Before I delved in the whole photo world I was really into electronic music, yet another field dominated by boys and their toys. I spent hours keeping up on the latest gadgets, reading electronic music mags, and alone with Protools. Everyone I knew in the electronic music subworld was really focussed on creating on the best technical setup and using it to its full capabilities. Very little time was spent on artistic expression or coming up with creative ideas, instead it was all about figuring out what every possible different function on the Kurzweil synthesizer was. There’s a lot of similarities with the photo world and so I outline my top 5 downfalls of the technologically obsessed artist.
1. The techy artist spent all weekend reading reviews on the newest gadgets and didn’t take one photo.
2. The techy artist met two other techy artists and they spent their entire conversation arguing about Brand A vs Brand B and learned absolutely nothing about how or why the other person is an artist. (If another Canon user gets all up in my face about Nikon I am going to lose it.)
3. The techy artist looks at a photo and only sees the digital grain or the slight vignetting and then wonders for ten minutes about what exact model and gear it was taken with.
4. The techy artist is really really proud of his boring photo because he made it with his new $10,000 setup (or DIY setup that took 14 hours and 3 trips to Home Depot to create).
5. The techy artist has been so busy keeping up with the newest gear in all the newest magazines that he hasn’t read a non-gear related item in about 2 years.
Imagine if writers spent hours sitting around discussing which version of Microsoft is better for editing their drafts. I’m not saying technology isn’t important to photography. I’m just think it’s the first step on the ladder and that’s about it.
Cliches are a big problem in photography. (Writing and illustrating too but I’ll keep it to photo now). You’d think that it would be less of a problem in photo, that photos are taken of everything from all over the world and end up being a reflection of the complete diversity of what’s out there. But, in my opinion, in the pro photo world, it seems that we may all be spending too much time looking at each others work. This is not to claim that I am completely innocent of the photo cliche. But, here are a few photos which represent photo cliches that irritate me a lot. 
(How often do people actually stand like that, or run cheerfully in the surf, board in hand? Yet I have seen these photos thousands of times.)
If you believe photos you’d think this whole country is filled with beautiful groups of mixed race teens laughing in the snow or next to the campfire.
And then there are all those pensive businessmen, just thinking all day.
So yes a lot of this is the stock photo world but also portfolios.
I can’t even count the number of skinny pastel clad women taking a morning run on the top of a grassy hill I’ve seen lately. Or grizzly lobster fisherman casting their nets, or black guys standing on empty basketball courts shot from feet level, or Cuban cars at sunset. I’m not claiming I’m exempt, just wondering at how we end up having this big visual conversation with each other, repeating the same images over and over.
At last night’s shoot in front of a crowded hotel with lots of gear set up, a chatty guy came up to us and asked “Why don’t you just shoot during the daytime? Then you wouldn’t have to use all of those lights!” On the way home, I snapped Al coming out of the liquor store.
This is a tear from Ladies Home Journal. I shot a portrait of Dr. David Kaelber, a pediatrician who working to raise awareness about high blood pressure in children.
Ladies Home Journal
I’ve been MIA for the last few weeks, too busy to keep up! Here’s a recent tear from the Improper Bostonian f0r an article on the sex wars at Harvard: the H-Bomb soft core porn magazine versus a very active pro-chastity student group . There was some additional photoshopping needed on this shoot to cover up some “improper” exposures.
Improper Bostonian:
