Rainy Day

It's rainy so our male cat, Snookie can be periodically found hiding. He's afraid of the rain. We don't know why. His sister/wife Itsy is not-- like with most things she's quick to investigate and Snookie's default setting is to leap away and run for safety.

Snookie is the cat version of an Olympic athlete-- capable of 8 foot horizontal leaps and perfectly executed landings on kitchen cabinets where he really shouldn't be. We are regularly amazed at his athletic skill. Itsy however, is the cat version of a Corgi, and a rather stout one at that. Short legs, sturdy, she's muscled like a pit bull but doesn't seem aware of it. Snookie is the Alpha and is known at times to bully poor Itsy, who literally outweighs him by 50% but almost always capitulates.

It's fun to watch them play together though, as Itsy has learned to look him in the eye and "roar" like a lion. The sound of her roar is nearly imperceptible. It's not a "meow" and she only does it when staring directly into his eyes in a play session. Think of it: locking eyes from 8 inches away and very, very quietly; “Roar.”

So here is Snookie now, hiding under the furniture because it's raining. I manage to coax him out and say to Sheryl, "Good thing it's not a Monday." and Sheryl laughs because we're both Baby Boomers and know that song by the Carpenters circa 1971. No, not that Carpenters song, no not that one either, the other one. Yeah, Ok, maybe you got it right the first time, but it was long ago and oh so far away, so maybe you didn’t.

And me being me who just made the 1971 pop culture reference joke, has my brain stuck on the fact that Karen Carpenter was a world class drummer and I never knew that as a child because Misogyny. Or we knew it unconsciously but would only ever talk about Buddy Rich or John Bonham or Ringo Starr whom everybody had to say, “No really, Ringo is a good drummer, I mean . . . he’s good in context . . . I mean, did you know he’s left handed? I don’t think Pete Best was a better drummer and only got kicked out of the Beatles because he was better looking than everybody else in the band and all the chicks dug Pete and ignored Paul, George, and John. That’s just an ugly rumor.” But we didn’t talk about Karen Carpenter’s drumming because maybe it was too good.

What we did talk about was her anorexia. And because it’s raining and I have a brain that memorizes details and attaches to them randomly: I’m stuck on the fact that she never had a long and satisfying relationship with a man, even though that’s almost all she ever sang about. She was perfectionist to the max. She was never thin enough, her voice never perfect enough, and probably her drumming was never perfect enough either. I hope in some ways she did have happiness in her relationships of all kinds, that she knew how fucking good she was. How her voice really was perfect and six year old me, sitting on the kindergarten carpet fell in love with her the instant I heard it, and that never stopped. And she starved herself to death at age 33.

Snookie is hiding under a chair in the bedroom again, because it’s raining. Good thing it’s not a Monday. Itsy walks over to check on him and almost sub-audibly, Roars.

 

It's been a long time. I bet you thought this blog was dead? Well it might be. I took a break from social media on a doctor's advice, so here I am not on social media but back to my long abandoned blog. We're in the middle of the second Trumpian nightmare, but it turns out that hearing about it and/or writing about it or even reposting articles, memes or videos constantly can be bad for my health. Most of the health and well being issue is more about the algorithms and the way that social media sort of tricks your brain to stay on the website and keep clicking and scrolling. 

Taking a break from social media had immediate results. I suddenly felt better, lighter. I didn't miss it that much because to be honest I wasn't getting that much out of it in return. I am mostly a big sharer-- finding things from multiple sources and then "spreading the love" by sharing it. I don't always have that much to say especially when an article says it all, but I suspect that my friends weren't seeing much of whatever I posted with  a link, maybe because clicking away from the primary social media website is counter to the goal of keeping you on the website to show you ads. I'm just guessing, but they do make their money from ads, don't they? Like, all their money. So it turns out that social media isn't really about being social. It's maybe about addicting your brain to certain forms of stimulus to keep you on a website and being subjected to advertising. Fun times, but our brains aren't really built for that. The technique includes "top down" and "bottom up" programming, apparently. You can look it up but I might provide a link. I don't know though, wouldn't want you clicking away now, would I? In my case the overall effect started to manifest as both anxiety and depression. I'm not saying that you can't or shouldn't do social media but if I* was offering advice I'd say keep hard limits on it and use it with your own discipline to get out of it exactly what you want out of it. That's all for now I guess. Maybe more later.

Wildebeest painting

"Wildebeest" by Paul Hood copyright 2015 all rights reserved, no duplication or usage without my express written permission.

This is my latest completed painting, currently titled "Wildebeest". I wanted to have fun with bold brush strokes and colors, especially on the body. This "looking back over the shoulder" is apparently pretty common with the wildebeest, or Gnu, based on several pictures I've seen of them it just seems to be a common thing that they do. I roughed out the general shape in pencil, then I played around over that with colored chalks and with gesso. The gesso and chalk under-layers were mostly obliterated when I went in with paint. I actually wanted to see if I could "fix" the chalk with a casein based fixative that we have, but to be honest it never really worked. I'm interested in working more with casein because I like to combine drawing with painting. I'm fond of line work, brush work, and the shading that can be done with pastels or charcoal, but getting it to 'stick' and be durable when you come in with paint or clear varnish is tricky.  The landscape and horizon line background is something I started months ago, when an extended case of vertigo prevented me from doing much of anything at all, including painting. At that time I was going to overlay a stylized horizon line indicator from aircraft type display-- having it skewed to mirror my vertigo, but I couldn't stand to do that. I found the flat horizon line so comforting at that time, that I couldn't stand to mess with it. I used that painting therapeutically, to stare at it from the couch when my vertigo was bothering me, and it actually did help.

