Filed under: Field Notes & Essays
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Please visit my new column on RESOLVE, liveBooks new blog, about the business of photography called “Seeing Money” where I hope to provide some fundamental business information for those just starting out or trying to re-boot their careers.RESOLVE — the liveBooks photo blog » Doug Menuez
THE OLD MODEL IS THE NEW MODEL
I’ve been having lots of discussions around the country lately about what viable new model might be developing for advertising and editorial photographers to survive in this new economic era and beyond. Guess what: there isn’t one. Yet. And probably at this point there won’t be one. Photographers are too fragmented and pulling at cross purposes for too many years. We’ve been giving away internet rights for so long that’s become entrenched as pretty much free.
Right now I have to believe the old rules still apply. Photographers who develop their eye and can present their own special way of seeing the world and can then build a reputation around that work will thrive. And copyright, feeding photographers and their families for so many years, has no substitute. Of course, supply and demand will always play a role in terms of the leverage photographers have. The more you build your name, the more leverage you’ll have. Right now supply is at an all time high. Demand is at an all time low. Now is the time to hone your skills like crazy, and at the same time you must as always market yourself using all the new marketing tools available, including social networking first and foremost.
The one thing photographers can do right now is improve their business skills so we are all pulling in the same direction. The better photographers get at running their businesses the better we’ll all be. If photographers follow similar best business practices that will make us all more effective in leveraging what we have built up. We will never get back to the golden age of past pricing and trade practices that made advertising so lucrative. But the more existing and new photographers embrace and understand the power of unifying their business practices and protecting their rights the sooner things will improve.
There are lots of expert consultants out there who can take you to another level. The main thrust of the work I see that is valuable is around marketing and honing your creative vision. Five who come to mind who I know, trust and recommend are Mary Virginia Swanson, Debra Weiss, Allegra Wilde, Ian Summers and Susan Baraz.
I have either consulted with or worked together with them on panels and I know how powerful their experience can be for a photographer trying to push forward creatively and marketing-wise. But before even taking that step it’s important to do your homework on a basic structural level.
BACK TO BASICS
What I will be sharing is a report from the front lines from a working photographer perspective. At first I’ll discuss the basic stuff and then later some of the mistakes I’ve made, what worked for me, things I learned the hard way. Bankers can’t help you until you know how they think. Most accountants don’t understand the photography business. Most photographers I know have no idea what a P&L is or how to manage cash flow or get an SBA loan. Very few are effective at collections without alienating clients and almost none have learned basic bookkeeping. Yeah, the boring, yet essential DNA building block items of a growing business.
Please take a look at the new column and let me know what you think and what you want to know more about:
RESOLVE — the liveBooks photo blog » Doug Menuez
Filed under: Field Notes & Essays | Tags: elections, facebook, Iran, students, violence
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As blood spills in the streets of Iran I watch from the safe distance of television and internet, sorry for the lost lives and fearful for colleagues covering the story. Today I got another note from a student in Iran who I met through Facebook. I can’t do much to help this courageous young man– his name literally means “brave Iranian”– except what he asks me to do: relay the message. So I’m sharing this valuable first person witness to the repression:
Bahador sent you a message.
“Dear doug Please let the world know what is goin on in iran. please let the world know about iranian youth cries in lack of justice in our elections.”
Subject: doroud (hi).
“dear doug thanks alot for your kind reply on my previous post and please accept my appology because of the long delay in getting it back with you. as you may know every communication mean is blocked by our government in iran, speacially internet and depndent stuffs to it. our cellphones, sattilites, internet access and everything is blocked and filtered.
yeah 4 days ago before our supreme leader speech we were asking for a new election and that is 80% of the voters oppinion but when he showd us his real face the protesters demands were taken to another level and after killing more of our citizens by his command, oppinions got changed and people can not stand his leadership anymore. they are setting up our 2 candidates, mir hossein moosavi and mehdi karoobi a crime to arrest them and kill all other protesters. they use snipers, tear gases , batons and everything possible to use the highest level of violence against the protesters. they have killed at least at least and at least 50 persoan by far. unfortunatly president obama is not takeing a more seriuos dicision againts iran and we iranians are suffering from his being this cold blood against this much bloodshed. we belive that political sanctions from america is needed. thanks again for your kind support and hope you keep supporting us to a better end. for humen being, humen dignity, humen rights and a peacful life. at least this tragic story allowed us to prove to the world that iranian peopl are not happy with their government and the whole islamic republic of iran, but we were all dominated under this shameful system and what i garantee is that my citizens are not looking for atomic bomb we are are all friends with american people and european people and we are looking for the real peace. please let our american brothers and sisters know, that iranian people were dominated and they can not take this anymore. my sister was born in america in oklahoma and she is an american/iranian citizen. and please if its that reachable for you guys use the NGO powers to help us. a heartfelt thanks goes to all of you from my people and we are looking for your help indeed. wish you all the best of lcuks and a peacful life for all of us. good luck.
Truely yours.
Bahador.”
Please pass it on.
