Thanks!

Cheers,
Zack

Question… Does it have to be perfect? Can the best image for the job sometimes be blown technically but executed perfectly for the job at hand?

Wrong exposure.

Wrong focus.

Wrong shutter speed.

Wrong light.

Wrong composition.

Just right photograph.

As technically strong as I try to be I’m always drawn to the work of others and myself that blows “technical perfection” out the window in lieu of “emotion” “movement” etc. Thoughts? Each photo above is technically wrong. They should be dumped yet they are in the first edit of my new portfolio.

I wouldn’t want to buy an “imperfect” house. Why do I like “imperfect” photography? Thoughts?

Cheers,
Zack

PS – More on the business coming up. Just needed a break from all that.

First, thanks for all of your input on the first blog post of this series. As usual, your comments are far more interesting, entertaining, and thought provoking than anything I write here. If you haven’t read through those yet, you should. What’s interesting to note in the comments there is how the tone of comments changes through the 100+ of them. They start off friendly enough and then somewhere in the middle a few feathers begin to get ruffled. That’s fine. That’s welcomed. It’s a very interesting time in our industry right now and it’s good to have passionate discussion about it. The smart photographers will sit with open minds and get a bit introspective and take a look at their own business practices. The stupid photographers will sit from on high and just point fingers OR sit at the bottom and think, “I’m banking an extra $1,000 a month that I don’t claim with my $800 camera!”

Anyway. Check out that photo above. It’s some stop light advertising for a wedding photographer advertising weddings starting at $350. Man… that’s cheap. Is this person part of the problem in our industry? Absolutely not. I admire the hustle. I admire the fact that they are trying. Now –  if you are the type of pro photographer that looks at that and says, “This is everything that is wrong with this damn industry! You can’t be a pro charging $350 for a wedding! What an A-hole!” Yeah, if you’re that photographer let me challenge you.

Think of the brides out there who don’t have a budget but want some photos of their weddings. Maybe there are young couples getting married who don’t have the parents to pay for a big event or they don’t want to start their young family in debt but they would like someone to come take some pictures. Are you saying that if they can’t afford a $3,000+ photographer then they don’t deserve photos? Are you saying that if they can’t afford a Mercedes then they shouldn’t be allowed to drive? Shame on you. Not everyone can afford pro level prices. That doesn’t mean they can’t have some level of photographic services available to them.

Let me tell you a little something about my journey being the cheap photographer after the jump…

I started out shooting bands seven years ago for free. Then I charged $50. Then I charged $75. Then I charged $150. Within a year I was up to $250 and I leveled off there for awhile and I was busy shooting bands. My goal was to shoot 10 bands a month at $250 each and fill in the rest of my financial needs with second shooting for Marc and and any other jobs I could gather. After a year of marketing to bands I was shooting 20 bands a month at $250. I doubled my goal and darn near became the Olan Mills of music photography. You know what happend? I almost lost my business.

This is what happens when you are the low ball cheap photographer. You either don’t get enough work to stay alive and you have to quit the business or you get so busy being the low ball cheap photographer that you can’t keep up with the workload and you have to quit the business and that’s what happened to me. You can only stay cheap for so long before you have to make a change to your pricing to either stay alive because you aren’t getting enough work, or to get fewer clients so you can keep up with the workload and actually have a day off from time to time.

Some of you may be reading this and think, “20 bands at $250 each = $5,000 a month = $60,000 a year.” and you’re thinking you would LOVE to have that “problem”. If you are young, single, no kids, no pets, living in a crap apartment and drive a crap car and have no plans of paying taxes then yes… $60k a year shooting seems really nice but let me tell you what it’s like in the “real” world.

First of all, thanks to our tax codes you can go ahead and take about 30% of that and give it to the government. If it’s not in income tax it will go to taxes somehow so just budget for that. I want to buy a house one day and to do that as a self employed person I have to show that I actually make money doing this. If I don’t claim my income on my taxes then I have no paperwork to show that I have income when it comes to buying a home so I claim every penny I make. It’s very tempting to hide income and it’s quite easy to do as well but one day it will catch up with you and you’re going to be hosed. Render unto Caesar and all that. You just have to.

So our $60k just dropped to $48k a year. How much does it take you to live? Let’s put you in a $900 apartment + utilities, add some car insurance, a set of tires, a new transmission for your crap car, a 24-70 2.8 lens, food, and some beer money. Life can easily cost around $2,000 a month in many places. Especially places that actually have 20 bands a month to grace the doors of your business. That’s $24,000 so you have $24,000 left in income for the year.

Wow! That’s a ton of money! Awesome!

Now throw kids into the mix and your life easily got $1,000 a month more expensive. Now we have about $12,000 a year in profit. Not bad. $1,000 extra bucks a month. Oh wait. You’re shooting 20 bands a month. That’s a lot of driving. I totally forgot to add gas in this mix. Oh yeah, and you need some insurance on that new lens. You think you’re going to get 20 bands a month coming in the door without some sort of advertising, networking, marketing, and web presence? Nope. Tap, tap, tap on the calculator and I can tell you for certain that when I was bringing in $5,000 a month on bands I had about $250 left over every month. It could take four months to replace a $1,000 camera. Please note that you haven’t bought so much as a new pair of socks with this budget. You’re eating cardboard three times a day as well. Want to take a vacation? No can do. Want health insurance? Hahahahahahahaha! That’s a funny one! You want health insurance. Silly photographer! You’re ONLY bringing in $60,000 a year. You can’t afford health insurance. Better budget for some vitamins.

Look at the workload as well. 20 bands in a month. It was rare that I shot more than one band in a day so that’s 20 days of shooting. You have 10 days left to do the post production, answer emails, network, spend time with friends and family, sleep, etc. You’re in a dying marriage. You’re trying to keep your business alive. You’re trying to be everything to everyone. Husband. Dad. Artist. It’s a hard life that can lead to a divorce lawyer. Not that I know anything about that at all. Replace divorce lawyer with car wreck or cancer or broken arm. You’re barely staying alive bringing in $60,000 a year and I was living in a cheap place and driving beater cars. I did have a small studio space and that was part of my marketing. I was competing with other young music photographers and I had to separate myself from the small pack of us in Atlanta and part of that was stepping up from the coffee shop office to a studio space.

I was so covered up in work that I couldn’t keep up with it. I either had to start raising prices or I was going to die. I once figured out that I was making about $5 an hour. Note that I quit a $10 an hour job for this. Hmmmm. Nice job Zack. Be your own boss and make less than a slacker in a copy shop.

Did you visit the site of the photographer in the photo above? Notice that they are out of business. No idea what they are doing now with their life. Maybe they raised their prices, ditched the brand, became a better photographer, and now go by the name of Joey Lawrence.

When I started raising my prices I didn’t get as many clients as I used to but my income stayed about the same. It helped me take a few days off. It helped me take a breather and work on my business. I started diversifying my income and started attracting new clients. I could start focusing on my craft again. I got my very own set of Pocket Wizards after two and half years of shooting full time. I started to see the value of what I do. The clients I attracted saw the value as well. And that attracted new business.

My pricing for bands is a tad higher than $250 these days. I’ve seen real growth in my business and at some point I’ll have to blog about the fact that I am not where I am today without the help of others to get me here. I didn’t do it on my own and I still don’t do it on my own. People like Michael Weeman, Erik Dixon, Kara Pecknold, Sherri Innis, and Dan Depew have helped me as I’ve branched into new opportunities and those new opportunities continue bringing in opportunities. I still hustle. I still have to continue pushing. There are photographers that are far more expensive than I am and there is an army of shooters under cutting me to the bone… but I stay afloat. I’m still alive. I still don’t have health insurance. Still haven’t purchased my home. Still shooting Alien Bees instead of Profotos. I don’t fret over the cheap photographer. I actually tip my hat to you and say “Good luck and good shooting.” It’s a hard life but at the end of the day… for those of you who can’t seem to do anything else with your lives… photography is the greatest job in the world no matter if you’re getting $50 or $50,000 for a shoot.

This isn’t the post about pricing you may think it’s becoming. That’s for a different time. I’ve laid this all out to make the point that cheap photography has it’s place. It has it’s place for clients who can’t afford much and it has it’s place for photographers trying to build something from nothing. It’s part of becoming a full time working photographer in an age when so many want to become a photographer. I have a lot of respect for John Harrington. By a lot I mean boat loads. I understand what he’s saying in this post about shooting for free but I have to wonder… how in the hell did he get started as a photographer? I’m pretty certain he didn’t buy a camera one day and start invoicing $1,000 a day the next. I don’t think he landed his job at The World & I magazine without some sort of portfolio of work that I can only imagine was made up of pretty cheap photo shoots. Maybe I’m wrong. I am the antithesis to every point he is fighting against in that blog post and I’ve built a career off of it and from what I can gather – I didn’t kill the industry doing so.

Hyundai didn’t kill Mercedes. McDonalds didn’t kill Ruth’s Chris. Wal-mart didn’t kill the mom-n-pop shop… oh wait.

Up next… Microstock. Now there’s something to look at.

