At 14:53 -0800 15/1/03, Rob Jackson wrote:
>My own trip (which is far from getting anywhere yet, just to be clear)
>started with a small-town weekly newspaper (now defunct) called The
>Plant City Observer. My mom was friends with the woman who owned it and
>she'd throw me jobs shooting a few photos here and there for her. I'd
>go down and she'd load me up some HP5 from her bulk-loader and off I'd
>go to some civic, sporting or local arts event. I was about 14 and I
>thought it was the coolest gig ever. By 16 I was occasionally also
>shooting for her competitor, The Plant City Courier. By 18 I started to
>finally realize that I'd spent almost half a decade taking the same
>damn photo over and over. The photo-op portrait. Stacks of 'em. I'd
>started out emulating what others at the job had been doing and never
>for a minute questioned the nature of the job. Breaking away sorts out
>the artists from the grunts, IMO. I never really got to be much more
>than a grunt. I'm still grunting a lot, but I'm always trying to break
>away.
Way to go, Rob.
I started on my local weekly at about the same age, and I too, thought it
was the greatest thing to be paid to do something I enjoyed, hobnobbing
with the town's (and out-of-town visiting) nabobs, getting into the sports
events free, and rubbing shoulders with the real professional
photographers, the daily newspaper guys. Took me almost twenty years to
break free, because I just kept rising through the ranks of the
professionals, especially after I studied photojournalism at university
(before the days when they turned out 20,000 PJ grads a year), and was
active in the National Press Photographers Assn.
Good photography (as defined by my earlier comments) is definitely grunty
work, especially if we have to overcome the conditioning of the camera
clubs, the professional norms and associations, and the shibboleths of all
those who say that light is so important.
Most of what the others here are saying about your instructor is good
advice, especially the part about taking what you can, giving what is
required while quietly going your own way, and using it as an advance craft
skills developer.
Not to give this guy too much slack, but I think (as a former photo
instructor) that he may have these behaviors as a defensive mechanism.
There is a broad swell anti-craft, anti-intellectual, anti-work,
anti-thought, anti-seeing, and anti-discipline in the world today. Teaching
any technical craft is difficult because nobody wants to know about
agitation and the relationship between f/stops and shutter speeds. That
would be good if they wanted to concentrate on taking great pictures -- but
they don't. They usually just want their ticket punched so they can get
what they think is going to be a cushy, perky, job.
Craft is important to professionals, even if they will never do their own
darkroom work. But there is a class of photographer who has never touched
Dektol, never will, and doesn't need to in order to make great images. Even
you could do that.
In the digital age, everyone will be able to do photography craft almost
without any training, skills or technical knowledge. That's both good and
bad.
The most vital thing that is missing from most photographers work is a
sense of visual literacy. That's what you should work on, and that's what
my suggestions about reading photographs was all about.
Rob, how about showing us some pictures (or, since I'm lax in reading every
word on this list, and have only been here for a year or so, point to some
earlier showings)?
All the best for your "Trip" (didn't Olympus name a snapshot camera that?),
Michael
--
Cheers from Godzone,
Michael Kopp
Wellington, New Zealand
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