Filed under: Blur: A Memoir, Field Notes & Essays | Tags: Brazil, cocaine, fate, O Globo, photography, photojournalism, San Francisco
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From “Blur: A Memoir,” an ongoing and random series of stories, dreams, and memories from my life as a photographer. This is #2 in a continuing series from “Tesåo,” about my wife Tereza and our relationship. A recurring theme in any photographer’s life is how to maintain some semblance of family life, or to even keep friends. This story reflects parts of my personal evolution and naive attempts to balance my work and family and make my second (and hopefully last) marriage work.
©2009 Doug Menuez from "Tesão"
After we broke up I drove cross country to attend the San Francisco Art Institute, determined to lose myself in photography. Tereza quickly tired of America and moved back to Brazil in 1977, entered University, got married, got divorced, graduated, moved back to New York to work for Globo TV eight years later, got married again, and in a devastating setback got separated from her new husband within a month. She began looking for me. Not knowing where I’d moved, she was calling around the US for two years, city by city, finally in late 1985 finding my number in San Francisco with the help of her sister.
I had suffered night after night in those ten long, sad years we had been apart, listening to Brazilian records and memory-etching each detail of that summer together. She found me in California and left a sweet message, which I played upon returning from a shoot. I’d been flying all day in a helicopter with Wayne Newton at the controls, his german shepherd barking continuously in the co-pilot seat as Wayne roared through canyons near Vegas, inches from the red rock walls. Exhausted, I arrived home and hit play on my answering machine. Her soft voice barely audible with my cocaine-fueled wife screaming for a divorce behind me (“OK, you got it!”).Then I flew all night to New York City full of elation, adrenaline and dread. Laying in bed that first day back together, it was then, looking into her eyes, that I experienced true peace of mind for the first time. We’d found each other again and nothing whatsoever had changed between us.
I was always flying in those days for the magazines and was able to start making weekend trips to New York to see Tereza from wherever I was shooting. We slowly got to know each other again over five months of visits. I started secretly grabbing some of her stuff and putting it into my suitcase to bring back to Sausalito, while slowly trying to convince her to leave New York.
The last weekend before she finally decided to move with me to California, Tereza remembered her visit to a psychic who made some predictions on a tape that she had put in a drawer and never played. She had just forgotten about it. As a young journalist, I was pretty skeptical of psychics but was willing to listen.
Tereza found the tape and put it on her little cassette player. We sat together and listened. The psychic spoke in a calm, even voice. He said that in two years time Tereza would meet a man from her past with the initials “DM or MD” and that he worked for the magazines. We both got chills as we realized it was two years to the month since she had been given the tape. We looked hard at each other. I knew she was deciding that moment to go with me, to trust me. Well, there are just some things that can’t be explained in life. Some force is at work we can only guess at. This then, our meeting again after all this time, was fate.
©2009 Doug Menuez from "Tesão"
Filed under: Field Notes & Essays | Tags: Adobe, darkroom, Greg Gorman, Innova, Karl Rove, Kodak, Miles Davis, photography, Seth Resnick, silver gelatin, tequila
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“There are relatively few things I truly despise: beets, liver, Karl Rove and RC paper, in that order. RC breaks my heart. It’s to those who print on matte rag paper yet remember silver gelatin before the Hunt brothers cornered the market on silver in the late 1970’s that I address.”
Pulling a perfect print from the wash was one of the great joys in life for a photographer. While still wet the image glowed supernaturally, tones luminous and rich. Judging how much it would dry down was one of many subtle skills gained in a darkroom. Working all night with a bottle of scotch and Miles playing, we were ecstatic in our solitude.
The small miracle of a silver gelatin print yielding its hidden image in the developer and the joy of the process was unequaled for me in the digital realm until recently. With the introduction of inkjet paper that emulates the look and feel of silver paper a rather larger miracle has been produced.
A whole generation has grown up thinking expensive, delicate rag type paper such as watercolor or other less costly types of matte papers are what you use to make prints. To them, this paper is photography. Better this then plastic, resin-coated stock. For those who embraced RC paper in the darkroom, or it’s evil mutant digital version, I can’t help you, hasta le vista. There are relatively few things I truly despise: beets, liver Karl Rove and RC paper, in that order. RC breaks my heart. It’s those who print on matte rag paper yet remember silver gelatin before the Hunt brothers cornered the market on silver in the late 1970’s that I address.
It’s true many in my generation have embraced rag papers as I did, at first because the alternative was the horrific sheen of plastic. What choice did we have in the early days of digital? Good rag papers are an important link to art and the history of printmaking, and can deliver stunningly beautiful prints for the right images. I grew up using it for etching and lithography, not photography. But over time, every generation of digital printmakers has grown to just accept matte paper as the norm.
The difference for me is simple: matte paper absorbs light and looks flat. A traditional silver paper of the type I grew up like Kodak Polycontrast F, famous as Ansel Adams favorite, or Agfa’s Portriga Rapid or the orginal Ilford, had a “supercoating” of a hardened gelatin giving it what was called a semi-gloss surface. It wasn’t glossy like RC paper, but it had a sheen that reflected light and gave depth to the blacks. And that difference was its power.
After a speech at RIT four years ago where I lamented the lack of an inkjet substrate equaling the look, feel, and tonal range of long-ago papers I was approached Eric Kunsman of Booksmart, a talented local digital printer and bookbinder in Rochester. He told me my wait was over. He was testing a brand new paper from a new company called Innova.