Ironically, my vertigo started to come back around the time I started in again on this painting, but by then I really wanted to do more than the flat horizon anyway and the vertigo didn't get any worse. I have a series started now, of African animals, so I'll do that until I'm done with it. They're all colorful, with a certain amount of bold brushwork, bright color combinations, and aspects of my personality that mostly seem to come out in my art.

Here's another guy experimenting with milk-based fixative:
http://ryanmcjunkin.com/using-skim-milk-as-a-drawing-fixative/

The White Elephant

 

So, it's been awhile. I decided to take up painting more seriously, and since I seem to enjoy painting large mammals, lately from the African continent, I painted an elephant. This one is a mixed media piece in that I used charcoal in addition to acrylic paint. There are also some hints of graphite from the under layer. I generally leave some of my "working marks" because I like the effect. Obviously I'm not after realism. It's a fairly large piece, at 30 by 40 inches. I went into it not knowing exactly what colors I would use, and it ended up to be a bit of a "white elephant". Now, a white elephant gift, in my culture anyway, is an odd gift that you give as a sort of joke. Everybody shows up and tries to outdo each other with the weirdest gift around. However, looking up the origins of the "white elephant gift" I discovered something a little more interesting here . I'm pretty fond of elephants, actually, and I didn't paint this as a joke. Despite their size, they seem to be pretty gentle creatures and it's hard not to be fascinated by them. While elephants may not be sacred according to my spiritual beliefs, any more than any other creature, I nonetheless have some feelings of reverence towards them. At this point in time I don't have any intentions to paint anything that isn't uplifting in some way, and respectful of my subject, so I'm moving forward with that.

The Giraffe Riddle

 On an unrelated note, this is me with my giraffe painting titled "Tall, with freckles". OK now, our story:

It’s not you. It’s “The Giraffe Riddle”.  It has nothing to do with giraffes. It’s a riddle on Facebook and it went sort of viral.

Here’s the riddle:
“It’s 3 a.m., the doorbell rings and you wake up. Unexpected visitors! It’s your parents and they are here for breakfast. You have strawberry jam, honey, wine, bread and cheese.
 What is the first thing you open?”

As riddles go, it’s screwy, in that it’s written in second person and present tense and it’s supposed to be designed to trip you up so that you get the “wrong” answer. If you get the wrong answer you have to change your Facebook profile pic to a giraffe for a week, or three days, or something. It’s a bad riddle because it immediately garnered not one but two potentially right answers and a lot of people are disagreeing about which one makes more sense. Others meekly agreed to just be a giraffe, and I guess to try to trip others up. So, you know, spoiler alert, I’m going to get specific.

You’re supposed to guess quickly and guess wrong. If this was a good riddle it wouldn’t have gone viral. This is the “hanging chad” of riddles. It drew accidental attention. Somebody even made up a hoax that it’s a virus or an insidious plot of some kind. It isn’t. Wrong guesses would be any one of the food choices or the wine. Right guesses, depending on who you talk to, are “the door” or “your eyes”. These two choices are now hotly debated on the internet as to which is the right answer. News stations have picked up this riddle and broadcast it. And there are giraffes galore, and people refusing to be giraffes because they’re sure they’re right, and/or pressuring their friends to be giraffes because they got it wrong.

This reminds me of poorly written tests I’ve had to deal with ever since I was a kid, and through college, and hopefully never again. One question I remember said “Can you give three examples of. . . blah blah blah” and so I answered it, “No, I can’t. And that’s the right answer.” I didn’t get credit. It was the right answer. Not to worry, I’ve graduated with three degrees, Cum Laude. And I have other funny things to say about college some other time.

But back to the giraffes: any answer you give is the right answer for at least two reasons. Given that the riddle is written in second person (you) and you’re the one reading it, you get to decide what you’d do in that circumstance. After all, the actual question is, “What is the first thing you open?” Well the first thing you open is the first thing you open. Free will. It could be anything. They ask (and presumably, “they” are a consortium of giraffes who have learned to type, go online, and join Facebook) essentially, “what do you do?” Well you’d do whatever you’d do. For the purposes of illustration, some of the first things I’d open if my parents rang the doorbell at 3am expecting breakfast: the gun safe, a box of ammo, the closet where the baseball bat is stored, things of that nature. One clever respondent stated that the first thing they’d do is “open fire”. In a calmer moment, the first thing I’d open is a competency hearing if both my parents showed up at 3am for a light snack, or any other meal.

I’m just getting started.

We know that any of the food choices are deemed wrong. But seriously, depending on your relationship to your parents and/or the possibility that one or both of them are dead, you might indeed open the wine if they’re ringing your doorbell at 3am for any reason. You might not be in so all fired up of a hurry to break bread with the undead who walk the earth seeking, oh, I don’t know, to eat your brains? Yeah. Have a glass of wine first and ponder the options. Given this scenario, however ironic it may seem, any of the food choices opened with the intention of feeding the zombie parents would be wrong again, because in fact, your brains are the only thing they’ll eat. Nothing else is palatable. But again, given this scenario, opening the door is also the wrong choice if you’d rather keep your brains. And the other “right” answer, opening your eyes, was probably a bad idea too, assuming that your door is locked. Better for your psyche to sleep through the parental zombie show.

