Seriously, though, I’ve been busy reading.  And writing.

Some of the reading I’ve been doing lately is about writing.  The reputation that I hear I have is for being a good writer.  Truth is, though, writers are made; not born.   There’s definitely truth to what Nancy Lamb says in The Art And Craft Of Storytelling: A Comprehensive Guide To Classic Writing Techniques:

Some people are born with the gift of storytelling.  You know them: friends who can talk about the most mundane encounter and captivate an audience.  They know just when to pause, when to draw out the details, and when to deliver the punch line.  They’ve got the instinct for narrative.

But she goes on to point out some equally true facts about the writing life:

Even if we’re not among those fortunate few blessed with this inherent skill, we can learn how to master it.

Storytelling is an art, but it is also a craft….

Craft involves technique.  Craft has rules.  If a potter doesn’t center the clay on the potter’s wheel, he can’t throw a pot.  If a cabinetmaker doesn’t measure the wood carefully, cut corners at the proper angle or join those corners correctly, she can’t build a level table. What the potter and the cabinetmaker produce may be art.  But they could not produce that art without craft.

What Lamb doesn’t say is that even those with an instinct, or an affinity, or — if you prefer to think of it this way — a natural ability for a thing must work to hone it.  Michael Jordan may have been “something” from the minute he picked up a basketball, but don’t doubt for a minute that he became the legend he is through constant and repetitive practice.  Michael Jackson was a hit from the minute he stepped onto a stage; it took several decades of daily repetitive practice to build him into the King of Pop.

I’ve never had the privilege of meeting either of the Michaels mentioned above.  But from what I’ve read, Michael Jackson was familiar with those who came before him; he admired and studied them.  From them, at least indirectly, he learned about craft.

My life has (obviously) not been as glamorous or as well-followed as these icons in their fields.  This provides all the more reason for taking my cue from them.  Thus I’ve spent a great deal of time lately reading books about writing.

Actually, I’ve always done this.  But I’m stepping it up because I’ve finally decided that if writing is where my strength really lies, then it’s time to stop relying upon any “natural gifts” I may have in this area; it’s time to do some work on craft.

They say that practice makes perfect.  But I suspect that practice does not make perfect, if one practices imperfectly.  So far, most of my writing — check out my various websites accessible from the main page of this website — has been based on whatever “natural” abilities with which I was born.

It’s time to take the next step.  If I can.  Time to embrace that which (because of the pain involved), I’ve resisted.  So, for now, I’m digging into a study of the craft of writing.

Tomorrow, I may begin to write again.

Why not kill a small flock of birds with one stone?  Isn’t that partly what trackbacks are for?

The Crux of the Problem is Not Bad Photography

I’ll ignore the bait I so wanted to jump on when JimmyD pointed out Justice Stewart’s cop-out comment that he knows porn when he sees it. I’ll also point out that I (mostly) agree with JimmyD’s comments. (If you like good photography and aren’t offended by nudity, JimmyD’s own interesting photography blog is worth checking out.)

However, I don’t think that I agree JimmyD got to the crux of the argument in the Slate article. So my agreement with some of JimmyD’s comments does not mean I agree they explain the problem Lehrman was addressing.

Lehrman’s complaint is more darwinian.

After pointing out that critics think the problem is that old-time fashion photographers believed they were just doing a job and current fashion photographers cover their inadequacies by calling themselves artists, Lehrman actually disagrees that that is the problem. It’s not, Lehrman says, that too many photographers see themselves as artists and not photographers who “were just working for a living.” Sure the fashion photographers of years past were just photographers working for a living, she says. But they were also artists.

So that’s not the problem.  And Lehrman has two other complaints, but they are not the problem, either. One complaint is that some modern photographers forget the art part; some forget the commerce part. Still another complaint is (and I think this is what JimmyD was commenting on) that too many modern “photographers” aren’t really photographers. As Lehrman notes on slides 24 and 25, the fashion photographers of the past were steeped in art.  They really knew what art was — and not the way Stewart knew porn; they could actually explain why something was (or was not) art.  Today’s fashion photographers don’t have that.  At best, they have some good instincts; at worst, they have the flawed photographic skills which, as JimmyD notes, causes them to produce bad photographs and dub them “art.”

Nor is the Crux of the Problem the Photographers

However, this is not the cause of the decline of fashion photography.  Blaming the decline of fashion photography on poor photographers is like blaming real prostitutes for the existence of prostitution.  Without the johns — without the market — the prostitutes do not thrive.  Prostitutes are, in the end, just people taking the easy way out; people looking to make a living without exercising any other real marketable skills.  They can do this by artlessly offering up their bodies for sex, or artlessly shooting piss-poor photographs for art directors and fashion magazine editors.

The Problem is the Art Directors and Fashion Magazine Editors

Lehrman would agree.  If you read through all the slides, she consistently puts the blame where it belongs: in the lap of the johns: the art directors and fashion magazine editors.

There still are photographers steeped in art and striving for visual sophistication and beauty.  Even more, there are photographers without the art background striving for visual sophistication and beauty.  I know some of them.  But as Lehrman points out,

Fashion photography isn’t obligated to take readers into an elegant fantasyland, though that certainly was nice. But it should be different from photojournalism, and especially photojournalism concentrating on society’s dark side. (Slide 17.)

Yet, as the majority of Lehrman’s slide comments point out, it’s the fashion magazine art directors and editors we have to blame for the fact that fashion photography has replaced beauty with photojournalism concentrating on society’s dark side, or shock photography, or “fashion” photography that has lost touch with both the art and commerce of fashion photography’s past.

JimmyD finally makes that same point in the last comment left on the subject at StudioMarcotte when I wrote this article.

[It] seems to me that many art critics are exactly the people who have attempted to elevate crap to art. Unfortunately, they’ve been successful at doing this a few too many times.

There are good photographers attempting to do fashion photography the way it used to be done.  They’re trying to do what JimmyD, Bob, and the others commenting at StudioMarcotte might consider “art” versus “crap.”

The problem with today’s fashion photography isn’t with the photographers.  The problem is more darwinian: it’s with the selectors. And until we start selecting for beauty, artistic sophistication and commerce, that’s the way it’s going to be.

In short, the problem with fashion photography is that fashion is out of style.

You can view my work on ModelMayhem and So Shoot Me!™

For more on my artistic endeavors, read this post. To hire me for photographic, artistic (including advertising) or website design, send email to rick over here at RickHorowitz.com

These days, I don’t get much time to shoot, because I’m trying to start a law practice.  A friend has a studio and occasionally, I’ll join him for a shoot, or borrow his studio and bring in a model myself.

These days, I feed my artistic self by trying my hand and designing and maintaining my various websites and blogs.  When I get time, I play around with photographs I’ve taken in the past — I’ve a rather large collection numbering in the thousands — and try my hand at transforming them into digital paintings.

If I ever strike it rich and don’t need to work a job for money, I’ll probably try to get more advanced training in digital painting and photographic techniques.  Then I’ll spend my retirement pretending to be an artiste.