Application For Approval

It would seem that whatever we do in Australia requires approval. Not from ourselves, mind - that would be too easy. No, the approval we require is from the federal government, the state government and the local council. If we superadd membership in a religious faith, a marriage, and a football club we can get to 6 levels of interlaced compulsion. An ox in a yoke would feel freer.

When we elect to join a professional or amateur photography club as well, we find that we can be controlled not only in our artistic opinion, but in how we express it. Does our work not fit in the category required, or not please The Committee, we find ourselves cast into outer darkness...generally without a safelight.

It is a brave photographer who decides what they want and then produces it. And then shows it. And then has a cup of tea and a jam doughnut. And then doesn't stand on the bathroom scales to see if that was a good idea.

When you ask another for permission to own a revolver and to shoot it in the main street of town, that is one thing. When you ask for permission to make your own art, that is another.

Let and hindrance should be reserved for big things - not art. Art is too big for that.

Creative

I used to think that the two most frightening words in the English language were singer-songwriter . They warned of long hours of despair and depression, generally emanating from Toronto or Seattle. We lived pretty near half-way between these two sinks and so we got our left-wing political rants and tortured love songs in stereo. I used to welcome the blizzards out on the prairies because they cut off communication.

Times have changed. We no longer have to fear singer-songwriters - we have to fear creatives. Video creatives, textile creatives, image creatives, and I can accurately report...history creatives. Yes. Create history. Stalin did, so can you. Pull up a keyboard and sit down.

For the purposes of this blog - selling lens cloths and tripods and macro lenses - we generally consider the video and image creatives. Some are professional creatives - they make images for pay and keep some of the money.The more successful ones keep more of the money and the real stars keep all of it, and they get it before they make the images. Sometimes in the dark I reflect that Jesse James was quite creative too, but I keep it to myself.

The amateur creatives create images with no pay. No, I'm wrong...THEY pay. The return for the money they spend and the time they use is a sense of enjoyment. And a sense of competiton. And blind unreasoning anger and jealousy...I've judged at camera clubs before and I've heard the sotto voce chorus from out there in the audience...

The artist creatives don't get paid. They don't get praised. They don't get listened to. They don't get published. They just create and stack their images in the electronic corner and carry right on doing it again. You can get 5 terabyte electronic corners these days for surprisingly small prices.

I cannot say which box is best. If you are locked into any of them and know it you will naturally become depressed...and start to write songs and sing them on the CBC. Please let me urge you to avoid this, if only for all our sakes...if you are locked into business try to do something for just you - not the client. If you are just a hobbyist, find a customer who will pay for something you do - even if it is just for getting you to go away. If you are purely an artist, try to get one of your pictures into a gallery, and not by sneaking it in under your coat and Blu-tak-ing it in the loo.

You will benefit and your skills will grow. And we can all get back to the blizzard.

Uncle Dick

Get An If

Ifs are awesome. You can do anything with an if. You can persuade people to buy cameras, give you their lunch, stay away from your borders, or clean the inside of the car.

You can also use them to prevent other people from eating their lunch, to gain commercial advantage, and to hide the fact that you don't have enough money.

On the technical side, ifs allow the macro photographer to link together aperture, focal length, and distance to the subject to arrive at not enough depth of field. And the wonderful thing is that it really doesn't matter what values you set for any of the criteria, you still arrive at not enough depth of field. It is like doing roundabouts in Manchester - no matter where you go, they always go the same place.

Ifs are also useful in the artistic side of photography. If you make it dark and moody you can win club competitions and if you make it bright and over-saturated you can sell it to the junk mail catalogue printers and if you cannot focus you can bokeh.

Commercially, if you set your photography prices high they will come, but grumble about paying, and if you set them higher they will come in smaller numbers and grumble louder - but if you set your prices at the absolutely astronomical unbelievable level they will come and tell you how great your product is. They won't pay, but you'll feel good.

You see it all depends on where you put your ifs. Start your speech with the if and people will not hear it - they will only hear what they want to, but they will be pleased to think of it. If you drop the if in the middle of the business you disappoint their hopes and they resent it. The concept that you are trying to get to them may be exactly the same but their perception of it is different.

And you can always resort to sad puppy eyes and the phrase "If Only..."

Hold That Pose. Bwa-hahaha...

It has often been said that the prime difference between a hero and a traitor lies in who he harms - his enemies or his friends. So it is with the portrait photographer, except that in some cases since he has no friends, he cannot be a traitor.

I can hear the hackles rising in a number of Perth studios as this is being read - I hasten to add that you are entirely innocent of any charges. All your images are symphonies of empathy and elegance. And well worth the money...in fact you should really double the prices to uphold the honour of the profession. It's those OTHER studios that are full of scoundrels.

