So…this was a pain. Did it work as imagined? No. Was it super fun? Also no. BUT I enjoyed going for it to see if this weird idea could work. Turns out, it kind of can, but would take far more work and customizations to get it just right. Anyway, hope you enjoy the video! (You can peep some of the photos below)
009 What small businesses aren't doing (but need to IMMEDIATELY)
Having a huge archive of documented material is the BIGGEST money saver in all of marketing for a business. And barely anyone is doing it. And that’s great news for photographers and videographers going forward.
Back when I was mostly just a freelance photographer, I’d get paid to shoot photos for a small business, and then see that they’d never really put them to use. It was kind of frustrating, because I kept seeing it over and over, businesses spending money on a photographer or for video but never really doing anything with any of it. There’s so much waste in that. One single image can be used in a ton of different ways for a business: website, print, social media, square, black and white, with a graphic, however. And it sounds expensive to hire people to help create media around your business, ad infinitum, but a little bit can go a long way. Make a long video, cut it into clips! Shoot a bunch of photos, put them in a video, use them for all kinds of stuff.
I see a future where most major businesses or businesses that want to become major have their own in-house video and photo team. In-house marketing feels like the future. The future is about personalization, and it’s tough to outsource that to an agency of people that don’t know you or your business intimately. They can make a good ad about your business, but they can’t tell your story as well as you can.
Photography or making video, used to be a real, employed job. Now it’s basically gig economy work largely. There are almost no truly “employed” photographers left aside from remnants of the old world. But I think that could possibly change. I think it has to change as our consumption habits change.
Remember what I said in Photography is Dead? Social media content is now competing with Succession and Game of Thrones because we have a finite amount of time to spend consuming things. If you make something good and engaging, you can take eyeballs from something that has a multi-million dollar budget.
We avoid ads like the plague. We pay extra on our streaming subscriptions, we hit the skip 30 seconds button on our podcast apps, and we scroll right past ads on Instagram. We have been such an ad saturated society for so long now, that we have a sixth sense for when something is an ad or not. We stop scrolling, however, when we sense some authenticity in something, whether it looks like a lower quality video that your friend shot on your phone, or if there’s a good hook that seeks to actually offer you something in exchange for your time.
I’ve been dipping into a creative consulting of sorts since early this year, and it’s going pretty well. I have a few clients that I help to craft interesting content using my taste and technical skills. But also, I spend a ton of time with these businesses and know them very well. You know what makes that easier? When they’ve recorded their history. When they have a pile of real stuff around their business, not just pristine “ad content”. Because the stuff people want to see is real.
Every business needs their own photography or video library around what they do. Businesses that don’t get stuck using impersonal, sterile “stock” media that really has nothing to do with them and makes them blend in with everyone else.
This is good news for people who specialize in use of these “documenting tools” like photography and videography: You’re going to be super important for years to come. I believe entrepreneurs and business owners are beginning to see the importance in an archive of photos and videos about them and their business. Because it actually saves them money in the long run. Ads only get more expensive as time goes on, but if you’re putting out your story organically, momentum builds, and even if you still have ad spend, your advertising gets cheaper because you have all that organic reach.
Maybe product photography is being replaced by AI, but AI can’t really document a person’s real, actual life and experience. AI can make the documenting process easier and lower cost for sure, but those who can document aren’t going anywhere.
——
For the 15 years I’ve been a photographer, I’ve been building an archive. Now, in my videos and any project I work on, I have years and years of work to pull from. It’s crazy, actually, I can even insert flashbacks of sorts in these videos…Like back when I was traveling for the Small Town Photo Project…or even farther back when I worked at Art Warehouse.
Back when I worked at Art Warehouse, we built a “stock photography” library of our own that could be used to sell commercial prints to hospitals, hotels, and other commercial spaces. That stock image library gave us enormous power AND value.
Then when I went out on my own starting the Small Town Photo Project (insert flashback of the Small Town Photo Project), I realized that there was a ton of value in building a library of images for specific places. That was the goal: Make it easier for people to get images for their town, not just to hang in offices, but also for web and branding use. That has now transformed into Anderson Views, a website that has a growing bank of images just for my town of Anderson, SC.
Fortunately, during the Small Town Photo Project process (which was a pretty grueling time of driving miles and miles to capture photos in these growing places) I had the foresight to document much of it with a vlog. That helped people understand the story of what I was doing, but now, I can use it for stuff like this very podcast, after the fact. I can cut it all up and use it for whatever, at any time. Not only was I building a library of images to sell in various ways, but I was creating content for myself for the future.
The fact is, I could stop making things now, and I would have plenty of stuff to post on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Youtube Shorts for the next few years.
——
During the early iteration of this podcast, Photography is Dead, I talked about how important it is to tell a story with our cameras in order to create value in our work and take them a step above what you see on Adobe Stock or places like that. A picture of a waterfall is cool, but why did you take a photo of a waterfall? Why were you there? What was the journey to the waterfall like? We’ve all see plenty of waterfall photos, and I can find some cool ones for free on Pexels, so why is yours valuable?
But the fact is, every business should be thinking this way as well, no matter if you have a deli, a coffee shop, or an insurance agency. One way to tell your story would be to simply show them, by documenting the process of how you got there in the first place.
I live in a small town. Small towns are often…let’s just say…behind bigger locales in a lot of ways, but eventually time catches up. Eventually, everything comes to a small town that was in a bigger city years ago. Not just products, but also, ideas. Many businesses that start are focused on the work of starting a business itself (as it should be, by the way). It’s a frenzy of chaos and stress, so it’s not on top of mind to have someone there with a camera making sure to document it all. Also, it can be expensive.
2 episodes ago I talked about how it’s about to be the golden age of photography and creativity: We are going to need photographers more than ever. BECAUSE, what’s happening now is entrepreneurs in bigger cities are making the investment of documenting the process along the way. Gary Vaynerchuk has 33 full-time employees filming him and packaging the content they film for him which is being used to get his story and message out there EVERY SINGLE DAY. Oh, and organically, I might add. He’s a client of his own business, VaynerMedia, and then his content is also helping grow his businesses. He has an enormous archive and proof of everything he does, which only helps to build tons of trust in him and value in what he’s saying.
——
This strategy of just being everywhere isn’t a new one. Lawyers use this strategy all the time. Personal injury lawyers are trying to cast the absolute widest net they can, so they just make commercials, put up billboards, create radio jingles, so that they are the first name that pops into your head when you get into a car wreck or need to take legal action in some way. When you think about “entrepreneurship” you now think GaryVee and Alex Hormozi because they are carpet bombing the internet with their points of view all the time.
This is just one strategy. Honestly, probably the most maximalist strategy. These are super extreme, BUT if you’re capturing tons of photos and video of what you do and documenting, it gives you a lot of options.
——
recommendations:
-Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom- I play maybe one or two video games a year, and this was the move this year. Video games are an enormous time suck, but I feel like every once in a while devoting the time to solve puzzles opens new pathways to thinking or creativity. It’s problem solving, but in a different way. Most of the problems I’m solving day to day are work related, so fun problems to solve can be quite useful. Also, this game is amazing. There’s so much to explore that it will offer tons of to do for months to come. I’m pretty addicted to this game at the moment.
-Summer movie season- We haven’t had a real summer movie season since 2019, but 2023 is popping off. I love the movies, and used to go multiple times a month in the before times, but for the past couple years there just hasn’t been that much to see. I kicked it off with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 which was great (I’ve liked it the more time goes on. I think I liked it more than the first Guardians if I’m being honest.) And there’s something worth seeing coming out now every week or two for the summer. Many of these movies may not work or may even be bad, but the spirit of summer movie season reminds me of a simpler time in my life. Highly recommend spending the summer at the movies.
That’s it for this week! Thanks for listening and/or watching, and I’ll see you next week!
003 How Artists Can Survive The AI Tsunami
Commercial product and portrait photography has a had a rough couple weeks. I’m not sure if it’s a real collab, but on TikTok there’s this video with images from a Jeep x North Face collab completely generated with AI. Also, Levi’s is experimenting with AI models to advertise their clothing.
We all knew it was coming. But it was pretty easy to brush off as “the future’s” problem.
But, I have to ask: is it Levi’s job to keep the photography/modeling industry afloat? Not really, it’s their job to sell jeans. If they have a better, more cost-effective way to do that than hiring a bunch of people in a studio for hours, then they are probably going to choose the cheaper faster one. That’s life. That’s business.
In order to survive as a photographer, we need some complexity and uniqueness. If anyone can make close to the same thing that we make without much work and effort, then maybe we need to rethink what we are doing. Basically, all the photography we are seeing get replaced with AI are formulaic. If we want to create images, or even, AI images with any sort of depth it still requires the very human skill of critical thought.
That’s the secret I think: We have to take photography a step further conceptually to make our work immune to the devastation of AI.
Weirdly enough, I think leaning on photography as art is an increasingly appealing route. Using photography to communicate a concept or experience or inspiration is more valuable than ever.
I’ve been back and forth on this over the years, but AI has really forced me to settle on the necessity for printing. Printing photography is becoming more niche: printing knowledge is slipping away from photography culture largely, but I think that’s a mistake. The more photography is limited to digital, the more malleable it is to things like AI.
How’s the NFT thing going? I keep tabs on it, and there still seem to be those passionate about it, but the excitement has seemed to die down. That makes sense: it’s not super accessible to the masses, but also, block-chain technology (so far) isn’t as secure as we all thought. If you can change or steal NFT art or crypto from someone through hacking or whatever, then the whole promise of digital “one-offs” is kinda defeated.
Prints are still undefeated. I could be wrong about the NFT thing, but I think it has a long way to go still.
If we are mad at how the digital world is going, maybe we need to go back to the physical world in some way. AI hasn’t gotten rid of walls to hang things on yet.
We have the tools. We just need to think deeper about what we make.
Imagine Levi’s had an in-house photographer or someone they contracted with regularly who’s out of the job now- how will they recoup that lost income? Maybe they quit photography, or maybe they start working on the personal projects they haven’t had time for. Maybe, those personal projects are a gateway to a way more satisfying photography career. Some of the best photographers now and throughout history who make interesting work started out or also worked in the commercial photography world and took the leap to follow their creative curiosities and interests instead of the sterile but lucrative world of commercial photography.