This might bring us to the fact that the second-person present-tense riddle also appears to be written from an omniscient narrator perspective. Sure. Why not. You’re asleep, the bell rings, you wake up, now be careful here— you may or may not have opened your eyes— it’s present tense and we don’t know, not yet, because everything is happening right now. Perhaps through extraordinary psychic abilities you know, you just know with absolute certainty, even though this is entirely unexpected, that it’s your parents at the door wanting breakfast, that the time is 3am, you’ve an accurate mental inventory of the foodstuffs available and some vague sense that something must be opened. Don’t forget now, that the correct answers are either “the door” or “your eyes”. Here’s the deal, second person omniscient in the present tense means. . . you are now God. What need have I of “doors”? And my eyes are all seeing throughout the universe and all of time. My choice is going to be to open the gates of heaven, and me and the zombie parents are walking right in. This honestly feels like the right choice, intuitively, and being omniscient I’m sure I’m right.

As an aside, however, I have to mention that it’s downright bizarre that God has wine but no coffee. Must be an oversight in the Giraffe theory of the cosmos.

Next scenario: Maybe we assume the narrator is not omniscient. So, even though it’s still written in present tense we make a huge leap of logic to presume that you woke up, opened your eyes, discovered with absolute certainty without opening anything (blinds, drapes, window. . .) that your parents are behind the door and that they want breakfast. You’ve looked at a clock or your watch and you know that it’s 3am. Have you “opened a light” ? My partner is from the East coast and that’s what they say there, “open the light, close the light.” Sorry, no, that would be a wrong answer. The gods of meme have determined this. Somewhere in there you’ve either checked the food inventory without opening anything like the frig or pantry, or your razor sharp mind at three a.m. with no coffee already knows exactly what you have and have not. Remember the question is not “what do you open next?” it’s “What is the first thing you open?” I may have opened my mouth to yawn. Wrong answer. I may have opened my mouth to speak— which may have been part of the conversation with the parents telling me they want breakfast. Wrong answer. OK, ok, we give the benefit of the doubt that all kinds of stuff have already been opened, even though, peculiarly, we’re speaking in present tense. “What is the first thing you open?” Which should actually read, “What is the next thing you open?” I’m giving enormous amounts of presumption here. With the presumptions, “your eyes” is the wrong answer because you’ve already been up for awhile so of course your eyes are already open. And you aren’t blind. Or deaf, because you had to have already had a conversation through the door to determine that it’s your parents and they’re here for breakfast. The remaining right answer is “the door”, given all the presumptions and, oh yes, this presumes that the door has not already been opened, even though this is not stated, not anywhere.

Wait, wait now, that’s funny, why would we presume all that PLUS the idea that the door has not yet been opened? Why, indeed. Dropping the idea of omniscience, everything stated in the scenario has been verified by the senses. Heard the doorbell, opened your eyes, looked at the clock, went to the door and opened it. It’s your parents, rather unexpected, but there they are and they want breakfast. You invite them in and check the pantry for a rather paltry list of foods—(where is the coffee, damn it?). And now the question. “What is the first thing you open?” In this scenario and in present tense, all eyes are open. Mom and pop are on the couch. Door has been safely opened and closed again. The food is waiting and everyone is hungry. Any food choice would logically be the right answer. “The door” or “your eyes” makes no sense whatsoever in this scenario, because with eyes wide open you already invited your vampire parents through the front door at 3am. Dang it. Open your veins and become a creature of the night. It’s a family tradition. But see, that’s the “wrong answer”.

The really funny part is this: Some of my friends said, “Duh! The door.” and they were deemed correct. Some others said, “Your eyes.” And they were deemed correct, or not, because then fights broke out. Friendships were lost forever. People became giraffes. Anybody who named a food or a drink was “wrong”. At least one of my friends said, “I felt really dumb when I heard the right answer.” Yeah, that’s the funny part, because the riddle was written badly. Every interpretation could be right, or wrong. “Your eyes” means you interpret the question as “What is/was the first thing opened?” “The door” means you interpret the question as “What is the next thing that is to be opened?” oddly presuming that the door has not yet been opened, despite all evidence to the contrary, and that choosing to open the food is a trick and is therefore the wrong answer. In order to answer the question you have to presume or guess what the questioner is looking for. You have to censor, judge, presume, rule things in, rule things out, and most of all suspend your disbelief at this preposterous and likely dangerous scenario.

For the record, I first guessed "the door" and then “your eyes” and about ten seconds later determined that the riddle itself was a fail with no absolute right or wrong answer. Now it seems to be that the internets have decided that the first thing you open is the door. I don’t know man, the door to consciousness would be a better idea. Open the conversation with the parents as to why they’re ringing your bell in the wee hours for breakfast, but by all means do that before you open the door because even if they are neither zombies nor vampires they’ve probably been kidnapped and are in the company of terrorists and therefore breakfast is the least of your worries. Inventory the food at some future time when the threat has passed. But seriously, who shops for you? No coffee, no tea, no cream or eggs? At least stock up on some brains or whole blood for marauding relatives with an odd sense of timing.

Here it is again, that crazy riddle: “It’s 3 a.m., the doorbell rings and you wake up. Unexpected visitors! It’s your parents and they are here for breakfast. You have strawberry jam, honey, wine, bread and cheese.
 What is the first thing you open?”

If you no longer have any compunction to even try to answer this riddle, then my work is done.

Some photos I shot in Bellingham, WA

 In the name of keeping up my artistic interest I am revisiting some old photos like these. The one above I shot in Bellingham in about 2005. My main reason for shooting this was to spook a dog who was charging me by popping my flash unit at him. It worked, and he stopped. Then I discovered that I liked the image.

