The idea of correctness or rightness segues into the notion of the ideal, which plays a part in all kinds of beauty, including human beauty.

What really struck me was his section titled ‘Cliche and Irony’, where he essentially lays out the idea that cliche in photography is anything that has been done before. Then he spells it out very clearly in a sidebar titled “What makes a photographic cliche?”:

• An inherently attractive subject with a conventionally attractive viewpoint
• Established points on the tourist trail that fit the above. [My own example of both.]
• A strong stylistic technique that is … identifiable and over-used. Example: racking the zoom during the exposure for a radially blurred treatment. [My own cliche'd example.]
• Any subject or style that becomes so popular and so reproducible that it is taken up by many other photographers. A victim of its own success, in other words. [My example above.]

My ‘fork you’ picture is the first picture I ever took with Instagr.am, the incredibly popular photo app for the iPhone that I’ve been known to bash. Actually, I have no problem with the app–I dislike how the use of filters has become (though I don’t think I ever said this before now) cliche’d. In fact, you might even say that canned post-processing as a whole has become cliche’d by Freeman’s standards. Anyone who applies the ‘toy camera’ filter to a photo is guilty of cliche. Any consumer grade photo toy is, because of its popularity, cliche.
And that led me to feel a bit of sadness, or ennui, or angst or something like that. Would the four basic lighting patterns be cliche just because everyone has done them? If everything I do is based on some technique I’ve learned from someone else (especially on the internet) am I capable of getting out of the cliche? Oh look, there’s a band on stage. Cliche. Blurry feet to show movement? Been there. Menacing shot from below? Done that.  Biker on a path by a river? I’m pretty sure a Flickr group has come and gone with that theme. We all stand on the shoulders of giants, be they Rembrandt or Hobby. Just because an individual imitates those greats or an uses a popular technique doesn’t mean their contribution to our discourse should be demeaned.

It suddenly occurred to me that the word “cliche” ends up representing a form of tribalism. For one group to all stand around sniggering at someone whispering “cliche” is really just a way for the group to say “We’re in, you’re out. Ha ha ha.” Its a way for that group to say to themselves “we know whats cool, and that technique used to be cool, sure, but now, no way. That was SO 8 months ago.”

As I’m continuing to learn about photography, and have learned quite a bit in the last 3 years, I’m starting to recognize people who are where I was a year or two ago. I was in an off-camera flash class recently and one of the participants hadn’t heard of David Hobby. I was shocked, but quickly realized it wasn’t so long ago that I took my first baby steps in off-camera flash. I feel like I’ve progressed a fair bit since then, but have I produced something that someone can’t call a cliche? Probably not. I try to do things in interesting or unique ways, but I’m always applying my own experiences to what I think is “interesting” or “unique”. I’m sure a million people have taken pictures of the tidal river from Conwy Castle. I tried to make it interesting to me and my family by framing the river with my wife and daughter. Is “tourist overlooking a pretty vista” a cliche? Sure, I suppose. But so what? Its my image and my family (or client or band or pet or whatever) and if you don’t like it, then you can stuff your cliche soaked sniggering finger up your butt.

This, of course, means I’ll have to stop my sniggering at Instagr.am and the over-worked and over-used filters that seem so popular. I may find them tiresome, but clearly not everyone does. I personally have taken a liking to the Camera+ app, and applied the cliched Ansel Adams filter to my Stalltography images.

• I wish I understood my own photographic/artistic/personal style. Right now it feels like I’m just shooting whatever stands still long enough in front of my camera. Maybe “shoot whatever you feel like” is a style, but it doesn’t seem like a proper style just yet. I know I like shooting people (I nearly scoffed when someone recently suggested that I take a picture of clouds) but beyond that, I just don’t know.
• I wish I could stop reading photo blog posts about the latest incredibly creative thing someone has just done, and only think about how uncreative I feel. I know I have some creativity, and I have a lot of fun with the images I create. Seeing the work others do shouldn’t discourage me–it should provide inspiration.
• I wish I had clients who raved and raved about my work, then told all their friends who raved and raved, and called me for their next photo shoot. I’m not sure when enough would be enough. I’ve been published a few times. I’ve been called (or e-mailed) out of the blue for portrait sessions. People (even strangers) give me very nice compliments on my work. I just wish there was more of that…
• I wish I didn’t feel the need for external validation with the work I do. If only it could be enough that I enjoyed the processes and the result. I wish I didn’t feel the desire to be ‘in demand.’
• I wish I could dedicate time to connecting with other photographers in a community in a meaningful way. I think I would grow through the experiences of feedback, critique, reinforcement, creative inspiration, etc.
• I wish I could find a mentor–someone who could give me a strong kick in the pants when I need it and encouragement when merited.
• I wish I could stifle my inner photo snob. I know I’m not great, and not every shot is amazing. But there are times when my little critical inner voice thinks snarky thoughts about other photographers’ work. And I have to remind myself, again, that I am not great. When my snarky snob starts to surface, I have to remind myself that even one of my photography idols, Joe McNally, shows a great deal of humility.

