Draco was the first legislator in ancient Athens who wrote a set of laws known for their misbalance between offense and punishment. People who fell into debt were often forced into slavery, and death was dished out as a sentence more often then not. While society has evolved and moved away from Draconian punishments, I think in a way the internet has not.
Visit any blog, forum or comment thread and you will be met with people spitting acid onto the thoughts, comments and creations of other people. The wall of anonymity has allowed people to slip into their ugliest suit and a wealth of information makes it easy to make people’s simple mistakes look stupid.
Too often the people who are brave enough to express their opinions or work are cut down and humiliated by small people. Don’t be a small person, don’t be a critic. Make things everyday, even if those things are mistakes.
I was answering some interview questions the other day and someone asked me when I first felt like a photographer, when I became part of the “club”. I sat on the question for a couple of days. I can’t say I really feel like I am part of any club. In fact, sometimes I think I might even resent the whole movement. Photography is going through the same thing that urban cycling did a few years ago. There are swarms of young people carrying around vintage cameras and calling themselves photographers, but it is all wrong. It’s fashion and it’s stupid. The “club” is kids taking pictures of said vintage cameras and smoking cigarettes, and I don’t want any part of it.
The thing is, I’m not a photographer, I am just a man who has taken a couple of good pictures, and that’s enough, that’s enough.
nickxocchino asked: I'm pretty interested in marketing/advertisement. I know you work in marketing, what exactly do you do? You're the only person I know that works in that field and it'd be awesome if I could just get some info about it. College is coming quickly and I gotta start thinking. Thanks!
Congratulations!
A lot of people have been asking my what I do so I will just go ahead and answer it here. Job titles are boring and indescriptive, but I can tell you the problem that I am here to solve. Stock photography has, in recent years, become a commodity. With this “commoditization” came low prices, a saturated market and a diluted product. One of the main goals here at Image Source is to try and decommoditize stock photography. To help turn us into a brand that our clients “like” to do business with, a brand that they are proud to be a part of. The problem I am working on is how we can become to first great brand in a market that has traditionally not asked for them.
Now, more interestingly, onto your future. The best thing you can do over the next 4 years is try and become as interesting as possible. Keep riding your bike, read a lot of books (a lot), try and speak another language and live outside the country, drink beer, sleep with people, chase experiences and collect stories.
College is not about learning a craft, it is about learning how to think. You will be disappointed when you get older. You will find this world is full of people too afraid or ill-equipped to think for themselves; they huddle in corners holding signs they don’t understand and jobs they don’t want. Don’t do that. Promise me you won’t. There are brave and brillant people changing this world and it has nothing to do with where they went to college.
In 2001, Jaguar released their first compact 4 door and called it the X-Type. People were excited when they heard the rumors, I was excited. I was 16 at the time, and hailed from a Jaguar family. I wanted nothing more than for them to do something brave and take some of the blood out of BMW, Audi and Mercedes. Fast forward two years and it didn’t work. Their sales peaked at 50,000 cars a year, half of what Jag execs were promising before it’s launch. So I was thinking this morning, why?
It seemed like a no brainer. Jaguar had been making machines of lust since 1922 and they held one of the strongest brands in the market. They were hemorrhaging cash in the late 90’s and it try and stop it they offered the X-Type at $35,000, it was a way for more people to buy into the brand and the history. There were a myriad things wrong with that car. I could talk about the design (lazy) or the construction (poor). I could wax on about the engine (190 Horsepower, really?) but I won’t. I think it all went wrong before that. It was wrong from the begining.
Jaguar decided to cut costs by placing the X-Type on the same chasis as the Ford Mondeo, and they could not have been more wrong. I don’t think they realized they were not really selling a car, but an image. Old money, burning tabaco, worn leather and hot exhaust: they were selling heritage and the minute they decided to put those things on a Ford frame they faded out.
Someone once asked me if it would bother me if a woman I was sleeping with was sleeping with someone else and I can honestly say it would not (does not count for serious relationship). However, my not caring is contingent on never knowing that she is sleeping with someone else. Does that make sense? It did not matter that the Jaguar was built on a Ford frame, what mattered is the customers knew it and once you know something like that you can’t un-know it.
In the South the heat feels different. In New York, the heat is unpleasant but it rarely feels like it is part of you. In the south, the heat enters your body and takes up residence. You wear it as a jacket. When you walk into a cool store or government building you can feel it come off. First the fingers stop burning, then your arms, slowly you feel the sweat starting to dry off your back. There are, however, ways to enjoy the heat.
In the early morning, I would slink out to our pool. We have 6 treated cotton covered lounge chairs set up in a row. By 9AM they have been baking in the sun for a few hours and are hot to the touch. I would lay down slowly on the first chair, often having to arch my bare back so it would not burn. Slowly the heat from the chair diffused into my skin and I lay cat like napping in the sun. When I had transferred all the heat out of the first chair I would move down the line until I had taken the life out of all of them.
Some mornings when I walk out of my apartment on Rivington St, I am secretly hoping there will be a line of lounge chairs waiting for me, begging me to take the heat they have been storing all morning.
