"You have to use the same filters on all your Instagram posts..."

UPDATE! Now listen to this blog post, right here! It might be cringe worthy because for a voice over guy I suck at reading my own copy!

What? Is this how far working artists have fallen down the disturbing rabbit hole? The title of this blog post is a direct reaction to the tsunami of new aged millennial bullshit that is crashing on everyone trying to make a living at a creative craft. Let me clarify what I am trying to convey in this markedly, horse out of the gates, blog post. One of the many outlets for exposure, advertising,marketing and general narcissism nowadays is the social media platform, Instagram. I feel like an old codger explaining that but hey, whatever. With that seemingly powerful (and mostly free) tool comes a whole lot of utter  horse shit rules, guidelines and social norms that "successful" instagramers should use, created and cultivated by God knows who but probably the unabashed millennial. 

I loathe the instagram machine, I'll be very clear, I wait for the day that it starts to crumble and something as equally asinine comes along to replace it. That day will happen, remember Betamax? It's only a matter of time. You would think a photographer would obsess over the idea that there was a relatively simple platform to display and share their visual content, FOR FREE! I mean, that sounds God damn, amazing. Beats the hell out of a website where updating takes minutes if not hours and content is seen by at least 1/1000th of the people that hop on instagram, right?  It's not that simple though because with the rise of social media platforms comes the rise of social media platform culture. There are little rules, do's and don't to having a successful, and neutured, instagram feed. There's the 98% and the 2%. The welfare queens and the yuppies all in digital visual form. It's rules and regulations might as well share a seat at the table with Communist China. Alright, alright that is a bit of a stretch but you don't conform, you're not going to be successful.

Someone has mentioned to me that my Instagram looked a bit "all over the place" (even though my main stated focus is fashion, conceptual art and the human body) all of which are definitely the only thing on it. Now my slight agitation, yes slight, isn't directed towards the person who said this. It's how they feel in relation to the instagram experience. I won't knock them for that but they later mentioned something more, disconcerting? The fact of the matter is, I should be using 2-3 of the same presets for all of my work...

Can I insert a rocket ship exploding on the tarmac here? I have to learn how to do that because this is where I start to get SIGNIFICANTLY annoyed. That statement is just such a archetype for all the wrong things that are going on in photography and the EXPLOSION, pun intended, of dumb faux tographers that, all of the sudden think, that they are so artsy because they buy a canon 6d (still a great camera) and a sigma 35mm art lens(which will defocus in about 18 months). This market is saturated with that very person.

If your mindset is finding presets to make your work look uniform, you are a boneheaded moron. I automatically think you are a toddler with way too much technology in your hands. Technology that you don't understand, technology you just think is cute or cool or "vintage". Press a button and boom, you have a kodachrome filter(mind you there hasn't been one accurate kodachome preset to date) Are presets all bad? Hell no. They cut time, make things easier and can aid in developing a "look". BUT IT WILL NEVER BE YOUR LOOK. You just bought a preset from someone or downloaded it for free and pressed play, without ever knowing what it did to your photo or how you got to that. Nothing irks me more than people not having a basic understanding of how things work when using them. It's not magic kids.  I much prefer someone actually make their own crappy vintage filter(raises hand, yes I've totally done that and I am admitting to my rottenness) than just click something because they thought it looked cool.

SO MANY "successful" photographers seem to do this. It's all the rage, clients love the look and feel of the soft light/flare and vintage muddy tones. It's a trend and it won't last and half, more so 3/4th of these people won't know what to do with themselves when clients don't want it anymore. Or, they will just download the filter preset of the new thing that is popular.

I've gone slightly off topic BUT VERY IMPORTANT. I am so happy this person said that my instagram was all over the place. Why? Because that's my style. I take every shoot, every concept I make pictures of and I make sure it stands on its own. Does that mean thursday could be different from friday? HELL YES. That's the point. How I perceive the shoot, how I interact with the model/client/subject, that, that is how I show my style, That will always be consistent. 

I've danced with the devil before. I've felt persuaded to edit display work that looks the same for the past couple years and in many instances I've fallen victim to the spell of conformity but today made me realize that those days are quite over. I'd rather make what I want and fall into (even more) obscurity than try to reflect the trends of every photographer who decided to pick up a camera in the last 5 years and charge 500 dollars for a wedding. You folks don't dictate style.