We need to go deep. Deep into our minds, into our souls, and really think about why we are photographers. We often start photography as a job because we love photography, but then we get caught up in it as a job. I’ve always been back and forth on that: I need photography to be a successful business venture to make money, but every time I lean on photography as art, my opportunities grow. We have to trust our creative instincts- it feels irresponsible because wedding photography or real estate photography is tried and true, but that’s what risk is.
Photographers have been watching the photography business get dismantled for years. AI is a new wrinkle that seemed to pop up somewhat quickly and suddenly, but are we surprised?
Obviously, the need for more focused and unique images still exists for small businesses and other places, but a lot of those jobs have been replaced by iPhones before AI started being a discussion.
I think the future of photography is conceptual. I think it’s art. When we make art, we can do whatever we want, there are no limits. Maybe we can even use AI to our advantage. Art is about the human experience. Art can’t be killed as long as humans exist.
So really, we just get down to the same problem many people with creative curiosities have had forever: How do we create art AND make a living? Before, we could lean on mechanical, commercial type stuff. But what if we can’t?
We’re just going to have to get really clever.
But there’s a lot of hype with new things, and I’m starting to feel like AI is one of those slightly overhyped things. It’s amazing and cool, and even scary at times, but the term “AI” is being used the same way as the term “algorithm”- it’s a blobby term to describe a thing that no one actually understands. AI in photo editing isn’t the same as ChatGPT. In fact, I would argue, that it’s a marketing term more than anything else, meant to evoke ideas that we’ve gotten from movies. Or the idea that humans created a consciousness that wasn’t human. But really, at least for now, it’s pattern recognition. Really really good pattern recognition. (I’m a moron so I could be wrong. Maybe it conscious and I’m totally off on this)
It couldn’t have existed 10 years ago to this level because there wouldn’t be enough data to pattern recognize, and now there is. Topaz Denoise couldn’t remove digital noise if it didn’t understand over years how digital noise worked across cameras and files. ChatGPT couldn’t give you an example of a stock photography contract if such a thing didn’t exist on the internet. Midjourney couldn’t spit you out a photograph or a piece of art if it didn’t have the pieces from other art to pull together.
But we do the same thing as humans: we take patterns we like from everywhere and form them in our own way. Humans, however, can take these ideas a step farther because we can think deeper than AI can. AI is powered by human creativity, we give it the fuel it needs to get smarter. So if we are dumb enough to fully let it start replacing us, I think we are going to be disappointed. ChatGPT is wrong a lot, but what if it just starts learning from itself, learning from wrong information? I feel like if humans stop creating because the AI can do it for us, the AI will show its limits.
But then we get to the AI Art thing, which feels like more of my lane than ChatGPT. I play with Midjourney a lot and I’ve used assets it creates for different projects. The Photography is Dead skull was created in AI, the background of Will of the Future’s cover is a photo of mine that I uploaded to Midjourney that it morphed into something weird that made a good background.
In one of the first episodes of Photography is Dead I talked about AI Art being art, but without context. Artists that are freaking out about AI ruining art are really selling themselves short. Real art isn’t just about making pretty pictures. Art is deeper than a picture of recorded data, its context about the person that created it. It’s a story. It’s connection.
This was Andy Warhol’s whole thing: Brillo Boxes is just a painting of Brillo Boxes. It could have been created by any college level artist from a technical standpoint, but it wasn’t about that. (In fact he was kind of asking the same questions we ask about AI art) But the Brillo Boxes painting went beyond a picture of a Brillo Box, it was about a concept. It asked if a painting of a commercial product could even be considered art. And of course, it’s one of the most important works of art history.
I think we are a long way from AI being able to go that deep. AI can recreate a Brillo Box painting, but that’s kind of it. It has nothing to say about it.
Social media and the internet has exposed us to a lot of art and images over the years. And quite honestly, most of it is mediocre. I think the promise of all these distribution platforms that help share our creations convinced us that we would see amazing, transcendent work more often. We have seen stuff more often for sure, but are we necessarily seeing more really good work more often? I’d argue, no.
For some reason, we forgot about the questions being asked by the Brillo Boxes. We have more people than ever who can pick up a camera and take a technically good photo, or make a cool painting, but what is any of it about? Most of it, honestly, is just about making a technically good photo or artwork, and it stops there.
One of my favorite Youtube Channels is grainydays- Jason Kummerfeldt is a film photographer with a very specific sense of humor and an artistic mission. He’s an Edward Hopper stan. His goal with his photography is to basically create Realist paintings with his camera. What’s fun about his videos is that he’ll take multiple images and let you know which ones are “portfolio shots” and which ones he thinks suck. Often, I’m surprised by his choices. Sometimes my favorite image is one that he thinks doesn’t work based on his artistic goal. I don’t have the same artistic goals as he does, so my favorite photos of his don’t necessarily always align.
Watching his videos has gotten me to think deeper about my own work. I’ve taken thousands upon thousands of photos, but which ones actually meet my personal requirements for what I believe is a good photo?
So I’ve started created a portfolio, which I haven’t done since college. What are Will Malone’s absolute best photographs? Turns out, Only a percent of a percent of the images I have created really satisfy my requirements. It’s gotten me to think deeper about what I’m after with photography: There’s a common thread in there but I haven’t fully honed in on it yet. Even after 15 years of taking photos basically nonstop.
Before our podcast last week, Chad Dyar and I had coffee and we discussed the distinction between “art” and “decor”. The Small Town Photo Project is a series I made for years that is largely decor. A couple of them I think rise to my definition of art, but most of those images conceptually begin and end at the image you are looking at. There’s no real larger story in each image. Many of those images, straight up, could be recreated by AI. In my mind, decor is distinct from art in that it has no deeper concept than to merely fill space on a wall. So, many images from that very big project aren’t making it into my final portfolio. Actually, I think only one or two out of hundreds are going to make it in.
I’m not trying to undercut decor either, I just think it is distinct from transcendent art.
AI Art feels threatening because we are making a lot of mediocre stuff right now for the sake of the internet. This need to “produce” faster than before is causing us to thoughtlessly put out more work than before. Nothing really means that much these days. The internet needs content so we don’t really work too hard on anything before sending it out the door.
Lately, when I’m sitting around at night, I’ve been digging deeper into photography genres I’m curious about. It’s been pretty amazing actually, I’ve discovered artists that have made incredible photography work that I’m still thinking about. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt that way, mostly because I’m often just hanging out at the front door of the internet, like most people. I’m just looking at what is presented to my tastes rather than going deep.
I think we will get replaced AI if we abandon going deep. Depth feels like it’s being abandoned. If we are happy with just posting a photo we shot at a National Park, and yet we go out and call ourselves an artist, then yeah, I think AI will be an extinction-level event.
There are artists who make transcendent work that goes beyond “decor”, who are incredible thinkers and have a lot to say who are still posting paranoid thoughts about AI, which is has been confusing to me. The deep artists, the real artists, the ones that live, breathe, and sleep contemplating the nature of our reality are the artists that are safest from the future of AI. Much like Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, the world needs people who think deeper about things, more than ever.
001 Humans vs. Machines
Recently, on Colin and Samir’s podcast, they talked about how Youtube in 2017 was better than now. Youtube has matured, it’s a major business now. It’s a search engine. When things get big, they lose their edge. That’s just the natural state of things.
Posts that do really well across social media are posts that talk about how to succeed on that social media platform itself. If I started making content about how to make successful content, I’m sure it could potentially do pretty well if I build it within the framework of what the algorithm is looking for. Here’s what the algorithm (we say the algorithm despite there being a lot of different algorithms) is looking for: consistency, for one. Many of these platforms make all their money on ads, so the more people come back to look at content, they continue to hold valuable ad real estate. We, the people keep their business afloat. They have data from their users behaviors, so they want those who make content to adhere to the data of their users. That’s why the algorithm changes. We look at these platforms as some sort of capricious god, but really they are beholden to their own audience.
It’s the same reason you watch Fox News and you see commercials for buying gold or catheters. Fox News’ audience is a certain age, so they do everything they can to cater to that particular demographic.
But at the same time, creators are a great source of evangelism for these platforms, so they want to make sure to keep them at least minimally happy as well. Apparently, Kim Kardashian came after Instagram when they downgraded photos in the algorithm in service of TikTok-like reels. Those complaints seemed to work, as photo-carousel posts are supposedly more effective now. But that’ll probably change eventually too, because by nature, all of this is alive and moving based on the circumstances of the moment.
But in 2016 and 2017, there was some content on how to “optimize” our content making, but really, even Youtube and other platforms seemed to still be flying by the seat of their pants too. These mediums all seemed somewhat new and magical, like there was still all this untapped potential. Now, we look at “content creators” as brands and industries unto themselves.
And back in 2016, many of us were idealists about the future of content creation and how it would replace the establishment, but now, in 2023, it is the establishment. But some of us remember and long for the days where it was still the wild west.
We have so much information now. How to eat, how to be productive, how to stay active, how to protect our mental health, how to succeed in business, how to effectively sell things, how to dress, and so on and so forth. We have all the tools we could possibly ever want, and yet, are we happier? Are we more creative? Have we self-actualized? Or, does having a treasure trove of information on how to perform and do everything perfectly just attempted to turn us flawed human beings, as emotional and unpredictable as we are, into machines?
I fall into this trap all the time, and I seem to never learn my lesson. 365 projects, podcast episodes twice a week, and posting every day. Nothing is wrong with all that, and sometimes I’ve even managed to do it well, but consistency can have costs. Maybe I avoid creative risks because that might take too long to make, maybe I don’t want to miss a day out of fear of some kind. My goal has always kind of been to optimize creativity so that I can be producing ALL THE TIME.
There are benefits to that, and I’m not opposed to consistency. But, I started questioning myself: Is my goal to just put something out so I can check the box? Or is my goal to make something good above all else?
Sometimes, consistency and something good can work hand in hand, but that takes a toll over the long haul. Casey Niestat made a vlog a day for like, 800 days. He’s been on record about how that almost destroyed his life and family. Dang, I did 300 vlogs for 300 days and I totally went insane. And mine were terrible!
