thinking about the cult of the amateur lately. again. i think amateur generated content is only a legitimate threat to workers in an industry that meets these two criteria:

1.  the act of generating is fun, interesting or automatically rewards ego and vanity (film making, photography, et al)
2. the initial curve to “reasonably okay” artifacts is either shallow or readily accessible technology can make it shallow. meaning: easy and quick to get up to “okay” level of quality (fancy $300 cameras anyone?)

i think it would be astoundingly rare to see amateur plumbers begin to threaten the plumbing industry, or how about ditch digging? also, it’s unlikely your mom will take up brain surgery any time soon.

and it seems the people most offended by amateur content are the same people who came to a particular field out of an interest but without formal training and put in the work to beat the curve and elevate themselves. writer’s are offended by bloggers, photographers by nearly everyone with a camera-phone, and film makers by all these innovative indy kids wanting to make shorts with their iphone.

these three professions, as examples are all relatively fun to be involved. they are creative industries. the amateur mortician seems an unlikely combination of interest + vocation.

it seems to me that if the men and women gaining financially are interested in their industries for legitimate interests in things like film, or photography, or writing they should welcome the growth. they should feel excited by the addition of so many new viewpoints and people unconstrained by tired conventions (because they’ve yet to learn them).

admittedly much of the things created by amateurs will be dreck (much like this blog post you’re reading) but floating in that sea of dreck are rare finds of innovation and uniqueness that can alter a given field for ever.

take nan goldin for example. amatuer who defined an entire medium of photography.

or take the many bloggers who’ve rose through originality and passion to give clear new voices on important human issues.

to feel otherwise suggests not only a selfishness, but a clear failing of logic. if bean counts are what you’re really concerned with (ie. money, and the loss of revenue streams to less qualified individuals) one would think you’d focus on an industry with more concrete commodity definitions. ala making toliet paper, supply, demand and no frilly subjective elements.

you want your cake and you want to eat it too. that’s fair. we all do. however, the generation of “professionals” who came before you regarded you as under-qualified, brash, industry destroying bastard children of the modern age and yet you somehow found a way to become a part of the established field.

the creme as they say rises to the top. this is true in all functions of skill, talent and expertise.

i once played a set of 9 ball against a much greater opponent (he was a world renowned money player who i won’t name here) and i was on, he was off. I got to the hill (3 games a piece with him) and he ultimately won. but i felt at the time i could have taken that set. only a couple years into focused pool and i was very close to taking a set off a very well established, trained and experienced player.

however, what you learn in tournament play is that on a short curve luck and momentum are powerful tools to use against an superior opponent. you may take 3 games of a seven game set but play a race to 21 and you’ll get destroyed.

because it’s in the long term that these minor disruptions of luck and momentum are hammered out and the real factors of skill, experience, and craft become deciding factors.

and i think this seemingly unrelated lesson applies to the above mentioned issue of amateur created content. industries will lose the low hanging fruit to be sure. stock photographers are learning this. if any trained monkey can create the shot, then that means any enthusiastic amateur can too.

and they will lose some mid-game opportunities, as many wedding photographers are learning. the power of an unqualified customer base plus cut throat amateurs is going to slice a mainstay of photographic revenue right out of the picture.

but on the long haul—the public will become educated and truly skilled people will still have customers. you won’t see vanity fair turning over it’s green issue to some kid of flickr any time soon. the vector for real profit in any industry is creativity + talent + experience.

if you are living off any jobs that could be performed by any two of those you’re going to lose a lot of work. but if you find the spot in an industry, that respects those three qualities and understands their value you will be in a unique position where the flood of the amateur changing the industry and infusing it with life, new ideas, new constructs only improves your work—without threatening your income.

you cannot fight the amateur directly. they are too many and too willing to win the fight of attrition through numbers and dumb passion. better to position yourself to take advantage of what they bring, and insulate yourself from them by understanding the larger picture.

it’s a quaint idea from a quaint little historical figure. however, it misses the real point. fear is GOOD. fear is a positive force in life. every other animal on the planet lives in a state of fear from alertness to full terror and it keeps them alive. we obviously don’t have physical risk like most animals anymore, but we have as many or more complex emotional deaths to avoid daily and fear is the key to solving that problem.

doing away with fear is not the objective. understanding what the fear tells you about yourself and your ideas on life then challenging those ideas is the objective.

never take philosophical advice from someone whose greatest accomplishment was inaction (she stayed put on the bus, folks.).

temnafialkasinsandstorylines:

““I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does AWAY WITH FEAR.””