Today, I will beat to my own drum, louder and with more gusto than I ever have before. Today, I will put my headphones on and listen to my playlist. Getting a bit dramatic here Mike.  For my personal life and pursuance of making something I want to remember when I'm diaper laden I couldn't feel more emboldened.

For the work I do as a "career" photographer, things won't change but I'm not going to field clients because they want the latest trend. I want clients to come to me because they like what I have to offer, not what Instagram dictates is good.

Oh look, time to go post my photo of the day on Instagram so I get the proper engagement and free exposure from the insta god's algorithms.

The democratization of photography and modeling and anything else you can afford.

All the time its, "Mike, write a blog." "You have so many things to talk about!" You've finished like, 500 shoots, share your ideas!" I sit down to write a blog and I want nothing to do with this process. My thoughts matter less the more I sit here and type this. Though, wait till tomorrow when I am far away from a decent computer, I'll be wanting to write those silly thoughts down. 

I suppose this blog isn't about anything in particular because all my thought processes have seemed to escape me. Okay, I'll stop right there. Nobody wants to read a blog about nothing.  I just went and wrote the title before I even have written anything of substance. I'm calling this one, "The democratization of photography and modeling and anything else you can afford." Well, what the hell does that mean? It basically means that two, somewhat specialized, professions are now accessible to a lot more of the population. That's good right? Sure. It sounds remarkably good. Thousands of people who may have not had the means to now have the chance to try it out. It's good when everyone gets a chance right? Too bad I'm a cynic and all I'm going to do is focus on why it's terrible. Let's break this down and start with Photography because one undeniably has created the other.

Photography has been around in some form or another for about 170 years. It went from an uber specialty profession and then to the masses when 35mm film became much more prevalent. I'm not trying to argue that everyone shouldn't have a camera. I mean everyone almost does with the advent of smart phones but what I am arguing is that everyone who has a camera isn't a photographer. Well, duh Mike, they know that. Ah, but this is where the noise sets in. This is where the tidal wave breaks. If you sampled 1,000 people in 1970 who owned cameras and asked them if they were photographers I assure you the amount of people that would have said "yes" would be markedly less than a group of 1,000 in 2010. Am I losing you? Probably. Does this matter? Probably not. Well it does. It does to me.

Sometime after the year 2000 something happened. Digital photography started gaining strength. The cost of technology in cameras dropped significantly. Film started to increase in price. Demand was down.  The winds of change had been felt. Stupidly not by Kodak, those schmucks. Camera companies introduce the first digital SLR. A compact, digital camera that changes lenses and uses a memory card to store photos instead of film. How many photos? As many as your card could hold. The prices go down. Memory prices go down. Film prices go up. They stop making certain films. Companies jump on this band wagon. Digital sensors are cheaper and so are the chips that run the camera. Image quality goes through the roof. I'm taking about real advances in latitude, resolution and contrast. There is no development time. There is no waiting to see if you got the right shot. There is no wasting of negatives.

I just had a thought that has little to do with anything. People have always taken photos. Most point and shoots and 35mm cameras got the job done but they didn't do anything too amazing.  To take really great photos before the advent of digital photography you had to have some money(for film and gear), have a great eye, understand the basic concepts in photography. Okay okay, I'm running into walls as I type this. Of course, you don't need great gear to be a good photographer. My point is, you needed some education. You needed to put some work into that. That's it. That's what I'm trying to get at, you needed some effort. You couldn't just pick up an iphone and take a great picture without knowing anything.  There was no iphone. I think about this when I use my mamiya rb67. That thing doesn't care about you. You work for Mamiya. It will do nothing unless you, meter, set the f stop, set the shutter, focus, recompose, focus, lock focus, take the dark slide out, press the shutter. Advance the film. Getting the negative back and scanning it, you still might have taken a crappy picture. People now hold up their little rectangle and hit a circle and you could get published in nat geo(okay maybe not nat geo) or any other magazine because that little camera sensor has made all those difficult decisions for you. Okay, slowly starting to get even more off track. Let's go back to the digital era.