The company was formed by a band of Hanemuhle rebels who left when the parent company refused to fund their dream of making and distributing a paper that rivaled silver gelatin for inkjet printing. There was a story about an eccentric German scientist who also missed silver paper laboring to solve the technical challenges involved in getting a silver gelatin-like emulsion on a cotton paper base. Innova got a hold of this guy and set the goal of producing a fibre based baryta paper that no one could tell from silver.
Until that moment, no major manufacturer appeared to be interested in this idea. I’d spoken to Epson and others and was told that it was technically too difficult and expensive to produce, and there was essentially no demand. Yet here came this little company with the crazy idea that there were photographers who remembered and missed the silver print. They also felt there were plenty of people still printing away on silver paper that might be tempted into digital printing.
With the invention of Innova FibaGloss paper the doors opened and Hanemuhle, Ilford, Epson and others got the religion and all today now distribute similar papers, creating choices and competition. I’m mentioning Innova because they were first, remain my favorite and now thankfully sponsor my projects. But I do this also from pure self-interest: I hope photographers will buy this extraordinary paper so I get to keep printing with it.
Tequila, Mexico. ©2009 Doug Menuez. At Fotokina a silver gelatin print of this image was hung next to an inkjet print made on Innova FibaGloss in a comparison test. Most photographers chose the inkjet print when asked to identify the silver print.
For a long time I did not even realize how I was missing silver paper. I was caught up in learning to master inkjet printing, especially the amazing color possibilities. I woke up in 2003 while comparing a black and white silver print I had made of men in vats of agave juice making tequila from my book “Heaven, Earth, Tequila” to a rag print. The first thing I noticed was the true continuous tone, the rich blacks and overall luminosity made me feel I could almost fall into the print. The rag paper had its lovely texture and handmade feel, but the image lost some impact. I felt separated from the content by the paper. And then I really noticed the limits of ink jet. While it was much easier to use Photoshop to dodge and burn I started to see where the lower gray tones were blocking up, the upper grays jumped to white and subtle banding I’d ignored somehow. Measuring the d-max showed the silver print to have deeper blacks as well.
Knowing there was no such thing as a semi-gloss silver type paper on the market at that time, I began to further explore image processing and printing with the goal of getting as close to continuous tone as possible. RIPs and processing techniques for digital converting color files to bw from Greg Gorman and other tips from Seth Resnick helped. And overall, there has been tremendous progress in inkjet printing. But even so, I grew to miss the look and feel of my old paper more and more.
In the late 1980’s I was experimenting with digital printing on rag and other papers, printing on wax printers at Adobe, where I was documenting the engineers, and later at Electronics for Imaging, where they were developing what later became the Fiery RIP. Around late 1992 I printed a portfolio on an early version of Supermac’s dye sublimation printer, a breakthrough on price and color. It had what was essentially continuous tone, far more similar to silver than what I could get from inkjet, with its dithered ink droplets. But the trade off was that the paper was resin based and it also faded quickly. I turned to Iris printers and lush watercolor papers. Those papers quickly became available on the much, much cheaper Epsons, so I joined the hunt to make beautiful prints with inkjet.
And that was all good until my wake up call. Sometimes we forget what we truly love and what defines us. Now my long nightmare is over. For me a big quest in digital is to find and implement metaphors for what I had in analog. Now I’m pulling prints out of my inkjet printer with that same rush as I had pulling them from the wash. They glow.
So the challenge is lessened but is essentially the same: to make prints that move us emotionally. It’s about the image, but also the print as object, as a beautiful delivery system for the subject matter. The choice of substrate says as much about the photographer as the content of the work and can affect our perception of the photograph as subconscious filters. To each their own of course, but I finally found mine; the look and feel of silver. Can’t beat that.
Filed under: Blur: A Memoir, Field Notes & Essays | Tags: beach house, Brazil, Carlos Falchi, photography
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From “Blur: A Memoir,” an ongoing and random series of stories, dreams, and memories from my life as a photographer.
When Tereza arrived in New York City from Brazil in 1976, her older sister Magda got her a job in a sweatshop on 23rd Street sewing leather bags for Carlos Falchi. Magda was representing the hot new Brazilian designer, filling orders she’d taken from Bloomindale’s and trendy boutiques downtown.
Every day at lunch the women would rise from their sewing machines and gather by the huge windows on the 10th floor. Across the street, like clockwork, they would see this freaky old guy jerking off on his rooftop, looking over at them as they laughed in amazement and disgust.
At night, Tereza and Magda would go to huge parties downtown wearing black leather mini-skirts. There were East Germans, Russians and Poles who’d escaped through the Iron Curtain, Brazilian diplomats and musicians, French filmmakers, Italian playboys, heroin dealers, dancers, painters, and a few Americans trying to dance the Samba, with everyone high on Capirinhas, shouting over the music in a Babel-like cacophony of miscommunication.
