JohnWolf
Well-known
There is so much offensive and condescending and arrogant in this statement that I'm not even going to respond. And from an RFF mentor...
peter_n
Mentor
Chris your "Check out my print sale in the RFF Classifieds" link isn't working properly.
helen.HH
A smile & a wink…
I wrote this awhile ago here, in Chris’s thought provoking cool Thread...it still rings True for me.
Dogman
Mentor
So true, Helen.
helen.HH
A smile & a wink…
Two different Perspectives: To some
One is: Hippie & esoteric
the other: mean & condescending
I am sorry Chris about your Health
and I know your life has been an economic struggle but I do hope You put less stress on yourself and your health
even in the midst of your fear of a short life
find Peace and Joy not just being driven by your sense of being an ‘Artist’.
Love to You ~ H
helen.HH
A smile & a wink…
I think ‘Failure’ most of the Time are other people's perspective, Judging You, not living up to their expectations.
There may be some truth , maybe NONE at all, just someone’s subjective point of view, their concept of the word ‘failure’.
it’s dynamite in the hands that little word
can cripple or blow someone away
There may be some truth , maybe NONE at all, just someone’s subjective point of view, their concept of the word ‘failure’.
it’s dynamite in the hands that little word
can cripple or blow someone away
mothertrucker
Well-known
I just felt I had to comment on your discussion Chris, because I grew up in Marion, just a few miles south of Fort Wayne, and I know Fort Wayne well enough to know it is much like many other midwestern towns.
I try to do something similar taking photos of my current city, Peoria, Illinois. I think these two cities are very similar, industrial river towns which have seen better days.
Great subject matter abounds in most places, it is up to the *photographer* to turn it into something special by using their artistic skills to interpret it and tell the story that you want to tell.
The source of the subject matter is not limited by your location, it's limited by how hard you want to work for it.
Without having met you in person, Chris, I believe we can tell that you work hard finding locations and telling that story. That is what makes a great photographer.
Thanks for having a great photo thread!
Chriscrawfordphoto
Real Men Shoot Film.
The people I was talking about knew they were failures, they just blamed others for their failure. They complained that no one bought their work, that no one would exhibit their work, that no one would publish their work; but they refused to do what it took to get their work in front of people.
I dated a woman for a very short time a few years ago who was a brilliant painter, tattoo artist, and photographer, but she was so lazy that she'd have stopped breathing if it didn't happen automatically.
She lived with her mom because she was too lazy to work for a living. She had worked at a tattoo shop in the small town where she lived and made good money but quit because she just didn't feel like working. The owner kept begging her to come back to work because she was very good, but she didn't feel like it.
She had done some mural painting in the past. I offered to build a website for her to show off her previous projects so people outside the small town where she lived could see she exists and hire her, and to show her paintings, drawings, and photographs so that people could buy them. Wasn't interested. Too much work; what if someone BOUGHT one? She'd have to pack it and ship it and maybe even get it framed.
Yet she whined all the time that she had no money, that her car was falling apart, that had to live with her mom, etc.
That's a failure. She had no health problems or other issues. She had someone offering her a good job as an artist, so she wouldn't have to do something else to make a living like many artists do (I was a high school English teacher...a good job...for a few years before the stroke, and many artists work really crappy jobs to survive while building their art careers). She could have made money doing more mural work, and selling work online like I do.
She always had idiotic excuses, one of which was that 'commercializing' her work would compromise the spiritual depth of her work or some other head-in-the-clouds nonsense.
I've struggled to make a good living because of my health and because I was raising my son alone with no help from his mother or my family, but I worked my butt off to make that living.
Corran
Well-known
Just being hard working doesn't guarantee success. Neither does being lazy guarantee failure, for that matter.
I've been in a number of situations where it just didn't matter how good the photographs were, how capable viewers were of buying, or whatever, the environment/people simply did not engender success.
