Sunday Musings: Your wedding is not important so quit taking pictures already!

[michaellinder]

I still have fond recollections of working for my uncle in the scrap metal business when I was in my teens. My most vivid memories of that set of experiences are of the other guys on the crew. I think I learned my love for driving from one of them - Maurice Cotton, who could jockey a truck like no one I've ever seen. Another, Herbert Grant, helped me to understand some of the physics of lifting heavy objects. But, the best memory I have is of sitting on Johnny Carter's front steps, listening to him play blues riffs on a harmonica. If I had a camera in my hands at the time, I ceratinly would have photographed him. The photographs probably would have been terrible, because of unsteady hands (too much beer).

 

Thanks, Sander, for reminding me of one of the most important reasons I do photography - to connect with my world.

[victorpanlilio]

Sander, you make a good point that if something becomes commonplace, then it risks being perceived as trite or

cliched. It may certainly be the case that wedding photos or photos of everyday life seem devalued by having them

taken so often in the same predictable ways and with such mediocre technical or visual quality that we have to protest

"Enough!" or, say of lives documented with such careless abandon, that "it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and

fury, signifying nothing." (Macbeth)

 

But... it is not so much that the images themselves may be of value (or not, depending on the circumstance), it is the

fact that the images are of people who lived, loved, laughed, wept, wondered — whether we know them or not. This is

precisely why collections like those at the Holocaust Museum have the power to move us. Will this still be true when the

web is completely overwhelmed with the firehose of images pouring out of cameraphones? I don't really know. Google

chairman Eric Schmidt predicted in an interview last year that by 2012, we will be able to carry in our pockets enough

storage to record 24/7 high-definition video of an average human lifespan, at which point finding a particular frame is

going to be a massive search problem (in practical terms, if a particular image can't be found in a reasonable amount of

time, it may as well not exist).

 

I photograph people as part of my work, not just as a pastime, and each and every person who goes before my camera I

regard as unique and special. The day I no longer feel this way about my subjects is the day I will stop photographing.

[lou korell]

As a wedding photographer, I do believe it is an important thing to photograph. Photography chronicles life as we see it. It is an important part of how the future will look at our civilization and evaluate the "look" of our culture.

If you make the statement that 50% of all weddings end in divorce then what about just photographing the bride and groom seperately - to get some nice pictures - just in case. That will save anyone from having to tear them in half later. :) Just a thought. Saves paper.

[yeffe]

" what about just photographing the bride and groom seperately - to get some nice

pictures - just in case. "

 

Wait a minute, wait a minute: STOP THE PRESSES!!

 

If the prenup is considered part of the deal as it so often is, how far away are we from separate bride and groom

photos, perhaps with each side of the friends posse? Lou: you're sitting on a goldmine.

[lou korell]

Even thought it was kind of a joke Jeff, you may be right! Even weddings can be a bit self-centered. But I try as hard as I can in the current social climate to not be cynical about weddings. I cry at them sometimes too! (don't tell anyone).

 

 

Lou

[jtk]

I think Michael L's reference to Beckett has more weight than other references because Beckett was, not an academic, philosophic, or religious parasite: he was truth's lodestar.

 

"... a photographer, especially in documenting his own life, can put down his camera, some times. And live. Otherwise he might end up as Krapp in that Samual Beckett play: living a life of documented past and no real present"

[michaellinder]

John:

 

Thanks for giving me credit for the Beckett reference. However, the reference was Sander's.

[jtk]

...and as to "firehose of information": a week ago, exiting a Forest Service outhouse, I was nearly run over by a bicyclist in crash suit...his helmet held a digital videocamera that ran continuously as he humped uphill and hurtled downhill, terrorizing hikers and wildlife, launching off boulders ... hopefully to suffer a crash for his later enjoyment from a full body cast .

[jtk]

Michael, thanks for the Beckett correction.

 

You have, however, contributed importantly by demonstrating that the cosmos prefers beer and harmonicas to photography, a truth Beckett allowed poor Mr. Krapp to miss.

[yeffe]

"... hopefully to suffer a crash for his later enjoyment from a full body cast ."

 

That's the sort of opprobrium I feel toward profligate cellphone users. Sitting on my city front porch with my beer in hand I fantasize about buying a cellphone jammer, sitting back, and having a good laugh.

[yeffe]

"... hopefully to suffer a crash for his later enjoyment from a full body cast ."

 

That's the sort of opprobrium I feel toward profligate cellphone users. Sitting on my city front porch with my

beer in hand I fantasize about buying a cellphone jammer, sitting back, and having a good chuckle. Maybe it's a

similar kind of 'ism' on my part that falls close by the originating sentiment of this thread.

[michaellinder]

"Is it not time for my pain killer?"

 

"Where is my pain killer?"

 

Is it not yet time for my pain killer?"

