Still Photography not only steals one’s soul, but also takes it to a seedy pawn shop on the wrong side of the tracks and hocks it for the $12 the guy with the three-day growth and fading “I Love Mom” tattoo behind the counter is willing to pay for it. Of course by then, Still Photography has filed off the serial number so if and when the police eventually do find it, there’s no way they can get it back to its owner.
I once did an interview for Rangefinder magazine with an L.A.-based wedding photographer who staunchly maintains he goes into a Zen state when he shoots a wedding. As Joe Bussink is one of the two most successful wedding photographers in the United States, (along with Mike Colon) who can argue with success?
However, as a working photojournalist, I know deadlines do the job of providing inspiration quite well also.
O.K. Let’s see if coping technique 345 works any better. Having watched great newspapers, like the Rocky Mountain News in Denver close its doors, the misery is almost too much to bear. The other great papers who are on the edge of bankruptcy are the ones who REALLY need and DESERVE a bailout. They are the last barrier between the really mean, corrupt, ugly and horribly dishonest part of government and the people these crooks steal from. We save powerful and totally inept insurance companies and banks (God help us) and we let the industry that brought down Nixon go under. As usual, the rich get richer and the good guys suffer.
Grrrrr!! If I had every dollar back that I’ve spent on ink cartridges in the past 8 years, I could retire and live comfortably on the beach in Jamaica for the rest of my life. Printer companies are worse than oil companies. Ounce for ounce, MUCH worse.
Art DOES imitate life. As a photojournalist, people whose picture I am about to take are always telling me, “Be careful, I’ll break your camera.” The truth is, the only time one of my cameras ever imploded was when I tried to take my own portrait. Self portraits can be VERY expensive.
Had Milo waited just a minute longer, he could have captured the squirrel, which is rabid, biting the girl on her nose and drawing blood, which ran copiously all over her precious ice-cream covered face. Then the dear lad would have finally been awarded the Pulitzer Prize after which he has long lusted. He also would have won the NPPA Monthly National Clip Contest in the Spot News category.
This is not a humorous expansion of the truth. It is real. I work for a newspaper and deal with these fruitcakes every so often when everyone else is out to lunch and I pick up the phone. They have medications but they forget to take them.
Still Photography not only steals one’s soul, but also takes it to a seedy pawn shop on the wrong side of the tracks and hocks it for the $12 the guy with the three-day growth and fading “I Love Mom” tattoo behind the counter is willing to pay for it. Of course by then, Still Photography has filed off the serial number so if and when the police eventually do find it, there’s no way they can get it back to its owner.