Example: A friend and I had a very large showing at a very large gallery, biggest in the region, with a massive push in terms of marketing and showcasing images that were very culturally and historically significant to the area. We smashed records in terms of attendance at the opening as well as day-to-day visitations and viewings. Out of 25+ images hanging, framed and ready for sale, I sold two - one of which was to my partner in the show who basically paid for the framing costs involved in my part as payment ($$$$). We had done everything right but the area simply would not support artists, even the well-to-do folks from the country club who came out and donated money to the gallery. I was told time and time again "photography doesn't sell." That was the moment I figured out I needed to move out of that area if I'd ever want to have more opportunities.
I've been in a number of situations where it just didn't matter how good the photographs were, how capable viewers were of buying, or whatever, the environment/people simply did not engender success.
Example: A friend and I had a very large showing at a very large gallery, biggest in the region, with a massive push in terms of marketing and showcasing images that were very culturally and historically significant to the area. We smashed records in terms of attendance at the opening as well as day-to-day visitations and viewings. Out of 25+ images hanging, framed and ready for sale, I sold two - one of which was to my partner in the show who basically paid for the framing costs involved in my part as payment ($$$$). We had done everything right but the area simply would not support artists, even the well-to-do folks from the country club who came out and donated money to the gallery. I was told time and time again "photography doesn't sell." That was the moment I figured out I needed to move out of that area if I'd ever want to have more opportunities.
Chriscrawfordphoto
Real Men Shoot Film.
But you did respond!
Here's the thing: part of mentoring is telling the truth to the person you are mentoring. The truth isn't always what they want to hear, but you cannot help someone by lying to them to make them feel good.
I spent several years as a teacher after finishing my Masters Degree in Literature. I was shocked at how many kids in my high school classes could barely read. After nine or more years in school! Their previous teachers failed in their duty to those kids by giving them passing grades and letting them move up to the next grade year after year. They basically lied to them, telling them they were succeeding, when in fact the kids were failing academically. Because no one wanted to hurt the kids' feelings by making them retake a year of school or take remedial classes when they were younger.
When they got to high school, the house of cards came crashing down because students in Indiana cannot graduate from high school without passing a standardized test that the kids could not pass because they could not read well enough. What kind of future do you think these kids will have because their 'mentors' refused to do their jobs?
When people ask my advice, I tell them the truth so that they can succeed at whatever they're trying to achieve.
Chriscrawfordphoto
Real Men Shoot Film.
I understand that. Fort Wayne is the same way. You and I both did something to overcome that, though. You moved, right? So did I. I moved to Santa Fe and began making good money.
I had to come back to Indiana after only two years because my son needed me, and I ended up getting custody of him only a couple months after I returned. I knew I had to do something to make a living, so I went back to school and earned a Masters Degree in Literature so I could teach high school. I chose to be an English teacher because there are few jobs for art teachers, and lots of them for English teachers. I liked teaching and would have kept doing it if it were not for my health problems.
I also worked hard to build my website and get my work out to a worldwide audience, and after I quit teaching high school I built my tutorials website and began teaching private photo lessons. I managed to put my son through college from my income from selling prints, teaching photo lessons, and the donations I get from my tutorials site.
raid
Dad Photographer
I see similar things when having a manuscript being reviewed by some reviewers. If rejected , I resubmit to another journal. Quite often, the new reviewers like my manuscript.
It often is about different opinions.
chipgreenberg
Well-known
Raid's point is well taken. Unlike literacy, photography is pretty subjective. If I don't like (fill in the blank) color, grainy B/W, pictures without people, square prints, etc, etc and that's what you're selling, I'm not buying. Hopefully somebody else will.
I just didn't get along with my first year photo instructor at a well known university. We were polar opposites. Unfortunately he was my mentor that year. He missed few opportunities to tell me I sucked and I'd never be a photographer. I saw him ten years later at Photo Expo in NYC. After he recognized me and I saw his face say, "Oh, you," he asked what I was doing. I said, oh shooting for Pfizer, Sony and J&J.
Sometimes an opinion, no matter how expert is still an opinion.
Vince Lupo
Barely Known
I like your perspective John (and BTW your Instagram photos are super), and I can appreciate Chris’s sentiments as well. Sometimes you do just want to take pictures because, well, that’s what you feel like doing. I don’t think you always need an agenda or purpose - you can call it making pretty pictures for the sake making pretty pictures (or doing a lot of bad ones, which I tend to do), or as I like to call it, ‘doing my scales’, or whatever you want to call it to keep yourself ‘limber’. There aren’t any rules as far as I can see - if there are, please enlighten me!