Sometime after that I want to have a discussion about shooting for free as if that discussion has been beaten to death already… because guess what… Shhhhhhh. Don’t tell anyone… (I still shoot jobs for free every now and then.) Shhhhhhhh.

Cheers,
Zack

Everyone wants to be a photographer these days.

Let me warn you now that this blog post is currently in it’s third state of revisions. It’s a real rambler. If you’re up for it, I’m up for it. More after the jump.

If you hang out on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and the like enough you can “stumble upon” some trends without even trying to. Lately I have seen a number of articles flying around about the over saturation of the photography industry, the unsustainability of the microstock market, and the pros and cons of working for “free”. The “abuse” we photographers receive at the hands of our clients and totally absurd Craig’s List postings of people wanting work for free or photographers giving away the farm for nothing.

Here are a few of the articles that most people are talking about these days.

• Photo business guru John Harrington over at Black Star Rising talking about the 12 excuses for shooting for free. This article is the one that got me thinking about doing this blog post.

• Don Giannatti (Wizwow) has this article on shooting for free, and this article on getting experience. Great reads here.

• David Hobby (Strobist) about working for free. Another must read.

• Rob Haggart (A Photo Editor) about the unsustainability of the micro stock industry. Canary in the coal mine?

Let’s start with the “over saturated” market premise.

I, Zack Arias, am part of the over saturated market. I am one of the many who are filling the waters of this industry. Every job I take is a job off of the table of another photographer. I am a working photographer in large part due to the prevalence of affordable DSLRs, the expense of film and development being removed from my up front overhead, and the Internet.

I’ll be so bold to say that if you have entered this industry in the last ten years then you too are part of the over saturation equation. If you are thinking about becoming a pro photographer, whether part time or full time, then you are over saturating the market as well. I would say the “standard saturation” photographers are the ones who have been in the game, full time, without gaps, for more than ten years.

Let’s break this thing down.

In the days of Kodachrome and dinosaurs there were some pretty set rules of engagement and paths of entrance into the photography industry. You usually started by going to photography school or you started working in a lab. You had to get your feet wet somewhere and school and photo labs were a good place to get started. Once you were ready to move forward you started assisting working photographers. Many times you would have done this for free. I have assisted and interned for free many times and I have met countless photographers who started by schlepping bags and fetching coffee for nothing or next to nothing in pay. It’s what you did. It’s how you got to see how a “real” photographer worked. It was called… get this… “paying your dues.”

These days those paths aren’t so clearly defined. You can go to school via blogs, workshops, YouTube, and DVD’s. You can upload pictures to flickr and suddenly get a message from an art director wanting you to shoot a job. You can be a kid from Canada, travel the world, shoot some bands and end up shooting campaigns for a company you aren’t even old enough to buy their product. You can be inspired by your own wedding photographer, buy a camera, a fast lens, and rise to the top of your zip code within a year. You can go to Wal Mart, buy a cheap DSLR, shoot your friends and family, shoot their friends and families, put a blog together, and start a business. There are so many easy entry points into the market now. There is an abundance of inexpensive cameras, free learning portals, and free advertising routes that allows just about anyone with a camera to get out there and make a little or a lot of money with it.

The worst part about all of this is you don’t even have to be all that good of a photographer to get into the game. That really is the worst part about it all but hang out at enough photography water coolers and you’ll hear stories from “back in the day” about the same damn things. Being a crappy photographer with a profitable business is nothing new. There were just more up front costs to deal with back then. Now it’s just easier to be a crappy sucksessful photographer. Add insult to injury… You can be a fairly mediocre photographer these days and have a workshop teaching others how to be just as mediocre as you are. Meh. Whatever. It is what it is.

Add to all of this the deteriorating morale in the corporate workplace, the need of many to make an extra $100 here and there, unemployment, the recession, blah blah blah, and the fact that a lot of people find it a whole lot cooler to say “I’m a photographer” at social gatherings instead of saying “I’m a systems analyst at a health care company.” Bring this all together into the perfect shit storm of an industry filled to the gills with Joe and Jane Photographers trying to do something cool with their lives AND make some money doing it. I mean, Quicken and Quickbooks didn’t really over saturate the accounting market did it? Maybe I’m wrong.

I’m right here part of it all. I’m part of the over saturated market. You’re part of the over saturated market. Don’t bitch and moan and complain about it because you’re in it with the rest of us.

What do we do with that information? Here we all are. Up to our necks in each other. We watch ten leave because they can’t take the pressure and twenty more take their place. It all gets just a little tighter around here. The last thing in the world you need to do is complain about the situation… unless of course, you’ve been at this for twenty or more years. In that case, my apologies to you. I know you’re feeling the pressure of all of us new kids in the pool but here we are and it’s the only pool in town for us. Complaining about us isn’t making us leave and don’t think for a second that I didn’t just notice the water around me get a lot warmer.