The algorithm rewards working under those extreme conditions. But maybe, I’m not looking to live under extreme conditions like that anymore- if we don’t want to be machines, what is left?
Patrick Tomasso’s philosophy is make what you want to make, when you want to make it. I’m increasingly of the mind that this is right. We need to balance overthinking something so much that we don’t just put it out with not just putting stuff out just for the sake of filling the internet pipes.
What is the end game?
A lot of my favorite creators do things the way they do things, meaning, they have a style. They’ve been imprinted on from various life experiences, successes, and failures, and what they make is a reflection of that. I can’t make a Mr Beast video. I don’t have the guts to run up to people in the street and ask to tour their apartment. But, my life is it’s own soup that informs what I do. And it can take time to find it. That’s the only thing I’m interested in this social media game.
As machines, we have no interests. We aren’t able to love. We only serve the users.
As humans though, we have our own interests. Our love of those things is a more powerful and exciting force than getting promoted in the algorithm.
The pressure to produce degrades often degrades what we make, very few can achieve the level of quality AND quantity, if any. The Marvel movies have really taken a dive due to this very same thing, they’ve had to work on so many movies at a time that Ant Man and the Wasp compromised on VFX because Wakanda Forever needed more VFX artists to get finished on time.
We want to be like machines, and yet, we just aren’t able to maintain a machine like output of creativity. Think about the burnout often amongst Youtubers: they are big for a while and upload multiple times a week, and then they just kind of disappear after a while. The ones who stick around end up having an inconsistent upload schedule.
I’ve always been a big producer, I’ve fully completed 8 or so 365 Projects, and can do something with regularity for a long time. But there always comes that moment when I start asking “Why am I putting myself through this again?” Once I start asking that too much is when I end up taking an overlong break afterwards. But since I’m in this for the long haul, I don’t want to get so burned out that I need a year off.
Photography is Dead, the previous version of this podcast, came out twice a week. I had a great system for making sure that happened: I’d write an episode every Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday morning, so then I’d build up a bunch of episodes. Some made it to recording and some didn’t, but then after a couple weeks I’d record 6 to 9 episodes. I’d always stay ahead so that I never had to scramble to put an episode together. That worked for 48 episodes. In fact, it worked too well.
Producing a show like that made it feel like brushing my teeth, and it was starting to get a little too scientific. I was also starting to want to spend more time on each one to really polish it up. But, I didn’t want to just suddenly change the format of the show, so I’ve turned it into a new show with different expectations. Also, the ethos around Photography is Dead where I look at the photography world in the present day, was getting stale to me as I was starting to think about what’s coming next.
My philosophy around creating things is changing for me. I’ve spent so many years posting and creating daily that now, I’m hungry to spend some real time on something.
I do some social media management and creative consulting for clients that need content or content ideas, and what I’ve found is that many business owners I work with don’t post anything to social media, because they want it to be perfect. And social media, really benefits from being more relaxed and not perfect. We gravitate toward more human content as consumers. We don’t want it to feel too polished like an advertisement. I’ve always had the opposite problem: I’ve never been afraid to post no matter how half-baked. Its social media, not an art gallery. Everything we post ends up being kind of disposable. And in a few days, it’ll be buried.
But now that I’m able to consistently produce, because I’ve built my life on creativity, I want to turn the tables a bit on my self and spend more time on a project.
When I decided to make a run at Youtube and video-making again I went to a few friends who are more experienced with it. A lot of the recommendations were the same: you need to post a couple times a week and it has to fit in this or that box. In the past, I would try to adhere to the rules of the algorithm, but quality will always end up falling by the wayside. So, since making Youtube videos has never been a successful endeavor for me, I’m going to do things the opposite of how I normally do them.
First, I want to make all the content I make fit together better. The podcast has to be a good companion to the videos and the videos and podcasts can trickle down to all the other social media platforms. Photography is Dead was built as an audio-only project, so it wasn’t really possible to translate that format and frequency into video. Basically, I’m re-orienting everything around what I do around adding a video component.
Second, I want to take more time on each upload. I’m only doing one podcast a week now as opposed to two. In the main videos that I’m making for Youtube, however, I want to work really hard on doing one at a time. My normal problem is that I start thinking about multiple episodes or projects at once and work on them simultaneously, never giving enough time to one. So, this time, I’m going to fight this ADD impulse or whatever it is and only work on video at a time for as long as it takes to be good.
Third, I only want to make what I’m excited about. If you’re a Photography is Dead listener, you’re familiar with my Kurt Russell Theory. It’s essentially we love watching Kurt Russell in everything he’s in because he always looks like he’s having a blast. If we aren’t having fun, whatever we make isn’t going to be good.
Sitting around talking about what “I’m gonna do” is kinda lame, but really I just wanted to say that I have a plan. Making a YouTube channel that I’m happy with has always been an aspiration of mine, and I’ve never quite gotten there because I’ve never put enough focus on it. I’m working on a series on videos, and I’ve almost fully written the first one. I’m super excited about this upcoming series. It’s daunting, and not going to be easy, but I’m very excited about it. I think you’ll at least find the topic of the first one pretty interesting. And with each video, there will be a companion podcast episode.
At the core of all this though, there’s really a love for one thing: Photography. That’s it man. That’s really what I do this all for. That’s my first love. Everything I talk about and create touches photography in some way. It’s something, that no matter how much I do it, I never get burned out. I’ve had seasons where I slowed down, but in 15 years, I haven’t stopped taking photos.
As I spent 48 episodes talking about, photography is in a weird place right now, so I want to explore the future of what that looks like. What’s its value going to be in the future? Obviously, images are more important than ever, but as a result, they’ve become cheaper, whether one can create an image themselves or just download a free stock image on Pexels or Unsplash. Then of course, photography is getting easier to produce via AI. You can still kind of mostly tell the difference between an AI photo and a real one, but in months or weeks, it may be impossible at the rate that AI advancement is moving.
My theory though, is that those truly dedicated to the craft of photography will continue to survive as long as we focus on context. AI art may be cool and technically impressive, but it is art without context. As humans, we need context and story in the art we consume. In fact, one could argue that art is simply a vehicle by which we can experience another human’s context or life experience. Those who mostly focus on just making technically perfect images without a ton of context might be on the chopping block, but I believe if we really focus on expressing everything that has made us we still have a chance in this uncertain future.
Or
Skynet goes live and we’re all doomed. But if that happens, we don’t have to really worry about the future of creativity much anyway.
Don't Give Up
Really, all I’ve been doing for my whole photography career is trying to figure out how to build a photography business that wasn’t like other photography businesses. And that’s a tall order. Maybe an unreasonable one. But, if I was going to be a photographer full-time, I had to build something I believed in, otherwise there was no way I could maintain interest in it.
What I’m learning, however, is that the longer I keep at it, the more I fail, the better I get.
There’s a fear I’ve always had, which is, “What if it’s time to quit, but I’m too dumb to quit something?” Like a gambler, draining all the money they have after losing over and over, but they think that hot streak will eventually come- I try to alleviate that one by just not doing the same thing every time. Failure is one thing, but we don’t document our failure or gather data from it, then yeah, I think doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is what happens.
We have to get good at failure.
Here’s an example: Youtube. I have attempted the Youtube thing a few times now, thinking I had something interesting to offer in that arena. But I never really could gain traction with it.
And now I’m back to working a Youtube strategy. I’m tempted to think, “Well, I tried it before and it didn’t really work for me, so I should probably just cross that off as a possibility.” But the reason my interest has been piqued again is because I have more data of “what not to do”. Also, I know people who understand the Youtube machine better than I do and they are giving me important data on the subject that I didn’t have previously. Oh and I’ve only tried basically one strategy in the past, which was vlogging.
So yeah, you’ve heard it here first: since the creation of this podcast I’ve been exploring what a video version would be like. I’ve considered just dumping the audio of these as Youtube videos, but I think the problem is that this is very much designed as a podcast, not a video series. Not only that, but I think some of these topics I address work better as podcasts, and others might work better as a video. I think I’m going to just have to have to tweak the format for Youtube if I want it to be successful. So yeah, I’m probably going to take another crack at Youtube, the difference now, is that I have something to say, and the stuff I’ve learned about the photography world, I think, would be super helpful to photographers everywhere.
But that voice is always in the back of our minds: When we fail at something, we often give up. “I screwed it up last time, why would I even bother trying again?” I was designed with a stubbornness that allows me to work around that dark thought, but not everyone is. To which I say, the details are important. Why did you fail last time? What was your strategy? Did you have a strategy? What are the variables since you tried before? Have they changed? Have you changed since then? If you pay attention to data, your next attempt won’t look like your last.
The secret to doing that, however, is that we look at ourselves and what we are doing in an unemotional way. That’s the hardest part: being honest with ourselves. Being honest with ourselves is maybe one of the single hardest tasks we can achieve as humans, because we can think we are being honest with ourselves, when really we couldn’t be farther from it. I can tell myself I don’t drink that much, but if I had a drink yesterday, two the day before, maybe one the day before that, and it turns out by the end of a normal week I had 10 drinks, then that was a lie. The truth being that I actually drink a fair amount.
If I’m being honest with myself, “not being honest with myself” is what has always held me back. It’s when I can look at what I’m doing unemotionally and viciously audit what works and what doesn’t is when I get closer to success.
But how do you get to a place where you can look at yourself unemotionally? You have to fail again and again. But it doesn’t stop there. You have to fail again and again, but also take notes with each failure.
I’ve had two or three major attempts at Youtube. I did the daily vlog series in 2016, back when everyone started doing that. Then in 2021, I started a much better, more focused vlog series. Then, last year, I did a few more of these better, more focused vlogs. So yeah, I’ve put a lot of time into Youtube in the past and it didn’t amount to much, but I did basically the same thing every time. There are a lot of mistakes left to be made, and a lot of roads I haven’t travelled yet. Maybe vlogging doesn’t work for me, but maybe a video essay strategy similar to this podcast could work better.