 

Oops, wrong Beckett play. I'm such a Hamm!

[kristina_kraft]

Victor, I like your thoughts about: "individual human beings are renewable resources" - I agree on this one, but not on the one about being interchangeable. What did you mean, anyway, by being interchangeable?

 

I just feel need to document my life from time to time. It's often emotionally turbulent and active. Sometimes I feel like a bunch of chemicals, and in other times I feel totally as a dispersed ghost who floats above the ground. Sometimes emotions overwhelms me so much that I start to cry from the bottom of my belly. Once I observed myself feeling sensations that starts usually in my belly with rising temperatures, I get a kind of spasm until it gets to my face and eyes. What a complex emotional process! It takes so much for a tear to come - rising temperature in the belly, spasm, thoughts about someone and tears in the end. I feel relief afterward. For me it is my catharsis. After I feel more balanced and able to continue with my daily work.

[jtk]

Jeff, a neighbor lady keeps three ratty little doggies. When I walk by her gate to collect my mail they always start yapping (8' adobe walls and gates hide our yards, nobody sees anybody) . Then the lady shrieks. I suspect the dogs aren't concerned about me, they're yapping because they hate it that the lady's about to start shrieking. I may get one of those silent dog whistles to test that hypothesis. If she starts shrieking before the dogs start yapping I'll revisit my theory.

[victorpanlilio]

Kristina had written: "Victor, I like your thoughts about: "individual human beings are renewable resources" - I agree on this

one, but not on the one about being interchangeable. What did you mean, anyway, by being interchangeable?"

 

Kristina — I did not originate "individual human beings are renewable resources" — that was John Kelly's statement. If he

really believed it, I suspect he would not have been particularly concerned with being almost run over by a mountain biker,

since he (John) and the mountain biker are pretty much both "renewable resources," — and hence also interchangeable.

 

:-D

[Norma Desmond]

Victor-

 

One can have two outlooks, both from an individual micro perspective and from a more global macro perspective. A

human, from a scientific perspective, is a batch of molecules and reducible physical systems. That same human, from a

more humanistic perspective, is a very different matter.

 

I don't know what John's answer would be to your challenge, but I have no problem understanding how he holds the

beliefs he does and why he simultaneously feels and reacts the way he does.

 

Remember, people who believe in an all-merciful and all-knowing God still get angry at God. We humans are complex

beings and don't always act and react based strictly on what we think.

 

--Fred

[victorpanlilio]

Fred had written: "A human, from a scientific perspective, is a batch of molecules and reducible physical systems. That

same human, from a more humanistic perspective, is a very different matter."

 

How is a "scientific" perspective different from a "humanistic" perspective? It seems to me that both "perspectives" are

originated by humans, even if we like to give them different labels.

 

Fred also wrote: "We humans are complex beings and don't always act and react based strictly on what we think."

 

That would be known as an understatement. :-)

 

We think we think... or do we (think)? If we really do think, how is it that we — a "batch of molecules and reducible

physical systems" are able to do so at all, when clearly this activity we like to call "thinking" — does not appear to be

ubiquitous?

 

If it were, then everyone with a camera would be able to produce works of visual genius — even the mountain biker

careening down the hillside and nearly running over another one of the "renewable resources" that dot the landscape

before spending quality time in traction.

 

:-D

[yeffe]

"everyone with a camera would be able to produce works of visual genius — even the mountain biker careening down the hillside and nearly running over another one of the "renewable resources" that dot the landscape"

 

This sort of dystopia was hinted at in Peter Kremer's Listening to Prozac in the '80s.'What,' he asks, 'are the ramifications of a drug that makes some people better than well?' One such result is mandatory worship at the temple of Neuro-Moleculus. He is but one of many new dieties spawned in the wake of post-modernism/ post-colonialism.

 

But seriously, if the past, as characterized by Stephen Stills is just a 'good-bye,' how are we going to be able to recognize this new and exalted geniusocracy?

[antoniobassiphotography]

<B>Karim</B><P>I haven't read all the comments above but I will try responding to your question. What it counts in this

crazy and miserable western and so-called-civilized-and-advanced society is appearance, status, what others think of

you. If you make 35000 G per year you are a looser, if you make over 80000 you are on the right track to be considered

like somebody. If your friend just got married and had the most expensive wedding photographer, you have to match that

or you'll be a looser. If the hip car is the BMW 335 with the dual exhaust, you gotta get one of those even if you have to

ask for a loan. And what about a house? If you don't have a house with a nice yard and a two-cars garage before you are

35, you will be a failure for the system. The American Dream, baby, the American Dream! Now, with this huge financial

crisis going on, we will see how many people will pay 15000 G for a wedding photographer...<P>I have seen so many

"top notch" wedding photographs that are staged, fake and do not represent the real character of the couple... It's the

trend that counts, it's what <B>sells</B> that is important. Of course I am being sarcastic, you are completely right

when you say <I>It isn't that photographs are taken at weddings that's at issue. It's how and why they're [...] a good

photo is better than a crap one [...] some people see it as social status (read vanity) to have an expensive photographer

[...] Perhaps our desire to be immortal is responsible for our outlandish spending habits</I> We think we are immortal

and better than anybody else, I mean not <B>we</B>, stupid people think that and most people today are stupid

because in order to fit in our society you have to be. The most intelligent and self-thinking people I know are considered

socially outcast and crazy.