For the amateur photographer the idea of faithfully and accurately portraying the appearance of their sitter should be paramount. If they have wrinkles, light the wrinkles with a strong cross strobe light. If they have a misshapen nose, show this clearly - it is dishonest to disguise it. Likewise use broad lighting on broad faces and short lighting on thin faces. Babies are small - tower over them to reinforce this in the picture. Remember that small apertures and enhanced contrast makes for clear portraits - when in doubt, sharpen it up.

Let's face it - you aren't getting paid so there is no sense pandering to them, now is there.

If you get sitter towards whom you bear a grudge the game can become altogether more fun. Bad complexions are best treated with sympathy -and monochrome rendition. A green filter and that cross lighting will make a picture worthy of a text book. If your sitter fails to cooperate with your reasonable direction in the studio, shoot anyway and be sure to  look for images with one eye closed or something dangling. It doesn't matter what dangles from where - the eyes of the viewer will never leave that portion of the photo.

Of course you are going to get complaints but this is your chance to educate the public. They may want to see themselves with smooth skin or a full head of hair or an athletic body, but you are just a photographer - not a miracle worker. Urge them to face the horrid truth. In the end if you talk fast enough you may be able to create a new art form. And that will give you time to escape.

Aarrrrrrrr There, Jim Lad!

And how be we on this fine spankin' mornin' with the wind from the port quarter and the seagull poop on the taffrail? For it be International Talk Like A Pirate Day and ye can finally let loose yer spanker. My spanker is home doin' dishes. Aarrrr.

And how can we, as pirates, ensure ourselves against the piracy of others? For mark my words, there be monsters in the sea and on the net. Aarrrr. And they want to take out treasured images and sail off with them and turn them into gold. Time to go all Cap'n Kidd on the lubbers!

First off, put a watermark on yer images. This is a big disruptive overlay that you cobble up from a copyright symbol and your studio name and a dire warning not to remove it. Plaster it all over your images, and don't be shy about it - if the bride has a particularly fine bosom, mark it like the side of a goods wagon in a train yard. That'll stop her from sailing down to the local Hardly Normal and printing out the wedding pictures herself. Be sure to flatten the layer before you post it - preferably with a charge of grapeshot - and she'll never be able to retouch it out. Of course, the fact that the proof image looks like a fitted fast freight wagon bound for Murrwillumbar may discourage her from ordering it from you in the first place, but this is about security, not sales. Aarrrr.

Secondly, threaten 'em. Threaten 'em with the law, if you must, but if you be a real pirate, you'll want to do the job yourself, to see it well done. Cannons and pistols are difficult to come by these days  - damn those environmentalists - but you can still get cold steel and knotted rope's ends and boarding pikes quite freely. I can recommend several surplus stores, as well as mail-order firms in Pakistan. Be prepared to temper the blades and to do a bit 'o sharpening and avoid the decorated cutlasses - they are just for show. Mr. Wajid in Karachi does a particularly fine hook if you need one.

Finally, if you find that the scurvy dogs have sailed into yer harbour and cut out your best landscape picture and sailed off with it, you can adopt the philosophy of Red-Eye Goldstein - the greatest pirate of  three seas, a tidal basin, and Kamloops Lake. When his best photo of a grizzly bear eating a tourist was pinched from his website and submitted to the annual Canadian Environmentalist Photo Competition he just sat back until the award night. Then he went to the dinner, waited until the image was flashed on the screen, and then pulled out 15 other photos of the same incident - shot just before and just after the bear bit off the cyclist's head. When the attention this caused - and you can be assured that images of grizzlies eating tourists WILL attract attention - lead to all the room swivelling to look at the photographer who had entered the stolen image, Red-Eye simply walked over to him and gave him an Irish Kiss. It were beautiful, it were. Aarrrr.

What's It All About, Alfie? A Photographers Cri de Coeur.

There must be a reason we take photographs, right? A good reason - after all, we're not morons who just run around in a circle on the carpet clutching a DSLR, right? Well, not a small circle, anyway...

I asked around the shop today and it looks as though there is quite a list of reasons:

1. " I can't draw but I wish I could ".
2. " I can draw but I'm lazy ".
3. " I do it to collect the pictures. Once I get them all I'll move on to beer bottle caps ".
4. " I do it to collect the pictures of Edith Cowan that the government prints ".
5. " I do it to get out of the house ".
6. " I take pictures to keep the camera in use ".
7. " I need to take pictures of the children ".
8. " The children need to take pictures of me ".
9. " I want to record the alien space ships that hover above my farm ".
10. " I need to test lenses. So that I will be able to post arguments on internet forums. Do you want to see my pictures? Why not? ".
11. " My father was a photographer ".
12. " I know a photographer ".
13. " A photographer knows me ".
14. " I need pictures for work ".
15. " I need pictures that work ".
16. " I need work ".

I am still a little leery of some of the reasons that we hear for certain purchases...the camera mount that would allow a video camera to be mounted in a sports bag for covert filming was the most recent one that curled my toes.

 I am more than happy to sell beauty dishes to anyone - even if the prospect of beauty is slim. You can always hope, can't you.

A New Year's Resolution

New Year. New financial fear. Added to accounting for a new calendar year, new religious year, and new car license year...every year...it is a wonder that we can remember anything that we have resolved. I have taken to putting stickers around the house to remind myself, but I sometimes forget where I put the stickers...

Never mind. If we are enjoined o make moral resolutions for the religious new year and practical ones for the calendar new year, I guess we can make financial ones this month. Here goes.

I have a bundle of old camera equipment that is sitting in the studio and the safe - unused for 5 or more years. If it was socks there would be moth holes in them - as it is there is figurative dust accumulating. It is time to turn these still-fine items into new items that I actually will use.

I'm lucky - I have gear that still has some intrinsic value - not much, but a little. I can offer it for sale knowing that there are actual customers for it. My resolution is that I will get off my rusty and actually do it. The return of some money will be one thing, but the real benefit will be that it will clear the mind of sitting and wondering what to do with it. Once gone and converted to a new lens I will be off to new adventures.

May I suggest the same to you? If your old gear is truly old junque...I realise these are strong terms, but we are adults now...give it to a charity. Or take it to the Workshop Camera Club camera market and set up a stall and learn a great deal about human nature in the space of a morning. One tip - sniff. If granddad's dear old 35mm Flapoflex or your automatic film compact smells like vinegar or old socks or a rabbit hutch in hot weather, ditch it in the bin.

If it is not bad and not cheap and not broken, a professional dealer may express some interest - but generally only if it will have a profitable resale. Be honest with yourselves - if no-one wants to buy it from the newspaper or Gumtree or the camera market, they are not going to buy it from a shop. Time to be realistic. Bin.

So where has this blog gone? Round in a circle, I daresay, but at a tangent from that circle will be some benefit from the turnover of the gear that is just sitting there. I am sentimental about it, but then I am sentimental about Curtis Lemay and the 21st USAAF and that never gets me noticed at parties either.

Change.

Fishing For Hobbyists - Niche Picking Need Not Be Nit Picking

I'm in two minds whether to be ambivalent here. Should I post this idea on this blog site or on my own personal blog that is written in the comfort of my old darkroom? I can say meaner things at home and unlike work, there a chocolate biscuits freely available. But right now my readership for the thing hrhoa.wordpress.com   - " Here All Week" - is still smaller than the entire reach of this blog and its associated Facebook account, so this is a better audience. Here goes.

Get yourself a group of geeks.

No, not necessarily the pencil-necked ones with  pockets full of pens and minds full of "Dr. Who". I mean get yourself a specialist group of enthusiasts who share a common interest and a focused outlook on life. And soak them for all you can.

The dyed-in-the-wool enthusiast hobbyist collector pest is just the person you want to team up with - if they have a collection of anything that they have found, bought, or made, they are going to want glorious pictures of it - and that means they are going to need you to gloriously provide them.

You may have to steel yourself when you meet them - they can be focused to the point of mania - and you must be careful to treat their obsession with dignity and understanding and serious interest. You can wipe the thin trickle of blood and CSF from your ears after a couple of hours of listening to them, but try to engage them early on with the idea that THEIR precious is YOUR precious. And that YOU can make it all look wonderful, and safe, and noble. Never mind that they collect jam tins - photograph the jam tins as if they were Fabergé eggs.

Toy cars, toy trains, quilts, teapots, kittens, coins, stamps, flowers, bees, horses, defunct farm oil engines,....there are enthusiasts for everything and they can be sold your services if you are prepared to sell. Brand yourself if you must - I must say I never did care for the smell of singed hair - market yourself wherever they will let you stick a bill, and go wherever the geeks meet. Buy geek magazines and learn a few of the cant phrases - an occasional tech term half mumbled with a wise nod can make you an expert, as long as you are neared to the door than your listener.

The world is really your oyster. If are allergic to shellfish or are keeping kosher this may not be quite so appealing, but do try to go out their and find your niche market. Find it early and sell it hard. And remember if you have been out and spent a day at the Knitting And Crochet Fayre you can always come home and drink.