Taking criticism sucks. But most of the reasons it often sucks is because we listen to criticism from people that don’t know what they are talking about. Family members or friends are often culprits in this arena: sure, they know me and who I am, but they don’t really know the details or ins and outs of the business I’m in. If I’m thinking about the number of people I know who I would actually seek advice from, who actually understand my business, it’s a much smaller number of people who I would actually take criticism from when it comes to photography.
Before I do anything new, I have a rule: make a list of people who I know might know something about it. Then I go down the list and ask them questions. I start off by getting all the data that I can. It’s all about data. Information. The more data we have, the less “wheel spinning” that happens. The fewer dumb mistakes we have to waste our time with. Really, one of the best skills in life to have is how to ask questions. If we learn how to ask questions and who to ask, we will inherit the earth. Life is less about having the answers and more about asking good questions.
I always get frustrated with people who seem to not understand the power of Google. My friend Mark Lakey used to tell me “Anything you could ever want to know can be found on Google.” And it’s 100% true: asking questions is a skill. If you’re not good at asking questions, you’re not going to be good at getting answers. One of my biggest failures in my life is not asking enough questions, and just emotionally starting something and getting all my data from a gut feeling. Every successful business owner I’ve ever known, is really good at asking questions. And using Google.
The better we get at failing, the more notes we take, the more honest we are with ourselves, the more success we will find. We often take failure at face value, we are too distracted by the fact that something didn’t work that we don’t ask ourselves why it didn’t work. Turn statements into questions, and then suddenly, the failure goes from being an obstacle to being the way out.
How to be Different
In 2023, we’re often told to “stay in our lane”. And I understand why, it’s a heck of a lot easier to communicate if we are only communicating simple ideas to a select group of people rather than a lot of ideas to a lot of people. From a marketing or brand awareness standpoint, that’s really good advice.
It’s easier to make an impact if you are making one type of thing.
From a consumption standpoint, however, staying in one lane is death.
It’s a funny phenomenon, I see a lot of photographers do the opposite of this: They create a lot of different things and are generalists, but they only consume photography-related content. It should be totally flipped around- It’s hard to be a good photographer if all you know is photography. It’s actually easier to be creative when you get your inspiration and ideas from all over the place.
It’s taken me a long time to become focused with what I create, mostly because I’ve been really good at the “consuming a lot of things in a lot of different industries thing”. I listen to podcasts, read books, watch movies and more about TONS of different things. In fact, I’ve been consuming a lot of photography related content lately and that’s super weird for me. I don’t feel super connected to that world, despite being a photographer for over a decade now.
I like consuming photography-related stuff, because, well, I like photography and have a photography-related podcast, but it feels a little indulgent, I’m not going to lie. I feel a little guilty for it. It feels like junk food a little bit. Same with talking about cameras or technology or whatever else- It’s fun, but it’s all kind of a distraction from the point of all this.
As an example: I think my favorite “photo-book” is the Momofuku Cookbook. It’s not a photo-book per say, (although I suppose cook books can be considered that sometimes) but it has many photos in the book that are a total reinvention of food photography. Food photography was always about spraying water on lettuce to create perfect droplets or rubbing lard on a steak to make it shiny, but in the Momofuku Cookbook, the photos are gritty and cinematic. They look like they were shot on film and they tell a story. They aren’t just perfect arranged photos of food.
I love photo books as much as the next guy, but now I want to gather a collection of photo books that aren’t explicitly photo books, but are examples of interesting ways to tell stories with images.
One can always tell when a photographer isn’t getting out of the photography world enough: They are often insecure about their standing in or violating unspoken rules of the photography community. That’s a tough place to be, because then, your work will only be aimed at other photographers rather than reaching other people. This is another reason I’m on the flip side of this discussion, because I maybe haven’t invested enough in the photography community and I’m really only interested in making work aimed at either non-photographers or for myself quite honestly. This podcast is kind of a reflection of that: I’m not always coloring in the lines of the photography world.
I’m always really interested in making something unique and interesting. Making something “different” has kind of been my quest over my photography career. In order to make something interesting and different, we have to consume interesting and different things. We have to listen to the world around us.
There’s this movie, and maybe you’ve seen it, but probably not. It’s not a great movie, but it lays out a simple premise of creativity that I enjoy. It’s called We Are Your Friends. It’s a Zach Efron movie where he plays an aspiring DJ. He meets and becomes friends with a more famous DJ who coaches him on how to find his voice. And the movie boils that down in a really insightful way in my opinion: There’s a scene where Zach Efron plays one of his tracks, which sounds like cookie cutter DJ music I guess. It’s all sounds from his DJ computer software. The famous DJ, played by Wes Bentley (that guy from Yellowstone) tells him to try and use sounds from the real world instead of all the sounds that every other DJ is using.
I don’t know if that’s an accurate depiction of DJs or not, or if DJs go around recording the sounds of nail guns and quarters spinning in order to integrate them into their music. The overall message is saying that we need to create something “honest” and something that is actually a part of who we are, and then maybe it’ll hit and reach a larger audience.
Recently, I talked about what I believe the secret to success is: Focus on making something really good and being kind to people. I think the sub-secret under “making something good” is to consume the world around us, not just the photography world. The only way to be unique is to consume unique stuff, and to find inspiration in weird places. If we just make work for other photographers, we’ll never reach that next level creatively.
All this talk about telling your story or making something that is honest about who you are doesn’t mean much if who you are is limited by what you’re taking in. You are what you eat. If all we do is watch photographers on Youtube, then maybe we can one day be a really good Youtube photographer, but that’s kind of it. In order to be more, we have to explore more.
Photography Dark Ages
Are we in the photography dark ages?
I am a firm believer in the opportunity that almost always exists no matter the circumstance. But that doesn’t mean that hard times also don’t exist.
I’m not sure I’ve seen photography in such an “in-between” space before. We are in a place where photography and image creation has been fully embraced by culture- culture recognizes the importance of those with a camera, there are more photography opportunities than ever, and yet, there’s this feeling that being a photographer isn’t enough. We need to be videographers, entertainers, entrepreneurs, taste-makers, and more. Being a photographer alone used to be a somewhat prestigious path, but since the camera became more accessible, we have to be a jack of all trades more than ever in order to stand out.
Photographers like Saul Leiter used to do commercial photography work in order to pay for the lifestyle of making work that actually matters to him. We know Saul Leiter for his work outside of the fashion photography that paid his bills, because that’s when the meaningful work was created.
That’s a path not often taken nowadays. We’ve embraced this idea that our “work for hire” is us and we are our “work for hire”.
Wedding photographers are the best example of this, which is why I didn’t make it very far in this world: Wedding photographers, in order to be successful, have to live and breath weddings in everything they do. It takes so much bandwidth, that there’s very little hope that you’ll have much left over. Sam Hurd is one of the few examples of a wedding photographer who seems to have infinite bandwidth, or even creative interests outside of wedding photography at all, but I would say Sam Hurds don’t grow on trees.
Back in November of 2022, me and a couple friends went to the movie theater and basically did the old fashioned “I don’t really know what this movie is about, but let’s go see it thing” and we ended up seeing one of my favorite movies of last year The Menu. Had no idea what to expect, and boy, that movie is thrilling, disturbing, hilarious, wacky, and kind of a bummer. I feel like this movie is becoming a phenomenon now that it’s on streaming (in fact I just rewatched it with my wife who hadn’t seen it yet).
I don’t want to give away much, but it’s basically a satire of what the food world has become, namely the experimental, high end, gastronomy world. It’s about celebrity chefs and all the types of people around celebrity chefs that ruin “the art” of making these overpriced, thoughtful dishes. Each character stands for a different aspect of the joylessness of making things in the modern day: you’ve got the enthusiast foodie who dissects and overanalyzes, the critic, the money guys, etc. All of these people exist in every art form now, because every part of the process has become a job of its own due of social media. Critics aren’t exclusive to publications only focusing on high level art, everyone is quite literally a critic in one way or another. Foodies can be influencers with tons of followers, and can act as enthusiast and critic interchangeably.
Every facet of the world now has their own customers of their personal The Menu, whether it’s the hunting community, photography community, food, movies, comedy, etc. Every art form now has what were once a type of middle-men, as an audience in and of themselves.
As a guest on the comedy podcast Two Bears, One Cave, Quentin Tarantino (definitely not for kids) mentions that the state of movies makes the 80s look great. He mentions that cinema is going through a repressive time. He illustrates the decades of film as a pendulum swinging back and forth, and that he’s waiting for it to swing back again. Not only are Marvel Movies the only thing that can generate any excitement, but it’s really tough for any original film to make a dent right now. Superhero movies are the industry at the moment, which is a real bummer for movies that aren’t about a group of super-powered heroes fighting a CGI army of some kind. (I like Marvel movies, by the way, although I’m out-growing them a bit)
I don’t know what the Marvel movie equivalent in the photography world is, maybe it’s orange wedding photography, maybe it’s that instagram style-type of image of a bombastic landscape with a lone woman standing in the bottom third of the frame looking at the vastness despite there definitely being 100 tourists right behind the camera. I don’t know. It does feel like that somehow, many artistic mediums kind of landed in the same place. We are just chugging along and not really moving forward in any significant way. Or, maybe we are moving forward, in a really kind of depressing way.
I don’t think we can make Saul Leiters anymore unless he’s willing to hire a video editor to help him make videos of him waving his camera real quick to feed into a slideshow of images to the beat of a recent pop song. Or, maybe his images become famous and then 1000 YouTubers make videos dissecting it and making their own copies of his work and then his work gets diluted and over-explained by all his fans. Wow, just saying this kind of bummed me out.
I kind of flip flop between being bummed out and excited. I feel like I’ve always lived in this duality of identity, on one hand, I love photography and I’m an enthusiast. I also think it’s important to take what knowledge I have and share it with others, sometimes that’s a podcast, a reel/tiktok, or some other way. I totally understand being the “foodie” that ruins and overly talks about something that should have some mystery, and I think I’ve kind of given into the inevitable a bit. But on the other side, if I look at everything from an artist’s perspective, it’s looking pretty bleak.