So there you have it–the seven things I wish I had as a photographer: style, creative courage, external validation, internal validation, community, a mentor, and humility. Alas, those are all things I need to give myself. No one else can give them to me. I have to find my own way out of the fog.

Oh, and a softbox wouldn’t hurt either.

Don’t try to click on that image–it doesn’t get any bigger. And the pictures on the web pages don’t get any bigger either. So, we’re posting icons of the leaders on the web page, with a grand total of 5494 pixels. Someone decided that these pictures needed to be a) business professional, b) taken in a professional setting, c) taken by professional quality photographers, and d) it should all be done for free.

A fellow employee and friend of mine offered to take pictures of the IT leadership (CIO->Managers). He’ll do 40+ in a day while he ignores his regular job, probably trying to catch up that night. He did this a number of times, and finally said he needed to take a break because of some pressing project work. When he was asked if anyone could take his place, he suggested me.

So I’ve volunteered to take portraits, attempting to match the style established by my friend. He’s been shooting in a lobby, with empty lobby as the background (the icon above was take in that very location). This works great when folks are moving quickly through the lobby. It’s a bit of a pain when people are just hanging out. I was also told that if people want anything more than the “standard” shot, that they would have to get their needs filled outside of this effort. Could I give them my contact information so that we could work something out away from work? No, was the response. That would be inappropriate. How, I’m still not sure. I wasn’t asking to give people my card for every shot, just to respond if they expressed a need.  In addition, I’m not allowed to add the images I make to my portfolio, even with no identification. The picture above is a coworker who volunteered to help me prepare for the SVP session described below.

That was the deal–constrained look in an awkward location, no recognition, no compensation*, no business building, no portfolio. Just do the job, thank you very much. I still accepted the project thinking it would be good people practice.

I spent one day shadowing my friend, shooting about half of the subjects that he shot, so that I could demonstrate that my images would be as good as his. My images were deemed acceptable, with two exceptions. One subject was leaning too much. My friend had posed him, so I was a bit surprised that the lean was unacceptable. Another subject was inappropriately attired. I knew that when he arrived without a jacket and tie, but figured I’d take his picture anyway to show the quality of the photography, not the quality of the subject. I was told in no uncertain terms that I must not take the picture of someone who isn’t dressed business professional. I must play the role of the heavy and turn them away, rather that let the person posting the image make the final decision. Seemed a bit backwards to me, but OK, whatever.

So my first official head shot was a Senior Vice President who had very little time. I was given a 20 minute window when he might show up, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to have him for that whole time. When he arrived, I was ready to go, having set up and completed the test shot above. Unfortunately, just as he arrived, the lobby filled up with several people. So I chit-chatted with the SVP, but the people weren’t moving. I waited another couple of minutes, and finally got a moment when there were just two people were in the lobby. I moved in close, knowing that the final image would be cropped very close like the one above, but still had two people in the frame–one on either side of him.

I delivered the photo as shot, and was told that the photo was unacceptable. Two complaints were detailed: it wasn’t “full length” and there were people in the frame. I demonstrated that when the photo was cropped exactly the same way as all the others that the people weren’t in the frame. And who cares about “full length” if EVERY picture is cropped to head-and-shoulders like the one above? Crickets. Instead of using my image, they decided to use an image that they had on file. I was just a little beside myself.

And it didn’t help that I learned all of that the same morning that I had six more people scheduled to have their icons taken. I tried to keep a positive attitude, and remember the requirements even if they made no sense. 1) Don’t get too close, and 2) Absolutely no other people in the frame no matter what.

I completed all the icons, delivered the images two days later, meeting, as best I can tell, all the requirements. I followed up with “Please let me know if you have any concerns about this batch of images.” The only response I got was a dismissive “Thanks Rick.”

So the project so far has been just a bit frustrating. However, I’m learning lessons about working with people, just like I’d hoped. It just isn’t the subjects I’m learning to deal with, but the client.

——————————————————————————

* I get paid my normal wage, so I’m not really complaining. But for the project working on this, the photography is free because my time is billed to my team. It’s just a bit amazing that they are so uptight about the requirements, making non-trivial demands on the photographer time, but unwilling to actually dedicate some money for it.