 Bellingham Bay is a beautiful little body of water. Deceptive in that it seems sheltered and calm, but there are some serious currents. I understand that kayaking at the wrong time of day can leave you swept out to sea and unable to return. Nonetheless a lot of kayakers take the trip, and of course so do fishermen. Some do not return. The shot above is of a kayaker returning home at dusk. He's assisted by a companion seagull.

Another shot of Bellingham Bay, this time a fishing boat is shown in soft focus due to the long exposure. I like the dreamy, soft feel of this shot.

Quincy, California. Just a couple photos.

So, yeah, this is the Quincy public library.

We went to Quincy, CA, and I took a liking to some of the local scenes. The top building is the public library and the bottom one is an unknown building-- seems to be in use but I don't know what it's for.

A Single Strand

"A single strand" Image I just shot in my favorite field across the street from my house. I'm mainly testing to see whether this image shows up better here than it does on Facebook. I may upload and unretouched ( except for resizing ) too, just to compare. Yeah, OK, why not:

Smoother gradients, reduced vignetting. Different color. I may prefer this unretouched image.

Nicole Hugaboom test shoot

Trying several tonal variations after a short test shoot with Nicole Hugaboom. I was just sitting across the table outdoors at a Starbucks here in Chico, California. These are all natural light using different post production techniques. Nicole herself strikes me as very sweet and polite, down to earth. Most likely we'll do more shooting together. She has some kind of cosplay shoot in mind before halloween, so that should be fun. I'm still getting my bearings from having done almost exclusively nature and landscape shoots for the past year.

Brenda Lockie-Knight plays the harp, ukelele and sings at Peet's here in Chico, CA.

Brenda Lockie-Knight plays the Harp, Ukelele and sings too. Wish we could have heard her better, it's a little noisy on the outdoor patio at Peet's here in Chico. She says she also plays at Cafe Flo sometimes. Found her on Facebook http://facebook.com/brenda.lockieknight but she says she's not on there much. Super nice lady. We told her we'd post these photos online, so, with any luck she'll be able to find them.

The first wedding I ever shot in 2005

Looking back at a favorite image from the first wedding I shot in 2005. I realize that it's unusual to see a bride in white holding a baby, and that's part of what I've always liked about it. Life is unusual. It's hard to believe it will be eight years as of next month.

Wedding and Portrait Photography in Chico

 

I decided it was time to go back and look through a set of photos that Sheryl and I shot at the Naked Lounge ( it's just a cafe with great coffee ). Talia Lupita Azul was our model and she did a great job. This was shot with available light only, and Sher helped me modify it a bit to get what I consider to be beautiful light. I really enjoy doing work like this, and I look forward to doing more in the near future.

I had thought that putting up a few ads on Craigslist would get me some bookings, but around here that doesn't seem to work very well. My general impression is that approximately nobody is using Craigslist in the Chico area to find a photographer. I get a few website hits which can be traced back to Craigslist ads, and I've gotten a few contacts, but I also notice that no other photographer posts consistently to craigslist-- they all drop off sooner or later and that wouldn't be so if the ads were actually working. I'll have to explore other channels for selling my work.

I'm actually biting my tongue right now to avoid commenting too much on what other local photographers are doing. I decided a while back to keep a very loose, casual eye on what they're up to. Well, it seems to break down into a few different categories. There are the hobbiests, and there are tons of those. Digital photography just keeps growing in popularity. There are serious hobbiests/ semi- pro photographers. Some of those are pretty good ranging to very good, but in that group mostly what I see is that they get reduced to playing "dress-up" with friends who want to be models or at least play at it. This is likely true all over, not just in Chico. You can be a great photographer but if you aren't good at marketing and selling, you probably won't get hired except by family and friends, and some of our locals are pretty damn good. 

The phenomenon of getting hired by family and friends, church members, coworkers, fellow club members, etc, is that as a marketing strategy, if it were one, it works better than, say, advertising. Your friends may actually follow through with hiring you. There's some trust there already built. They'll probably expect a discount and they'll probably get it, especially when you just think of yourself as "turning pro". You'll probably bump into them over and over again until they remember to actually pony up and do a shoot and so on. None of this is true when you really are a pro. As a pro you have to build trust through other means, you can't afford to offer bottom barrel pricing, and your potential clients aren't predisposed either to hiring you or actually following through, even if you've spent significant time with them already. They won't see you again so it's easy to blow you off.

What's actually bothering me that I've been avoiding talking about is that some of the local photographers who are actually getting some work ( cut-rate work, yes, but still work ). And what bothers me most is that they are absolutely awful at photography. They haven't a clue what they're doing, and it shows. I'm not even being picky: we're talking baby picks where the baby is completely out of focus, bad light, bad composition, bad color, underexposed or wildly over-exposed. . .  pretty much everything a photographer can do wrong is done wrong.  Only fifty bucks for the shoot? So what. And yet, and yet-- they're working and continuing to be hired by family and friends, building confidence, planning to do more and more and more: but they aren't learning from their mistakes. They aren't getting any better. Somehow their clients aren't complaining. What I have to assume is that the proliferation of amateur photography is keeping expectations very low. Is it because the low rate photographers are so cheap? Well there's cheap and then there's worthless. Maybe if the end result marginally beats a cell phone pic it's considered acceptable? I don't know. This "dumbing down" of the art of photography is pretty troubling to me, where the expectations of quality are so low, and the price point as well. The low end photographer and the low end client threatens to kill off the mid level photographers market where there's actually some talent.

