HOW MUCH IS TOO LITTLE?

Yes, well. . .I suppose you could also ask yourself: HOW MUCH IS TOO MUCH?

I’m pretty sure I finished the book edit of LIVE THROUGH THIS. I started with
about 3000 images to choose from and took them through 6 iterations. There
will be 46 pictures in the book.

That got me a bit nervous. After all, you want to give the folks who buy the
book their money’s worth, don’t you? Is 46 enough?

But it seems to me that taking out all the extraneous images, the ones that
describe rather than evoke, the ones that don’t move the thing forward, is
really the final job of the fotografer.

So. . .46 it is. I’m going to print them in a book, offer them for sale. Give you
your money’s worth.

You’re welcome.

Out-take: Steph, March 30, 2011

FLORA and FAUNA

Ottawa fotografer Lorraine Gilbert invited a bunch of her friends and
colleagues down to the Nat’l Gallery of Canada to have a look at the
new exhibition in the Prints, Drawings and Photographs rooms.

And why shouldn’t she, she has 2 big pieces in the show. Thrilling,
I’m sure, to be shown at the National Gallery.

The theme of the show, curated by Ann Thomas, is Flora and Fauna.
Included are fotos, etchings and prints featuring the likes of Lucien
Freud, Rembrandt van Rijn and so on. There is also a whole bunch
of fotografy, which stands up well in such august company.

These are some of the fotografers represented. I’d show you more
but it would seem that folks are not allowed to take fotos of the
work and post them on blogs because of copyright reasons. This
despite the universally recognized “fair use” allowance when dis-
cussing works of art and other copyrighted materials. And despite
the fact that a fast Google search of a few of the works on display
turned up a plethora of sanctioned samples.

So, after I got caught snapping these samples I approached one of
the art guards and asked him if I could take a shot of Lorraine in
front of one of her pieces for my blog. Well, no I couldn’t. After a
tiny bit of polite push-back on my part a supervisor was summoned,
a conference ensued and then, this being a National Institution, the
next-higher-up supervisor was called.

Lorraine told them she was the artist and that she had no prob with
me including the work in the background of the shot I wanted to take.

And this is where we got into Bizarro Land. The main supervisor told
Lorriane that they would not allow it “for her protection”.

The copyright holder was right there in the room and had given her
permission. So, really, you have to wonder at just who the powers
that be were protecting. And the obvious answer, in this case, was
not the artist but themselves. Fair enough, but come on!

I understand that the guards were just doing their job, that in this
case the policy was a bit murky. There was no rancor, really, on
anyone’s part but one can’t help but wonder. . .

So, long story short, I’ll attach here the image Lorraine attached to
her invitation and just hope that no one turns it into a poster and
sells it for money.

And I’ll say that if you are in Ottawa this show is well worth a visit.
It’s beautiful.

Details here.

THE FUTURE

You go along day to day, and each one pretty much resembles the one
before.

Then, every so often, something seismic happens. You’re in a head-on
collision on the highway, your kidneys fail, you lose your job. Stuff like
that, stuff that you just can’t ignore, stuff that fundamentally changes
your perspective.

Or maybe stuff sneaks up on you. You shift a tiny bit every day and,
over the chain of those days the pressure builds and one day you
arrive at some new conclusion(s) you just can’t ignore.

But mostly we all just trudge along, hoping nothing changes, because
we fear it, change.

I bring all this up for a few reasons. . .

First, I’m wondering about drool.

drool has, for a long time, dwelt upon the non-commercial aspects
of my foto-practice and thoughts about fotografy. Which pretty much
means it (drool) needs to come up with (mostly) non-topical content.
But drool kind of feels like it’s running on empty. . .a bit repetitious
and, really, lame.

As well, I’ve been working hard on a couple of other fronts. Struggling
over the book edit of LIVE THROUGH THIS (which is starting to feel very
right) and setting up STRAYLIGHT Press (which involves a pretty steep
learning curve). But I don’t want to make public much about either of
these things (LTT and SP) until they get firmed up.

I’ve been pecking away, too, at my new project (OTTAWA: a survey) but,
like LTT and SP, want to keep that work a bit closer to my chest for now.

So that leaves me with nothing much to say.

(But all these projects are moving forward. You can expect major updates
in a few weeks.)

Plus, as regular droolers know, I have my moods. These days I’m so tired
of the perpetual hype social media hath wrought in the foto-universe. So
tired of the Fb updates, Tweets and Instagram messages that tell me where
some fotografer is, what s/he’s shooting, a pic of their latest acquisition and
so on.

The fotografer’s blog, which used to be a kind of long-form journalism,
a platform for the actual fleshing out of ideas, approach and personality,
seems to be on the wane these days. “The medium is the message”, as
Marshall McLuhan put it all those years ago. And these new mediums,
the social media, by promoting bite-sized bits that add up to nothing,
seem to be transforming not only how fotografers relate, but also how
they work and the meaning they assign to that work.

I’ve got no problem with a bit of the social media water-cooler talk/bullshit/
hype but, come on folks, lets get back to work and actually produce something.
Then we’ll have something to talk about.

I spent last Monday to Friday in Florida. Well, I spent the Monday
and the Friday in transit, but. . .

It was one of those working trips where you see a lot of airport
(I won’t bore you with the obligatory airport pix), a lot of hotel
(I will bore you with the obligatory hotel fotos. . .)

Inside view, Orlando Hilton, and view from window

Bits of the venue where the action will take place. . .

And then, of course, there’s the set up. In this case we were
shooting portraits of execs and entrepreneurs on white. . .

Gear and set up

All this to say that I didn’t really have the time to figure out
a drool post for this week.

However, if you’re working on a Tumblr about fotos of nothing,
if you’re trying to define how nothing can look and feel, the bit
of Florida I was stuck in is fertile ground indeed.

I was posting on my Tumblr thru the week but dropped 6 more
pix in today. Bop on over to NOTHING and have a look.

SPAO EXHIBITION No. 7

The annual grad show at SPAO is a hot ticket, brings out the crowds, gets media
attention.

For those that don’t know SPAO (School of the Photographic Arts, Ottawa) is a
fotoskool like no other in Canada. Studio-based, process-driven and a place
where the students do the house-keeping, floor-polishing, wall-painting and
so on. Actual darkrooms where you can smell the Dektol, hear running water
and hang on the shop-worn chairs in the library to eat yer lunch and shoot
the shit.

(Full disclosure: I teach the second year students there, meet them one-on-one,
three times a year to discuss [and argue about] portfolio development.)

Anyway, like I was saying, the grads hung their thing on the wall. Most chose to
go big(gish) so you had to flip thru their books (which are conveniently located
by their wall mounted fotos) to get a better idea of what they were up to.

This year was notable for the fact that the works are so disparate. This year’s
grads followed their own instincts so you will see all manner of work, approach,
subject matter and renderings.

Worth a trip to see for yourself. I’m sure there’ll be some stuff up there you love,
some you are indifferent to and you may even dislike some of it. It goes without
saying that each viewer will bring their own biases and judgment to how they
categorize each student’s work. And that’s how it should be.

This is not homogeneous.

Details here.

STRAYLIGHT

Well I’ve gone and done it, started a publishing thingy. It’s called STRAYLIGHT PRESS.

As you can imagine there’s a whole bunch of thinking and a number of hurdles to jump
over to get it up and running. There will be a dedicated e-commerce store, a mission
statement, blog, other social media and the acquiring of printed photo matter to be
made available to concerned citizens.

Stay tuned here for details as this thing rolls out. . .