I hate those blogs that apologize for not writing or being away. Even more I hate the excuses they proffer to explain their absence; usually something to do with being too busy or real life getting in the way of blogging. Are we d-list bloggers so egocentric as to think that we are missed when we don't write? As a reader of blogs, it's not like I'm going to run out of things to read if even half of the blogs and podcasts I subscribe to stop publishing tomorrow. My RSS reader cup would still runneth over.
I am, therefore, not going to apologize for not having written anything here lately. I am not going to make up excuses for neglecting my photoblog, or for phoning in my project 365 pictures, or for not commenting on my contacts on Flickr. My real world responsibilities were no heavier than usual - I just didn't feel like it. I do not presume I was missed nor am I fishing for comments to the contrary. Let's just say for want of a better explanation, that my creative muse left me for a while.
So what do you do when you consider yourself a creative person but you don't feel like doing anything creative? I save what little creative juice I have to keep creative commitments that are important to me, in this case my photo-a-day project for this year. Even when I didn't feel like it I took a shot each day that I wasn't ashamed of. If this meant reshooting things I'd already shot, so be it. If it meant taking pictures in the same, comfortable vein day after day, then I just rolled with it. There are times to push yourself and there are times to acknowledge your limitations and energy.
In the project365 group I am part of in Flickr we have seen a number of committed members drop out recently. Either they were pushing themselves to try to make an exceptional image everyday that stood a good chance of making explore which is exhausting, or they just tired of the project and it was either to stop than go on. In running parlance we call it 'hitting the wall', or 'bonking', or 'the bear jumping on your back'. Somewhere around mile 18 to 21 of a marathon there's a danger that you will have the overwhelming urge to stop running; this might be because you're trying too hard, or not trying hard enough, or your not well enough prepared. If you want to finish enough you will break through the wall and keep going - if you don't want it enough you'll either walk it in or stop and get a ride in from the sop wagon. If you can dig deep and run it in you're a real runner no matter what your time.
A similar analogy could apply to any long term artistic endeavor. If you want it enough and you can find the energy to keep going even when you want to stop you might learn something about yourself, your talent, your limitations and your strengths. There are mental tricks runners can employ to break through the wall; you try to divert yourself. Instead of counting steps, watching out for mile markers and all the mental arithmetic that goes into working out if you can still make your target time you can sing songs in your head that match the tempo of your steps. You can lift up your head and look around yourself instead of looking inside and down at your feet. You can talk to your peers around you. Before you know it mile 21 is behind you and the finish line is achievable again.
While my muse was MIA I picked up a guitar for the first time in forever and tried to learn something new. I sat down with the books of photographers who I love. I went to the movies. I talked to other photographers about, what else?, photography. My muse didn't come running back, banging on the door begging me to take her back but I can feel her in the house again. Artistically speaking, I'm not going to qualify for Boston but I will run it in.
I started a new photography class with an old teacher last week. Going into it I knew that he thinks digital is best suited to commercial work while film is the medium of art but I thought I'd be able to win him over. However, in the first lesson he tricked me somehow into promising to shoot at least one roll of 35mm and one medium format this week. 'No problem', I thought, 'I shot film for years. Going back can't be that hard can it?' It turns out it is that simple and that hard.
Digging my old Olympus gear out of the closet and dusting it off filled me with a wave of nostalgia. The OM cameras are beautiful pieces of machinery. The Zuiko lenses are, at once both compact and solid. My first shock to the system was how heavy all this stuff was. I put a couple of OM bodies and most of the Zuiko lens I owned into an old school, canvas, shoulder bag and set off. A block later I was back home dumping half of what I was carrying and puting it all into a modern backback. The tiny, dense, Zuiko prime lenses rattled around on the huge spaces the modern bag has for modern zoom lenses but at least I was getting some feeling back into my left shoulder.
In use, I kept forgetting that I had to wind on manually so I pressed the shutter many times only to wonder why nothing happened. More than once I looked at the back of many OM2 spot/program to review the last shot I had taken, only to be greeted by the TriX film box reminder. I'd forgotten how to focus manually so I was winding my lenses all over the place. The biggest change, however, was how aware I was that each shot had a financial implication so I was overly careful and ponderous. It took me 2 hours to shoot one roll of 36 exposures.