Blah blah blah. Metaphor upon metaphor.

So it’s competitive. Guess what? Photography has always been competitive. I don’t know of any other time in this industry when it wasn’t competitive. The nice thing about the industry these days is it seems that most of us are now open to share our experiences with others. Gone are the days of everyone playing with their cards close to their chests. If you are still trying to stay in this industry with that sort of attitude your days are numbered. It’s a real hippy love fest around here these days and we young punk kids ain’t got no time for your old ways of doing things.

Us young punk kids actually really need you to stick around. We need the long established pros to help us out. I know you want us out of your pool but that isn’t happening any time soon. The better you can adapt the better you can survive. Part of adapting is now requiring you to kind of be a life gaurd even though  you’d probably just be as happy to watch us all drown.

So. Yeah. Over saturated. Your attitude should shift from “This sucks.” to “So what?”. Big Deal. More at the party dude!

How can I run a business will all these $500 wedding photographers in my town?

That’s the next thing we are going to look at. I’ll let you in on this… I’m all for $500 wedding photographers. For many different and sometimes conflicting reasons. Then we’ll look at the micro stock situation. Is it the canary in the coal mine? Then let’s have a conversation about what it all means at the end of the day and will the industry adjust and what will that look like?

The dog days are over
The dog days are done
The horses are coming
So you better run*

*I actually like to listen to the song above as “The dark days are over” and the horses coming aren’t here for destruction.

Cheers,
Zack

Friend and colleague, David E Jackson, has recently published this video on his blog about his thought process behind a recent conceptual shoot.

As you are starting on your photographic journey many of your questions will be dealing with cameras and lenses and their settings. What lights were used and with what modifiers. What photoshop actions were used. Etc. Then the day will come when cameras, lenses, lights and all of their settings don’t mean a damn thing to you any more. What you want to know from other photographers is what was the thought process behind a certain photo or series of photos. Dave does a good job breaking that down. Watch the video to hear how he thinks… not which aperture he used.

I’ve been saying for a long time that Dave is “one to watch” and this recent shoot of his only confirms that. Check out his blog for photos and more BTS action for this shoot. Great jorb homestar!

Cheers,
Zack

As Lightroom churns through some images I’m working in PhotoMechanic on a few new portfolios for web and print. The one capturing my attention right now is the selection of images from my two trips to Dubai.

I’m still trying to figure out why I love Dubai so much. There’s something about that place and something about the people that has really caught hold of me and I can’t let go of it. I’m sure if I were to go there around this time of year it would change my ideas about the place.

More images and thoughts after the jump ::

Working on a portfolio is tough stuff. The images above are just a cross section of the initial edit. I have my main portfolio culled to about 2,000 images. That is the big messy edit. It needs to get to 20. Most likely it will be a selection of 20 or fewer portraits. Then I’m doing a portfolio of 20 or fewer Dubai images. Then there is a personal project I’m working on this year and that will be about 10 images plus narrative, video, and one audio track bundled into one portfolio. Then we are doing a kids commercial test in a few weeks and that will most likely be another portfolio of 10 images.

Entertainment/Music. Dubai. Personal Project. Commercial Kids. Four portfolios ready to go by the end of the year. That’s the goal. In print and online. That’s the goal. With the new branding wrapped up. It’s taken 10 months to filter the vision down for these.

Currently I’m most excited about the personal project and the Dubai portfolio. Those two get my blood moving around a little bit faster and little bit hotter. The personal project will have a definite narrative. The Dubai portfolio I see in my head is black and white but there are a few images that just work in color. So how do you find the right flow with color and B&W living side by side? How do you show the contrast that is Dubai? At some point I’ll get a sloppy edit together and then I have to hand it over to trusted colleagues for input, critique, and discussion. It’s a painful process but it has to happen. The only thing I hate more is working on branding. I hate working on branding.

So, here is a good example of my dilemma. I have this shot of a gentleman in his Lamborghini. It only works in color. I have a shot of two kids playing and I like the connection of the reds and blues in the two photos. There’s also a social contrast between the two images. So, I’m digging these two photos but I have this other shot outside of a shop that I kind of like as well. Here they are…

Here is the same spread but with a change to the left photo…

And now the other shot placed in…

What do y’all think?

Cheers,
Zack

PS – Then. THEN… After all that… the majority of the work is horizontal so am I going to print double truck (across two facing pages) or am I going to keep them on individual pages? The gutter can screw up a composition in a New York minute. Ugh. And do I print double sided or single sided? Blurb or Epson and a post book? It’s all of these questions that keep me from having an up to date print portfolio, but that has to change. It will all be done by the end of the year. I’ll share the process as soon as it is done.