Here’s a new self-portrait, and a color photo to boot, contrary to my recent trend in black-and-white. Mostly this was a picture about my mustache. Its itchy, and driving me a little crazy. I still love how it completely conflicts with how most people see me–straight-laced, kinda nerdy/geeky, clean-cut sort of guy… with a biker ‘stache. And yes, I had to throw in a little Ansel Adams book to make it meta-photography as well–an obviously self-aware self-portrait even if I wasn’t looking at the lens.

There’s also a new experiment with the watermark. I’ve got several new fonts I’m going to play with. This one seems a bit whimsical while still being incredibly uptight. My dad and grandfather labeled their stuff with old-school label makers. I did too, until the early ’80s. So to me its funny, retro, and conservative all at the same time. I’d love to hear what you think about it, either here or on Facebook.

You’ll notice I didn’t ask for comments on Flickr. When I went to post this picture to Flickr, I noticed that one of my previous self-portraits had only 2 views. That same picture on Facebook garnered six Likes and several comments. (Yes, I’m a ‘Like’ slut. Sue me.) Not massive attention, but still better than two views on Flickr.

So I now pronounce, based solely on my personal subjective anecdotal perspective, that Flickr is dead. The painful part about that is if “2 views/week = death” then my blog is on life-support. I would give up both my blog and Flickr in a heart-beat if only Facebook gave me a “pro” level account that allowed me to have the kinds of statistical analytics I get with my blog and Flickr. Not that I do anything with the numbers, but I really like knowing, for example that an image search for “volleyball portrait” shows five of my images in the top 30. If Facebook gave me that kind of info, I’d probably drop my blog and Flickr in a heartbeat. As it is, all I get are the crack-like Likes (108 and counting for the Fall Dance set).

Tonight, the self-portrait bug bit me. Up top is the last of several iterations; I’ve been wanting to do it for a while. The inspiration comes from an advertisement I’ve seen frequently for an online photo gear store–a picture of a camera lens in your face. I decided to add a bit of personal creep factor to mine by showing my eye above the shutter release. That was actually the most challenging part because that eye isn’t normally visible when I’m framing a picture through the viewfinder with the other eye. So this is my “how you probably see me” self-portrait, if I’ve ever taken your picture.

My other two self-portraits were designed to highlight some new facial hair I’ve been growing. In honor of Movember, I’ve decided to grow a horseshoe mustache. The one of the left is my best attempt at bad-ass, because my kids now think I’m something like Paul Sr. from American Choppers. Yeah, not without a lot of steroids and a change of heart on tattoos. The shot on the right was a test shot to see how well the 5 days of growth would show up. I liked the resulting expression, so I kept it.

While I’m sitting at the desk writing, I might as well throw up another picture or two and a few comments. Above is one of my favorites from another Mother Grove performance (more pictures). They were on a “stage” in a ballroom at the Rathskeller in Indianapolis. And there was plenty of room to walk around behind them. As a photographer I was conflicted about standing behind them shooting. I loved the light hitting them from this angle. But I also hate being too obtrusive about taking a picture like this. Alas, a few beers into the show, I wasn’t worried about being too obtrusive: I had only my Jive 35 lens (f/1.8 35mm) so this shot was taken from on-stage.

The other point of interest in the picture above is it is the only one I’ve published with a new logo I’ve been tinkering with. I hate the concept of branding, and I’ve never been terribly comfortable with branding my work, though I probably should. Part of me hates Olan Mills for the mark they made on every portrait my parents paid for. But part of me understands that everything gets branded. But what’s different about portraits is that it is a collaboration between subject and photographer. He couldn’t have made that picture without my baby-butt sitting there for him. Why does his name get to be on the picture and not mine? So when I’ve used a brand/logo/watermark, (other lame examples here and here) it has only been for my own on-line presence. The files I deliver to paying clients are always free of it. When when I gave branded photos to bands hoping they help me advertise a little bit, I always felt just a little dirty. And nothing ever directly came of that branding.

Anyway, enough kvetching about branding. The biggest problem with the brand above? When posted to facebook, the “Like” and “Comment” buttons cover it up. Doh!

Back to Mother Grove… they were playing in Indianapolis, a three hour drive for us; we’d never driven that far to see them. We decided to make an over-night road-trip of it, arranged for my parents to watch the kids (Thanks Mom and Dad!), and decided to surprise the band. We got to the venue just as the band was getting ready to perform. Some of them saw us, but Brad, the lead singer didn’t. So I told Anne that I wanted Brad’s first sight of me to be behind a camera.

