flying can be kind of a pain sometimes, but i get in a "zen" kind of mood when i travel and so the whole process is relatively painless for me…besides, i look at the upside…i try to do things when i travel that i cannot possibly do any other time….like expense accounting…..like making my "to do" lists….like taking stock of my life….but mostly, like reading….that is all i do when i fly besides sleep….read and read….the movie is never good..
the next book i must read is al gore’s new book "The Assault on Reason"….there was a cover story on al in the current issue of "Time" which i read on the flight back from boston this morning….The Last Temptation of Al Gore"….a story all about whether al should run for president again, written by eric pooley who i had shot some pictures with many years ago when i was doing some freelancing for "Time", my first professional magazine work….al gore’s new book is evidently about awareness and action and a democracy that needs an overhaul…i will say no more because i have not read the book….
al gore is not a close personal friend, but his wife tipper is…..or rather i should say, she is a really close personal friend of jodi cobb and i am often in social scenarios with jodi….tipper is a photographer…she was in my class as a student at rich clarkson’s workshop program in jackson hole, wyoming just last fall…tipper worked with jodi at the newspaper in nashville way back when…i will do a story on tipper under "family friends" soonest…
anyway, we all remember al gore’s famous gaff about being the "inventor of the internet"….i do not remember the details of that statement , but he did take a lot of good natured "heat" for the comment….however, al gore may not have invented the internet, but he is one of the internet’s strongest supporters…..he feels we have lost touch with each other…that democracy is being hurt because we no longer talk to each other…
both print and television fail us in interpersonal communication…"letters to the editor" is as close as it comes….gore sees the net as a community builder….interchange…chat…conversation…..no doubt, one to one chat in the living room #1…..internet exchange of ideas #2….the other media fall way way behind in this regard…..it is just not their nature….not interactive…
traditional media offer "presentations and packages" by editors and producers who are trying to figure out what their audience wants…with the net, the "speaker", writer or photographer goes straight to his or her audience and builds the audience with "personalized" content….the author’s content…a story…a stream of conscience tale ….if nobody likes this content they go somewhere else…but if you do have an audience, you have an audience… period .. built with your content….print magazines at their peak had "voices"….henry luce….melville bell grosvenor
i do not know whether al gore will run for U.S. president or not….he is in such a respected position right now as a sincere alarmist for our fragile environment and as a champion for the net …he claims we may have to fight sooner rather than later for freedom on the net as we had to fight for a free press….and the man has been a major environmentalist since he was in college..gore has spent his whole adult life with global warming as his major concern….al gore might just be better off staying right where he is….
but i think he is right about the community building power of the net….those of you who are still reading now know exactly what i mean…look at us right here…pretty cool right??? how else could we be doing this?? nice for me because it helps me keep my thoughts "organized" and is becoming the same kind of "diary" of life i did as a 14 yr. old photographer….and hopefully, this is nice for you because i try to put myself "in here" only to the extent that it will be useful information for you…mostly to let you know that i have the same problems as you or have had the same problems as you or certainly will in the future have the same problems as you ….the only thing i really have to "offer" is my current experience in the publishing world… both magazines and books…. and my long term friendships with so so many people in this biz….and mostly with the shared experiences i live every time i teach a workshop….i believe my students will tell you…
if i can keep this audience, we can do some really amazing things….here i am dreaming again, but sometimes my dreams happen…actually, they usually happen!!! once i focus, i am on the case!!
i am not a "plan oriented" person…i act spontaneously , recklessly, passionately…instinctively….for this i pay a price……i scramble with finances always…total disaster…..i must have some kind of organization wired into my hard-drive or i could not possibly have been a professional photographer all this time…but, you would never know it by looking….i mean really really i am a nightmare on this front….
i pay this price…but, i also receive this reward…..freedom….real freedom…feels good….so why not take this special time in my life and move it forward in a meaningful way??….what i want to do is create some production money for you…..so that a selected few of you would be able to go work on a project of your choice….i would have to go find money….from corporations , from generous funders…this is not anything i have ever done…..but imagine if these donors ended up endorsing some truly creative photography that would be printed in an annual super quality magazine format where the photographers had all the control..with just a little help from me maybe!!! and an exhibit of course…..