That guy above is hip hop legend 8 Ball. I had the opportunity to photograph him about three years ago. We shot in the studio and then headed out on location in his completely tricked out Hummer. * Ball came up in Memphis with MJG. You may not have heard of 8 Ball. If you like any sort of hip hop coming from the south then you most definitely have heard his influence. Everyone from T.I. to Luda to Andre 3000 all talk about how they were influenced by 8 Ball and MGJ early on in their career.

I was, of all things, folding socks this morning thinking about anything but folding socks. There are some who look at me and say, “Wow. Zack has made it.” From my view point I will say I’ve “made it” when I don’t have to fold socks ever again in my life. That got me thinking about 8 Ball and I thought I would share this interesting personal story…

As I was steaming Ball’s 6XL shirts for this shoot I was asking him about his career. I asked one question and he told me something that has stuck with me ever since.

I asked… “When did you know your career was to the point that this was now your job? Like, you made it.”

Ball stopped rolling his “smoke” and sat back and told me about growing up as a kid in a poor neighborhood in Memphis. He lived with his mom and grandmother in a shotgun shack. He slept in the den. One of his daily chores was going around the house and collecting the mouse traps in the house, take them outside, and get rid of the dead mice. Then he had to reset those traps and put them back around the house. He told me that he knew he had “made it” when he could throw away the whole mouse trap and reset a new one. He was making enough money in hip hop that he could just buy a new bag of traps every week instead of using the old ones.

8 Ball bought his mom a house. He’s doing well. He’s influenced an army of rappers. He knows he made it when he didn’t have to use a used mouse trap.

It doesn’t take a whole lot to make it does it? He made it but still had to set those traps. He still had a long way to go before he could just buy his mom a new house. It’s such a great story. For those of you who just discount hip hop as “crap” you ought to listen beyond the ho’s and rims and hear the stories of people who came out of nothing and into something. There are a lot of stories of redemption that come out of hip hop. Not exactly your Sunday school stories of redemption but redemption all the same. Go watch Hustle & Flow. It’s one of my top three favorite movies of all time. It’s about a small time pimp coming up in hip hop in Memphis. 8 Ball, of course, is on the soundtrack.

Here’s another one…

Cheers,
Zack

I get asked a lot about where I get my inspiration. That’s a hard question to answer because there are so many things and people in my life that inspire me. Let me tell you a story about a white guy from Arkansas that raps.

More after the jump ::

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Last night Meg and I were able to get a babysitter and go see our friend Dan Smith play a show. His project is called “Listener“.

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Dan has a schtick. A persona. A presence on stage. He does this “thing” that is amazing. Dan does “talk music” and it is his own thing. Love him or hate him, when Dan takes the stage people get off their phones, stop chatting, and watch. His stage persona is mesmerizing. It never bleeds into background music. His music isn’t ever going to make the top ten on the billboard charts and I think that’s just all right for him. He’s not following. He’s not replicating. He’s not trying to find what is popular and pursue that.

I met Dan about six years ago when he was more of a hip hop artist than folksy/indie/something/talk music artist. I was introduced to him through this cat in Nashville named KC Jones. KC said to me, “You gotta hear the Listener. He’s a white dude from Arkansas that raps.” That introduction was enough to pique my interest.

The first song I heard was Train Song (mp3 download).  ”It’s my habits that make my fingers weak…” Listen closely to the story. Pretty amazing.

Decadence (mp3 download) is one of my favorite tracks from his more hip hop centric era. It also features Manchild who has a flow like no other. Yes, I do have permission to link to these files.

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It’s been interesting to watch him change. To watch him find who he is. To start at one place and end up somewhere else and to see he’s not “there” yet. Dan has always been Dan, yet with each new part of his project he is becoming more true to his core. He’s walking through the shit of life and stripping off the non essentials and building back from there. It’s really an amazing process to watch from the outside.

I need to sit down with him sometime and see what it’s like from his perspective because I know for a fact it will be much different than my perspective. Maybe I’m wrong about how I see Dan. Maybe Dan is wrong about how he sees himself. Sometimes people on the outside see the real you. The “you” you can’t see. And sometimes people from the outside have the wrong idea about who you are. Hmmmm. This reminds me of something Meg is working on but that’s not for this post. (Dan, next time you’re back in Atlanta let’s talk it out)

If you listen to his older music you can hear the framework of his newer work. Meaning, you can look back and see the progression but you never see it when you are moving forward. The same thing goes for photography. It’s called personal style and it takes years to develop and you can’t really see your style until you have some years under your belt and can look back.