It's a bit like Walmart. Your local hardware store gets driven out of business because everybody is buying the cheap crap at Walmart. One day you go back to the old hardware store because you need something good and it just ain't there. Gone.

The thing about the mid level photography market is:

#1 That's where all the new talent gets developed. Eventually this feeds the higher end markets and that's where the top end talent gets nurtured.

#2 It's accessible but not "dirt cheap" to consumers. Maybe there's just enough profit to keep a dedicated photographer going, to continue to build his skills and move onward and upward. 

#3 It helps to "set the bar" for a certain level of quality in the field, and expectations for better things to come in the future.

    So I don't think we can afford to lose that. It's kind of like the middle class in America, it drives everything.

RIP Brett Olson

A young man was lost to drowning in the Sacramento River this past week. His body turned up a week from when he went missing. Some 90,000 people in the meantime got together and tried to help find him, or became involved in one way or another. Not to mention the County Sheriffs and Chico Police dept. Anyway my point is not to be a news source here-- you should look elsewhere for that. I noted that in the interim many, many false sightings occurred and I'm sure many well-meaning people who thought they were helping feel kind of bad right now. One thing I noticed within the last couple of days was that Brett's missing iPhone was somehow found,  and that Brett's mother appeared to be very encouraged by this.

I'm just hoping that everybody who thought they saw him, or otherwise tried to contribute positively to the case can realize that anybody can make a mistake, and that they should forgive themselves. It was wishful thinking, and a lot of people wanted very badly for this young man to be found safe and returned to his family and friends alive and well.

Some people, myself included, were less hopeful about the outcome, but that doesn't make the ending any less tragic-- no matter what anybody did, thought, hoped for, this is one of those times when something just happened and you can't turn back time and change that.

Is Self Defense Spiritual?

So. . . this isn't the first time that the question came up, and to be honest it isn't usually a question, it usually arrives in the form of an accusation, or worse, an insult. The question, if it were put in a civilized way ( I'm big on civilness lately ) would be "Is self defense spiritual?" And the answer is: of course it is. Never heard of Martial Arts? Distinctly spiritual. Or how about the Shao Lin order: kick ass monks, they are. There are gentler forms of martial arts such as Aikido which turns an opponent's attacking energy back against them. Then there's Tai Chi which is even gentler, but it's still about moving and redirecting energy to where it is appropriate and beneficial. Redirecting energy is healing, and so I say, let the healing begin.

Pacifists can be spiritual too, of course. I don't question pacifists. I don't insult them. I don't even wonder whether or not pacifism is connected to their spirituality. It might be. It might not. What it really is, is, none of my business. I respect a pacifist for their choices just as much as I respect the next person for defending themselves, or others. If a pacifist changes his mind I still respect him. Same goes for a non-pacifist who says "no" one day to self defense, even if he changes his mind five minutes later. It's really all about personal choice and the right to live one's life as one chooses. Naturally if we do that we recognize the same rights for others. That's the ideal scenario, in any case.

Where does it become a gray area: how about when a pacifist gets all up in my face for having defended myself? Yeah, would a pacifist do that? Yep. I can witness on that, several times in the past. There will probably be more attacks by pacifists, or those who otherwise find themselves more "spiritual than thou" whenever I do or say virtually anything which does not agree with what they personally think is "spiritual". The good news is, I've only ever been attacked in such a way by people who don't know me at all: they just do a "drive by" and then keep on rolling.

And then it got very quiet and peaceful, downright civilized.

So. . .  we're not famous enough to have to institute an email blacklist yet. Not that we ever set out to be famous, but we did discover a while back that getting enough business involves getting noticed enough statistically to secure sales. Any shyness we had needed to go away or at least be dealt with. One of our outreach tools was Youtube ( more on that in just a minute ).

The update on my angry little troll is that he made another squeeky angry sound at me so I reported him to his ISP and to his domain registry for "cyber-harassment" and I may have taken some further steps to try to make sure that anyone else he's harassing can figure out who he is, where he lives, and how to reach him by telephone should they need to file a police report. Yep, a police report. Harassing isn't legal, it pretty much falls under "stalker" laws. In this particular case we're talking about a guy who setup a domain name and email for the sole purpose of hurting people, and like I said in a previous post, he's been at it for years.

Update: However, even in trying to do good, sometimes mistakes get made. Not every bit of information can be verified, and sometimes despite all best intentions, things go wrong. I'll still try to do the right thing if I see or experience bullying, but the fact is, if somebody is determined to do wrong and then hide under a rock-- it may not always be that easy to find which slimy little rock they're hiding under.

Youtube just instituted a new policy: they're asking people to use their real names. They aren't requiring it yet, but I think they should. This quote pretty much says it all, "95 percent of comments still contain either a racial slur, a sexist tirade, is totally incomprehensible, or some combination of those,"--Leslie Horn of Gizmodo. Because basically, if you create and foster "troll heaven", you're responsible for the outcome, and the outcome in this case is disgusting and harmful.

Anybody seen the Saturday Night Live take on this?

Photographing Talia Lupita Azul in Chico at The Naked Lounge

Images from a recent photo shoot here in Chico, CA at a cafe called "The Naked Lounge". These were all shot in available light in the course of one hour. The model's name is Talia Lupita Azul. She's a joy to work with, really conveys a lot of subtle emotion and presence.