But when you think about the history of artists, and I mean artists who’s sole purpose is to make art, not be an influencer or a guy behind a mic who speaks in essays, it’s always been pretty bleak. There’s a lot of trust put in the hope that an artist will get discovered by some benefactor or the right people, and then they'll finally attain the life of making art without being under the gun of financial duress. That trust is a risky move, and it’s why many artists get discovered late in life or postmortem. Saul Leiter wasn’t really discovered for his pioneering of color photography until his early 80s.
So, photography as art, I would say is probably in the dark ages. As a medium of communication, I would say it’s in the mainstream. Everyone has a proximity to photography, and it’s very possible to make decent money if you make the Marvel movie version of photography. So I guess I can also say that photography is alive and well and doing better than ever, it just totally depends on your point of view.
365 Strikes Again
In the last episode, I talked about going on a photo hiatus, and I wanted to expand on that a bit. Am I talking about quitting photography in order to tighten up the business end of things? Yes and no. I’ve positioned myself as a business where I don’t really do many freelance gigs, so other than building a library of images, I’m not asked to pull out my camera very often these days in a “run and gun” type fashion.
I’ve spent so much time building up a library of images over the past couple years, however, I need to make better use of what I’ve created up until this point. So basically, professionally, I’m putting the camera away for at least the next six months for the most part.
Personally though, I’m not capable of putting the camera away. It’s a lifestyle. I have to always be capturing something. The camera will be more of a tool of my personal life this year, rather than creating work that can be used for my business.
Part of this “resolution” as I guess it can be called, came out of one: trying to just allocate resources to get better at sales and marketing, and two: looking over my past body of work. Namely, I went back to the work I created in 2018, under the 365 project 365 Strikes Again.
This project was my return to doing a daily photo project, and one that really captured a massive change in our lives. I’ve talked about it a bit in a previous episode, but it was documenting our last year in Chattanooga. But I still had a job, so I wasn’t starting my business yet. So, I just sort of sat back and leaned into my voice a bit. I didn’t really have much pressure put on my creativity, so for maybe the first and only time in my photography career, I didn’t really try. I just let my monkey brain take over and I created work that was interesting to me.
It wasn’t for anyone else. It was just for me. No need to sell them or monetize anything. It was just me leaning into my voice.
And then, towards the end of the project, when I started my LLC, my voice stopped a bit. The work became more tame and “marketable”. Maybe it was fear or this idea that I had to grow up, but I dropped it like a hot potato.
I never really looked at it that way until recently, when I was watching a video by Ryan Booth on Youtube. He’s someone I’ve followed for a while: He’s a filmmaker, but he does street photography as an outlet. His look is very distinct, and he 100% has a voice.
In the video (which I will link in the show notes and blog post), he talks about how he had this voice very early on, and a mentor told him to do whatever he had to do to preserve this voice. His mentor told him not to get his masters, and just survive for the next 5 years so his voice would solidify. He was successful in keeping it, and you can see his moody, while simultaneously colorful work as Ryan Booth’s from a mile away.
2018 was the most me I have ever been in photography. But no one gave me the guidance of working to protect my voice. The main concern for many who mentored me was, you know, how to make a living, and make work that people will buy, and how to grow and raise a family doing photography. The common thread that I learned was, in order to make money as a photographer, your work had to be marketable and maybe even more traditional. You’ve got to pay the bills. My body of work in 2018 was not that. So, this project to me, and this way of shooting photos, which I would describe as using double-exposures to make places not seem like places, was a detriment. It was a weakness, and in order to be a photographer that could make a living, I needed to get rid of any style I had.
And no disrespect to anyone who told me that I needed to do things in a more marketable way, but I think that point of view is largely a fear-based one. It comes from people who are projecting their own fears. Of course, your bills need to get paid. Everyone has bills. Everyone is aware that their bills need to be paid. That’s the minimum requirement to exist. If our goal is to only make it to the minimum goal of existence, that’s a pretty unfulfilling life.
For me, there is no risk. I’ve had my essential needs met for my whole life because I have a supportive family, friends, and I’ve been raised with a work ethic and an education that has given me the skills to figure things out if things get tough.
I went to a college full of people very similar in that way: my college was full of middle-class, suburban people who could afford an expensive liberal arts education. Yet, that group of people, me included, gives into this fear that we are all raised in: that it could just all go away in an instant and we’ll end up on the street. And to make sure that doesn’t happen, we must avoid all forms of risk.
Yet, avoiding risk is a risky move in and of itself.
I come from a glass half empty type of family (probably because we’re all southern), but thinking about things in the negative admits that there’s also a 50% chance that there is a positive outcome as well. Maybe the pursuit of a “unmarketable” voice is “riskier”, but it also could lead to greater rewards as well.
Practicality is important. I’m very practical. Sometimes too practical. Trying to alter or snuff out an original or distinct voice in your work may be essential to paying bills today. But, it could really screw you over tomorrow.
Another piece of Ryan Booth’s video that was really interesting was when he shows some examples of his work that was a result of him trying to work outside his style. The images were ineffective and a “failure” according to him, because he denied his voice.
Many photographers can take a good photo. But what is the definition of good? Is “good” merely defined as something “technically sufficient” or is “good” defined as “true to you and your overall story and message”?
In October, I went to Highlands, NC and I stumbled upon a retro car show. It was fun getting some close up detailed pics of an old Lotus and Porsche. But I look back at these photos now, and I’m utterly unimpressed by them. They are good photos, I like them on a technical level. I’m sure someone would be happy to hang one in their garage or “man-cave”. But in a way, they are kind of a failure. They told no story, and they weren’t true to me at all.
365 Strikes Again was some of the truest work I’ve ever made. I’m not saying that I’m writing off the Small Town Photo Project or anything that follows, but I really have been toning myself down a bit, mostly likely, out of fear. I also know this is true because my wife frequently has called me out on it- She’s told me that I need to get back on the horse of what I was creating back then.
I’m excited about 2023. I’m excited to dig in and learn some new business skills and grow in new ways. And I think I’ve done enough ground work now over the past couple years that I don’t need to put a ton of pressure on the camera to do my day job. So, I’m actually able to make photography a “hobby” again for the time being, and get back to where I left off in 2018. Then, when I get back to adding new images to the Small Town Photo Project, the work, hopefully, will be better than ever.
Photo Hiatus
A while back, I made an episode about making a great bio or “about page” that captures who you are are what you do. Basically, what is the most interesting part about you?
Photographers really struggle with this. A lot of photographers don’t, deep down, want to be that interesting, they want to be like every other photographer.
I know, I know, you’re like, Will, that’s nuts. But it’s not. It’s a human impulse. We don’t want to stand out, we want to fit in. We feel like something is off when we don’t fit in, and when we aren’t doing things the same way as the people around us, we often feel wrong and like a failure.
Photographers who steep themselves in the photography world and community do this exact same thing. It’s not about focusing on what is interesting, it’s about making sure you’re in lock step with the other photographers in the community. And that’s why photography has gotten boring on social media, that’s why engagement has dropped, and now, it’s why I go on to Twitter and Instagram and it’s just nonstop complaining about how photographer’s work isn’t getting seen anymore.
I’m on the other end. I don’t stay connected to the photography community enough. I’m trying to be better, but I’m finding that it’s super easy to get sucked into it all. Photographers who spend a lot of time with other photographers don’t make work for an audience, they make work for other photographers. It’s kind of this loop that never has any real pay off, it’s just approval seeking from your peers. But if your peers are in the same boat as you- then you’re not really going to go anywhere.
I’m not saying don’t hang out with or be in community with other photographers, but my Twitter algorithm for the past few months has been only photographers, and it’s a very skewed view of the reality of the photography world.
Years and years ago, I used to work for a commercial product photographer while I was in college. I was taking a photo documentary class at the time, and I decided to use photography to document this professional, high level, commercial photographer. It was super intimidating. And the project, ended up looking terrible. Not because the subject matter was bad, but because I was trying to impress this commercial photographer more than I was trying to actually tell a decent story about him. I let the pressure get to me, and these photos remind me of how I just totally dropped the ball on anything interesting because I was just focused on this commercial photographer’s opinion.
That’s why I love Van Niestat’s videos, he’s a YouTuber (not a photographer), but he doesn’t really watch Youtube. His style is unlike anyone else’s because he stayed on the outside of everything. You are what you eat. You become what you consume. If I consume a ton of analog photographers, I start taking more photos of abandoned buildings and gas stations. If I consume a lot of Youtube travel photographers, I gravitate more toward sunsets and bombastic landscape shots. I think my photography work in 2022 has been good, but honestly, I can tell that I’ve maybe consumed a little too much this year. A lot of my work isn’t me. And a good chunk of it is totally forgettable.
I’ve been spending the final weeks of 2022 planning out next year (in as much as that’s possible). I just need a game plan for how I’m going to tackle everything. And it’s time to face the music: I think I need to go on a hiatus of photo-taking. I need some distance between me and the work. Honestly, I need distance from photography in general.
I’ve been posting more behind the scenes stuff lately on my Instagram, and I’ve started to realize the honest truth: maybe the most interesting thing I do is not actually the photography part. For those that are new to the podcast, I’m basically a commercial art consultant. I have a library of images that I use to print large custom prints for businesses. And that’s an unusual job.
The problem with photographer as a moniker is that culture understands it as being a wedding photographer, portrait photographer, or real estate photographer or something akin to that. The world sees a photographer as a mechanic. Will Malone Photography might as well be just Blah Blah Photography, because the Photography part is the only thing that ends up meaning anything to people. There’s a ton of other Blah Blah Photography companies if you search “photographers near me” into Google.
I once watched a TED Talk with a fine art photographer who basically said he dropped Photography as a word entirely. It took me a bit to fully understand that, but I get it now. Photography puts me into a box that takes a lot of extra story-telling and explanation to get out of, and that’s just a lot of extra work when having a conversation at a networking event. If you skip to commercial art consultant, the message gets across a lot quicker.
“Competition is for losers” according to the controversial Peter Thiel. If you’re tired of being compared to the long line of bad photographers out there, or simply photographers that don’t fit your niche, make up your own title. Call yourself something different that helps you stand out. Identify the interesting part of what you do, and lean on that. Trust the interesting and different part, don’t look at it like a weakness. Doing things different is seen as a weakness when you hang out with a bunch of other photographers. It’s just too group-thinky out there.
