Too many pictures syndrome

[John Jarosz]

Attempting to make a living (or at least trying to pay for the photography costs itself) is a puzzling thing. I know nothing about the gallery scene. But when I go to art fairs I do see photographers and painters with enormous inventories. Many of the works are large in scale. But I never see anyone carrying away any of the artworks after a sale.

So in addition to the time spent creating the images, the artist wastes entire weekends sitting in the sun waiting for someone to buy. Are they working for $5 an hour? What do they do that pays the bills?

I've hung one show at a gallery above a photo store here in Chicago. Long time ago. I did it mainly because Fred Picker wrote that every photographer should do at least one show. I think he was right. My prices were laughably low - I didn't sell one print. But it was a very good experience and I was very glad I did it. It showed me that I should keep doing what I wanted to do and that there really weren't any commercial aspects possible that would let me quit my day job.

Since then I have concentrated on carbon printing, like some others who have posted.
The process is an editor in it's own right because it is so slow and it really makes you question if an image is worth all the work. I finally switched to ULF because I've found I only need a few good images to start with. So my seeing has improved and I waste less. I no longer have zillions of unprinted negatives that don't make the cut. Maybe this long evolution must take place over a long period of time so one's brain can sort all this out.

Do what you want to do with photography and forget what everyone else does. It's all for you anyway.

[mrladewig]

How does that work - do people just bring prints and put a price on them? Do you exchange prints? Or what? I'm curious because I'm involved with a photo group and we might like to do something with prints if it's anything more than just people bringing prints to a meeting and putting a price on them.

Its an exchange. In order to get a print, you must bring a print. There is no charge.

The prints are wrapped in some form, so they cannot be seen. Everyone who brought a print gets a ticket. The MC pulls calls a ticket number and the person with that ticket can either take a new print from the table or steal from someone who has already chosen a print. If a print is "stolen" then that person from whom the print was stolen can take a new one from the table or can steal from someone else. A print can only be stolen once during a "round".

Of course there could be many other ways of exchanging prints with your peers. This has been fun for our group, but its time consuming.

[hmf]

Its an exchange. In order to get a print, you must bring a print. There is no charge.

The prints are wrapped in some form, so they cannot be seen. Everyone who brought a print gets a ticket. The MC pulls calls a ticket number and the person with that ticket can either take a new print from the table or steal from someone who has already chosen a print. If a print is "stolen" then that person from whom the print was stolen can take a new one from the table or can steal from someone else. A print can only be stolen once during a "round".

Of course there could be many other ways of exchanging prints with your peers. This has been fun for our group, but its time consuming.

The problem with a 'blind' print swap is that one often trades one's own unwanted print for someone elses. A better approach, in my estimation, is to have all the prints exhibited. As numbers are called, each person selects the print that they prefer.

Obviously, the earlier your number is called, the better your slection. But, given that each of us has different taste in pictures, many will actually get a print that they want.

There is a side benefit to this process: the quality of the images improves. No one wants their picture to be the last taken!

[tgtaylor]

...I find that I have become very critical of evaluating subject matter for the worth of turning it into a photograph. If there is not extraordinary (in my eyes) visual impact I don't bother to set up a camera. I call this TMPS (Too Many Pictures Syndrome)...

I am wondering how many participants on this forum feel the same way?

With respect to my own work, I have found myself "liking" and "disliking" the very same image at different times. Now why would that be? Specifically, why would an image strike me as "good" at one point in time and "not so good" at another? I have come to the conclusion that my opinion about my own work is influenced by my personal psychological make-up at the moment of viewing.

It's interesting to note that Ansel Adams is supposed to have exhibited for sale each and every image that he took during a particular Sierra Club outing unless the image was a "complete mechanical failure." I imagine that Adams, like most of us, us, occasionally forgot to take the lens cap off or pull the dark slide. Consider also the Nazi dictator Adolph Hitler who, although denied admittance to the Academy of Fine Arts program in Vienna and rumored (I say “rumored” because I personally never saw any of his work) to be an atrocious artist, was nevertheless able to carve out an existence by painting scenes of Vienna which were then peddled locally by a flophouse associate.

