Category: artgame

Influencers. Naming. Remembering

Posted on Posted in A Symbol Life, art school, artgame, the fora

can you name your influences. How about those you’ve influenced? something all teachers consider.

Mostly, we don’t make a difference that we ever realize. The spoken word ends as it begins.

Claims on forums are a source of ongoing puzzlement. Photography is a small world, isolated but not insulated. The web is just a right-click away. Pride is a terrible memory aide.

Most teachers don’t remember their students well — students are expected to remember some of their teachers. Typically, they remember those who guided well, or who they needed for a career boost. If the teacher had a name, was a member of the canon, they are always listed on the memory page.

What of those students who don’t list you on their extensive friend circle. I wonder more about a teacher citing their student as a badge in their influence-quest. It happens on one forum.

Like this:

Zig Jackson is cited…

Zig Jackson provides a page of people.

Many…. no Gittings. Not even a Kirk.

This doesn’t mean as much as other types of errors made in that forum.

Overlaps occur. Gaps are certain. I graduated from SFAI. Was a TA and knew many of those Mr. Jackson cites in:

.. none of those people influenced my work. I knew them when they had just begun their own career, leaving SFAI (MFA) 73. I left several unsigned papers on making dye-transfer prints. They found their way into other peoples work. None of my students ever looked to me, other than at times they needed a job, or a reference.

as one of my bigger influencers says: and so it goes.

Most of my key, ongoing, recurring influences sit on shelves in my library. I will never thank most of them; ever.

Equipment Matters?!

Posted on Posted in A Symbol Life, artgame, bead game, film, Getting Stuff

Does equipment matter?

Equipment does matter! — sometimes it does; sometimes it doesn’t. For most people, even photographers, photographic equipment gets in their way, Even if their way is the standardized imagery of the Kodakery.

Equipment Poor

is the phrase once used as epithet about those professionals who bought more equipment than they ever used; buying so much they rotated credit cards. They were made poor by their falling for the pitch of the Camera Monthlies sold at the camera counter. Salesmen could be relied upon to inform their customers about improvements to their vision that lay in their future — oh, and we have layaway.

Lollipops also fell into the trap of buying for something sometime in the future. These people were the ones caught off-guard when the tide changed.

Lollipops were the single person lab barely able to support themself. They may have had aspirations of becoming a mom-n-pop. Lollipops eventually realize they’re just a hobbyist on the brink of becoming a hobo. For most, the only professional thing they did was get a re-sale license

— ANSWERING every question the same. applying one answer for every situation. see it in one case, not the other. variable in the Sinar, not in the souping. BL mode. Cost of souping, not knowing that the person used the burst system to save more than direct cost, and that in that approach they hired an assistant, gaining even more work relief: they could answer phones and other small tasks. [ link site ]

two pathways taken. The first is more popular than the second. Note the view counts.

One sells — they are trying to make a living off of the adventure of photography

the other is the much harder, less certain way. Sometimes it works.

We will never remember the salesmen.

ming smith filmday

also: how the format trips many