When he recognized me crouching down for the low angle, I believe his exact words were “Holy Shit!” mid-song.

After we got our first round, we went looking for a table to share. I found one, kinda off to the side, with a kinda crappy view. “Is this OK? Are you going to be able to take pictures from here?” my wife asked. “The camera is here with me. I’m not here with the camera.” I took a lot of pictures, but that wasn’t the reason we were there. We were there to have fun with friends. The pictures would occur naturally, and secondarily to that fun.

It has gotten to be such a pain in the ass to write a blog post anymore. I’m not even sure where to put my primary content. I like taking pictures. I like writing about them, but my current “publishing” workflow has got to change. Here’s what I’m doing currently, though it seems to vary a bit post-by-post.

1. Edit my photos in Lightroom or GIMP as needed. Export them to a web-sized image for uploading.
2. I upload the images I’m most proud of to Flickr. If people I know on Facebook are in the images, I’ll upload to Facebook too (or sometimes instead). If its an image like the one above that I’m writing about and has no other merit, I’ll just upload it to my blog.
3. I write about the images or the experience or whatever I’m thinking about. Most always that writing is done on my blog. Sometimes I’ll add content to the description of the Flickr images. Sometimes I’ll add content to the Facebook images.
4. I’ll publish my blog post.
5. Sometimes I update the description of the images on Flickr or Facebook to include a link to the blog post.
6. I link to the blog post on Facebook .
7. I link to the blog post on Google+.

I have a small community of contacts in each of those spaces that I’d like to maintain, but its getting to the point where a) I don’t know why I’m doing what I’m doing and b) it takes a minimum of 30 minutes just to publish an image and a paragraph about it. So I’ve started to procrastinate–took me three weeks to say almost nothing about the shoot with Jessi.

Why use four different venues for my content?

I use Flickr as much out of habit as anything. And I’ve got a few contacts on there whose input on my work I value. And it means my web host doesn’t get hit with traffic for the images (yeah, I know, all 10 views).

I use Facebook because the huge majority of the people I know use Facebook, and its the best way to make sure my content gets seen. But I don’t write extended content on Facebook because their terms of service used to say they can use my content any way they want, even if I deleted it. The TOS doesn’t say that now, but old habit die hard, and I feel like I want control over my content history. Also, (I believe this is still true), comments, status updates and notes on Facebook are not searchable to the world. So if you got an “smoni receive datagram” error, and had I published my experience solving the error on Facebook, you’d never find it. On the other hand, my blog post about it is number two on Google search results. I like to write to help others.

I started to use Google+ because there was a huge influx of photographers there. Seemed like a good place to go to meet and share with other ‘togs. But almost none of my IRL friends and family are there.

I use my own web host because of the degree of control that I have over my content. But not many people read the posts. And control also means I have to deal with spam and hackers.

So this is mostly a rant about the situation I’ve developed for myself. I know, first world problem. Dunno where I’m going to go from here. If you have a thought, please feel free to hit me up on any of the above channels.

My employer is using a new third party training vendor, and today I had to take my first class. After clicking the link provided by my employer, I was told I need to change my “Training Pin #”.

First of all, a pin is primarily defined as “a piece of solid material (as wood or metal) used especially for fastening things together…” So how would I change a [solid material used for fastening things] number on a website? That just doesn’t make sense to me.

I then had a coworker of mine, D. Ipshit, review this blog post for me, and he informed me that the programmers likely meant PIN, the acronym for Personal Identification Number. Ah. Now I understand.

“Training [Personal Identification Number] #s must follow …” Hello Department of Redundancy Department. And never mind that a number cannot contain a letter. So is it Not A Pin #, Nor A PIN, but a password.

Did I mention that this is for my corporate training site? No one is going to be attempting to sign in as someone else to complete their training. Work can be boring enough without attempting to guess someone else’s training password. So why make the password 8 characters with at least one letter and one number?

So I soldiered on, set my password, recorded it in my corporate password spreadsheet (with 26 rows in it). Then I got curious: could I break the “Pin #s” form by using punctuation? So I went to change my password, ahem Pin #. But there’s no where to do that. No where in the training application can a user change their Pin #. Wow. Just wow.

A few weeks ago I was approached by a coworker to see if I would help with our corporate challenge American Heart Association fund raiser. She asked if I would be willing to donate a photo session to help sell raffle tickets. I was flattered, and just a little bit worried that no one would be interested.

