: No you don’t dumbass. What I’m saying is that you should have good work to show before you waste my time. There’s a million photographers. Did you hear that? A million. That’s like a city. A city full of photographers. Just thinking about that makes my sores flare up. And 80% of them are doing it so they can sleep with hot girls, the other 20% are nitwits. It’s my 80/20 rule. See what I’m saying? No? I’m saying most people aren’t committed to it. It’d help if you had shown some commitment so that I know I’m not spending my gold minted time on your waste of a life.
A: Well I’ve been working hard at things, I’m nearing 30000 photos and I shoot good street. I read a lot and am aware of the history …
F: Hahah, ‘good street’ is an oxymoron, moron. Ok, so you’re in the 80%, great. Now you have to get over the other hurdle. Here’s a secret, there is no good photography. There’s only photography that I like. If I don’t like your photography than it’s no good. Get it?Thinking is hard for you isn’t it? I mean you have to contact people who are going to be receptive to the work that you do. Who can judge without the prejudice that they hate your kind of work anyway. Don’t give me crap about your stuff is unique. Nothing’s unique. Now here’s another secret: how do you tell what work a photographer likes? Their own! We’re artists. All we care about are ourselves, oh and saving the planet, railing against bourgeois taste etc. etc. So find people whose work you like, and contact them first. There is another class of people, but there’s only like 10 of them in the entire world, and those are people who are so open hearted that they can look beyond differences in your work with theirs and still give you good advice. I’m not one of those people, your work isn’t fit to clean my ass with. Stop wasting your time.
A: But you haven’t even seen it.
F: Well I’ve met you haven’ t I? That’s all I need to know.
A: Ok, so I make a list of photographers whose styles I like and I think will be open to my work. What then?
F: Well, try to find a phone number for them. Or a mailing address. Try to stay away from email. It’s what everyone else uses. The best is if you can just ‘run into them’ somewhere. A gallery opening may be ok. Now, don’t get me wrong, most of the time you’ll be reduced to an email, but it’s good if you’ve got other ways of contacting them. Most of the time you’re not going to get a response. Getting their details can be hard. I damn well make sure mine are hard to find. But search. And I don’t mean the Intertube. That needs a bypass. Often they will have a representative, and you can try calling up the rep and seeing if they’ll forward your details and a message on. You’re making me talk about hella boring shit here, but you’ve got to be persistent. It’s best to be a little annoying but be charming at the same time. Also, it’s good to be recommended. Meeting people through other people. So go and hang out, have some free shit wine somewhere. Get drunk. You need to.
A: Cool. So find analogue ways of contact them as a first resort. Then what, what should my letter, call, conversation, email say?
F: What’re you in the mental ward of the local zoo? You say you like their work. Which you do right? But don’t be a boob, say what you like about it, what personal connection you have. That’s why you’re contacting that photographer right? Because their work has had an impact. Then talk about your own work and what you’re trying to do. Try to sound sane. This is very important: ‘sound sane!’ Don’t write 30 pages (like this mock interview), and don’t write a mail merge three line advertisement. Be sincere, be yourself.
A: Allright.
F: Well don’t be the dweeb that you really are. Dress it up just a little bit. Ok, then request something specific. Whether it’s 30 minutes to have a talk about your work, and what you’d like to do in the future. Whether you can meet them at a gallery if they are showing. But be specific about what you want and when. It’s good that you’re going over there and can be in the cities to meet them. These things happen face to face. Don’t let them palm you off to a portfolio review, that’s a scam for the herds.
A: Ok, thanks for the advice.
F: Leave me alone. But, let me tell you this. You will probably be disappointed by what you get from all this. Real mentorship comes from friendship, not some grubby social climbing. If you work hard, produce good work and get it out there, you’ll meet others who are doing the same. You’ll meet people you respect and you’ll meet them as friends. But I guess you have to learn your own lessons. So good luck, jackass. Close that door on your way out.
Posted 2 years ago