It wasn’t long before the sweatshop job wore Tereza down and she quit, retreating to the calm of Magda’s beach house on Eaton’s Neck, not far from where I grew up in Northport. On Easter Sunday I was making a rare visit home when Magda called me from the city. For three years Magda had been telling me her younger sister would come to live with her as soon as she could arrange things. And finally her sister had arrived, was alone at the beach house, and needed cheering up. I was busy and still a bit mad at Magda for some long-forgotten reason, made some excuse and hung up. Five minutes later, Maria Tereza Pires Machado, 21 years old, called and asked in very broken English why I would not come and see her. Her voice was soft and sexy as hell. I grabbed a bottle of wine and my Nikkormat and hitchhiked the 30 miles to see her. Although I did not understand her Portuguese, language was not an issue that night and we talked for hours. She insisted I stay the night, pulling me into bed. I watched her cross the kitchen into the back bedroom. With a quick, graceful gesture she simultaneously dropped her sun dress revealing her naked, perfect brown body, while slapping her hand on the bed, and said “You stay.” I did.
This utterly blew my 18-year-old, Long Island mind. The night became a week. I was overwhelmed, transported to another planet, converted to a new religion––the religion of her––with the total devotion and hallucinatory intensity of a convert, and in way, way, way over my head. I’d had girlfriends; this was a woman.
We began an affair that lasted almost six months until she abruptly broke up with me. She got bored and wanted to see older guys. On our last date I tried to impress her and took her to Fire Island in my “new” ’65 Opel and we ran out of gas on the highway. She didn’t really speak to me after that, although I continued to visit her sisters. Devastated, I moved to San Francisco determined to forget her and dedicate my life to photography.
Filed under: Field Notes & Essays | Tags: chase jarvis, photography, silicon valley
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I’ve been driving up and down 280 in Silicon Valley the past few weeks working hard to launch my new book and documentary film project from my work here in the 80’s and 90’s. More on that soon. Although it’s going amazingly well, it’s still really, really, really, really, really hard to get sponsors and funding for these kinds of projects. At the same time I’ve been updating my portfolio (with my amazing new agents at Stockland Martel) and preparing a new web site with LiveBooks new custom service, writing this blog, and beginning a new blog for LiveBooks on the business of photography (coming soon). I’ve also completed a rough cut on a short film I directed about immigrants in NYC and giving talks around the country while also working on ad campaigns, production and other projects.
What am I doing? Basically I’m starting over. The economy just makes it all harder but I’m putting myself in the same boat with any other photographer starting or redirecting their career. This is the same crazy pace that ten years ago led me to burn out completely so I can’t help but think about the message I’m sending in my essays and public talks. Damn, I hate having to follow my own advice. Of course I’m in a good position and having fun with this new phase, but the same principles apply. I have to keep honing my vision and get my work out there. I have to hustle as much as any young photographer starting out. That’s the way it is.
We had drinks last night with a young woman considering a career in photography and the issue of “paying your dues” came up. I told the story about the time we hired “a famous photographer’s” assistant who one day threw the negs he was filing back down on the light table and announced “I’m too good for this shit! I paid my dues!” And so forth. Well, sweet Jesus I was so glad for him. I sure wish I could say the same. Please don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.
There is no such thing as being paid in full in the dues department. If you believe that, chances are you are on a plateau, comfortable and resisting the increasingly obvious problems related to stasis in a creative live. You might be heading for hack-ville if as I believe we must challenge ourselves periodically to grow. By challenging yourself you are automatically making your life more complicated, stressful and taking risks. This is the requirement of excellence, of fulfilling your potential. It just goes with the territory….
I think it’s so interesting and consistent with my point that Chase Jarvis is writing about how he is pushing himself creatively to take risks; he’s shooting landscapes, portraits, every day life with his iPhone and probably next with his hotel room converted into a pinhole camera — see Chase Jarvis Blog: Escaping Your Portfolio — this stuff lights up my brainstem like a strong snort of powdered jalapeños. He is absolutely right not to sit back on his accomplishments, and I’m inspired by what he’s doing. I hear that damn voice in my head: get busy, get busy you lazy bastard!
For those starting out, suffice to say that to reach your goals the amount of effort you need to put in will be SHOCKINGLY surprising to you; it will seem endless, unfair, irrational. And once you get to the first goal prepare to do all that all over again every five or ten years out if you want to stay relevant, fresh and ultimately, happy.
So yeah, I”m probably pushing things a bit more than I should, but this time around I am heeding my own words in that I have clearly chosen a path I want to follow that I think is my true path, and which I feel I was born to follow. This time I’m not compromising–as much. I’m actually content and in the most creative space I’ve been in for years. I remember how a large part of the insanity of my early days was not having a clear plan, not knowing the price for my dreams in terms of the amount of work I would have to put in. But once you go through the fire of life and actually survive there is not much that can stop you if you believe in something strongly enough.
It is definitely easier now because I know the amount of insane effort required. Because I’ve succeeded while taking risks in the past the fear is much diminished or mostly gone. What the fuck, just move ahead. Have faith. Now for some sleep.
Filed under: Field Notes & Essays
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“The ideas I’m expressing about true success are scalable and can be modified to fit individual needs. That’s where kaizen comes into play. “
I’m still buzzed from the wonderful, warm bath of good vibrations that made my visit and talk with the photographers of Richmond, VA and the ASMPCV such a blast. Giving one of these talks can be like any performance; entertaining, hopefully inspiring, or…not, and the outcome is more than half driven by the energy of the audience. This was an outstanding audience from which I learned a few things. These folks down here have their heads screwed on right, especially the talented John Henley, who helped arrange my visit. John started in fine art and continues to bring an artist’s eye to his commercial work. In other words, he gets paid to shoot what he loves to shoot. Thinking about John and a conversation we had on the way to the airport got me reflecting again on the merits of kaizen, the Japanese concept of continuous incremental improvement.