However, I do also see the value of working on a project with purpose. But, oftentimes (maybe I should just speak for myself) you don’t know right off the bat what the project is or what your purpose/intention is. At least I don’t. Sometimes you think it’s one thing but then it makes a hard left into something else. And maybe you have no control over it - you just end up there and you’re scratching your head wondering how you got there. For example, I had no idea that my ‘Mapping the West’ project would even exist 7 years ago - it evolved from something else into where it is now, and has taken a lot of twists and turns along the stumbling, bumbling way. And it may go in yet another direction.
For me personally, I can’t tell myself in the morning “today I’m going to photograph X and nothing else” because life has a way of throwing a wrench into your plans and you end up in a place you never thought you’d be. And I’m completely fine with that - I think part of being a photographer is to be open to possibilities.
I’ve often been asked “what are you looking for?”, and I usually respond by saying “everything and nothing, all at the same time.”
I hate to keep referring people to this Jay Maisel video, but for me it’s something that I watch whenever I need a creative kick in the pants. Maybe it will help you too: https://vimeo.com/116692462
Another thing that I recall Jay having said in another video is that ‘good’ photographers usually come home disappointed at the end of the day - because of all the shots that they missed. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve felt that way, thinking more about the ones that got away than the minuscule successes I may have had.
Hopefully these ramblings have some kind of relevance to the topic being discussed!
PKR
Mentor
My old friend and sometimes assistant, Barry (RIP), would often setup a tripod mounted camera - and sometimes a simple background, on a San Francisco sidewalk, back when you could do that. He used a simple battery run flash for sunlight fill. And, he would wait. People would ask what he was doing, he replied, "street portraits". Many stood or sat for a portrait. Releases were signed in exchange for a print.
A Dangerously Curious Eye: The Edge of San Francisco, Photographs by Barry Shapiro 1972-1982 Hardcover – October 15, 2010
Snip
Far from the bridges and cable cars, hidden away behind the famous hills, there is another San Francisco Bay Area that most people never see. San Francisco's Hunter's Point and Fillmore District, West Oakland and Richmond's Iron Triangle ― in the 1970s these places on the edges of this great American metropolis offered Barry Shapiro an alternate reality where he pointed his lens.
Although Barry made his reputation as a professional photographer with the 1972 publication of Handmade Houses: The Woodbutcher's Art, his day job as a teacher of remedial reading to adults gave him an entrée into a world that white America only saw in the blaxploitation films of the day like "Shaft" and "Superfly." His curious eye brought him to many dangerous places, but with the trust he earned, he was able to not only hang out in this unique subculture, but be allowed to photograph their very intimate and sometimes dark moments. In these photos we see glimpses of tenderness that can explode into violence,..
Snip
When Barry wasn't hanging out in these fringe neighborhoods, he was prowling the streets of the Bay Area with his stealth Leica shooting poignant black-and-white moments of street life through the windows of his VW bus. These images record an incredible slice of everyday urban life without any hint of his even being there. Barry captured what Henri Cartier-Bresson called "the decisive moment" over and over with a natural ability that only the best photographers have.
Always a maverick, rarely inclined to shoot to spec and unwilling to compromise or cater to photographic fashion, Barry shot his black-and-white photographs with no thoughts of commercialism. Although his career as a photographer spanned more than forty years, and he spent the last sixteen years of his life as a high-school teacher and principal, he never stopped shooting.
With a foreword by famed San Francisco rock photographer Jim Marshall and an introduction by best-selling novelist Mark Joseph, two of Barry's closest friends, A Dangerously Curious Eye will show you a very different side of the San Francisco Bay Area.
https://www.amazon.com/Dangerously-Curious-Eye-Francisco-Photographs/dp/0979331498
https://www.sfgate.com/entertainmen...ters-Point-captured-in-photo-book-2453307.php
chipgreenberg
Well-known
"I’ve often been asked “what are you looking for?”, and I usually respond by saying “everything and nothing, all at the same time.”