If I thought the 35mm SLR was slow I was in for a shock when I took the an old TLR out the next day. Loading, winding on, focusing, setting the exposure were all slow but framing took forever. Up and down are alright, but left and right bounced from a mirror get reversed. Try to manipulate an object, level and into a specific place in the frame was ponderous and frustrating, like the worse hand held video game you've ever played. I'm beginning to remember why I use to shoot this thing mounted on a 3-way tripod head 90% of the time; at least on the tripod you can deal with one axis at a time.
On the upside, there's something about an all metal, all manual camera that makes you fell like a real photographer. The shutters make the most wonderful noises. Feeling that each frame is precious slows me down from my more usual habit of taking 3 frames before I even think about what I'm doing. I'm excited about picking up my shots from the lab in a way I rarely am about putting a compact flash card in my computer. Of course, I could be in for a huge disappointment but at least I tried to do my assignment.
Nearly four years ago I started my photoblog at TheOtherMartinTaylor.com; for a few months before that I had used a fotolog.com to try out the visual blog concept before the Brazilian invasion. At that time there was a lively and vigorous community of photobloggers on the web. We met on line, we met in person; if you wanted to have a visual journal or project of some kind, the photoblog was the only game in town.
But shortly after I began, photobloggers started signing up for a new service called Flickr. I resisted for a while as I didn't know what I needed a Flickr account for as I already had a 'real photoblog'. Like most photobloggers I caved and got a Flickr account; at first I used it to house my b-list pictures and photos of events, dogs and cameras. It was quite some time later before I got sucked into the community aspect of Flickr and I finally understood flickr's real power.
A lot of that old photoblog community have given up their photoblogs and most of the rest of us soldier on in obscurity. Just about all of that old community are still on Flickr and probably taking more photos and interacting more than ever. So what happened to the photoblog? It's strength and weakness are that it is infinitely more flexible and technical than Flickr. Back in the day it required that you installed your own blog content management system on your own server. Then you had to learn some propriety markup language hybridized with HTML to create templates that defined the look and functionality of your photoblog.
Spam was/is also your own concern. When Google rank was largely a matter of who linked to you and from where sleazy search engine optimizers quickly realized the potential power of blog comments. It wasn't long before they have developed bots that searched out blogs running on specific software and tired to add comments to the blog linking back to some site selling porn, diet pills or the promise of a larger willie. Google has since changed the influence of blog links and the CMS software tries to help bloggers manage spam and yet I doubt I'm in the unique position of receiving thousands (no exaggeration) spam comments and spam attempts on my blog for every one ligitimate comment I get these days. Many photobloggers have surrender and just closed comments on their sites, but isn't a photoblog without comments just a gallery?
Another problem was that the community was dispersed. We all used to hit photoblogs.org at least every other day and comment on each others photoblogs and follow each others RSS feeds but Flick has all that built in one place. I still use my photoblog but less of the old photobloggers are out there; where once my RSS reader lit up with hundreds of new photoblog posts everyday, now it's down to a trickle. I get my photo community almost exclusively via Flickr who filter all the junk and allow me to follow friends, peers and heros effortlessly. If you're a photography enthusiast of any standard or experience and you don't have a Flickr account you're the exception rather than the rule these days.
So, what is to become of the photoblog if the community aspect has largely been replaced by Flickr? I still post things to Flickr that I wouldn't post to my photoblog. My photoblog is reserved for my better shots, but those images are usually available in my Flickr stream too. Yet, my photoblog is not a portfolio but is still a visual journal of some kind. I don't think I am unusual among photobloggers in using Flickr as my day book, my photoblog as a more exclusive subset of my on going pictures, and having a portfolio somewhere else altogether. Does this make the photoblog largely irrelevant? I would argue that the photoblog still has its place especially if you want creative control on how your images are displayed and/or you want to mix in other kinds of media (text, sound, video, flash widgets, etc.) One of the problems with Flickr is that you're always aware that you're inside Flickr. The look and feel is very distinctive and, although this does allow the images to speak for themselves to some extent, it does add a uniform conformity that can wear you down after a while. The community is huge and diverse but you can sucked into playing the popularity contest game. If you want your pictures to be seen, and what's the point of making pictures not to be seen, you have to get involved in some Flickr politics which can be time consuming - images rarely get to the front page of explore from a newbie, with few contacts, few tags on the picture and without the picture being in many groups - it does happen but very rarely no matter how good the image.