the sponsors would get terrific press, prestige and a positive long lasting image with a young audience of serious photographers which is exactly who you guys are….there would be no direct product advertising in this annual…but, sophisticated logos front or back or whatever but with a "museum quality" look to it…
we use the net to "community build" and then take that to reality…to print…
another piece of this corporate funding i would want to go for free photo workshops in developing countries where the emerging photographers cannot possibly afford one of the current workshops ….another major piece of good press for our donors…even patch it in with some worthwhile ngo projects and build a workshop around an issue….have part of this mythical magazine use these pictures too…
now anybody can have an idea like this….there must be better ones around…i only have one thing going….a voice, a personal voice…..you are the ones who have told me that …that is not my claim….those are the claims from the letters i receive from you…i do not edit those letters and i am still waiting for some "hate" mail of some kind….but honestly , the best part of this blog is "inside"….the comments….i can’t believe it sometimes when i read your letters…heartwarming, clarifying, philosophical and often poignant……it is only because of your comments that i even had the, perhaps unrealistic, perhaps doable, ideas laid out above….i sense my audience here….i think you sense it back…
this is definitely a "we" thing…an interesting experiment and a new kind of collaboration….i certainly cannot do this without you….it would be fun if we even just could pull off one issue….so, let me know what you think…straight up….let’s face it, this seems like an exciting thing to think about and if nothing comes of it, what have we lost???
all you have to do is be here….all i have to do is make it worthwhile…
I agree with you Lance.. traveling camera is good idea, but it shouldn’t be story about “everything” it has to be one choosed topic for everybody
I am hungry too ;)
another thing to think about….
why is the camera traveling and who does it go to??? in other words, if we took all of the photogs who will get this camera to just take a picture on the theme decided, would the final result not be the same?? or does the camera get sent randomly like a chain letter??
somebody has to think of a “reason” for the camera to be traveling in terms of the actual pictures which will be taken….
carlos, where did you go??? come back and give us some details!!!
Hi…I’m with a big “monga” right now (cold) I don’t want to go to work buy I have to….
I think that this project should have one theme in common, something that affects everybody everywhere right now and maybe the enviromental issue is a good one (I don’t know). I also think that maybe the last person that have the camera should decide where to send it next to make the thing less predictable and to really reach new and unknow places…bib places and little places…
When 9/11, I bought a picture thru an organization called “Here is New York”….eveybody that was near the twin towers during
9/11 sent pictures to this organization, they print them out and you can buy them for $20….you never new who was the photographer…maybe was David…Steve McCurry or just Carlos Rubin a tourist in NY during those days. This little detail made de project unpredictable and made people buy the pictures for the right reasons…to help.
I also remember the impact that I had when I went to ICP in New York with my wife to see an exhibition about 9/11. I remember that they put there a Canon body, full of dust of a photographer that died while working but he managed to take several last pictures that were recovered….That day, for me, that Canon body was a lot more than an object to see..I think that maybe the traveling camera as I say before is a ‘concept” or “gymic” to make this journey more interesting, to bring more awareness to the project, in a way, it’s a “marketing tool” a very symbolic and emotional one…
If we rationalize why are we doing this….we don’t have to because the results can be achieve without so much hard work, because at the end what we need is the pictures.
But, the “romantic” and emotional value of a camera traveling camera on its own, around the world with a mission, unifying people with a same purpose, transmiting positive energy from hand to hand, going from famous photographers to unknown….
makes this project “likeable” to a mass audience….not only to
a community pf photographers. It will be appealing to media because it has a “soul”,,,the camera becomes somebody…and that…at the end will bring a lot of people to the issue and that should be what we want (enviromental?…the effect of war in families all over the world?….the effect of tecnology in family relations around the world?…This part is hard to me to figure out…just brainstorming…
“monga”… that´s a cool word…
Here we say “Pacheco”… this was the last name of a man who cultivated flowers in the mountain near Caracas… he came down to the city to sell his flowers every December… so the people associated the arriving of the cold with Pacheco… and now we say “hace Pacheco!” (It`s cold!)…
Ok… back to the subject… Am thinking about your brainstorming carlos… and am looking to some of the websites and links of the people who write in this blog… trying to find common subjects… this could be a start to find common interests…
For example, I see a lot of photos of children (most of them in your site)… That could be a subject… or maybe something related with children (the importance of education… I don’t know, childhood is to me a very important theme)… aga has a very interesting essay about being almost a child yet and mother at the same time…
I also see religion as a common point… is everywhere… and is present in most the sites I visited…
I saw also a cool subject named “streets athletes of new york” in lance´s site that made me think a lot… some subject like that… people play games in the street in most of places… a lot of street photography…
to me is important that everybody feel connected with the subject… and seeing all your works I can presume what is important for each one…
Like “monga” or “Pacheco”… the core of the subject is the same… but will be expressed by everybody in a different manner…
Saludos,
Hola Carlos,
somebody mentioned the enviromental issue that is very relevant in this moment…I also like the religion theme because we live in a world of many rituals….Here in Puerto Rico we have a couple of “issues” that are very interesting but I don’t know if they are “worldwide issues”. One of them is “depression” (young people living without any motivation and depressed by war and other issues)…also we have the “lost bullet” issue during celebrations (mostly new years’ eve) where every year innocent people die because of this practice…we also have a new generation of young people with a different concept about friendship (no more getting together…instead you have your tech lab in your room and you chat all day…the facebook, you tube… and so on generation)…we have mothers losing her sons because of Irak…We have new concepts about sex where early experimentation in any direction seems more normal every day….ideas please??
