Creative: Mythbusters

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Hey, how about a film with me rambling about a myriad of strange topics. Well, you didn’t ask for it but here it is. There are two points I am at least attempting to make. First, the old industry was not magical or mythical unless you weren’t there and didn’t know any better. Second, there is a HUGE difference between people working in the industry of photography and people working in the online version of photography. One is not better than the other, just very, very different. In this film, I read you a biography of ONE person who I consider to be representative of the industry side of the business. Hopefully, this will help explain what I’m trying to say.

If you are one of these people who feel like all older photographers were gifted a career and had all the advantages, well, I’m here to tell you that you are correct. Just kidding. It didn’t work that way. Claiming this only makes it seem like sour grapes and shows you don’t have any real understanding of what photographic life was like. It’s always been challenging to make it as a creative pro. Yesteryear, today, it’s always been a grind. Unless you are rich.

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    If you try and explain photography of the 80’s and 90’s, younger folk just don’t get it, or they tune out after a minute, probably the latter. I sort of feel lucky I had my best photo years then. It was nice to drop film off at the lab, chat the the folks there, go and drink coffee in a cafe nearby whilst your clip test processed. When digital arrived, I missed the connections with the labs. Sitting at home in front of a screen wasn’t as much fun.
    It was a different time. There are few photo editors now, just admin who commission the odd job. With a few exceptions, photography is no longer a vocation, it simply doesn’t pay enough, often enough to furnish any kind of lifestyle and or family raising. This year will end a 40 odd year as a working photographer. I’ve stretched it out as far as I can and probably should have wrapped it up a few years ago. For once, i’m going to shoot pictures just for me. I’m not interested in anyone seeing them, I just want to feel what it’s like to take pictures.
    Your ‘rant’ is right on the money, sadly. I wonder, has digitalisation disengaged the young from the roots of their chosen genre? Music has taken a very similar trajectory. Has the absence of the tangibility of music and photography left a void? Like a plastic flower is to a living one.

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    Made me laugh, in UK we called it ‘clip test’ in the US it seems it’s a ‘snip test’ which here would suggest it’s what a potential partner would have done to verify the fertility status of her intended :)) To have ‘the snip’ is to have a vasectomy. Similarly, your ‘fanny pack’ is our ‘bum bag’ fanny having an entirely different connotation here ! The good old snip/clip test often saved a transparency…although you really only had the slightest of tweaks available, that’s how accurate the metering needed to be. Kids today have no idea :)) Never heard the phrase ‘dynamic range.’

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    Dan, you speak truth. I started pro life in ‘60 and my clock pretty much stopped ticking mid-80s. I was twenty-nine before the funds were there to give me a six-months shot at surviving on my own ticket, and that was in ‘66. I had little idea how long ad agencies (and the rest of the commercial word!) could string you out before paying you: some agencies wrote three months into their order forms. Their way or the highway. What you gonna do? What can you do at that stage but suck it up and pray.

    I never shot digital professionally, and in my experience, the end of the “golden age” was perhaps even earlier than you suggest. It seemed to accelerate around the time stock agencies began to turn transparencies into digital files. What I thought was my personal pension scheme became junk, worthless rubbish in hangers and taking up space in both an agency and my own archivadora. It all became a waste of time and money. Ending rights-managed struck me a massive shot in the foot for the agencies, as much as for the contributing photographers.

    At first, I thought this decline was something unique to me, and caused all kinds of heartaches about no longer being relevant to the industry: personal failure. Only some years later did other photographers I respect begin to admit that they, too, had booked passage on the very same boat as I. Yes, that was a kind of release from anxiety about personal abilities, but did zilch to help in concrete, financial terms.

    Regarding your endorsement of Mr DM: the first pictures I ever saw with handwriting, literally bloody scrawl, were Kenyan ones from the late Peter Beard. I have no idea who was the first of the pair to go public with them; the Beard ones came to my attention courtesy of French PHOTO magazine that I used to buy way back then. I don’t know for sure if I think it a good idea or not; if anything, it seems to distract and take attention away from the photography, but that could be peculiar to me, and instead, add value for others.

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      Yes, Beard was one of my favs too. So many good photographers have walked away. It’s a shame. We lost a lot of great potential and replaced it with trivial idiocy but that seems to be the trend now.

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    Hi Dan, thanks for another fun instalment. I miss your ranty podcast, any idea to pick it up again? Just got my mat black copy of the OHTO ball pen, thanks for the recommendation! I’m sick of my fountain pens leaking on the flights – and I’m flying for work quite a bit, so it was perfect timing 8)

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    Thanks for a pen recommendation. Perfectly timed as I got a bit irritated with foundation pen overflowing on flights. Matt black nice balance. Also.. good one! Bring back your podcast;)

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