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Dan is a huge source of inspiration for me. That inspiration doesn’t change how I look through my viewfinder but it changes how I look through the eye in my brain if that makes any sense at all… Which it doesn’t. I went to public school so trying to flowchart how inspiration works for me is a bit difficult. My brain eyes connect to my face eyes which connect to my viewfinder so maybe he does inspire how I see the world. How “inspiration” like this works for me is the music gets in my head. I listen to the stories in the lyrics. I connect the dots from the songs to the dots of my own life and those thoughts sort of lead me down a path of more thoughts that eventually lead to actions with my camera and with my business. Inspiration for me isn’t seeing one person do something and then I go do something similar to that. I think that’s more like plagiarism than inspiration.

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Dan’s magic really comes through his show. He’s brave. He’s full on. He doesn’t hold back. He doesn’t care what he looks like. He just lets the f#ck go and pours it all out. I’ve seen him perform to a packed venue and to 8 people in a living room and he brings everything he has to the stage with every performance.

You can find his new album here. Be sure to give “Wooden Heart” a listen. Buy a copy and support an artist. Don’t you want someone to give you some support in your endeavors? Pay it forward.

You can stream his new album. Sorry iPhone/iPad users. These are flash embeds.

This is his last album. It’s called “Return To Struggleville” and it’s about a traveling knife salesman and it’s brilliant.

His songs are stories. They are pulled out of his head and out of his experience. He’s living his story. Are you? Are you aware that you’re walking out your story? Are you keeping your eyes far out ahead and busting your ass to get there or are you sitting around on said ass looking backwards? How’s that working for you? I saw a great quote on Twitter yesterday…

“Don’t ask God to guide your footsteps if you aren’t willing to move your feet.”

Dan’s played more than 800 shows and he has 800 more to go. He’s doing it. He’s sharing his life. He’s changing. Growing. He’s moving his feet. Stripping it down to the essentials. He’s inspiring thousands. He’s just a white dude from Arkansas that raps and he is a really important character in my own story. Fun trivia – His 800th show was at a Mexican Restaurant. 800th show.

Where are you getting your inspiration from outside the photography world?

And…

Are you moving your feet or sittin’ on your ass? I’d rather have sores on my feet than on my ass. There’s a t-shirt.

Cheers,
Zack

I’m going to share a story about shooting crappy pictures then share a recent comment from one of y’all regarding our last critique that’s worthy of taking some time and thinking about what we do.

At the turn of the century I was photographer for Apartments.com. The image above is one I shot for them in 2001. It was shot with the then amazing Olympus C-3030. You should have seen the camera we upgraded from. My iPhone takes better pictures.

Ramblings after the jump…

I could typically shoot three apartment complexes a day. I would show up, introduce myself to the property manager (PM), explain what the Internet was (contracts were usually sold on the national level so local PM’s didn’t always know what we did.), and then take off through the complex to shoot one or two model apartments, the exercise room, the pool, the front entrance, miscellaneous property photos, the club house, etc, etc, etc. In addition to stills I would have to shoot virtual tour panoramics as well. An average apartment complex would take an hour or two to photograph and I would shoot, on average, 150 to 200 images per property.

Once I was done shooting I would sit with the PM and have them choose their favorite photos. It was not unusual to be sent back out on the property or to the model to reshoot something. Usually I was asked to make a bathroom the size of a size 6 shoebox look like it was the Taj Mahal . I would shoot the tennis court that had not seen a tennis match in 10 years and then be asked if we could Photoshop the cracks out of the surface and add some nets. I wish I had a dime for every time I was asked if we could Photoshop water into the pool. Truth in advertising people. Truth in advertising. Not that any of that mattered to folks who would name an apartment complex “Mountain View” when there wasn’t a view of a mountain for at least 600 miles.

Prior to shooting Apartments.com I was shooting this stuff for JC Penney… (sorry for the bad scans)

4×5 fo’ life!

How did I go from working in a large commercial photography studio to shooting apartments? I had a degree in photography, I had been an assistant for two or three years by this point, and I was then moving into a management/shooter position for JC Penney’s corporate studio shooting table top product, booking models, handling the best gear in the world, and interacting with amazing photographers each and every day. I moved from that life to racing around the Southwest shooting exercise rooms and horribly decorated 2 bedroom 1 bath apartments. JC Penney hit some really tough financial times and a big fat target was painted on the studio I was working in. We were all told to be on the lookout for other work because it could be closing any day. I got a call around that time about a photography position at Apartments.com. The Internet was at the tail end of being the wild frontier. The pay was good, the benefits were amazing, and the job allowed me to work from home and have time to get my freelance career started while still having a salary to rely on. What could be better? Other than the fact that I was now a photographer for Apartments.com. I was embarrassed to tell any of my photographer friends about my job. I never ever mentioned it on the forums I was active on. Pride would not allow me to breath a word of it. It wasn’t “photography”. I could train a monkey to do the job.

