Hi, everybody. Glad you’ve stopped by to check out the blog. Today I thought we would talk about photography in a general sense. Where has it come from, to where is it at and where is it going. Now, this is all in my opinion and therefore not to be taken for gospel but it is at least taken from observations which includes listening to some heavy hitters in the photo biz. In doing so I will try to make it as close to a Pro Pix Tips as I can but you may have to give me a hand with it, so let’s get started.
Recently, I had the opportunity to spend some time out on the road transporting our soon to be mobile photo production vehicle back from near the west coast. It was a lot longer trip than I expected or wanted. I encountered some problems on the way which set me back a few days but glory to God, I finally got back. During that time I had the opportunity to view some online training , read several photographic articles, and had the opportunity to ponder (now that’s a word I don’t use much). Believe it or not, and for those who know me this is very believable, I started comparing the things of photography to general everyday life. With me having to stop for fuel numerous times I started thinking of how the fueling experience has changed over my life time and noted the similarities with photography. Way ahead of me I’ll bet, right? No? Well let me see if I can put a flash on it, (get it? Flash instead of a light…… oh forget it.)
When I was a kid back in the 1800’s a gas station was just that, a gas station. There were pumps, repair bays, and restrooms and that was about all. There were these hoses that you would run over that would ring a bell and a service station attendant would run out and pump your gas, check the tires, oil, radiator and brake fluids, and wash all the windows and all for about 25 cents a gallon. If you wanted anything else you were most times out of luck unless you wanted something from a vending machine. Then came the gas price wars and after that the gas shortages. I remember during the gas wars some service stations had female attendants in bathing suits in an attempt to draw in the customers (men did do a lot of the driving then). They were giving out trading stamps and toys and mugs, and just about everything they could think of to draw in business. They even started the self service islands where if you wanted to pump gas yourself and save a few cents a gallon you could. So where have all the service station attendants gone? Well, if you drive a car, you’re living with one. Everyone who drives has taken on a new profession over the years. Everyone has become a service station attendant and in most cases a rather poor one at that, me included. Do you check the tires, oil, radiator fluid, wind shield fluid, brake fluid, or even clean the wind shield let along the rest of the glass. Why? I think because all we really care about is getting the gas we need to push us on down the road and that’s good enough for the moment. We only care about things for the moment. The service station attendant probably saved us a lot of money in repairs and accidents we didn’t have by just by doing those few things but the appreciation of that was lost in the idea of saving a few pennies at the moment. Our tires wore down slower because of having the right pressure, our engines ran better with the right amount of fluids in them. It seems the things we could lose or cost us the most over time is out weighted by the small things we gain now. And many times those things we think we are gaining now really aren’t what they’re cracked up to be later. It’s hard to value something that isn’t present yet. The old saying, “You don’t miss something until it’s gone”, applies. But the real problem with this is how do you miss something you don’t know you’ve missed or going to miss. I know that I don’t stop and think about the absence of a service station attendant having any direct or indirect cause of any car problems I may experience. With photography the same applies, how do you know you’ve missed a precious picture that you never got? How do you know you missed getting the high quality photograph with all those little extra’s that give the photo all it’s moving qualities when you get the old “automatic setting” photo taken by the friends and families members with a “good camera”? Educate the public you say? Are you not aware of the facts that doing the things the service station attendants use to do are things that promote good maintenance? Do you do them or do you do what I do most of the time and say “That’s good enough for the moment. I’m in a hurry and will catch those things next time.”
So what do we have now? Well, instead of paying 25 cents a gallon and getting our gas pumped and car checked over all while we just set in the car, we have $2.70 a gallon all self served and a convenience store that for the most part sells everything from toilet paper to full chicken dinners, from laundry soap to cameras. And all at what appears to be much higher prices than almost anywhere else because of the “convenience” of having it there and we think that’s great! So to review we have gone to saving a few cents for the moment to paying more on car repairs, gas and just about everything else and that is good?. I guess that when you think about the inconvenience of opening the hood of the car and tying up a gas pump for a few extra minutes while other people are gazing at you thinking you are an idiot for wasting their time while you play a one person NASCAR pit crew, it just might cause you to rethink checking out the car. Or, when you think about having to go another store, walk all the way back to where the item is that you want and then stand in line for a while longer just to save a dollar or so just doesn’t seem good for the moment. We just don’t want the hassle but over time the lack of the hassle seems to have lost its’ value when we wonder where all our money went. And when you stop to think about it, that was why we had service station attendants in the first place because we didn’t want the hassle of pumping our own gas and checking all those things necessary to insure our vehicles ran right. Now there’s some irony for you. Therein lays the problem. The definition of convenience has changed in the minds of we the people to reflect what we have chosen to think it is for the moment. What was that famous quote from the famous person who said something to the effect that “it all depends what your definition of “is” is.” Well, I think a lot of things have gone in that direction including photography.
So, there is a question to think about. What is your definition of a professional photographer? And don’t stop with just from your stand point. Think about it from both sides, the customer and the person with the camera. It’s just not a one way issue. Is our definition more of a true definition of the subject or is it tainted by outside factors to include convenience, economy, effort, lack of comparison, lack of understanding, or a host of other stuff. Yes I do know that our understanding of a subject has a lot to do with opinions and that, like a certain part of the human anatomy, everyone has one. Opinions have a tendency to put us at odds with the truth and therefore causes us all a great deal of pain and heart ache when we get it wrong. Just look at where our country is at now, lots of opinions and lots of problems all because we have to many ideas of what the definitions of things are to us as in comparison with the truth. Not getting political here at all. It all does tie into photography and with the next blog I’ll explain how it does……..in my opinion, of course.
Have a great day everyone.
Richard
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