Vince you're a lot more Zen than I am. That said, I think you do have an idea of what you want to shoot when you go out. Do you wander around Dell Texas with color film in your old Rollie?
Vince you're a lot more Zen than I am. That said, I think you do have an idea of what you want to shoot when you go out. Do you wander around Dell Texas with color film in your old Rollie?
PKR
Mentor
Another working style, that i find useful, is the "Lee Friedlander method"..
Go out and make a bunch of pictures, over some period of time. Print them all up and look at them. Look for any recurring theme. I figure that, some of this may not be conscious work when the photos were made.
I've often employed this method in my personal work. I have a series of what I call "Tree Portraits", that just kinda kept showing up.
Go out and make a bunch of pictures, over some period of time. Print them all up and look at them. Look for any recurring theme. I figure that, some of this may not be conscious work when the photos were made.
I've often employed this method in my personal work. I have a series of what I call "Tree Portraits", that just kinda kept showing up.
JohnWolf
Well-known
Thanks for your thoughts, Vince, and the comment on my Instagram.
I shoot projects and understand the value of a goal and planning. I get Chris' approach and appreciate his intention. I was simply trying to say there are other rewarding ways of working.
The flaneur tradition is a rich one that has produced some of history's greatest photographs. The older I get the more I'm drawn to it. Among my favorite photographers are Charles Harbutt and his book Travelog. He deliberately avoided projects, feeling they blinded him to opportunities beyond some narrow focus. Same with other favorites of mine, like Manuel Alvarez Bravo and Henry Wessel. And then there's Minor White and the whole Zen, first-thought/best-thought school, which I love.
Chris has one measure of success, but there are many others - probably one unique to every serious photographer. Personally, I agree with the guys above, that when entering the house of photography, the mind and intellect are best left outside.
John
I shoot projects and understand the value of a goal and planning. I get Chris' approach and appreciate his intention. I was simply trying to say there are other rewarding ways of working.
The flaneur tradition is a rich one that has produced some of history's greatest photographs. The older I get the more I'm drawn to it. Among my favorite photographers are Charles Harbutt and his book Travelog. He deliberately avoided projects, feeling they blinded him to opportunities beyond some narrow focus. Same with other favorites of mine, like Manuel Alvarez Bravo and Henry Wessel. And then there's Minor White and the whole Zen, first-thought/best-thought school, which I love.
Chris has one measure of success, but there are many others - probably one unique to every serious photographer. Personally, I agree with the guys above, that when entering the house of photography, the mind and intellect are best left outside.
John
Vince Lupo
Barely Known
Actually no I never have, though I have wandered plenty around Dell City (and plan to wander around a whole lot more in January), always open to whatever may come. How’s that saying go - chance favours the prepared mind?
I do have an idea of what I want when I’m out there, but always leave the door open to an unplanned detour. The creative path is neither orderly nor routine!
chipgreenberg
Well-known
Vince I hope you get back out there in January as well!
I actually agree with you. An open mind is important. But I think after you've done something for a while you approach things with a certain "toolset" that will affect where your mind strayers you and your outcome.
To stay on the Zen road for a bit, when I was younger I did a lot of Karate sparring. I read Musashi's 3 Rings and can't say I fully understand the open mind thing, but even with an open mind I think we react to our situations with our toolset. So when I sparred I kept an open mind enough to react to what was in front of me, but I reacted with my toolset which was based on techniques that worked for me, my personality, how I saw things, and even if I was having a good day or a bad day.
I had a style to my sparring.
I think photography is quite similar, at least for me. When I wander around with my camera while I don't say, "I'm going too shoot X today" I know I like a certain type of light, I like how my Tessar type lens renders out of focus stuff, I like the way Portra reacts to certain colors. I'm open to what I see but I react with my toolset, because I'm me.
I really did the same thing when lighting something for a customer back in the day. Start with a blank slate but work with my toolset. Didn't mean I never tried something new, but usually it was built upon the foundation of my toolset.
Now, does having a style or working with your own toolset limit you? That's for another thread.
Chip