For now I won't shutter up my old photoblog but if I were starting afresh I don't know if I would take the time to create my own half-waylimbo between Flickr and a portfolio. The photoblog doesn't seem to have the same relevance as it once had, in fact it feels decidedly old school today. Photoblog stars have largely been superseded by Flickr Rock Stars. Modest daily photoblog stats can't really compete with the many thousands of views per image the Flickr elite can achieve. Does it matter? As long as we can still find quality, innovative, inspiring pictures and a community to go with them, probably not.
Most despised lens on the planet or what?
Does anyone have a good word for the kit lens that comes with the digital rebel? It is pretty hard to find anyone on the web willing to stand up for this bargain under-dog but let me throw my hat in the ring and say that I don't think it's as bad as everyone makes out.
True, it is light and insubstantial when you pick it up - I don't think there's more than an ounce of metal in it's make up and most of what's there is in the electronics. The lens' mount itself is even plastic which is often a bad sign. It is cheap and it feels cheap ($100 or free with your first DSLR). Being free makes it common and I think this is the 18-55mm lens' biggest problem. Just about everyone who has a Canon DSLR has, or has had, a copy of the 18-55mm kit lens. It's as common as muck. It carries no prestige what-so-ever. L-snobs consider it worthless; enthusiasts think it a badge of inadequates; even beginners see it only as a stop-gap until they can afford something decent and this last view may be the most accurate.
Just about every review I've read of the digital rebels has said something along the lines of, "nice camera let down by the cheap kit lens". It is repeated so often by reviewers and forum pundits that we start to believe its bad press without questioning it. This bad rap is so unanimous among such places as Amazon's comments that I wonder how many of these photographers have really tried this lens and how many just blindly believe and repeat the hype. It's too easy to just blame your equipment for your horrible pictures but take a minute to dig that old kit lens out of the back of your closet and give it another try.
I've already admitted that its build quality is lightweight and plastic but that can be an advantage - after the equally cheap, but much less maligned 50mm f1.8, the 18-55mm paired with a 400D makes for one of the lightest, most compact camera/lens DSLR combinations available. You give up a full time focusing ring, focus scale etc. but it is so cheap you don't have to worry about taking it anywhere - it's so light it will go in a jacket pocket and you will forget you're carrying it. It's range is not exotic but it is very useful (29-88mm in 35mm terms) which covers a large part of the range you need for walkabout, landscape, architectural and portrait photography.
As for image quality, I won't pretend that this is the sharpest lens Canon has ever produced but it is not as bad as some reviews would have you believe. Wide open it is soft, especially at the edges but if you learn to work with this lens' limitations it will reward you with decent images. Avoid shooting wide open so stop down to the middle of the lens' range whenever possible. If this means hiking up the ISO a bit higher than you are usually comfortable with, then just do it and deal with the noise later in post-processing. Use a lens hood whenever possible. If the thought of spending $25 on a propriety hood for a $100 lens makes you wince then just use a cheap generic rubber hood you have lying around from your old film equipment.
If you can afford the 17-40mm f4 L or the 17-85mm EF-S IS is in your budget then, by all means buy, and use, those better lenses. I'm not going to try to tell you that the 18-55mm kit lens is as good as either of those more expensive lenses but don't discount it as trash either. If you need something reasonably wide don't forget about your kit lens gathering dust. I wouldn't recommend the kit lens as your main or only lens in the long term but don't believe everything you read on the interweb - the kit lens is just not that awful.
Reviews
- Bob Atkins on Photonet - much of the time it can hold it's own against Canon's full frame coverage mid-range consumer lenses, especially in the center of the frame
- The Digital Picture
- The Luminous Landscape - Of course everyone wants to know what the image quality is like. In three words — not that great.
- Photozone - serious users looking for a good quality lens should save a little more and look elsewhere.