I figured it would also be a good opportunity to get my name in front of potential clients, so I figured my “donation” was well worth the potential marketing boost I’d get. I put together the above montage (5 of the guys are current or former coworkers), intending for it to take half of an 11×17 sheet of paper. The other half had details about the raffle and how to purchase tickets. The tickets were $2 each (all proceeds to AHA), and the prize was one free hour-long photo session. The posters were up for two and a half weeks. How did the fund raiser do?

I don’t know. And it kills me that I don’t know. In advance of the purchase deadline, I asked the guy who was collecting raffle tickets how many had been sold. He hadn’t counted yet. The day after the deadline I asked again. Dunno. Then they drew the winner, and put us in touch. So I asked again, how many tickets were sold. “Sorry, we didn’t count.” GAH! Not “It was a ton, but we didn’t have time to count.” Not “Well, maybe 10 or 15, we’re not sure.” My gut tells me “not many” and that he’s afraid to tell me something like “Dude, only three tickets sold.” It ultimately means I don’t know if enough people contributed to the charity to make it worth my time to do it again.

How about the marketing?

I got a number of compliments from friends who were already familiar with my photography. And it reminded a friend that he wanted me to do a session for his wife, himself, and his dogs (that’ll be fun!). I didn’t put a URL on the flier but if you search for Rick Bennett Photography on Google, four of the top five hits are mine, and the first one is my portfolio site. In that 2.5 weeks, I got three hits on the portfolio site from someone searching for “Rick Bennett Photography”.

So, as with most of my lame marketing efforts, the results were pretty lame.

The person who won is going to use the session to have portraits done with herself, her husband, and three daughters. She’s very nice, low-key about it, and I’m looking forward to doing the session for her family.

In America – The Homeless go without eating.
In America – The Elderly go without needed medicines.
In America – The Mentally ill go without treatment.
In America – Our Troops go without proper equipment.
In America – Our Veterans go without benefits they were promised.
…..Yet we donate billions to other countries before helping our own first.
Have the guts to re-post this. 1% will re post, 99% won’t…Call me 1%

While bitching about this post, I made the statement to my wife that we (Americans) sneeze billions. The idea is that although a billion dollars is a lot to individuals [posting on facebook] it is NOTHING to the country. So here’s my calculation:

• Total US GDP: $15,003.8 billion (as of 7/29/2011, posted here.)
• Number of seconds in the working year: 7,200,000
• GDP per working second: $2,100,000.

Now, assume that all the workers in the country sneezed, just once, which impacted productivity for 10 seconds.

• Impact of one massive sneeze: $21,000,000.

Therefore the economy sneezes $21 million dollars. A billion dollars is like one sneeze a week for the whole year. To complain that we shouldn’t be feeding starving children in Africa (one destination of foreign aid) because we didn’t put enough armor on the Humvee is the utmost of human arrogance.

I’ve been going to Asian Express for lunch (and occasionally dinner) for over 14 years now. They’ve been run by the same family the whole time, and I think they have increased their prices only twice in that time. The food is consistently good and cheap. I don’t always get the same thing, but I do have a “usual”. Its a great place, and I’ve loved going there over the years. The cooks in the kitchen always say “Hi” to me (and other regulars) though they don’t know my name.

For several months I’ve been noodling around the idea of doing a “Fight Club” series of portraits based on this quote:

Look, the people you are after are the people you depend on. We cook your meals, we haul your trash, we connect your calls, we drive your ambulances. We guard you while you sleep. Do not… fuck with us.

I wanted to make portraits for cooks, operators, ambulance drivers and security guards. And a few other “you depend on us” kind of jobs. So naturally, I thought of doing a shoot with the owners of Asian Express while they cooked during the lunch rush one day.

Since I’m there mostly during the lunch rush, I don’t usually want to interrupt them to ask permission. They’re busy and working their butts off. At least that’s the excuse I give myself. Yesterday, the kids and I went there for dinner. They weren’t busy. We were the only ones there. No excuses–all I had to do was tell them I wanted to make some pictures while they cooked and almost certainly they would have let me–I’ve bought hundreds of meals there, helping to fund their summer vacations back to Thailand. For over a decade they’ve known my face–even asking where a coworker of mine was, referring to him as my “sidekick”. It would have been the easiest “Hey, do you mind if I take your picture” conversation ever.

But I didn’t do it. I stayed in my comfort zone. Not approaching people. Not asking to take their picture. Not creating something for them. Not creating something for me.

Why? Why did I not ask them? The timing and opportunity were perfect, but I chickened out. I let my self-confidence (or lack thereof) get the best of me. I convinced myself they wouldn’t be interested–that they wouldn’t even humor me–or worse, that I would fail to make anything decent of the opportunity.

I’ve got to do better. I’ve got to find the passion again.