©2009 John Henley, from "Midway" series.
These are strange times and I hear from a lot of people struggling to figure it all out, just as I am, and yet for the most part my sense was that life is quite good in Richmond amongst the photo community. People are working, things are happening as reflected by the challenging questions raised by this sharp group. Gathered in a former tobacco warehouse that is now the beautiful studio/gallery of photographer Guy Crittenden I couldn’t help but be impressed with the whole Richmond thing: the town, the people, the almost irritating friendliness (hey I am a New Yorker once again) and the tremendous talent on display on the gallery walls from a show of personal work by the local chapter members.
My talk was based on the themes from my EP essay “On Chaos…” which examines the core challenges we all face in order to create a creatively satisfying life in photography for the long term. These challenges include how to get paid to shoot what we love, building a proper business structure, balancing work and family, thriving and not just surviving kind of stuff. Most photographers are well aware of these issues and working on them. But when I’m listening to someone else articulate ways to address these questions it helps me to recognize my own challenges and to take what is useful from the speaker to apply in my own life. I’m hoping the same can be true for my audience. It really helps me to bounce these ideas off an audience in order to sharpen my own thinking and evolve the dialog. Everything about photography is changing so fast right now so I can’t even pretend to be any kind of authority. I just share my experience and what worked and did not work in the past. Hopefully some of this is useful for the future.
The feedback was very positive so I know I was on the right track for most people. But I had an interesting conversation afterward with Elli Morris who talked about her life and career in terms of having applied most of what I was talking about from the get go. She had acted all along with integrity, following her heart and saying no as much as possible to the bullshit that kills us. This to me is a rare person in photography and her ability to live in that way is exemplary. I was never that mature. Funny, but it does seem that the creative brain is often a beast that must be tamed, and many of my peers have become expert at self-medication. Sometimes this could be a chemical thing– art and madness do seem to go together– and other times it’s related to how we were raised or just the stress of putting your ego on the line. But Elli is also a mature individual, clearly raised with the right amount of self-esteem and gumption to weather the storms of a creative life. Much of what I’m talking and writing about is figuring out how to live like Elli already is living.
On the way to the airport John described similar sentiments that helped me crystalize a thought I need to add to my talks: the ideas I’m expressing about true success are scalable and can be modified to fit individual needs. That’s where kaizen comes into play. When I get rolling I tend to rant a bit, and I try to stress the urgency I feel about how short life is and coming to terms with what you feel is your true voice, putting that in your portfolio and figuring out the proper business structure to support that. For me it really is all or nothing and I can come on a bit strong with my swing for the fences philosophy. That works to get some people motivated, but for others it might be less helpful. If you are feeling trapped by the economy, or in a rut creatively, and trying to feed your family and without resources to change, then my call to action might be frustrating. But if you can make one tiny change such as everyday shooting one picture for yourself to replenish your creative well, you are practicing kaizen. And you can take other small steps, slowly turning your ship around until you are going in the right direction.
To me true success is measured in terms of how satisfied you can be creatively while still getting the bills paid. It is a question of balance, of first defining the goal and step-by-step progress to that goal. It’s doubtful anyone can ever achieve 100 per merger of art and commerce all of the time. There are compromises in reality, the trick is to keep tilting the scale toward your dreams. It’s not going to happen overnight and your version of success is yours alone. John pointed out to me that not everyone will be in the top 20 photographers in the US, nor will they even want to be. Everyone has a different level of ego, ambition and way of defining success. John is not saying people should accept mediocrity either, but to examine what works and does not work for them and begin to look at what their choices have been. What photographers do want is to find a way to make a living from the work that gives them the most joy so their lives are meaningful.
Yet it’s easy to get discouraged, especially if you are moderately successful. There is a keen fear now of rocking the boat. And even if you decide to push yourself to change, practicing kaizen everyday, you will never stop paying your dues. Even the top 20 superstars, whoever they are, will never stop paying their dues if they want to be creatively satisfied. That’s just the reality of what we do. We never reach the ultimate goal. Life truly is a journey––true cliché alert––and needs to be treated as such, appreciating each stage in context.
The inspiring news is that there are many photographers finding ingenious ways to drive their careers into satisfying orbits, even in this economy, and certainly it seems so in Richmond.
Filed under: Field Notes & Essays
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Please join me at ASMPCV chapter in Richmond, VA on April 23, 7pm, in a discussion around the issues in my recent EP essay “Chaos, Fear, Survival & Luck” For more info, please check out their site:
ASMPCV – Central Virginia Chapter of the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP)
EP Resources – Doug Menuez ON CHAOS, FEAR, SURVIVAL & LUCK: LONGEVITY IS THE ANSWER
Filed under: Field Notes & Essays | Tags: Africa, AIDS, dance, Elizabeth Taylor, Orphans, photography books, uganda
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STILL IN STORES, AMAZON.COM AND EMPOWER AFRICAN CHILDREN.COM
ALL PROFITS TO THE KIDS
Amazon.com: Transcendent Spirit: The Orphans of Uganda: Douglas Menuez: Books
“The stories featured in Transcendent Spirit illuminate the smallest fraction of Uganda’s heartbreaking history with HIV/AIDS. I believe you will be moved by the magnificent photographs by Doug Menuez as much as I have been. It is through his caring lens that we see the children and experience their courage, joy and innate beauty. This book brings these young lives into sharp focus, and we must never look away.”