Presenting your art like you mean it

Presentation, presentation, presentation. In Real Estate they say the three principles are location, location, location. I'm pretty much saying the same thing. The idea being that it is where it is and you're stuck with that. Would you rather have the best house in the worst neighborhood, or the worst house in the best neighborhood? You want the worst house in the best neighborhood if you were forced to choose. You can't change the neighborhood ( not very easily, anyway) but you can always fix up the house. And the fact is that most of all what defines the value of real estate is less what it is and more where it is. Similarly I've found that if your art is in a high end gallery, you're going to do better with it than if it's hanging in a run-down coffeehouse. Same art, different location and inherently better presentation will help to equal either more sales or sales at a higher price.

Don't get me wrong, I like run down coffee houses. But then I'm not currently an art buyer. If the run down coffee house is what you have access to, at least try to make sure that you have your work nicely matted and framed and well lit. You may or may not sell anything, but you will have made a start and that's important too. I think the most important thing when considering where to hang your stuff is to get an idea who the clientele is. Maybe the run down coffee house is frequented by a clientele who can actually afford to buy your art--- like, if it's near a University, you never know, an administrator or a tenured professor with a few bucks stashed away might take a liking and buy a piece. In that case it's also pretty important to make sure that everything is decently labeled and priced. You may or may not decide to say much about each piece, but if you leave out the words aspect of presentation, make sure it's a very deliberate choice. In the very least say something about yourself even if you don't care to define each individual piece. This may just be my preference, but my artist statement will probably include a nice photo of myself, and I will at least look approachable, friendly. If your coffee house is frequented by doctors, lawyers and other professionals that's good too. The people who buy your art have to have the money to buy your art. There's no getting around that.

If your run down coffee-house is frequented only by college or high school students, don't expect to sell anything unless you're selling whatever is currently popular amongst that age group by way of a large poster for about 6 bucks. I don't in any way claim to know what's popular with people 30 years younger than me. I'm pretty sure a lot of 20 somethings are spending their life savings on tattoos. In fact I know of a few younger artists who are concentrating their efforts on tattoos because at least they can get paid that way.

When we spent a couple of months in Santa Fe, we asked every single gallery owner about the marketing of art. We thought they'd all have the same things to say about what worked. Well they didn't. There was a surprising amount of variation, but one of the common threads was all about presentation. All these galleries were in the known gallery districts of Santa Fe. The prime locations were the most accessible locations: like right on the plaza, or on the lower to the middle part of Canyon Road.  Santa Fe, New Mexico is within the top three art markets in the country. Even at that, there are galleries going bust. If you're in all alleyway off Canyon Road, that might be enough to drive you out. If you're the last gallery at the top of the road, that could be a problem too because the road is on a slight incline. It's walkable but the altitude of the town is over 7000 feet. A lot of art buyers are elderly. Many of them are from sea-level climates and are just visiting, they aren't acclimated and they never will be. They can't buy your art if they're about to pass out getting to it.
So. . .  rather than try to detail or compile what all the gallery owners imparted to us ( it would be impossible, there were too many contradictions ) I'm just giving an example or two to show the common sense of it all. Selling art is like selling anything. The presentation includes the location, the lighting, the overall atmosphere, the access to "qualified" buyers and so on.

Craigslist works great for some things, not for others.

When I lived in Santa Cruz I was using Craigslist to advertise our spiritual counseling and healing practice, my photography business as a photographer for hire, and separately to promote my art photography and Sheryl's art as well. I even used Craigslist to promote Sheryl's Mamalove Perfume business. It being the Bay Area, Craigslist had a wide reach. We also used some print ads to promote the spiritual healing work, but never to promote the art and photography. I'm not sure why that is, probably it was just a matter of having a budget. Plus, Sheryl and I primarily got together to do the spiritual healing and counseling even though the arts and literature ( and music too, and in my case, film ) were a big part of our lives.

Well things change. We moved around a bit. Eventually we settled in Chico, California. Craigslist itself has gone through a few changes too, and some of the stuff like the healing practice isn't so easy to promote there, but at least the "Therapeutic Services" section is no longer as inundated with sex ads. In any case, here in Chico I tried to utilize Craigslist to promote a host of things over the course of a year and nothing happened. Pretty much nothing. Possibly, absolutely nothing. It can be hard to track, but I am relatively sure that I got nearly zero response until I decided to sell an old bicycle for cheap, then some old bike parts, then a used microwave. Those ads drew overnight and enthusiastic responses. Bing, bang, boom; I actually made money. I had not made money on any other ad, diligently posted and re-posted over the course of a year. Hmm.

Craigslist is for locals, it's supposed to help locals at buying and selling goods and services-- all kinds of goods and services. In the Bay Area, we got some response, not overwhelming, but something. Here, we get nothing. And I don't just mean people aren't buying, I mean people are barely even looking. I have decent enough tracking to know that. Further the pattern is to see similar ads, like for photography services or even spiritual counseling-- to note that they crop up from time to time and then quickly disappear. That's what I saw. That means it's not working for them either. If the ads worked, they'd re-up them. We've moved around enough to discover that it's not the same Craigslist everywhere you go. Bizarrely, it's not the same Google either, but I may write about that another time. I think the first key is to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of a specific medium of communication, but the real lynch-pin, the anchor is to be willing to accept what you see, to act on that and to move onward, onward and upward.