So I thought.

You know what?  I learned a lot about photography with that job. I shot 300 to 600 images a day and then had to sit and have them reviewed by the client on site. I would have to prep the selects and upload them each night so my workflow had to be efficient. Near the end of my time with Apartments.com I could breeze into a complex, knock out the photos in 45 minutes, and wow the PM’s with angles of their complex they had never seen. Even though I was never showing that work to anyone… I still took pride in what I did. Even though I felt I wasn’t doing anything with “photography”. I learned a lot about talking to clients, working with images, educating a client about photography and getting them involved in the process. I learned about being consistent and delivering on tight deadlines. I learned so much about photography with that job but I didn’t realize it at that time.  To keep from going crazy during this time in my career I spent a lot of time shooting personal work and continued to build my portfolio and get my freelance work up to the point where I could leave the Internet job. This was the time in my life when I was buying gear, going into debt, living more on forums than in my life, etc, etc. That horrible word “profitability” also started getting tossed around the home office in Chicago and the internet started to get incredibly Khaki around 2001. I had to start learning to read spread sheets. No more keggers in the kitchen.

I was really inspired by guys like Dirk Halstead, David Leeson, and Brian Storm back in those days. There was this new frontier called “new media” and these guys were at the forefront of it and they were lumped into one of two categories by the photography industry. They were either visionaries or they were bat shit crazy. I think in someways they vacillated between the two on any given day. I think they were bat shit crazy enough to be visionaries and time has proven that they were right on the money. Back when I was getting to know these guys there was another dude who had just become the youngest staff photographer for the New York Times. His name was, and still is, Vincent Laforet. Never heard of him right?

Now that I’ve dropped enough names to break my foot… what was I doing with my life?

Shooting effing apartments… but damn it all… I was trying to get my career and my craft beyond algae filled pools and mauve and teal clubhouse virtual tours. I jumped into the new media pool and started working on a project in Austin, TX about a group of homeless folks who flew signs to make ends meet. You see them on every corner. Someone holding a sign asking for some help and God blessing you as you ignore them while you pray for the light to turn green. I was shooting stills…

And shooting video…

I thought I have a lot to learn about audio and video now? I had even more to learn then. Like, check out this clip from that project of Worthless Kenny.

I’ve gone down this trip on memory lane because of a comment from reader ChrisDavid42. His comment took me back to this weird time in my life when I had more knowledge in my head than I had experience with a camera in my hands.

In the critique, I was looking at a gallery of images and I made a comment that went along the lines of, “Yes, it is a photograph but it isn’t photography.” I knew it would strike a chord somewhere with someone. Sometimes I say this sort of crap to make us all think or start a discussion. I also say crap like this to try and set a bar higher than where any of us reach with our own work. Myself included. Well, that statement did spark some conversation and this comment… (emphasis added)

This comment is meant as a contribution to the ongoing discussion, and not as criticism or dis-agreement with anyone.

First, my opinion about art vs. commercialism:
Art has always existed at a cross-roads between commerce and human expression. Artists who wish to benefit from their art will always be subject to the aesthetic of those who are willing to commission, or pay, for that work. On the other side of the coin are the artists who reject all control in pursuit of a “pure unadulterated expression of their vision.” I recently read of a photographer from eastern Europe who was discovered in his sixties or seventies. He spent much of his life in poverty and two decades in a mental hospital. I don’t want to be that guy.

I believe a key element of art is the interaction between artist, medium, and subject. Though at times this may not be conveyed successfully to the viewer, an arguably necessary component of “successful” art, the joy of the creation of art, in my mind, is as important as the result.

Zack consistently pushes his listeners and readers to strive for excellence and individual vision in their work, and I agree. And, I have been encouraged by his message. However, I must respond to a couple comments, including the comment about getting a side job rather than producing mediocre work, or as in one of Zack’s repeated quotes “competing with Wal-mart.”

I also take issue with Zack’s comment that an image can be a photograph, but not photography. I agree completely with the sentiment that there is way too much mediocrity in the industry and in the media. I cringe at most of the photos our local paper runs, especially after years of reading Zack’s blog and Strobist and knowing that 5 more minutes of effort could have improved those pictures. And yet, that tolerance for mediocrity is the what will allow me to build a small portrait business and get the experience that you can’t get from blogs, or shooting your kids and neighbors, and pay for the equipment that I can’t pay for out of my household budget.