I don’t mean for this to get too negative. I love the images I’m seeing in my social media feeds day to day. There’s a ton of photographers doing a lot of great work out there. But in analyzing my year, I think consuming that stuff has maybe negatively affected my work to a point. The fact is, when you are self-employed with a camera, the images end up being the easy part. The business part is what takes the most time and effort.
I’ve talked before about my dreams and goals for my photography work: Basically, I want the freedom to make what I want to make and get paid for it.
And I know, I can hear your chuckles from here. Who doesn’t want that? I think it’s extremely possible, I see the proof of it every day. In 2022, I sold more prints of my work than I ever have. In fact, most of my income this year has come from selling large prints of my work. So I’m going to take a break from the camera a bit, to really get better at the business part in 2023. If I can put the same energy I put into my creative work into tweaking and improving my business, then I think when I get back to making new work, I’ll have a better system with which to attain my dream.
But really, the more I get down this road, I just want to be better at getting great images on the walls of the growing businesses I serve. So I’ll be happy if I can just get better at that.
The fact is, my photography output has been outrageous over the years, so I’m just going to borrow some of that time to get better at the other aspects of what I do. And then maybe, once I get back to capturing a new set of images I’ll come back with fresh eyes and feel a little safer to just calm down and be myself.
2016: The Year Everything Changed
2016, I believe, was the year where everything changed.
I know, you probably think I’m referring to when some dude got elected and it shook the universe, but this has nothing to do with that.
Something happened in 2016 that we don’t really talk about super often, but I believe, that 2016 was the year that the internet and social media and “content” starting being what it is today. I think that’s the year where the internet began to really have some influence over our lives.
It could be argued that it was kicked off by Casey Niestat when he started vlogging. Vlogging wasn’t a new thing, but he breathed life into what was seen as this niche thing reserved for YouTubers. He took this stale genre of video and told good stories in a cinematic way. After that, creators of all kinds began sharing content in ways we never had before, and people began to watch Youtube in place of television and movies.
Of course, this was a slow burn before 2016. (I was listening to podcasts in 2004) It was already happening, but 2016 is when, I believe, the really internet hit its stride.
You know what else happened in 2016? The DJI Phantom 4 drone was released.
Obviously, it has “4” in it’s name, so it wasn’t the first drone to be released, but it was the first really smart and easy to use drone, ever released. Casey Niestat used a DJI Phantom 4 in his videos for establishing shots, just like movies do, and I believe that helped more people see drones as an essential tool in every creator’s arsenal.
It was also the wild west of drone use back then, the FAA had some vague rules, but really, it was a free for all. Even the government didn’t know what to do about it then, so, drones started to show up everywhere.
I saw this stuff start to happen towards the end of 2015, so I decided to start a vlog of my own as my 365 project in 2016. Vlogging was and still is a really great way to tell a story, I don’t do it often anymore, but I definitely have retained elements of it in my work. So, like many in 2016, I made a daily vlog. I did it for 300 days straight, and I wince thinking about it, to be honest. I have no earthly idea how I maintained making a nearly 10 minute video every day for that long. My drive to make these videos was almost irrational, I don’t know where it came from. I would go to my full-time job at the print shop, shoot footage throughout the day, and then sit at my computer for hours each night editing so I could post the video early the next day.
I look back at these videos and they are…rough. Mostly because my life wasn’t as interesting as I thought it was at the time. I was in my early 20s and I had no discipline around what I would put out there. I wasn’t super concerned with them being watchable to an audience, I was more doing it for me. That said, they are now a really interesting document of how I really started to find my voice. Without that super ambitious and insane 300 day project, this podcast wouldn’t exist. My whole body of work probably wouldn’t exist as it exists today.
During this 300 day vlogging project, I bought a DJI Phantom 4. I was seeing how other people were using drones, and I thought that it could not only kick my videos up a notch, but it could also maybe bring me some side money. I broke out a credit card and dropped $1500 at Best Buy- that drone would end up paying for itself a bunch of times over. It was a great investment, because at that time, drones still wow’d people . Very few people had them, so I could hide my lack of video skills behind the technology a bit.
$1500 was a lot for someone who was poor in their early 20s, but it never bothered me for some reason. My philosophy to this day, taught to me by my mentor Mark Lakey, is that if you buy a piece of equipment, it has to work for you in order to justify itself. That $1500 was pretty easy to make back: I sold aerial print of my work, shot videos for small businesses, you name it. I would put drone shots in my daily vlogs, and that was essentially my marketing strategy.
I would fly it around and shoot aerial photos of Thomasville, GA, the inaugural town in my Small Town Photo Project, and no one was really doing that back then. Some of my aerial images of Chattanooga are hanging in spaces all over town to this day.
2016 was an awakening for me certainly, but I think if you were paying attention at that time, you would have seen the same thing I was seeing. The only reason I started doing that stuff was because I was seeing a shift, and I wanted in on it. Again, I cringe at a lot of the work I made back then, but overall, 2016 and 2017 shaped what I do today in immeasurable ways.
It’s 2022 now, almost 2023. We are so used to the idea of vlogs and drones and influencers now, that it’s hard to hide behind the new. Early adoption of these tools is no longer possible. I used to shoot drone videos quite often for realtors, but time after time, I’d see their listings with drone photos (that I didn’t take) and realize, “Oh, they just went to Best Buy like I did in 2016, and they bought their own drone.” Outside of this podcast, I produce a podcast called Electric City Buzz, a podcast created by some locals guys here in Anderson, SC. Most mid-sized cities like Greenville, South Carolina and Chattanooga, Tennessee have fashion and style influencers, it’s not just blogs like The Sartorialist in New York City making stuff like that anymore. Everyone has access to and uses these tools now, all I’m saying, is that I really think that 2016 is when we started to hit that gear.
Photographers have really struggled in this era because we were always able to hide behind our expertise around the medium. Photography is art, but it has science elements to it, so there was always a learning curve around it. But now, those “science” elements are almost totally gone. There are plenty of photographers out there who don’t have a super deep expertise in the craft itself, but are more than capable of growing a successful photography operation. Knowing how to use a camera is an almost base-level skill for everyone now. Smartphones have brought some photography knowledge to the people over the years, so everyone has some knowledge around the basic terms of photography.
In episode 2 of this podcast, I posited that successful images come more from the ability to tell a good story, rather than the ability to use the technology. That became really apparent in 2016, which was the last time photographers (or videographers) could hide behind technology as their competitive edge. But unfortunately, the DJI Phantom 4, came out right around the same time people really started to get a grasp on using the internet to tell great stories.
Story is King.
In the aforementioned episode 2 of this podcast, I talked about how I believe AI Art is art, but without context. To me, AI Art is like drone photography in 2016. People will be wow’d by it for a moment (either that or tear their garments wailing to the heavens about how this is the end of everything they know and love), but in order for people to stick around for what you made with AI, you need to use it to tell a larger narrative.
I’ve posted some landscape images I’m extremely proud of over the years, but some of them are my least “liked” images. It’s because I posted them with zero context- I didn’t tell anyone why I took that picture, why I was in that spot, how I got there, and so no one had any investment in it. Every once in a while a sunset shot can be so beautiful that it can rely on the “wow”, but it doesn’t last.
People only care about pretty pictures for a moment. But stories stick around.
I think you’ll find that if you hook someone in to a story or a narrative around a photograph, the “wows” are far more powerful and satisfying.
Casey Niestat exposed photographers everywhere: the dude has used cheap, garbage cameras to tell stores for most of his career. Him and his brother, Van Niestat, created a series for HBO, with point and shoot cameras in 2008. Imagine how low res that was. But because they told a good story, it didn’t matter.
So now, we have no excuse. Our cameras are amazing. We have the power of an entire production crew, and yet we take photos and post them, as if no one else is doing the same thing we are. We all have something unique, and yet we don’t lean on it. That unique thing is our point of view, our story, our why we picked up a camera in the first place. The real learning curve in 2022 isn’t how to use the camera, it’s how to communicate. That’s where all of our resources need to be going as photographers who are seriously pursuing this craft.
And there’s nothing wrong with being like I was in 2016, making videos for basically myself. That’s how we learn. I now can look back at that, and learn what I did right and what I did wrong. And I’ve spent every year since 2016 trying to figure out how to best tell the story of what I’m trying to do here. And I’m closer than ever, but I still, have a long way to go.
A Big Ask
Clickbait has taken over the internet. For those that have never heard that term, clickbait, is basically like when people come out with podcasts titled Photography is Dead, and you can’t help yourself to see what that’s all about. Usually it’s a bold statement, or like “Man goes to church and finds trail of blood, here’s what happened next:”** It’s bait to get you to click on it.
It’s often really annoying, especially when artists do the “whatever art medium is dead” thing. But, it also works. Some clickbait is really obvious and the article or whatever doesn’t say anything, and other times, you click a clickbait titled podcast and it ends up being a positive and deep experience. Winky face.
I don’t have a problem with clickbait typically, mostly because I know it works. Every medium has grappled with it in some way. Pop musicians have found long, indulgent intros to their songs doesn’t retain audiences, so often they have to put the chorus melody or the chorus in the first 30 seconds of the song. They have to get to the hook much quicker because listeners get bored and can switch to one of the other eleventy billion songs on Spotify.
I’ve mentioned him before, but Mr. Beast is probably one of the most skilled practitioners of getting and retaining attention. He knows how to hook you into one of his videos with a great title and thumbnail picture. Then, he makes sure to cut every 2 seconds so you never get the chance to glaze over and move on.
I think the only time clickbait offends me is when it’s trying to make me mad or play on emotions in a manipulative way. I think this is why many news outlets today have lost credibility: Mr. Beast or some dumb photography podcaster can do clickbait, but journalists doing it at the highest levels talking about real life or death issues seems like a problem.
But it’s not really going to stop or get better for two reasons:
The first is that there’s just tons of competition. You need to hook people to get your content seen in the sea of all the other people doing the same thing you’re doing.
The second, and the main reason, is that the internet we experience is ad supported. That means, that the money you make from that video you just posted is directly proportional to viewers you and the ads within your content get. It’s really a meritocracy in a sense: you get paid the more interest you get. But that also means you have to get a lot of viewers, and clickbait helps you at least get that initial click.
