Mostly True

79 Collectable Prints on the Wall

Copyright 2012 Kenneth Jarecke/Contact

79 collectable prints. If one of those prints should happen to fall...

Yeah, I have no idea where I'm going with this either.

A concensus (of sorts) coming out of the discussion following my last post, was that the best way to judge an image is if people are willing to pay for it.

I think the idea has some flaws. Still, in a non-scientific effort to further the conversation along, I grabbed every image I could readily find and created a gallery of photographs that were sold to real people for real money (or sometimes swapped for a side of beef) for use in their home, most likely hanging on a wall.

Like I said, non-scientific. I excluded prints of people's own children. We already know people like pictures of their own kids. I didn't include celebrities. We know people like them too. For the most part these are non-invent pictures. Found images on the street or whatnot. Kind of what I refer to as the "Magnum Tradition".

Forty-nine of the images are in color, the rest B&W. Not sure what that tells us. Probably half were shot on film the rest digital, also not overly revealing. Two observations I can make are, people like pictures of other people's kids too, and they like the pyramids.

Here's the link. I bet you don't look at all 79.

To insure that you don't completely hate me, I've included a picture of a cat.

 

Thank you.

 

 

 

Chances Are, You Suck

Worse yet, nobody is going to tell you.

In the past, before the internet made us equal, your friends, the ones you had actually met in person, would let you know when your pictures didn't quite cut it. Most of the time they wouldn't even have to say anything.

You'd know it yourself as soon as you showed them.

Of course, plenty of other times they'd publically bust your chops, but that was a different time. Before we all became so polite. Back when respect was something earned and not a right of birth.

Do you know that feeling? The one when you're showing images to someone (perhaps an editor that you were hoping to work with) and you get to that picture, the one that looked perfectly acceptable moments before, but as soon as you show it, you're filled with regret.

Yeah, I hate that feeling.

There are plenty of things photography wise that I'm not very good at. I'm not great at creating images, but I'm pretty good at finding them. I'm terrible at selfpromoting, marketing, and the business stuff makes me squirm. Yet I'm a decent journalist, travel well, and strangers often accept me into their lives (maybe I've got one of those faces).

There's nothing really exceptional or surprising about that evaluation. It's fairly common among photojournalists.

So that's me, those are my strengths and weaknesses. I also publish too many pictures on my websites. I'd look better if I kept the numbers down, but this post isn't about me. It's about you and why 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.

They're afraid of the internet mob. Nobody wants to get on the wrong side of a mob, so it's easier to play nice. Go along to get along seems to be the secret to a happy online life.

The first night before a shoot, I never sleep. It could be something easy, a situation that I know will produce a good image, but that doesn't help. Fear of failure is a great motivator. The trick is to use it to get as well prepared as you can possibly be, and then ignore it once the shooting starts.

You shouldn't be afraid of risk, just failure. I suppose that's another trick.

So how do you become a better photographer when you're reinforced with so much unearned praise from your interent buddies? What's your motivation, to get a hundred likes instead of just ten? There's an easy recipe for that. Start making pictures of cats. Better yet, kittens... kittens and children. You'll soon be more awesome then you could possibly imagine.

I only bring this up, because I stumble upon (as do you) so many Facebook groups (or other social networking sites) which are just filled with hideous images underscored with meaningless praise. I find it depressing. If nothing is bad, can anything be good?

More depressing, google "great photography", better yet don't. Some things, once seen cannot be unseen (either me or Gandalf said that first).

There are some sites that are doing an amazing job at publishing great photography. If you want to become a better photographer, look at these sites. When looking at the work, ask yourself, "How would I have approached this situation?" and/or "Would I have done better or worse than this photographer?" and also simple technical things, like what shutter speed or aperture was used.

Right off the top of my head, here are three sites that are doing a consistantly excellent job of publishing great photography...

Time's LightBox

The New York Time's Lens Blog

The New Yorker's Photo Booth

For commentary on the editorial world of photography...

A Photo Editor

And two amazing apps...

Once Magazine

The British Journal of Photography

Not sucking is worth the effort. Seek out great photography. Devour it, and be suspicious of any undue praise.

My latest book is available on Amazon here, or iTunes here. Thanks!

 

 

 

 

 

Getting It on Paper

 

Here's a quick trailer for my new book.

Technically, it's a sports book. I photographed the last ten games of this football team's final season in a conference they'd been in for over 100 years. Lot's of history there, which is now gone forever.

Realistically, it's more of a documentary book.

When it was annouced that Nebraska would leave the Big 12, I went looking for historical images. Photographs that would show me what the stadium looked like, how the people dressed, something which would give me an idea of what it was like to witness or play the game back then.

Sadly, there wasn't much out there to find. Virtually nothing from before the 1960's, and not much from even twenty years ago.

So you could classify the book as a timecapsule too. That was my goal anyway. To capture this unique point in history that would become priceless to viewers in the future.

As a photographer, it wasn't an easy task. Still, I know how to make pictures (more or less), and I enjoyed every moment on the sidelines. That was the easy part.

Logistically, driving about 20,000 miles, flying, lodging, credentials, also plenty doable. As an agency photographer I learned early how to do this kind of stuff on my own, but more importantly do it cheaply.

Editing the 20,000 or so images (hmm... a picture for every mile), I enjoyed too. I think I did an OK job. I could have, and probably should have dropped this task on one of the great photoeditors I've worked with over the years, but that would have been a little much to ask.

The other seven or eight jobs, normally stuff a publisher would handle, were a tad tougher. I learned a lot, and got through it, though I'm nowhere near having mastered any of them.

Overall it's been a great learning experience and I think publishing the follow-up book on the Husker's first season in the Big Ten will teach me even more. Yeah, I shot the second book at the same time I was publishing the first one. Something I don't recommend to anyone!

It had to be a book, this body of work. The digital age hadn't helped my in my quest to find the images from twenty, fifty or a hundred years ago. I suppose the newspapers in Nebraska might get around to archiving their historical images on film, but that's a big and unlikely "might". So 5000 copies, printed on paper, in the hands of that many people, still seems like the best solution when it comes to documentary photography.

The book is available on Amazon here.

You can also get a copy directly from me.

Enjoy!