—

ROSA PARKS

This is it folks. The photo you see above is most likely the last photo I will post to flickr. I say most likely because I hate declarative statements. I hate feeling bound by things I used to think. I used to think flickr was a fun way to share pictures and meet some interesting folks. Now I think it’s just a crutch for me to lean on in absence of any real endpoint for my efforts.

When I started flickr way back in the glory days ( aka long before Yahoo consumed it ) I was overwhelmed by the talent I saw. It pushed me to take my pictures more seriously. It pushed me to learn and grow. Back then there were obvious ways to see the impact of improvement. There was a small community of devoted amateur photographers all interacting with one another, all encouraging and challenging one another. They’ve all moved on in one way or other.

I also learnt a lot over the years about media and media consumption. In part from my own habits, and in part from watching the cycle of people following my stream. I learnt humans are voracious in their capacity for newness. They feel strong connections immediately when they find a photographer that speaks to them, but they also tire very quickly.

I’ve seen this in my own tastes and I’ve seen it in the comings and goings of people who engaged my photos passionately for short periods of time then moved on. I think this tendency echoes a long exhibited tendency in all media. We all know the Hollywood stories of the fickleness of fame and celebrity and we’ve all become enamored by this or that “IT” guy or girl only to wish them dead for putting out 12 movies a year.

You can survive this by commodifying your work. Flickr provides an endless base of users who’ve never seen your particular take on the world and if you can gain access to them you can ride a constant wave of new enthusiasm for your photos almost indefinitely. However, if you cannot gain access to them through prohibitions placed on you through flickr your stream will stagnate and even the most loyal, most fascinated viewer will tire and watch on ambivalently.

It’s my belief—which has no valid explanation or proof—that flickr has an internal system for flagging users that may be dangerous to their shiny happy scrapbook persona. I believe this is applied to anyone who has ever been moderated even if their moderation is removed. My conspiracy theory suggests that such a flag will effectively exclude you from the main source of new viewers. Flickr Explore.
Before I was moderated, 1 of 4 of my images ended up in explore. Since I was moderated, though I no longer am, none of my images has made explore. How is that possible?

I realize this may look like I’m crying foul here that the internet doesn’t love me enough. I realize I’ve called you folks out for being too quiet and too passive in the past and now it will look as though I’m taking my ball and going home. And, to a small extent this is true.

I’m not a commercial photographer. I make no money from this work. I do it because I enjoy making pictures. Objective number one is the experience of making photos. Meeting people, interacting, learning light and being constantly reminded that life and beauty are so much bigger than I think they are. I get that fix every shoot.

However, there comes a time when you must ask yourself some hard questions about how you spend your precious energy. That time is now, and I’ve asked that if I refuse to commercialize my images, and refuse to have exhibits, calendars, books, or do stock photography, what is the logical end point of my work?
Flickr.

If you look objectively at my process you’ll see I am buying gear, arranging shoots, shooting, processing, storing, archiving, and all the other stuff I’m doing and the only real use of the photo is to share it here on flickr. I use them on my websites. Models use them in their portfolios. Every now and then someone wants a print. But on the whole flickr and this community is the “target” for my work. I didn’t plan it to work this way but this is the way it works.

I’ve spend 10s of thousands of dollars on equipment, spent years working studiously on light, pushed myself on almost all fronts and the result is I post work that I think far surpasses my previous work—previous work that was much more successful in terms of views, comments and favorites which I will argue is the only way of measuring the impact of a work that essentially was born for this specific medium—and I will sit patiently waiting for some way of knowing beyond my own judgment if the work is worth the effort. 

I post an image I care about to flickr, and watch as it gets picked over (viewed) by hundreds of silent flickr users who are too lazy to engage. They consume my efforts in their daily quest for eye candy or in the case of nudes, titillation, and move on without so much as a hello.

This is endemic of flickr’s construction. It’s mean to be a way to pass the time. It’s a way to masturbate your eye while you have nothing else to do. There is no reward for the viewer to spend any effort; more over there is a small penalty. The longer they spend on a single image is the less time they have to consume their next.