A Chico Photographer on Photo Groups

 Oh, photographer's groups. . . and why I'm pretty reluctant to be a part of one. So, the first time I joined up was in Bellingham WA, about a thousand miles from where I am now in Chico, California. I don't speak of this much but photographers, as a group, have a rather high percentage of assholes. I'm not sure why this is. Male photographers in particular: they certainly aren't all assholes, but seems like a lot of them are, compared to the general populace. So the first photographers group I joined had a couple of "pro" photographers and a couple of hobbyists and one guy who used to be a pro commercial photographer but he had quit. At first I liked all these guys well enough, but pretty soon I got tired of the guy who was sort of randomly hostile for no particular reason. He founded the group and slowly he managed to drive everyone out of it. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why he started the group to begin with. His buddy seemed nice enough, but shortly I got a little tired of his holier-than-thou attitude, not just about photography but about pretty much everything. He's one of these guys who says "Anything I can do to help, just ask me, anytime." And then you do ask him something, some simple question, once, and you're ostracized forever. For the record I'm not one of those guys who says "anything, anytime" because I really, really would not mean it. I'm also one of those guys who usually gives detailed answers to anybody who asks me for a little help, I just don't promise that, because some time or other I won't mean it. Same guy lent me his book about his trip to India looking for his guru wherein he pretty much proceeded to play the right fool. Only he'd written the book in this pompous, elevated style and he hand bound the book and signed it and then proceeded to freak out like I wasn't going to return it to him. Of course I returned it. After a while i realized that the hostile guy was always saying the thing that the holy guy wanted to say but was too holy to do so. Yuch. There were two or three other guys in the group including me and we never managed to get anybody new to show up more than once ( surprise! ) and after a while the whole thing fell apart.

Fast forward and I inadvertently got added to a Chico Area Photographer's group through the magic of Facebook. It's OK probably, for a lot of folks-- there are some 70+ members whom I don't know whatsoever. But only two or three people are ever posting anything. Yes, I could post, sure I could. One of the latest postings was some guy ranting and raving about how much other photographers should share everything they know, and bring him along personally on photo shoots as an assistant so that he can "watch and learn" and how despicable it was that these other photographers weren't doing that. Um, yeah. Well, last time I checked there was a huge amount of teaching material available for free on the internet. Then there are these things called "books" and a whole huge population of people called "teachers" who quite frequently disseminate information, often at places called "schools". As often happens on Facebook, people went "Here here! Yes you are so right, why, every other photographer is personally responsible to educate you!" and nobody suggested to Mr Ranty Pants that he might actually be responsible for his own education. I don't know. In my case my dad taught me a hell of a lot, but later on the things I didn't pick up, or things I forgot, or things I never truly understood in the first place I looked up and studied and memorized. Failing that, a lot of things have been learned through experience, trial and error, or some combination of applying book knowledge to the ever changing conditions of real life. While I am sure that there's a place for peer based learning, and I have for sure published teaching pieces about photography ( and I might do it again ) I never signed up to teach everyone in my path about photography. A big part of this has to do with the fact that a lot of people who think they want to learn photography, don't. If I do sign up to teach, I'm going to expect to be paid. This brings me to my next point about photo groups.

Unless a photo group has a really clearly stated mission, it's likely to end up populated with a hodge- podge of people with a lot of different ideas, goals, and expectations. It can get messy. In this case we've got photographers: some are pro and some are amateur, and that's a big enough rift right there. There are also models, MUA's and I don't know what else. What I see right now are a couple of strong personalities ( one in particular ) milking the rest of the group for free labor on her own photo shoots. I just received a personal complaint that she doesn't treat people very well--- but here's another thing, if your group lacks a mission statement it might also lack any kind of codes of acceptable behavior. Under those conditions, sometimes, you get a wolf, or possibly two, but really one is enough, whose mission becomes eating all the sheep as rapidly as they can consume them. Contrary to how it may seem, I'm not real big on structure or discipline. I'm also not real big on groups unless they have, or can develop at least, a reason to exist. Mostly my experience with groups is that they accomplish what an individual can accomplish with an efficiency which is inversely proportional to the number of members of the group. Back to my earlier point though: one of the bigger problems with photo groups is that pros and amateurs have distinctly different interests. The primary imbalance is that pros expect to be paid, and when they are shooting quite often they're being paid to shoot, and to edit, and indirectly to do outreach and marketing. If they aren't busy, then they aren't doing terribly well as pros. You might have trouble putting together an all pro group in a given area because too many are in direct competition with each other. If there's an all pro group there will be an agenda, or agendas amongst it's membership. An all amateur group might work better, but you run the strong risk of the blind leading the blind, of bad info being spread from member to member--- whatever, I mean if it's all about point and shoots and potlucks then it's all hunky dory. I've just never been interested in that. In an all pro group I myself am concerned about the agenda's. In the particular group I'm in, about 90% of the membership don't appear to be participating at all, less than ten percent are posting anything and one aggressive "pro" is just using the membership to exploit free labor from naive amateurs ( gobbling up the sheep ).

Come to think of it that potluck group sounds pretty good. If we can all agree to leave the cameras at home that could work out just great. We all arrive hungry and carrying food, we all leave full and happy, and in between we all had a great time.

A photographer in Chico; product photography, or photography as product.

This would be an example of product photography. I shot this here in Chico, but I've been shooting bottles of Mama Love perfume in Santa Cruz, Arizona, and probably anywhere else we've found ourselves. I think I discovered my liking for product photography about seven years ago. It's simple and clean and generally doesn't take long. It's quiet and kind of meditative. I rarely think to advertise myself as a product photographer because perhaps, it's too easy. I mean, maybe it's a little harder than it looks. And if you want to finesse it somewhat it can get a lot harder, but maybe when you like it as much as I do it just doesn't feel like work. And yet, you still have to be a competent photographer at least to pull it off at all and it is a sub-specialty genre wherein some photographers shoot nothing but product shots and make a whole living at it.