As a photographer, I find incredible joy from making images of people. I find joy from growing in my craft technically, or, to say it differently, interacting with my camera and equipment. I find great joy from interacting with people and creating a photo with them, not of them. My goal is to someday have the skill that allows my images to show the world “my experience” or “what I see in my subjects.” However, I am still producing mediocre images, because of where I am at technically in my photographic journey. But, my skills are improving, and I am seeing more and more improvement in my images.

I have recently had the opportunity to do two evenings of “event portraits.” Setting up in a corner at a community event and doing a hundred mini-portrait sessions over the course of two hours. The blogs and videos very much informed that experience, but having to shoot successfully under pressure is something that you can only learn from experience.

And I loved every minute of it, every compromise, every success, every time that I had to sacrifice composition to a technical detail, every time I was able to show them a picture that was better than they expected; even the failures when I couldn’t overcome technical difficulties, or connect with my subjects. Every second of that was PHOTOGRAPHY.

Even if it doesn’t translate yet on my website, it was photography. Even if I spend two years competing with Walmart for customers. It was photography because it was a labor of love for the craft; even if the viewer cannot see it. Someday it will be GOOD PHOTOGRAPHY and the viewer will see it. And that is my problem with Zack’s criticism, you can’t always ascertain the process from the product. however, I think we could agree it is a communication failure, the failure on the photographers part to successfully communicate his/her vision.

Perhaps where I take issue is that I perceived an insult to the process, and I see the process as inseparable from the product. (Honestly, what is really tweaking me is that I really identify with the first person you critiqued. One of the first things you read from her e-mail was that she had been doing this for one year. I look at what I was doing after a year and think “wow. I didn’t have the guts to put together a website after a year.”)

Zack commented in earlier critiques that kid sports photography may be boring, but he will buy it because it is his kid. I totally get what he means here, it is like watching a movie where somebody’s dad dies in the first scene, you are emotionally connected to the movie whether it is poorly scripted and produced or not. Same thing with the pictures, you buy them even if they make you cringe. However, I think that the answer is not to berate the photographers for making lifeless images, the answer is to stop buying the images. Vote with your wallet, pay a more envisioned photographer to make images of your kid in his softball uniform. Keep encouraging and educating photographers and the overall level of the industry will rise.

In summary, thanks for taking the time to read my rant. Your critiques are successful because they are thought provoking. I love listening to them. I listened to your critique on Tuesday and have been arguing the ideas in my head all week. I absolutely loved your talk at Photocamp Utah; it inspired me. I will continue to cull my best images for my portfolio, and I will continue to shoot whatever people will pay me to shoot (or let me shoot for free), and i will likely display some of that in my portfolio, if that is what my customers want and are paying me for.

enough said.

Wow. Chris’ comment stopped me in my tracks and took me back to the hundreds of apartments I’ve photographed. It took me back to all the crap ass photos I’ve taken (and, um, well, still take). I thought about this music video I just put together last week. My first. It isn’t a masterpiece but it’s mine. I’m tied to it. Attached in a way that is hard to let go and I often forget about that with photography. Is my level of video work on par with the highest end of the industry? No way. I struggle with it. I fight with it. And to me, it’s still film making. It’s doing something inside of me. If it is mediocre then I need someone from higher up the food chain to call it out and call me up… And that is the goal when I do a critique. Ok. You nailed the exposure. You made a portrait that is on level with Wal-Mart. You have made it to that level but that level is a low one. You must now rise. The bar is higher than that.

So as much as I stand by my comments in the critique and will continue to push buttons I also have to say that Chris’ comment opened my eyes. You made me stop and think Chris and I thank you for that. You made me remember the strange struggling times when you are fighting for your first jobs. I mean, I’m not so old hat around here that I forget but sometimes I do.

Yes the picture may be somewhat boring… but it is still photography.

My favorite part of Chris’ comment is this…

And I loved every minute of it, every compromise, every success, every time that I had to sacrifice composition to a technical detail, every time I was able to show them a picture that was better than they expected; even the failures when I couldn’t overcome technical difficulties, or connect with my subjects. Every second of that was PHOTOGRAPHY.

Pretty amazing quote huh? I want to print that and hang it on the wall.

Thoughts?

Cheers,
Zack

Want a sneak peak into the life of a successfull commercial photographer?

I made this for a few reasons. I’ll go into that later.

Want some more?

HQ QT version of the video here.

Cheers,
Zack Arias. Sucksessfull Commercial Photographer

PS – In addition to thanking the academy I would also like to recognize Jeremy Cowart, Chase Jarvis, and Joe Effing McNally.