Pictures
I'm hoping that we can all soon put the whole recent mess with JPG magazine behind us. The incident, apart from making me feel incredibly sad, got me thinking about the pros and cons of community publishing. This internal debate that was also fueled by recent podcasts I listened to from Switzerland related to the "We're all photographers now" exhibition; one from a panel that included Derek, and the other an interview with a personal hero, Martin Parr.
Let's get the pros out of the way; blurring the lines between consumer and content creator is a great new model that could help to rejuvenate staid print media. You have a built in subscription base because, of course you're going to buy a magazine you are trying to, or you think you have a real chance of getting published in. From a publisher's perspective (not JPG's I hope, but you can bet other publishers are thinking about this) you don't have to employ or commission expensive content creators and you get valuable content for fractions of pennies on the dollar. The community even saves your editors valuable time by voting on which items submitted for consideration should go immediately into the slush pile and which should really be considered - more on this later.
But there are downsides and here I am specifically speaking as an art photography fanboy. I have no real interest in stock, fashion or commercial photography, a passing interest in documentary work but my real passion is art photography. If you don't know the players in the American art photography publishing field there is one giant that is largely unchallenged; Aperture. I love Aperture but a monopoly is not healthy in either commerce or art, but lets leave commerce behind and concentrate on art. They need to be challenged because they have largely isolated themselves in their designer ivory tower. They, along with a few museum and gallery curators, decide what is of value - I'm not talking financially valuable, although, that of course comes into it too; I'm talking about what is worth seeing, what is worth your time and what is not.
At one time I had thought the JPG might be a grass roots movement that could lead a siege against this ivory tower but I now doubt that will happen. They (the art photography establishment) don't take us (the enthusiasts and amateurs) seriously. Why should they when we hardly take ourselves seriously? Look at a copy of JPG side by side with a copy of Aperture; JPG is fun and beautiful to look at but it doesn't have the weight, gravitas or artistic authority of Aperture. JPG may be a better business model but Aperture defines what art photography is. So which is more important? Of course it depends on whether you want to make money or make art. Being a path maker has a cost. Being dependent on your users to determine your content means that your content is democratic, but democratic often means moderate. Moderation in politics may be a good idea but in art it leads to mediocrity. The crowd is intelligent but does it know anything about art?
To quote Martin Parr in the fore mentioned interview, photography is the most democratic of the arts. Anyone can pick up a camera and if they do it is Derek's assertion, that act alone makes them a photographer. Photography is so seemingly easy - you just push the button and the camera does the rest right? You don't need to develop an visual vocabulary or have any knowledge of the movements or icons (images and photographers) that have defined the medium. When the crowd defines ascetics someone with 6 months experience has the same weight as someone who has been photographing for decades. Not that experience defined by time served is any measure of a person's eye for art, but I hope you get the point that I am trying to make.
Good, new art is rarely immediately popular. Good art is challenging and can take work to appreciate. In my experience the crowd may be smart but it is also often lazy. In our sound bite obsessed, instant gratification, ADD, modern world when we stumble upon something challenging or that requires work to understand that has not been recommended to us, we pass right on to the next, easier thing. For this reason the crowd appreciates and recommends things it can recognize as falling into a previously defined pigeon hole as 'art'. The crowd does not take risks and so good art is easily passed over in favor of easier fare. An art-photography editor who relies on the crowd to filter submissions, even just a first pass, will get to see good pictures but may miss out on real art.
Grass roots, art-photography still needs a champion and, if that champion becomes the establishment, it will need another champion and so on, and so forth. JPG could still be that champion but it is my assertion that it won't happen until it relies less on the crowd and pursues more edgy, less safe work. The art-photography world needs a new forceful, visionary personality to harness the new revolution and revival of interest in photography. It needs a new Stieglitz. It needs a new secession - secession 2.0.
... of course, as I'm ancient and out of touch I'm probably the last person in the universe to have seen it:
As a longtime photoblogger, flickrite, unpublished contributor and subscriber to JPG magazine with a blog or two to my name it is inevitable that I would have to write something about the past couple of days isn't it? In the online circles that I move in the coup at JPG magazine is huge news.
