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What is it about being a photographer that you wish you could change?

I wish I could scale back the amount of time I spend in front of a screen. It’s beginning to define what “being a photographer” is like these days.

via » 10 minutes with Wesley Mann this is the what.

Chances Are, You Suck

There's nothing wrong with not being any good at photography. Everybody started out bad and none of us does all aspects of it well. But it's a crying shame to want to be good at it, to spend time and money trying to be good at it, and not getting any better.

This isn't like teaching a child to read. Positive reinforcement is your enemy. Your Facebook friends, your Twitter followers... hate you.  Instead of taking ten seconds to say. "This doesn't work. You need to do better". They readily push that "like" button, because it's easy and they hope to get the same from you, but also because they're cowards.

via Mostly True.

Digital Has Definitely Made My Life Easier

One thing I can say is that having every photographer’s website at my fingertips is wonderful. We have many shoots all around the country in small towns. The Internet is the only hope I have in finding photographers in these areas of the country.  There’s also nothing that impresses me more than when I meet with a photographer to review his or her book and an iPad is pulled out. It just makes viewing a photographer’s work so much easier and it shows that the photographer likes to keep things simple.

-- William Morel, Photo Editor at Country Living

via Wonderful Machine Photography Blog.

The Death of the Editor and the Rise of the Circulation Manager

…[newspapers'] race for added sales is reflected editorially in the production of journals which more and more represent, not an editor’s notion of a good paper, but a circulation manager’s notion of a good seller.”

via Brain Pickings.

The Notion Of A Cultural Elite Is Threatening

We now live under the hybrid tyranny of middlebrow. No serious person believes the Oscars are a list of the best films, or the Grammys the best music. Charitably one could say they represent a kind of averaging out, an index of the taste of a group of informed people. At worst, critics acting en masse, with one eye on what's popular and one eye on what's good, end up praising work that doesn't upset them. That's why there's so much stuff that looks like art, smells like art, but when you bite into it, it just tastes of cardboard.

— Hari Kunzru, writing in The Observer, via The Great Leap Sideways.

Q&A With LA Product and Liquid Photographer BILL CAHILL

Over the last couple years, I have seen the number of photographers attempting to shoot liquids has exploded, some good, and some bad, but mostly very inspiring. I truly believe that there is room for everyone in the industry. The competition and creativity only inspire me to create better work.

via POP | Photographers on Photography.

‘Zoe Strauss - Ten Years’ at Philadelphia Museum of Art

...she continues to identify as an amateur, or at least retains certain amateur tics. Her portrait subjects are centered in the frame and square to the camera. She shares details of her working process on her blog and eschews tightly edited, gallery-style installations.

[...] It’s fair to say that Ms. Strauss has accomplished more in the past decade than many artists do in a lifetime. With more gumption than wherewithal, she spun a single idea into a magnum opus.

via Review - NYTimes.com.

Try Not To Be Someone Else

People told me I wouldn’t find a true style for five or ten years, if not a lifetime. It’s held true. Just when I think I have it where I want it, I look back and think it’s crap. I would stress patience and not paying too much attention to other people’s work. Shoot because you love it; shoot the stuff that resonates with you.

I try to shoot in a way that pleases me and hope to connect with art directors and photo editors who resonate with the same things. Those are the relationships that will be fruitful and the jobs that will turn out well.

via The Great Discontent: Eric Ryan Anderson. thx, Charlie

Interview: Jeffrey Goldstein of Vivian Maier Prints

Part of an artists job is to edit during their lifetime. The fact that she made the decision not to allows full exposure. And the rarity of this collection is that it’s a complete archive: the good, the bad, the learning curve, the thematic themes that cropped up. So it’s actually very fortuitous she didn’t edit. Artists are known to be their own worst editors.

via Through the looking glass.

Newman's Most Iconic Image

One of these assignments was to photograph the Russian composer, Igor Stravinsky, which resulted in one of Newman’s most iconic images, although at the time it was rejected for publication.

via wayneford's posterous.