Christopher Hitchens
I photographed Christopher Hitchens a while back for the Village Voice. I just read that Hitchens will be going through chemo therapy for cancer. Love him or hate him I don’t think you could deny he’s an original and speaks his mind regardless of the trouble it may get him in (read the comments at the linked article and I’m sure you’ll find equal number of people wishing him ill as wishing him well). He’s been one of my most interesting subjects to date and did not disappoint with what I was expecting (among other things, rolling out of bed at noon with a cigarette in hand and a constant flow of cigarettes thereafter). I hope all goes well with the chemo therapy for Mr. Hitchens.
Haiti Disaster Relief Print Sales
The other day I donated some money to The American Red Cross to help with the Haiti disaster relief. After seeing more of the pictures coming out of Haiti (warning, graphic photos at that link) I decided I wanted to try and do more. So, I will be donating 100% of the proceeds from the next ten print sales* from my etsy page to The American Red Cross or Oxfam (buyer choice) to help with the Haiti disaster relief . Print prices range from $50 – $200 depending on the size of the print, so the larger the print the more money will be going to Haiti relief. All prints are individually custom printed by me.
F&CK Digital
There must be some kind of movement going on. It seems to me there is a digital backlash at the moment. Maybe not a full scale revolt, but it seems to me like a lot of photographers I know who had all but switched to digital are now shooting more film.
I know I started shooting film again about 6 months ago when I decided to buy an old Rolleiflex to carry around with me from time to time. Just this week I went ahead and bought a Mamiya RZ67 Pro II (for really cheap I might add… a barely used demo kit with lens & film back for only $850!!!). And, a little over a year ago I bought a 4×5 camera primarily to shoot Polaroid Type-55 (that idea unfortunately went out the door quickly with Polaroid film’s demise).
Now, I must confess that most of my film shooting will be for personal projects. I’ll sprinkle in some film shots on editorial shoots when budgets allow for both digital fees and film related expenses. For commercial projects, it’ll be digital for sure since the Art Directors usually like seeing what’s going on as we shoot. But, for the projects that actually mean something to me, I’ll likely be using one of my film cameras (not that my paying jobs don’t mean anything… but you know what I mean).
I just got done shooting an editorial assignment for Inc. magazine. I brought out my new RZ67 and shot film for the first time on an editorial shoot for quite some time. Having never used an RZ67 before I didn’t want to rely on it alone, so I got the primary shot out of the way with my digital system (Contax 645 w/ Phase One P25+). But once I did, I switched over to the RZ67 and had a bit more fun with it. It was nice shooting and not running back to a monitor every 10 shots or looking at the LCD on the back of the camera to see what we had.
This isn’t digital vs film quality debate. I’m not going to say one is of better quality than the other. I’m not shooting film again for quality reasons. They are just different. I shoot differently when shooting film. I like the way I shoot with film. I slow down and think about things more than I would with digital. And anything that can get me to think has to be good.
When Quality Is Job None
I thought I’d post a link to a blog entry I read recently on John Loomis’ Blog about the bidding process and low priced photographers. It was a coincidence he posted about this subject when he did because not a week before his post I was confronted with the same exact problem he writes about and was discussing it with some other photographers. I guess all photographers who value their work and bid on projects accordingly run into this problem all the time. The problem of course being photographers who bid next to nothing for a shoot and give away all their rights to the images.
As a client, I would be worried about hiring the lowest bidder for fear that they don’t really know what they’re getting into. If you’re dealing with a larger production and someone says they can do it for a quarter of what an experienced photographer can do the job , chances are they don’t really understand the complexity of the shoot. Once you’ve hired this photographer, you may not know how badly things are going to turn out until its too late. Not only that, there is usually a reason the low priced photographer is low priced and even if it isn’t a big production you can’t be sure of the quality you will get.
Unfortunately we don’t live in a perfect world and quite often it is the lowest bidder, and thus lowest quality, that is chosen. Not only that, often times “good enough” is good enough as can be seen by the abundance of visual crap we see on a daily basis. I remember not too long ago, after i submitted an estimate for a job I was called by the potential client asking if I could come down in my price. They told me another photographer was significantly lower in price. I asked who the photographer was and looked at his work online. As politely as I could, I let them know why that photographer was so cheap. Clearly they would have been getting a lower quality photograph. The potential client’s response to this was… and I kid you not… “how much would you charge to take a bad photograph?” I laughed and told him I just didn’t think it would work out.
Here is to the clients that want to produce something better than”just good enough.” Thank you!