–– Dame Elizabeth Taylor
“Transcendent Spirit: The Orphans of Uganda”
Rarely do pictures alone create change. What does change things is money– funds to pay for food, clothing and the critically important education that catapults these children forward to lives of meaning. Therefore all profits are going to the foundation : : : Empower African Children : : : to support these amazing children.
Please buy the book, make a difference!
Sponsored by Macy’s, Produced by David Elliot Cohen, Intro by Dame Elizabeth Taylor , published by Beaufort Books, NY.
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“Mulling it over, I couldn’t articulate it fully but definitely, I knew I had become lazy, really lazy. A spectacular sloth by the standards of shooting film. Film is hard. Film is a stone cold unforgiving killing bastard. Film is once in a lifetime, no excuses. F8 and really, really be there: ready, steady, in focus, correct exposure, and pressing the shutter in synch with life.”
THE LURE OF DIGITAL
Throughout the 1980’s I covered a lot of football, some of it without a motor drive or auto exposure and all of it manually follow-focusing with big glass. Various manufacturers would show up on the sidelines with different versions of digital cameras to try, always promising (or threatening) the same refrain: “In five years you guys will all be shooting digital!” Everyone would laugh and roll their eyes at this ridiculous idea.
It took more than five years, but by 1999 with the introduction of the Nikon D1 I was shooting both film and digital. Five years later, fully two thirds of my work was digital. Now with the D3X and D700 it’s 99 percent digital. The main reason for this shift is simply that the quality of the files is just so fantastic now that I can’t justify the expense of film for most projects. I’m not too precious about my tools; for me it’s all about the image and whatever gets the job done. We are at a point now with the quality of digital where I can make a digital print from a digital capture and show veteran photographers prints they cannot tell are digital. And that brings the discussion back to the eye of the shooter and the content of the images; the camera is irrelevant.
Yet despite this technical advance, lately I’ve been looking hard at what this means for me as a photographer and how I see. Of course I miss film and the traditions I grew up with. Until recently I had been shooting Tri-x almost every day since I was 10 years old so it’s not a small thing to change. I’ve been questioning if what I’m missing about film and film cameras is more than sentimental. I wondered if the differences between the working methods of using film and using digital were more than physical and what the implications might be if so. And bear in mind, I’m looking at this as someone who lives for capturing moments. This led me to do a serious shoot on a personal project with only film. And that experience led me to a revelation that is changing how I shoot digital, for the better. More on that in a moment.
It was at the Super Bowl in 1982 that I first laid hands on a digital camera. It was an experimental prototype Nikon was working on. They let me shoot a frame or two. At the time, I thought the whole idea insane. I remember it being very slow and heavy. I vaguely remember you could fire a frame every few minutes and it had a maximum shutter speed of 1/90th of a second or similar. It was unworkable for sports unless you planned to just shoot peak action, waiting for the athlete to reach the apex of a leap in the air for example. This reminded me of the old guys I knew at my first newspaper who started their careers shooting sports with a 4×5 Speed Graphic. One gentleman in particular–Zeke–looked over my shoulder one day and saw the film I was getting ready to soup from an assignment. I knew Zeke had covered the invasion of Normandy, incredibly, with a Speed Graphic. He took a drag on his cigar and leaned over and shouted “Six rolls! We could have covered World War II in 2 f*****g frames ; one for the battle scene, one for the generals shaking hands!”
As the digital revolution unfolded through the 80’s and 90’s and all things analog were being converted to bits I was covering the engineers in Silicon Valley making the breakthroughs. It was clear they were going to change the world and I was very interested in the story more than the technology itself. My background was traditional and seriously analog. I was all about silver and the rituals of the darkroom. Staying up all night printing with MIles Davis on and a bottle of tequila was a necessity. I never imagined that digital capture and output would replace film and silver gelatin paper in my own work. But my curiosity about what the engineers were developing and my proximity led me to experiment early with digital scanners and printers. In 1983 I was transmitting photos to USA Today from forest fires in Yosemite with a steamer trunk size “portable” Scitex scanner. I bought a Mac in December of 1984 and was cruising the early internet immediately through primitive modems. In 1989 I co-produced the first published photography book with digital separations using a beta version of Photoshop. I made one of the first– if not the first– portfolios using a dye-sublimation printer from SuperMac. After three months of hard printing that beast, tweaking the color and density, I put the prints in an “archival” portfolio and by morning all the prints were blank. The ink molecules had migrated to the plastic pages. This is why we call it the “bleeding” edge of new technology. There are dozens of other experiments and beta tests I did with all the latest hardware and software, yet through it all I still never believed it would replace film or wet printing. Never. And that is exactly what happened.