[jtk]

"...most people today are stupid because in order to fit in our society you have to be. The most intelligent and self-thinking people I know are considered socially outcast and crazy."

 

Weird: That's a ripoff of Alan Ginsberg's "Howl" combined with an admission that one is so narcissistic and isolated that one doesn't know anybody who's sane, intelligent, and beloved. What terrible neighborhood is this?

[victorpanlilio]

Antonio Bassi had written: "most people today are stupid because in order to fit in our society you have to be."<br><br>

 

John Taylor Gatto (a former New York State Teacher of the Year) wrote in <a

href="http://www.spinninglobe.net/againstschool.htm"><b><i>Against School</i></b></a><br><br>

 

"I taught for thirty years in some of the worst schools in Manhattan, and in some of the best, and during that time I

became an expert in boredom. Boredom was everywhere in my world, and if you asked the kids, as I often did, why they

felt so bored, they always gave the same answers: They said the work was stupid, that it made no sense, that they

already knew it. <br>

...<br>

We have been taught (that is, schooled) in this country to think of "success" as synonymous with, or

at least dependent upon, "schooling," but historically that isn't true in either an intellectual or a financial sense. And

plenty of people throughout the world today find a way to educate themselves without resorting to a system of

compulsory secondary schools that all too often resemble prisons. Why, then, do Americans confuse education with just

such a system? What exactly is the purpose of our public schools?<br>

...<br>

We don't need Karl Marx's conception of a grand warfare between the classes to see that it is in the interest of complex management,

economic or political, to dumb people down, to demoralize them, to divide them from one another, and to discard them if they don't

conform. Class may frame the proposition, as when Woodrow Wilson, then president of Princeton University, said the following to the New

York City School Teachers Association in 1909: "We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of

persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forgo the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to

perform specific difficult manual tasks." But the motives behind the disgusting decisions that bring about these ends need not be class-

based at all. They can stem purely from fear, or from the by now familiar belief that "efficiency" is the paramount virtue, rather than love,

liberty, laughter, or hope. Above all, they can stem from simple greed."<br><br>

 

To glimpse the "terrible neighborhood" John (Kelly) refers to, look no further than the nearest public school.

[victorpanlilio]

Antonio Bassi had written: "If the hip car is the BMW 335 with the dual exhaust, you gotta get one of those even if you have to ask for a

loan."<br><br>

 

You do? Very few cars are investment-grade. Most depreciate rapidly, even a 335xi. However, if the driver's intention is to attract more

sexual partners, then a convertible telegraphs "fun-loving and carefree" better. You get more bang for your buck, so to speak. ;-D<br><br>

 

That said, photographing young newlyweds in their restored MG is quite different from pandering to Old Money tooling around in a <a

href="http://www.bentleymotors.com/Corporate/display.aspx?infid=41">Bentley GTC</a>.<br><br>

 

"It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it."<br><br>

 

:-)

[antoniobassiphotography]

<B>John</B>, I'm very flattered somebody like Ginsberg said that already, at leas I won't be attacked and depict like an

idiot like usual by thinking that. <B>Victor</B>, I know it's a job and people must earn their living but the point of the thread

is different...

[victorpanlilio]

<b>Antonio</b> — I suspect Karim's original "rant," if that's what it was (i.e. a rant), may have been occasioned in part by <a

href="http://tinyurl.com/3sjlge">"Ten most overpaid jobs in the U.S."</a> and similar stories that can be brought up by

Googling "most overpaid jobs"<br><br>

 

From the cited article:<br><br>

 

Photographers earn a national average of $1,900 for a wedding, though many charge $2,500 to $5,000 for a one-day shoot, client meeting

and processing time that runs up to 20 hours or more, and the cost of materials. The overpaid ones are the many who admit they only do

weddings for the income, while quietly complaining about the hassle of dealing with hysterical brides and drunken reception guests. They

mope through the job with the attitude: "I'm just doing this for the money until Time or National Geographic calls."

[jtk]

I know a lot of public school kids. Most are doing well. The Navajo kid I've mentored for over 5 years just graduated from high school...ten kids, no running water, no telephone, no family car, illiterate parents who are never at home, great public school despite being in one of the worst school systems in the nation (AZ).

 

America's public schools are it's greatest asset, along with New York Times and World Series baseball.