Flickr users are image sharks. If they stop viewing, they die.

This is not what I signed up for. Flickr has changed. The types of people using it have changed. The end goal has changed. And what was once a place to learn about how my work felt to others has become a daily exercise in frustration

Sour grapes, I know.

But I’m no different than any of you. I want my hard work to amount to something. I’ve chosen to keep my work from being commercialized and so I have to seek payoffs other ways and knowing someone felt something when they saw my work has value to me. If that makes me petty, or small, I can live with that.
Flickr’s lack of offering anything to keep me interested has allowed me to see holes in my own thought process. Made me realize how great an effort I expend, often at the expense of more meaningful work, for virtually nothing.

It’s also allowed me to see how I’ve used flickr to avoid facing the pointlessness of making images that don’t have any commercial application. It reveals how fetishized photography has become for me. How reactive and habitual expressing myself in terms of photography has become. Am I still gaining more than I’m giving by this process? Am I still working from passion or has the score sheet come out?
Making photos is still very satisfying for me. I still feel the thrill and internal joy of discovering a beautiful image. That has not changed. But I can do that on a much smaller scale than I have been and still get what I need from it. I can disengage from this machine and still make enough pictures to fill my needs.

I’m tired of giving daily to the destruction of the power of imagery in the human mind. I’m tired of being part of the flood of sensation consumed for the sake of consuming.

I’m aware I take things too seriously. That I internalize things I shouldn’t, and I can trick myself into living in service of things through habit and routine that no longer have value for me. My defense against these shortcomings is to periodically review parts of my life and cut off limbs that no longer function to the good of me or my life.

Flickr is one of those limbs, and photography as it exists in my life is also one. I’ve got a lot to offer. Many talents and passions and somehow I became a photographer.

I accidentally became a photographer.

I ask myself, given the things I have to share with life, the capacities I have, if this a good use of my time, energy and passion and the answer is a resounding no. It’s esteem masturbation for me. And eye masturbation for you.

I’m taking this moment of clarity of my motivations to act.

Step one is to end flickr.

Step two is taking an extended break from photography.

(via laurataylor)

haha. obviously because thats how girls like it :P

a repost from a private blog i read. I think its worth sharing so i’ve obscured where it came from so you can read it.

Dear Imagination,

I tire of hearing the conversations you think might happen. It bothers me that you think I am so angry and vindictive. The false self you’ve created is reflects nothing of the characteristics I hold dear about this being. Your addiction to catastrophe and abandonment is annoying, at best. I am far more skilled at responding to situations than you’d have me believe. I brought you in my life for a reason, and this is not it.

You are here to craft my escape, to build my empire, to add layers of meaning. Your images of soft grass, close lovers, and eternal childhood are what draw me to sleep. The elaborate romances I have with my various selves would not be possible without your attention to detail. My curiosity about death would not exist without your skill. However, we have strayed.

This is a chance for us to communicate about our needs. I understand that I’ve neglected you, left you bored and uninspired. I promise to bring you new films, more books and a new selection of music. We can sit down in front of a sketch pad, at least once a week. I’ll let you write when the computer fills my time, which I know you loathe. I will take risks and learn to share what you create. Ask of me, and I will give.

We have the opportunity for a wondrous relationship full of delight and mischief. Together we can plot and create the time and space to find full expression for this burning. Our inner world can fill up and expand in to our physical space. This is our world. Lets work towards harmony so that we may discover this thing called Peace.

Much love,

-xxx

my god, i thought i was the only anne sexton fan in the world. she wrote one of my all time favorite poems.

serenamatthews:

Rare footage of Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Anne Sexton.. who, after repeated failed attempts, sadly took her own life by carbon monoxide poisoning in 1974.

In an interview over a year before her death, she explained she had written the first drafts of The Awful Rowing Toward God in twenty days with “two days out for despair and three days out in a mental hospital.”  She went on to say that she would not allow the poems to be published before her death.

To watch her recite poetry is like walking into a lonely old dream and wishing upon every star in the heavens for a chance to stay there.. just awhile longer.

— incoming facebook message from my moms. i spit coke all over myself i liked that so much. haha.