THE ZEN OF FILM
So who cares anymore? Digital is king now. I for one do care, immensely, about the differences between film and digital. Why? I want to make great photographs, that’s why. I still dream every day of trying to make something meaningful that will stand up to time. And I started to get this slow realization that digital was making me lazy. Lazy, as in the opposite of what’s required to be great. No need to really worry about exposure, or to focus or anything. Just point and shoot–a monkey could do it! No need to think at all. This is so seductive and easy to rationalize. You tell yourself, “My eyes are getting bad” or “The auto everything makes me faster” and so on.
I started to worry that with digital I might be losing my edge. Yes, I was making images that I could be proud of and giddy with the instant gratification of seeing the image on the camera’s LCD. But what if I was in fact losing ground? What if I would get so slow and lazy I would miss the picture of a lifetime, the one I’m waiting for every day?
Mulling it over, I couldn’t articulate it fully but definitely, I knew I had become lazy, really lazy. A spectacular sloth by the standards of shooting film. Film is hard. Film is a stone cold unforgiving killing bastard. Film is once in a lifetime, no excuses. F8 and really, really be there: ready, steady, in focus, correct exposure, and pressing the shutter in synch with life.
To test this seemingly irrational fear, I decided to shoot a new project using film and manual settings. It turned out to be incredibly difficult at first, like giving up hotel mini-bars difficult. Like running up a sand dune blindfolded while trying to thread a needle difficult. But some things you don’t forget and after a day or so my mind razored up and I noticed I was again unconsciously adjusting f stops and pre-focusing while I was raising a camera in anticipation of a moment, just like in the old days. Soon these mechanical procedures happened automatically, unconsciously, naturally and in so doing I was changing. I was much more aware of light and therefore of the unforgiving nature of the film. I was bending my brain back into a film mindset. I could feel the difference and started to grasp the outline of a theory.
With digital, so much can be saved. Not only do you have the LCD to alert you to whether you got the shot, to adjust exposure and composition, but you can back it up via wireless, double memory card slots, downloading right there onto hard drives and so forth. The processing is much safer overall and risk of losing the image goes way down. Sure we get the odd electrical storm inside a memory card, but this is insignificant compared with film dangers.
With film, so much is at risk. You are never, ever sure you got the shot until you process the film, and depending where you are in the world and your assignment this could be days or weeks, or in the case of my old friend Frans Lanting, months! You learn to be psychic and to live in denial. You are denying your burning desire to see what you got. And sometimes when you think you sort of missed the shot but are not quite sure, you can deny it for the time being and move on, hopeful yet ignorant. (Contrarily, with digital you will know you missed the greatest shot of your life right then and there, thus inducing plans for suicide, and casting a pall of depression over your shoot.)
With film, not only might the exposure be off, but the processing is fraught with peril. Even if you process yourself mistakes can happen, it’s chemistry for Christ’s sake– and even the best labs have the rare but deadly disasters. Just protecting the film from the shoot to the lab is sometimes a minefield of stress and worry. Try getting a hand check at Heathrow security sometime. The rolls of film are like uncut diamonds, objects that simply cannot be replaced. You sweat, you bleed, you age until it’s safe.
The state of mind required to shoot film is one of heightened, intense concentration and analogous to the mindset required for Zen meditation. It’s pure zen in fact. You are truly living in the moment, electric with anticipation, open to life unfolding before you.
The state of mind when shooting digital is more relaxed, more easily distracted. It’s more like everyday life, nothing that special is required. Especially if you are in fact trained as a photographer and have some skills. The camera does leverage your abilities, no doubt. But while you have your head down checking the LCD guess what? You just missed your pulitzer. That LCD is crack. You just can’t get enough. We all want instant gratification and here you have it. Bliss. Yet the act of constantly checking the back of the camera is taking your head out of the game. You gain a useful bit of knowledge but at what cost? I know it also can save time we used to spend covering our asses with brackets and snip tests and whatnot but if it’s moments in time you are after, I now believe it’s the disciplined Zen mindset you need.
So my theory is simple: there is something really important, perhaps magical, about the fact that film is so unforgiving that it creates a special mindfulness in the photographer, which in turn increases the chances of making great pictures.
Is that a big breakthrough? For me it was a bolt of lightening. I’d slid down into the warm tub of digital complacency and lost discipline and needed correction. Yet I really love my digital cameras for all the practical reasons listed above and so I figured out a compromise. It has not been easy, but it’s all about limiting my use of the LCD. I try to never look at the devil LCD and I often will put the camera on manual exposure or manual focus to keep those neural pathways oiled. I’m not fully going back to the complete mechanical world, but by creating a limit on the LCD I put my mind back in the moment, open and thinking, ready for that shot of a lifetime.
Filed under: Field Notes & Essays
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In response to Omnicom’s recently announced plan to operate under the premise of sequential liability, APA/LA is hosting a round table discussion of this policy and the adjoining no advance policy and how it affects our industry. Sequential liability is a policy under which the photographer or production company gets paid if and when the agency is paid in full. Omnicom is the parent company of many advertising agencies, including BBDO, DDB, TBWA/ChiatDay, Goodby Silverstein, and many others.