The only real antidote to an ad-supported internet is subscriptions. And we complain about that too. Let’s be real, we complain about everything. Information should be free, man.
When I do bookkeeping each month, it’s wild how many things I subscribe to. The list is only growing. But, when you subscribe to someone, they don’t have to employ those clickbait tactics that the internet is filled with- they already won you over. That’s also a good way to get more responsible news, because they aren’t hungry for your attention with every single article. Sure they have to grow subscribers, but they aren’t posting shallow articles simply because they are thirsty for viewers. Having a regular audience that pays affords some more quality work.
I’ve always thought Patreon was a really cool because it takes that subscription model and gives it to the people. If you’re a photographer with a decent audience, that’s a good way to expand what you make. No matter what you make online, it costs money and time to put together, so it’s a great way to at least make your money back and have a directly line to a quality audience that has some skin in the game as well.
But here’s the problem: Each of us only has room for a finite amount of subscriptions, whether it’s because of money or most likely, because of time. Keeping up with 10 podcasts you subscribe to takes a ton of time, and we don’t have an infinite amount of it. That means, asking for subscribers is a really big ask.
Instagram has launched the Patreon-like ability to post content that subscribers can pay to see that people just scrolling through instagram won’t. I haven’t tried it myself, but I assume it’s just a way to create a paywall around certain content you post. I’ve seen photographers charging .99 cents, which doesn’t seem too offensive to me. $1 per month to support my favorite artist or photographer? Sounds reasonable.
But then, I’ve seen photographers charging $10 a month. And I gotta say, that’s a bold move. That’s about what I pay for Disney Plus, which has Marvel, Star Wars, National Geographic, and thousands of legacy Disney titles. That’s value. I pay $15 for HBO Max, which has House of the Dragon, Barry, and Succession. Super premium television. These subscriptions are all competing for my finite amount of time.
$10 a month to see a couple extra photos or videos from a photographer on a semi-consistent basis? Yikes. And I’m not saying I definitely wouldn’t, but I’d have to be pretty interested in their work for that to make sense.
As artists and photographers we get excited when we see more power land in the hands of the people. In this case, we now have the power of the paywall. Because we’re excited about the possibilities and we very much value our work, I think we are often very willing to just start a Patreon and start asking for money without realizing how gigantic of an ask that actually is. And sure, if one of my close friends made one, I’d probably pay them, because I value them for other reasons than just what they make. So other than the baseline few of your friends, how do you justify a paywall to others? Honestly, getting money from your friends is it’s own kind of pressure, so I’d want to make sure I was giving them tons of value too.
There’s this thing I see all the time, and it shows up a lot during Christmas: Artist often begin a campaign to tell everyone to “Shop Local” or “Support Local Artists”. And listen, I’m a hyper-local guy who cares about his community, so I’m down with the message. But, at the same time, I’ve seen that be a stand in for, “I don’t provide enough value as an artist, but it’s on you to support me. It’s your fault if I fail.”
I never really say “Support local artists” as a mantra, not because I’m against it, but because, I’m technically a “local artist” myself. It sounds weird coming out of my mouth, because I believe that if I’m worth supporting, people will support me. If you’re not interested in my prints, it’s because I’m not providing you value. Maybe my work isn’t your cup of tea. Don’t support me just to support me, I’m not a non-profit or charity. I’m a guy that makes things for people who find it valuable, and not everyone will. And that’s fine.
As this podcast grows, I plan to start a Patreon around it and the other things I do. But as of now, I don’t have the audience or the time to support it at the moment. Because the other big part of providing value as an individual artist that has “Pay up sucka” tattooed on the palm of his hand is consistency. You have to be accountable by making sure you’re making things with regularity. If you have an audience, then you have people that have most likely made you part of their weekly routine or ritual. We all have that show or podcast we look forward to every week, and we’re bummed when it doesn’t come on. If someone is paying us, we become that thing they look forward to every Wednesday.
Consistency is a tricky thing. It can lead to burn out, or just get interrupted and you struggle to get back on the horse. I had a podcast called Out of Focus (and actually before that I had a similar podcast called The 365) where I talked to different guests in tons of different industries. I had fun making it, and I made like 77 episodes. It was a ton of work to keep going and schedule guests, but I did it for a while. Then covid happened and it fizzled.
That’s the tough part. Consistency isn’t just about doing something with regularity. It’s about doing something that one can maintain with regularity. Joe Rogan has recorded nearly 2000 podcasts over the past decade, and the reason he can maintain doing so many a week is because for him, it’s not hard. He can easily maintain his style and format over a long period of time.
After Out of Focus kind of died out, I told myself I wouldn’t do a podcast again unless I found a format that couldn’t easily fall apart due to outside events or scheduling problems. That’s why I’ve laid out this podcast in the way I have: it’s just me and a keyboard, writing the episodes, then recording them. They are short so you don’t lose your mind listening to me going solo, and also so I can provide value (hopefully) around one thing at a time. I can maintain this pace and style, honestly, forever. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have jumped back into podcasting again.
I think we see other photographers making gear videos or vlogs or workshops and we think that we should be doing that. And then we try it (and trust me, I’ve at least dabbled in all of it), and then we fizzle. So, the key is to make something that we like to make and can maintain over a long period of time. Once we find that thing, then is when we can feel more comfortable charging streaming service-like prices for it.
Asking for money for what you do is a big deal. If you’re an artist or photographer and want make money through subscribers, I’d say sit down and make a plan. Figure out how you as an individual can best do that. It can’t be about what you see other people doing, it has to be what you can do well and over the long term.
**"Man goes to church and finds trail of blood, here's what happened next." - after I recorded this, I realized how out of left field that sounded. This actually happened to me. I showed up to church and there was a trail of blood all along the sidewalk. We called the police and discovered that earlier that morning (like 2am) some guy got into a fight at a bar and I guess walked around town bleeding. The police found him and took him to the hospital.
What are you about??
willmalone.com is 11 years old.
A website, for me, has served different purposes over the years. It started with a blog about photography and other things I love. Then it kind of became about movies for a while while I was in college. Then back to photography. When I would do 365 projects, it was primarily for that. Then it transformed into a portfolio site. Then a wedding photography site. And now, it’s largely dedicated to The Small Town Photo Project.
It’s my corner of the internet. Social media might change, but my website is still moldable and completely mine. It feels like a home base, a headquarters. Things may change out there, but I’ve always got a place to go.
Social media has replaced websites for many photographers out there, which I understand. Even Casey Niestat barely has a website, because everything you’d want to see from him is up on Youtube.
This podcast though, I feel is aimed to the more ground-level photographer. Maybe a big YouTuber can survive without a website, but I can’t.
There’s a lot of photographers, which means, there are a lot of unprofessional, professional photographers. How do you instantly rise above into another escelon of photographer? At the very least, have a website. Any business or brand you follow has one, so be like that. Be a real business or brand. I’d even say that you should drop the @gmail.com off your email and add your custom URL to your email. It just adds that little “chef’s kiss” of professionalism.
But what should your website do?
The theme of this podcast thus far is to cut through the noise in photography by honing in on who we are. A website is the easiest way to find out. It should embody you at the present moment.
Let’s start with the “About” page. The most underated part of a website, the part that so many kind of gloss over and phone in. This is the foundation of your website. Your mission statement. You should put almost more work into this part than the rest of your site. This is where you tell YOUR STORY.
I can’t even tell you how many photographer “about pages” I’ve read that say “I love photography because it’s capturing a moment in time” or something like that. That’s almost akin to saying “I press the button and the camera makes a noise that I like” or like if a pizza restaurant’s about page said “We have a passion for making dough into a circle and putting food on top of it”. It doesn’t tell anyone anything about yourself or what you’re about.
If you haven’t read the Simon Sinek’s “Start with Why” you should. Or, you can really get the gist of it in a TED talk of his on Youtube about “Finding Your Why”.
Why are you a photographer really?
I know why it’s often so hard to answer: we don’t want to pigeon hole ourselves. We don’t want to put ourselves in a box and maybe lose out on opportunities.
Honestly though, being too general loses out on more opportunities. You want to stick in someone’s brain by being kind of odd, and maybe box yourself in a little bit.
Here’s my strategy on creating my about page. First, I describe myself and what I do in one sentence.
I’m a travel photographer who focuses on small towns.
The next thing you do for your about page is answer “why”?
Because I grew up traveling all over the world and all over bigger cities that have billions of photographers taking pictures of that city, and a small town like Thomasville or Anderson does not. My favorite pastime is to walk around taking photos and doing fun projects, thus I’m taking photos of small towns for The Small Town Photo Project.
Based on that prompt, here’s my resulting bio on my “About Page”:
“willmalone.com was created 11 years ago by (you guessed it) Will Malone, when he needed a place to put all his photo projects and creative exploits.
In order to excel at his craft, Will began doing daily photo challenges called 365 projects where he would shoot and post a photo every single day. There have been 7 or 8 of these, among them was a project where he made a vlog every day (which drove him a little crazy as you’d imagine) and one was where he shot a portrait every day. One of the most grueling projects (due to lack of sleep) was a 24 hour photo project where he had to shoot, edit, and post a photo every hour that encapsulated the last hour.
His current and biggest project? Now he’s driving around documenting and making fine art prints of small towns all around the country for The Small Town Photo Project.
Why?
After going to often-photographed cities like Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Brussels, and more, Will realized there’s still so much of life that doesn’t get photographed at all, and smaller cities that don’t have a photography culture providing images for that particular place. Now, Will sees it as his mission to focus on smaller towns and places not as often photographed in order to provide images and fine art prints for people who are passionate about their small corner of the earth.
Will currently resides and has a studio in the small town in SC in order to pursue his mission with his wife, daughter, and dachshund. Will also spends a lot of time being a total movie nerd.
You can order prints for your home or commercial space here on willmalone.com and have them sent directly to your door! Blah blah blah
I’ve actually updated my about page since writing this episode, you can read the new one on the site (link in show notes). Life has changed a little since I wrote this (don’t worry, I still have a dachshund) Your bio can change and doesn’t have to be set in stone, so “capture this moment in time” of WHO YOU ARE.