saludos.
Rubín
i think i like the religion theme…within that theme you could actually have all of those other themes included….you can always, anytime, anywhere make a religion picture…no real access required, or at least very little…and religion really is one of the issues of our time , if not THE issue… the energy issue, the war issue, the single mother issue, the abortion issue, etc etc can all be tied to religion….unlimited possibilities….and unlimited editing nightmare!!!!
so, with religion you have open access, can be done any time, and is at least one of the most important themes we could tackle…
What I like about religion is that (at least here) religion have become many things in addtion to rituals. Religion have divided many sectors of our society…they have become like political parties…they fight each other to gain more members…they participate actively in politics issues…lot of thems have become very rich people with their own tv channels and other kinds of media…2 weeks ago came to Puerto Rico somebody that call himself Jesus Christ…the guy is puertorrican, have planes, boats and bodyguards and followers all over Latin America…incredible…
Also caribbean countries like Cuba, Santo Domingo, Puerto Rico and Haiti to mention some of them, have a lot of “Santeria” and other interesting rituals…I think it’s a very interesting theme…In Puerto Rico a church does not pay taxes…is that the same in otther Countries?
saludos.
Carlos Rubin
:-)
Mostly I am shooting religious storys (pilgrimares, processions, religious workshoops, ashura, corpus christi ect…now Mormon missionarys) so i love your idea!
I’m onside. Spending time with you here has awakened in me an irrepressible desire to create. My motivations now are focused towards children. Those most precious of creatures.
I’ve been endeavoring to make photographs of my own youngsters as a way to see into their world as best I can. To capture their pure delight at life’s simple pleasures. To witness their enormous and exquisite imaginings. And in this effort I have come to know myself so much better. The good and the bad but most especially the good.
I want my boys to be free thinkers. To be able to catch those fleeting thoughts and ideas and spend time with them. To mould them. To live them. As I do. As I try to remember to do.
Some of their thoughts and ideas can be quite frightening. But that’s fine. They may only be frightening to us “mature” grown-ups.
Suffice to say, I hope one day to make a book of my work on this. I have made a fine start, me thinks, but there is so much more to do.
My concern here is that many of us parents just don’t get it with kids. They have so much to teach us. All we need to do is partake. To wallow in the mud with them. To smell, to taste, to feel and to see with them. To listen to their quite astonishing questions. But not to intrude. Just visit. Spend time. This is their domain afterall.
This is what I’m trying to do with my photographs.
Thank you David for your brilliance and your dedication to our craft and it’s practitioners. Thank you for helping me to fuel my effort.
Hi everybody…I don’t want to lose the “momentum” that we have with the “Traveling Camera Project”, I’ll love to do it.
I can’t do it myself alone so I want to write down here what I “think” could be a logical plan (in very simple words) and then I’ll love to have feedback from all of you if we still want to do it.
1) We have David’s support (that means a lot)
2) We need to identified a sponsor or a couple of them. For me they should be a Mail Carrier (FedEx. UPS, etc.)a camera manufacturer (Nikon, Canon, Leica) and some “storage” provider like Sand Disk to mention one.