Moderated by Creative Consultant and Photographers’ Advocate Debra Weiss, the panel includes Photographers Jill Greenberg and Glen Wexler, Photographers’ Agent Tricia Burlingham, Syndication Agent Janet Botaish, and a commercial producer to be confirmed. This event is free to all in the photographic and advertising community, and will be held Thursday, April 2, 7pm at Helms Daylight Studio 3221 Hutchison Ave #E LA CA 90034
NEWS FLASH: Omnicom in UK has responded to overwhelming opposition from various production and photographer trade groups including Advertising Producers Association in London (APA) by backing down from their position and is reverting to traditional practices. From APA release to members as reported on shots: ”Omnicom have suspended their instruction to their UK agencies, AMVBBDO, TBWA and DDB regarding the wording of payment clauses. Thus, contracts you receive from them will be as per the standard ISBA/IPA/APA contract.” Way to go APA. Power to those who organize.
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Filed under: Field Notes & Essays
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Classic master/grasshopper moment: Pirkle Jones, legendary documentary photographer and teacher leaning over my prints at the start of our first class at the SF Art Institute. Silence, then “Hmmm, somebody needs to learn how to spot!” Stung to the core, devastated, struggling to keep my 19-year-old game face on, I tried a comeback. But we all learned in short order there was no defense for anything less than excellence with Pirkle. He’d been trained by Ansel and Dorothea and other masters of 20th century American photography. The only option was to take it onboard and strive to do better, period.
He was tough, he was smart, humble and a powerful force you had to respect. I could not have had a better, or more difficult, teacher. He had such integrity and built a life for himself according to his values and vision. His work stands the test of time and speaks with eloquence for those who cannot. He inspired a generation or three of passionate photographers and we will all miss him.
From today’s NYT:
Pirkle Jones, Photojournalist, Dies at 95 – Obituary (Obit) – NYTimes.com
I just found this 1976 image sent from a former classmate– Pirkle leading a critique. I’m the kid in the center.
Filed under: Field Notes & Essays | Tags: composition, golden mean, ideas, photography, the other
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Why do photographs– still images– survive? In this media saturated culture where video is king there remains a vital place in our lives for frozen moments in time– simple still photographs, produced by what French critic Roland Barthes called “clocks for seeing,” his crazy/perfect description of a camera. For me it seems to be the collision between the profound, deep seated human need to find meaning– not just in our lives but the meaning of life itself– and the way our brains must decode still photographs.
There must be some evolutionary twist in our brain development that causes us to be immensely attracted to and compelled to pause and study photographs, even images we are not particularly interested in. When I think hard about memory and my past, every memory is conveyed in a frozen still image in my mind. There is no film running, no motion. Each event is summed up in a moment. And then a series of cascading moments follow, but these are individual frames. I think this is true of most people. Our brain patches these together exactly like frames in a film so we get the impression sometimes our memory is flowing like a film. I don’t think it is a film.
We look at photographs to find ourselves, our place in the world. We learn and affirm who we are and our place in our culture by identifying with the subjects or by opposition and by our differences with the subjects. This ties into the meaning of the “other” and the connections we make with strangers we encounter. We are all human but what is their experience? We wonder and are fascinated by strangers in strange cultures, their clothes, habits, beliefs. This curiosity is particularly well served by the still image precisely because it is fixed, still, frozen and available for long study.
Now I understand that I photograph with an unconscious purpose other than to simply document a people or place I am interested in. Like everyone else, I need to find my place in the world and understand who I am. This is not something I think about, it’s part of human DNA and so I’m constantly attracted to the “other” and looking to connect. It’s meeting a stranger as you press the shutter.
Recently I came across the famous Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski’s fantastic book “The Other” which deals at length in an extremely accessible way with this subject. In the introduction there is a reference to the French philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas’ wonderful quote that sums it all up: “The self is only possible through the recognition of the Other.” Exactly.
As I’m pondering the “other” and why photographs have survived all the changes in our culture and technology, I’m thinking of my friend and mentor Dennis Stock and his opinions about exactly what qualities a photograph must have to succeed and last the test of time. Dennis believes photographs that have certain qualities explain why the still image has remained useful and part of the culture. Over dinner at our house in Woodstock, I began to describe a recent show of contemporary photography I’d seen that was entirely conceptual, as opposed to overtly emotional. It was purely an intellectual exercise and you could read the artist’s statement and agree or not, get the point, perhaps appreciate a little better the imagery, but it was art. Subjective and debatable as to its merits.
Dennis is never shy of his opinions and began a critique of contemporary fine art photography. I lamely interjected that rules are made to be broken. “Bullshit,” he cried, slamming his hand on the table. “Do you want your pictures to be memorable or not? Be serious!”
His point was that most contemporary work was going to pass by in a flash and disappear. To be useful it has to be memorable. To be memorable it has to follow certain fundamental principals passed down through Aristotle’s golden mean. He reminded me of Cartier-Bresson’s comments, roughly paraphrased here, that it is not enough to capture the moment, the photographer must at the same time position the subject in a compelling geometric composition. He suggested I go back and look at all my favorite images from the 20th century and promised I would see HCB’s ideas were correct.
I have to report that I did look up the golden mean again and copied one out. I pulled out many of my old photography books of my heroes and inspirations and damn if almost all of the images I’d remembered seeing in my youth did in fact fit with Dennis’ beliefs and combined a moment with classic geometric composition.
Does it then follow that what Aristotle discovered about composition is related to how our brains evolved to perceive still images? And therefore, to take photographs that will become important to the culture, that we always remember, must by default always follow a set of compositional rules?