You have these great cameras that do a hell of a whole lot. If you can't make a striking fucking image with a canon rebel t3i from 10 years ago there's something wrong with you. All these cameras start to become available at prices that were not in a lot of people's grasps. That's a good thing right? No. People don't deserve nice things. They deserve to be given the chance for nice things but you don't get nice things off the bat. This is how I feel about this generation in general. Now people have these image making boxes that do mostly everything for them and it instills some weird confidence in them. "Hey I took THAT picture?" Sure you did kid. You pressed the button. Give people power and they run with it. This begins the delusional feed.

Another striking realization as I type this is that social media has played a huge role in transforming the casual picture taker into the "photographer." The newly minted owner of a digital slr takes a couple pictures of something and posts them on the internet. His echo chamber responds instantly. Things like, "you take such beautiful pictures" and "oh my god you should be a photographer" start to murmur and swirl around them. The "photographer" is emboldened. They are caught up in a frenzy of feel good praise. "Hey, maybe I am a photographer!" they proclaim. They learn that putting watermarks on images is a "professional" thing to do and finagle something abhorrent in MS paint/Photoshop or Gimp and call them selves "such and such" Photography or images or "Focus studios" or something equally as shitty. If they are lucky people start to ask them what they charge. Never taking a business class or understanding what goods and services cost in their market they throw out outlandish numbers like "$350.00 for weddings! with all images and a cdr!" They systematically drive down the market without knowing they won't be able to sustain themselves before it is too late. Also, analogy time. Don't argue with me that people that shop at payless shoes are not the same people that shop at prada. If the Prada shoppers see enough payless prices they are going to ask for less. Sure there is definitely a market for everyone person and you should market accordingly but if those people who would normally pay 3k for a wedding keep seeing photographers that will shoot work for $850.00 people will start to wonder. 

I'm getting slightly off track...again. Geez and I haven't even scratched the surface or mentioned the whole "model" issue now. I might make a second post as this one is getting long. Even my attention is starting to dwindle. 

You create a sea of noise by giving everyone the chance to be a photographer. Just look at instagram. One could argue that it's a good thing. I mean there are a fuck ton of amazing people out there creating amazing images. Is it because they now had access to photographic means? Possibly? I think an amazing person is still amazing without the catalyst. Hmmmm I might have to think about that for a second or a day maybe.

I guess my beef isn't the fact that everyone can purchase a nice camera with less than 500 dollars. It's cool if you can. It's cool. It's just when you're given that power, and there is a whole lot of power in these machines now, you shouldn't be allowed to say you're anything. Wow, I'm just thinking again, social media is to blame.  Maybe it isn't cheaper gear. So fewer people would try to work hard at what they do if they had to work harder to display their images. 

You're not a pilot if you purchase a plane. I suppose you should be one though. I guess that's my point. A person that buys a 5d mark iv isn't a photographer but they should be. Now I see a lot of shit. Like really bad photography. It might be because I am now in a state that is a little more rural. It might be there is just less talent. It really is social media. I'm sorry I keep going back to this but there would be such less noise if people were not permitted to post things if they weren't really photographers.

Mike, that's not fair. You can't say that. You have a very humble beginning with awful photos. (My present is still humble don't you worry)

Yeah but I never called myself a photographer. I remember around 2009 when I actually said "I have a booking this afternoon." It felt really dirty. Like I wasn't allowed to say it. I didn't deserve it. I still have a hard time calling myself one. I guess my tax id number though kinda makes me say that. Don't worry, I'm not equating having a business license for photography to being a photographer. 

Maybe I have issues with the word photographer. Maybe it's all on me. What does it mean to be a photographer .5 person who is drunk reading this? I'll answer it. It really just like anything involving skill. You have to earn it. I don't think there is an award or plaque or time frame that allows you to know you're a photographer but I can tell you about half of the people that claim they are in these small towns aren't. I guess that's not for me to decide but you sure do look like a chump parading your awful images everywhere.

Alright, too much talk. Part two I will chat about the elusive Model. Where did they come from? Why you aren't a model and the gross underbelly of a world that I have witnessed evolve over the years. It's unhealthy and it's here to stay. I hope you've enjoyed my ramblings thus far. Leave a comment or tell me to shut up. Part two, tomorrow. 

Model: Lillian

www.lillianisabella.com