 I've seen a lot of other photographers in and around Chico but not anyone so far specializing in product photography but that does not mean they aren't here. So. . .  I was pretty surprised to see another photographer based in Ashland, Oregon advertising right next to me. He's been doing exactly the same routine for months now. I have pretty good website tracking, so I know that this guy first looks at my ad ( which usually says something like "portraiture" or "The Art of the Portrait" ) then he goes to my website and looks around a little, and then he posts his ad right above mine: "Product Photography." If you visit his website he claims to shoot anything and everything, not just product shots. I don't see how being a couple hundred miles away is any advantage for him. Is the economy really that bad? I don't think so. If anything, it seems to be looking up. There's little manufacturing in Chico, but maybe things are worse in Ashland? Hope not. I like Ashland a lot and seriously considered moving there. Maybe I should advertise up there. It would be like a cultural exchange. What the hell, maybe a merchant will invite me up for the weekend, I'll bring some big pieces of white paper and my strobes and I'm in there. It's way cooler up there and we've been hitting triple digits. Of course, there might already be photographers up in Ashland, even specialist product photographers, they might live there and wish to make a living where they live.

 I think everybody looks around to see what other people are doing in their field but this one is a bit off. I expect to see the other locals advertising around, and no doubt we all look at each others ads. My issues with some of those ads are usually one of two: charging so little for the service that it makes no sense and undercuts/sabotages the whole industry of pro photography, or, charging too much and having no idea how to execute your craft. In other words, some local photographers are so bad they don't even know just how bad they are, and yet they expect get paid for it. I'm a little embarrassed for the latter, but really the former is a bigger problem: once one schmo charges less than the gas money associated with a photo shoot, another ( desperate ) schmo might try to compete with that. Worse yet, a potential client looking around to get an idea what it costs for a pro photo shoot, including editing, goes "Oh hey, ten bucks!"  Ten bucks? I don't think so. Better to say you're an amateur or a student and you just want to get some experience--- charge them for gas money, a nominal fee for prints or a CD and that's all well and good but please, leave out the "I'm a professional" part. Any professional has some overhead, some skill, some education and experience, and hopefully some self-respect. Unless. . .

The whole industry is going down the tubes? This has been speculated on and written about elsewhere to be sure. By the way, my "ten bucks" "pro" is not a facetious example. This is a guy who claimed a week ago to be into photography "just for the art of it" and he got quite insulting about the motives of other photographers, including, specifically, me. Nice. Can't imagine what he'll do next. he's a loose cannon, or should I say "a loose Canon"?

Honestly, there is no substitute for a skilled, educated and experienced photographer. And while it's not about the equipment, the equipment is getting cheaper and more affordable year after year. This means that more and more people are buying it. This is digital, so there's no outlay for film once the camera, flash memory, computer and software have been purchased, and let's face it, most people who'd buy a digital camera already own a computer and can pick up some basic editing software cheap or free. It's then quite possible to use a pro or semi-pro camera as a point and shoot. I know a "pro photographer" who did this. I'll call her "Jane".

Jane bought an entry level DSLR and immediately hung out a shingle as a pro. She had pretty close to zero experience, training, skill, or even talent. She got a website and greatly exaggerated her background with some cleverly worded copy. She also proceeded to undercut local photographers on price to a stunning degree, deliberately insulting her competition in print for charging too much. Over the years she'd raise her prices gradually until they matched the very price she'd insulted others for--- even though to my perception her skills didn't really improve. On her shoots she'd set the camera on full auto and snap away. Wedding shoots, I kid you not. The funny thing is, she got away with it, for years. Her "secret" I guess, was a lot of post processing. Namely, pushing brightness and saturation to an almost unbelievable degree. Only now is she considering scaling back the operation away from weddings and more towards family/child portraits. She was purportedly working 60 hour work weeks post-processing, and only making about 15 grand a year: making her hourly wage sub-minimum wage. I don't know all the reasons behind it, but the main one I heard was that post-processing the thousands of images associated with a full wedding shoot was pretty much killing her in time consumption. I half expect to see her quit altogether. From time to time I saw her touting the difference between a pro photographer and an amateur as the ability to push a couple of sliders in software, long after all the photos have been shot. Therefore, to my knowledge, she never let a client see an unprocessed image. How could she? Her unprocessed product was of poor quality. The whole arc of her career was indicative of an unregulated industry spiraling out of control. And I say "was" because I fully expect her to quit, having learned little or nothing, driven other, better photographers out of business by low-balling and finally throwing in the towel when her own, sorry but I have to say it, stupidity, drives her out of business.


Now, she's not actually the worst photographer that I know, but the very best photographers I know have spent years of sweat, study and experience learning to put the best image in camera as they possibly can. They do use post processing, but post is the icing, not the cake. And, there's been a long standing saying in several technical industries that I've been involved in: "Crap in, crap out." If that's not obvious enough, it has to do with quality control from start to finish. That's one part of this particular industry which may be in some degree of peril, and it bothers me. I may write more about this later, but I think anyone can see that for one thing, a flood of poorly skilled practitioners representing themselves as professionals competing with each other ( and with "real" professionals too ) partly by low-balling the price structure can bring down the whole profession.