Rather than forcing the determination of whether or not the scene before you is truly of “extraordinary visual impact,” I think the better policy would be to take the picture while it is in front of you and make that "final" determination at some later point in time.

Thomas

[Frank Petronio]

Two related issues here, the first is WORKFLOW.

In my case I scan film and work on my images digitally, probably spending more time on stuff shot digitally, about 70-30 digital versus film. And then I post the best stuff on my website, which has been a blog for years, and now I have almost 800 posts.

I'll print a fraction of that, and the very best go into bound portfolios - letter-sized and 11x14. Even fewer are edited down to the 140 that go into a maximum page-count Blurb book. A few get made into postcard promos. A couple get printed large, framed, and sent to shows only after I get accepted based on my digital submissions.

Compared to my physical output of the darkroom era... oh dear... I do maybe 3-400 inkjets per year, keeping only about half -- a one-inch archival box and those portfolio books. Darkrooms days I would generate a couple feet of prints, RA4 or B&W. And for decades I would lug those around, slowly weeding them out until now I only have about three storage shelves -- maybe ~36 cubic feet -- of vintage archival prints in archival boxes, a couple feet of which are wastefully matted. Plus four feet of edited negatives in binders. Phew!

So, not to beat the dead horse over film versus digital, but digital solved my storage problem. I now produce a few inches of new material every year, yet....

I shoot A LOT more than I ever did back in the traditional days. I used to always have a overload and backlog of film to process and print. If I don't count all the stuff I abandoned years ago, these days I can keep up... I have everything scanned, all my shoots are edited up except for couple set aside that I want to dig more out of... it is a very effective and efficient way to KEEP SHOOTING.

And that is just it... KEEP SHOOTING.

If I keep shooting long enough, I'm going to get some amazing pictures over the next few years... the best is yet to come. But it took me 27 years to figure out how to manage and juggle this lifestyle to the point where I can be this productive.

MARKETING

I imagine hardcore marketing, participating in as many shows as possible, submitting to as many contests and festivals as you can... sooner or later may pay off. But I think that you'll end up just whoring whatever sells or gets attention if you spend too long in that world. Even if you aim high, for Aperture or Communication Arts or Review Santa Fe type of stuff, those situations still have plenty of biases and they really aren't the supreme judges many of us like to think they might be.

Personally I think most of them are a bunch of flaming, pontificating, do-nothing assholes. But that's just my assessment of academics in general. And if you end up pleasing them, you may get some circle-jerk, mutual-stroking enabled grant ($5000 hoot!) but you'll get co-opted into toeing the party line in the process.

I think all that stuff is bullshit -- after years of playing that game myself -- and now I have faith in myself, that if I keep pushing and shooting and producing something that is better and different and... just good work... that I will be discovered. Not by some college professor, contest judge, or neighborhood gallery owner, but by the market itself... word of mouth, bloggers, popular opinion, ad agencies, popular magazines, designers... real people.

I don't trust academics or the art world. I'll do it my own way.

THANK GOD FOR THE INTERNET as it allows us to see an almost infinite collection of art and artists. If you can cut through all that clutter, rise above the masses, and get popular online, then the galleries and academics, money and recognition will follow naturally and for a lot better reason than winning some judge's favor.

In other words, let the success come organically because your work is so good.

You can have mediocre work and force it to be success by marketing it like crazy, but that doesn't make it good work and your real job winds up being marketing, not photography.

[Ken Lee]

Bravo Maestro !

[Brian C. Miller]

Consider also the Nazi dictator Adolph Hitler who, although denied admittance to the Academy of Fine Arts program in Vienna and rumored (I say “rumored” because I personally never saw any of his work) to be an atrocious artist, was nevertheless able to carve out an existence by painting scenes of Vienna which were then peddled locally by a flophouse associate.