For those that don't know, JPG magazine is a photography magazine founded, and originally run by the dynamic husband and wife duo, Heather and Derek. For the first four issues they ran it as a print-on-demand cottage-industry and established an enthusiastic community which blurred the distinction between consumer and content creator. Then Derek co-founded 8020 publishing with Paul and JPG became even more successful as a more mainstream publication. According to Derek, Paul, wearing the CEO hat, decide to disassociate the new JPG from it's more humble beginnings and remove Heather from the masthead in the process. Personally I don't understand why 8020 would want to do this or what it could possibly achieve but I do understand that Derek could not remain and work in this environment.
All this is well documented on the web now and so my regurgitating events adds nothing interesting to the debate. What is interesting is the reaction of the enthusiast photographer community on the web. Let's prefix this with the following facts;
- Derek still holds a stake in 8020
- If JPG suffers as a result of any retaliation by Derek's supporters, Derek suffers as much as anyone else.
- Derek and Heather's treatment
- Paul's perceived manipulation of the truth/history.
Derek and Heather are talented movers and shakers who will undoubtly succeed elsewhere. They should be proud of proving to the tech world at large that print publications are still viable. They have invented a new model of publication. When the consumers of a publication are also its content creators they feel as if they have a lot invested themselves in the magazine which is the both the strength and weakness of the model. I hope that JPG continues to succeed despite this bump in the road - I know that Derek and Heather will.
Postscript: In an interesting turn, Paul's wife defends him - coming up, my Mom tells my manager why my I deserve a great raise.
PPS: No one is looking good as a result of this; not the protagonists, not the staff of 8020, not us pundits, nor the JPG user community. It's all a big, horrible, sad mess:
Here you find me at mile 7 of my Picture a Day documented as a marathon - I break through the magic 100th picture:
I had one of those days yesterday that makes a photographer want to craw under the covers and hide.
It started off well enough with a graduating student at SFSU, whose campus is just across the road from our house, asking if his small class could use one of my pictures for the cover of their graduation program. There would be no payment of course and could I reply ASAP as they needed to get on with publication urgently. I was flattered so I replied in the affirmative within a very short time of receiving this request. 48 hours later I have yet to hear a peep of thanks. Come on guys; if you're not going to pay for my work at least you could say 'thanks'.
This was followed around lunch time by a San Francisco magazine asking for permission to use one of my pictures to illustrate a piece they were writing. Again, there would be no payment despite them being a for profit publication, but I would get a photo credit. Again, they wanted to put the issue to bed in a few days so could I respond ASAP. Again, I was flattered and replied 'yes' and was already looking forward to seeing my name misspelled, in tiny print bellow a shot of a local landmark. But after a few hours I got a reply - thanks; the picture editor had contacted a few people on Flickr with images of the same landmark but, if they used mine, they would let me know. Hmm, I had thought the picture editor had stumbled across my picture on Flickr and had thought it so perfect for the article that she had had to contact me. It turns out that I'm just one of several images they found that would do and they might use if their first choice fell through. I was feeling less special by the minute.
By the time I got home in the evening I had received my monthly rejection letter from JPG magazine. I'm currently batting 0 for 10. I really didn't care that they had rejected my 3 pictures (one for each theme) but I had spent some time writing an essay that I submitted to them and they didn't even mention that as being received, never mind rejected. I guess that might mean it could still be in the running for some future issue but by this time I was feeling more half-empty than half-full.
These dashed hopes are not conducive to the creative process and my mood was not helped by having to leave work early to get our house ready for two different sets of guests that evening. A little before midnight I was pooped and I hadn't taken a single photo all day. Ordinarily this wouldn't be an issue but I'm taking Project 365 pretty seriously so I had to come up with something so, after clearing up snacks and dead glasses I roamed the house with a macro lens and a high ISO looking for something to inspire me to shoot. I had to settle for a cliched shot of a detail of my Stratocaster. With that obligation done I was finally free to crawl under the duvet and dream of picture editors with huge budgets who love my work, become my patrons, enabling me to give up coding for good and spend my days inspired and creating pictures.
... especially if you're talking to engineers. If you want to see our eyes glass over started peppering your presentation with the words "leverage" and "capitalize". We'll immediately discount you as a wanker who reads motivational, business books not O'Reilly geek cookbooks.