So here’s the assignment:
Write a short sentence boiling down what you do as a photographer. One that easily be thrown up on Instagram and where ever else when people ask what you do.
Then answer that sentence with “Why?” And based on that, the rest of your bio should follow.
Regardless of being useful for a website, it’s a valuable exercise.
Stay tuned for the next episode where I rant about how the movie Field of Dreams has ruined photographers lives everywhere.
Social Media
A photography podcast making an episode about the state of Instagram right now probably would get plenty of listens, but is new ground being broken? Is it interesting to talk about?
And, honestly, I think we think about Instagram and social media way too much.
BUT
I also think most people who are upset that their engagement cratering on Instagram either have no strategy, or aren’t really doing the right strategy.
I’m included in this group. I’ve had a strategy, and I think parts of it worked, but I truthfully have not been providing enough value to people. Straight up.
I don’t think Instagram is completely innocent: They don’t know what they want to be anymore. I think Meta realized there’s not as much money in the “social network” game, but rather, it’s all about getting attention for ads. Instagram/Facebook/Meta executives all probably had that “holy ****” moment when laying in bed realizing (like the rest of us) that TikTok’s algorithm is so good at presenting interesting content that they could lose 3 HOURS just scrolling. Of course they want a piece of that.
People don’t really like admitting it, but TikTok has changed and revolutionized the social media landscape. Because it’s not social media. It’s TV channel surfing at scale. You watch a few seconds long show that is presented to your specific eyeballs (and they know what you specifically find interesting) and then you swipe to the next channel.
The US has been on the verge of banning TikTok now over two presidential administrations due to Chinese connections and nation security concerns. But TikTok is so good at what it does and so viral, no one really cares. Joe Rogan read their terms of service on his podcast and exposed all of the ways they were collecting data from your phone and nearby computers. But…did that stop most people from using it?
TikTok couldn’t have existed without Instagram before it. Instagram changed everything. But even 2 years ago, TikTok’s interface and fluid usability made Instagram feel kind of ancient. What Instagram is trying to be now is like your grandfather getting on a skateboard. It’s not going to go well, and it’s a little sad.
Meta has the data. They know what people want. They know if they have more video in a feed that it will retain audiences more than a bunch of square still images will. Social media is in dog years though, so instead of thoughtfully growing and changing they have to speed up their changes to their platform lest they lose everyone faster.
I think all of this has revealed how many people rely too much on a singular platform. You can’t scroll twitter (or instagram for that matter) without a photographer complaining about their lack of engagement. But as Colin and Samir often say on their podcast: These platforms are “rented land”. We don’t own them, so we are subject to changes they make over time.
I think the solution to social media growth despite all these changes now is fairly obvious, however: Provide value like you never have before.
Pretty pictures aren’t enough. There’s so much great photography out there that either your images have to be wildly different or you need to be providing something else as well. I’ve been under the belief that I was providing value when posting a landscape sunset photo, and maybe I was, but not to most people who’s algorithm creates a feed for them full of landscape sunset photos.
When I started to put my prints up on the Instagram shopping feature is when I noticed a problem with what I was doing: Right under my “print for sale” was a bunch of suggestions: If you like Will Malone’s photos, check out these other Instagram print shops. They were all other sunflower sunrise photos or other eerily similar images to the types of photos I was posting.
That kind of bummed me out.
But then I started a Twitter account again after bailing from it for a while. I realized there’s a really great photography community on there, so I’ve been dipping a toe in over the past few months. I found some photographers whose photos were somewhat unremarkable, but they had huge followings- it broke my photographer brain.
But then I realized…They were eagerly building community. They probably even had day jobs and were just in photography for fun. (Imagine that) They loved seeing others photography and offered themselves as a vector for others to share their work. They were giving other photographers a platform within a platform. Value.
Because photography and the photography industry is all I’ve thought about over the past 13 years, I’m too close to the fire. Some things that are totally obvious to most people, blow my mind. I’ve always heard this phrase “provide value” over and over throughout the years from various entrepreneurs, but I guess, I never truly understood it. I thought my photos were enough.
Most people (me included) share selfishly. We are posting so that we may grow. That desperation for attention that I talked about in the first episode is why we think this way, but it’s old school thinking. Back in the day, you opened a shop and put an ad out in the paper. When you open a hardware store in Deadwood, people need a hardware store. Timothy Olyphant didn’t set up a boutique hardware store next to a Harbor Freight, he was the only game in town.
Back in the day, there just wasn’t the shear numbers of competition there is today. We know we have to set ourselves apart, but I think most of us think: We have to shoot better photos, (and maybe even talk smack about other photographers to downgrade them a bit). Shooting “better” photos (whatever that means) has diminishing returns- there are many photographers who have surpassed me in business who aren’t as good at using a camera as I am.
What we need to do, to set ourselves apart really is to create more value, as much as we can muster. We need to think less about what social media growth can do for us, but rather, what our social media growth can do for others.
The people that think like that are growing on Instagram and Twitter and Tiktok. Like, astronomically.
You’re probably wondering, “How do I provide value?” I think everyone has their own brand of it, but everyone has something to offer. Whether it’s humor, or tips and tricks, or a community, value can be more than just giving things away to people.
If you want a super extreme example of creating value: Go check out Mr. Beast. He’s the biggest YouTuber in the world. He gives away INSANE sums of money, but when he releases a video, he makes sure not to waste your time. He knows how to retain attention, he knows how to keep people from getting bored and clicking away. He’s literally giving stuff away sure, but he’s also giving you value in the form of a tightly edited video.
If you’d like to go back to a time where you can get famous by posting a landscape of a National Park with some music lyrics as a caption while trying not to cut yourself with the cracked glass on the back of your iPhone 4 You’ll need a quantum tunnel and a time/space GPS so you can go back and become viral on Instagram in 2011. That’s just not how things work anymore. This isn’t Deadwood.
AI Art and Story
I for one, welcome our AI overlords.
I’ve been reading a lot about AI in art and photography lately, which is a pretty interesting topic. A year ago, it wasn’t much of a conversation, mostly just on the fringes. Now, it’s everywhere.
Everyone seems pretty pissed about it. Well, maybe not “everyone” but there’s a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth on the issue.
One particular article I read was by an abstract artist who seemed very upset about Midjourney, in particular, saying the style of the Midjourney AI is creepy and lacking in “heart”.
Now, as a photographer, when I read about an artist who is upset that everyone can now paint, I lack a lot of sympathy. We’ve been dealing with the “ease” of taking photos for a decade (at least) now. Photographers are familiar with this feeling.
This was also a promise of the internet: a level playing field for all. And we love that idea, until we get leveled with it.
I sell prints to businesses for their office walls. Does a designer or office manager care much about “heart”? Maybe, maybe not.
Designers, I’d lean more toward “maybe not”. There’s a lot of considerations: color, shape, and how it fits in a space. I’m not sure designers often even care who the artist is, they are more concerned about how the piece works for them.
For the Small Town Photo Project, however, maybe “heart” is a factor. Well, I’d replace “heart” with “story”. I think what people like most (whether they realize it or not) is “story”. They want to be able to feel invested or connect with the art in some way.
Sometimes the artist is what people feel invested in: the photography YouTuber, Peter McKinnon made a whole video about The Bucket Shot (a shot he wanted of a lake in Canada during a certain time of year) and the journey to capture it. After many people asking in the comments for prints, he finally released them, and they sold out instantly. People went on the journey with him, and I’d argue that the fanfare around “The Bucket Shot” was less about the image and more about the story investment around the image.
Or
In my case, I’m highlighting landmarks and parts of towns that people are very invested in. It’s less about me, and more about me capturing something they love in a way they’ve never seen before. For instance, I recently hung a large metal tryptic of a low angle of the Thomasville, GA historic courthouse during an insane sunset, a photo that I’ve never seen be taken in Thomasville. I hung it in the lobby of a law office (hence the courthouse) as the main focal point of the lobby. The images in the lobby only made sense if they were Thomasville, they wouldn’t have picked out anything else from my selection of images. It was about Thomasville.
My courthouse shot is cool, and I’m very proud of it, however out of context on Unsplash or Pexels, it’s just a cool sunset photo that blends in with the rest of the cool sunset photos on the site. In the context of Thomasville and for the people of Thomasville, it rises to a different level.
AI art is still art, but without context. It doesn’t necessarily have that backdrop of “story”. Of course, until it does. It’s only a matter of time before artists take this “tool” (which is what I believe it is) and do things with it that imbue with with story and value. I saw some artist making weird AI birds and then painting over them and adding on to what the AI generated. We’re only at the ground floor of this medium.
And I believe it to be great for designers who largely buy art “out of context”. Many of them aren’t in the market for “heart” before AI art existed anyway.
My argument is, much like photography, artists, more than ever, need to imbue their art with value via telling a good story or helping spotlight someone else’s story. Like I said in the first episode of this podcast: That’s really hard. It takes a good hard look at oneself to pull that off.
The art industry is always changing. There will always be new snags and things that threaten the established order. A good story for someone to get invested into will never go out of style. The trick is to get really good at telling that story. The ones that tell a good story will inherit the earth.
The “how” of telling that story is a different question though. For travel photographers, you want to bring your audience along for the ride. It’s simple psychology: give people social currency that they can use to make themselves look more interesting and cool. Imagine you’re at someone’s house for dinner and you ask about someone’s print on their wall, and they answer: “Have you seen that video of that guy who travelled 5,000 miles just to get one photo? Check this video out!” Make it shareable, make people proud to show it off.
Personally, telling a good story is something I’m working to get better at. The topic of photographer websites are for a different episode, but the simple “portfolio” style photography website is basically just an expensive business card (and most business cards end up in the trash) We have to do more.
Taking a photo or creating the piece is only a small portion of the job. If all you want to do is enjoy taking the photos and making the artwork, then be honest with yourself and just do that. If you want to be an artist or photographer as a career, it doesn’t matter that someone out there is making photos or painting with AI. It doesn’t matter that someone took the same photo of a mountain that you did. The question you need to answer, is “Why is mine valuable?”