3) We need to write a proposal to those sponsors about the project. In this stage it doesn’t need to be a comprehensive one, just an introductory letter with our idea objectives and goals (to get their attention to the project)
4) Living in an island 100 x 35 I’m not the best guy to do that. Well…I can do it but I need at least somebody that knows any person inside Canon, Nikon, UPS or FedEx main offices so our letter gets there..to the right people
5)That letter can be signed by all of us as an organization or group we can create under the name “The Traveling Camera Project”. That group can live in this Blog if David agrees and I can make a nice logo,letterhead or any other identity if we want to or we need to.
6)While we do all these, we can all define logistics about the project…theme, trayectory, uploads, exhibition?, purpose etc. etc.
7)And then, we have to define a “departure day” and “arrival date” (a launching date and project finale)
8) My questions….
a)What about the religion theme? I like it
b) any other suggestion about theme?
c) Why are we doing this? Maybe this is a group that meet each other thru David’s blog and we decide to send the camera to each other as a way to create a common assignment and share our vision about it…a “symbolic” way to participate together in a commom project?..maybe because we know that we can’t meet in a common place we decided to send our most valuable tool to each other… a colaborative project between very known photographers, unknown photographers and students with one vision in common….
a project that we can repeat every year with new people coming to the blog and make an even more powerful document about the world we all share?
My Tech questions…
1) Does this camera needs to come back to a “headquarter” every 3 trips (for downloads,checks, batteries, etc)
2) film or digital?
3) What happens if the camera get lost or broken (the project comes to an end…we have a back up from our sponsor?
4) Time frame for this project… 1 month…3 months, 6 months…1 year?
let’s do it…I still like it a lot.
Alysia….help please…
Carlos Rubin
Hi Carlos Rubin. Nice to meet you! You may live on a 100×35 island, but you have internet access! That’s pretty cool. This roving camera project is very interesting, but somewhere along the blog I seem to recall it’s a different direction than David’s project. That said, it has some interesting legs (as they say, whoever “they” are). It seems this could be done in a pretty cool way on a site like Zooomr — a sort of mashup media site combining maps (location of photo) with blog and photos… (if you look at Zooomr today, I think they’re transitioning to new servers or something because they’re down now)… It seems a project like this needs some serious structure in order to work. My biggest question (probably asked somewhere up there already) is what difference does it make if the camera travels or if everyone just posts photos from their different region/location? It’s that portion that I can’t seem to wrap my head around because in the end, the product is a photo essay collaboration for which when you look at it you cannot tell if photos were taken with the same camera or not. As someone said above, it’s an experiential piece whereby the end viewer won’t have insight into the experience (of the flying camera)… I’m stumped. If the camera could take photos on its own of its journey (the customs guy, the road to the mailbox, the box opening, the room it sits in until it’s picked up), then we’d see the camera’s story. But that’s not possible (and defeats the artistic expression portion). Otherwise, maybe it’s just as effective and not as difficult to organize this group of DAH bloggers to collaborate on a photo essay (religion is a broad but universal topic) using their own cameras but posting in one mass blog/zooomr collection… The same community could “edit” the photos using some sort of polling and collaborative sorting. It would be a visual blog created by a group… Thoughts? Additional info your project?
- Alysia
“what difference does it make if the camera travels or if everyone just posts photos from their different region/location?”
Hi Alysia,
thanks a lot for your response and suggestions. You’re completely right with your quote above…the difference will be none….the end result will be the same..a photo essay.
Anyway, to me this idea is valuable because it is a “creative concept” a marketing tool to bring more awareness to the pictures, to make the project “memorable”, different and fun…
I come from the advertising business and sometimes is nice to create a “story” to stand out, to make something fresh, to get the attention…this is the reason for this…otherwise it does not make any sense…it’s easier to upload the images.
Maybe I can started it locally, in a smaller scale…I really believe in it…I really like it.
thanks again for your imput.
Carlos
I don’t know.. I am not here to abandon David’s original idea at all, I’d be on board with that in a heartbeat of course. But to add to the discussion of is there merit/interest in having a traveling camera.. there’s something ‘romantic’ (for lack of a better word) to have your hands on the same piece of equipment that your fellow photographer did just a week or two before, authoring your own piece to the story. It’s another common thread to the overall story, along with the theme/concept, that gives the project ‘legs’, makes it stand out. I guess it really depends on what the final project will be, a web-site? an online gallery? a book? a movie?
Lets do it David…
There s a lot of good photography/photographers out there with quality and will to push this one forward…
I’m in!
Many cheers from London,
Armando