I've seen a couple of Hitler's paintings. I won't say they were atrocious, just plain and competent renditions of what was in front of him. He was approximately equal to an aunt of mine who painted for a hobby, and she had been painting for at least a year. These were paintings that would be hung on a wall, just to have some color around the place, like in an up-scale motel.

And that is just it... KEEP SHOOTING.

I'll second that. I have a little book about writing (can't remember who wrote it. Nuts!) but the thing is this: you have to keep producing, and keep doing it every day. The only way your creative juices flow (yes, salivation!) is when you are munching your way through the photographic ideas in front of you. That is the only time that you have any chance of satisfying your self, your need to create.

Here's the basic problem with photography: Nobody wants it. Same with painting. Same with sculpture. Nobody wants to read, either. Listen to music? Ok, grab the iPod and mush in the earbuds. Veg on the couch.

And yet when I am in the street, what do I see? People stopping, every once in a while, to look at a building with an ornate facade. I think that Western society is starving for art.

But what else competes for space on that blank wall at home? Uh, bookcase, knick knack hutch, velvet Elvis, umm, entertainment center, uh, gee, all that's left over is the steamy bathroom, and that little area is only good for a 4x5.

So it isn't just the price of the art, an additional problem is where to put it, even if the stuff was free!

I think that the best place for art nowdays is in corporate hallways. Lots of blank space for stuff, and it's good for employee morale. Look, if anybody appreciates art it is an artist, and how many of us have a photograph made by someone else? I have one AA, and that's it. I have one (just one!) wall at home where I could hang something up. The AA is in a box.

Let's face it: architecture for the masses has left out space for art. (not to mention landlords who stipulate that you may not put a nail hole in the wall)

[rdenney]

Let's face it: architecture for the masses has left out space for art. (not to mention landlords who stipulate that you may not put a nail hole in the wall)

I dunno. The suburban tract houses I see around here seem to have acres of empty drywall. It is the quality architecture that poses the problem--efficient designs need fewer walls to achieve the same number of rooms.

And here's the secret for nail holes: White Pepsodent toothpaste. Squeeze a bit in the hole, wipe away the excess, and wait. When it dries, it has the same chalky white color of most rental interiors. I've made dozens of nail holes invisible even on close inspection with that trick.

I just did a quick mental inventory. We have about 30 photographs as wall art, which is about half of what hangs in our home. Of those, four my "fine prints", and about 10 are family photos. That leaves nearly 20 that are photographs by others, two or three of which are reproductions.

Rick "who just can't bear to take down a Paul Strand reproduction to put up his own drek" Denney

[Brian C. Miller]

I don't have drywall, it is lath and plaster (cement-type, not modern plaster). *sigh*

[David_Senesac]

Frank Petronio comment can be true, however in the current age of an unprecidented explosion of photography this digital decade, the notion of the best work rising "until it is impossible to be ignored", is not likely to be successful either because of the enormity of noise currently from gazillions of other photographers fighting in a very unfair commercial Internet and media environment and art world where money, influence, and connections are likely to drown anything else out.

In an older age with parallel situations, Ansel Adams failed during most of the best years of his life to make a business at selling prints and failed to receive much recognition especially within markets he might have been able to sell to simply because he was ignored, out of sight, out of mind. Galen Rowell for the sake of making a living was really only able to sell stock through his magazine writings until finally on his own he produced Mountain Light then suddenly received broad praise and recognition. For years one could go to his occasional slide shows of his adventures at places like Berkeley or Palo Alto where only hard core mountain enthusiasts and photographers were likely to show up. History is full of stories of painters who only received recognition late in their lives or after they were deceased. Often the best art work is not by those who most deserve it because of qualtiy but rather by those who have made connections whether fair or not, to key organizations, companies, media, and individuals that have influence in exposing work to the masses and or wealthy audiences.