Scr3w the idea of taking pictures for profit

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Ursula K Le Guin's speech at National Book Awards: 'Books aren't just commodities' | Books | The Guardian

Ursula K Le Guin received a National Book Award and said this about writing but it applies equally well to photography.

Right now, we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximise corporate profit and advertising revenue is not the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship.
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Books aren’t just commodities; the profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art.
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I somewhat agree, but also think there is an apples/oranges aspect to this. I can write a book with a pen. I need thousands of dollars worth of gear to produce fine photographs.
 
I could not agree more.

I somewhat agree, but also think there is an apples/oranges aspect to this. I can write a book with a pen. I need thousands of dollars worth of gear to produce fine photographs.

Problem isn't the folks with thousands of dollars worth of gear, it's the one who just got a DSLR from bobs box store and thinks that with some minimal training and a facebook page makes them a pro.

Not only that it's that people seem to think the only way to validate their purchase they have to make money. I've spent thousands on fishing gear and I don't feel the need to make money, I jus enjoy it.
 
I somewhat agree, but also think there is an apples/oranges aspect to this. I can write a book with a pen. I need thousands of dollars worth of gear to produce fine photographs.

People spend years writing, drafting and finding a publisher for their novels. The labor translates into an initial investment that I think is quite higher than the cost of a studio.

So sure it's apples and oranges, but I think it's a smaller up front investment to become a photographer.
 
With the rise of self published ebooks writing even has the equivalent of the Facebook mini-session and a disk photographer!

You don't need 1000s of dollars worth of kit to make important photos, unless you're doing something specialized. Not every photo can be made with the phone you already have. Not every photo can be made with the $600 DSLR kit ($300 used off craigslist, perhaps). But a lot of them can be. You can make a lot of them with a shoebox, a pinhole, and $100 worth of chemistry and supplies.

What is needed, is vision and passion. If you have those and live in a western nation, the small amount of money required is a solvable problem and you'll solve it. Consider it the first test of your commitment.

Money, or the pursuit of same, gets in the way of passion and vision. Technical trivia get in the way of them. In fact, everything that is not vision and passion gets in the way of those.
 
Art reveals something of ourselves to ourselves. Sometimes the revelation is uncomfortable. Sometimes it opens up the eyes/heart/mind a little more. Sometimes it hold up a mirror to our selves and our actions. Sometimes it insults our sacred cows and belittles our idols, and pokes holes in our mythology.

Then there's the "art" that serves as propaganda, or supports an ideology, or feeds our less-than-honorable proclivities. Sometimes it is decorative, or just "pretty". People pay money for stuff that is pretty, doesn't assault their biases, or force them to see stuff they'd rather not see. I totally get Ursula Le Guin's point between "art" as a form of expression, and "art" as a means of making money.

Mind you, "art" doesn't have to be offensive or troubling to be art - it is sufficient for it to get us to see what we would otherwise not notice or pay attention to. But in my opinion, it does have to touch the heart/brain/eye to have any hope of being considered "art".
 
I love her books. The Earthsea series is one of my all-time favorites.

And while it's easy to agree with what she's saying here, "starving artist" is not as romantic a lifestyle as it may sound.

It's easy to make statements like hers if you're in her shoes. She made her fortune in a time when she could afford to not deal with today's super-capitalistic culture of turning everything, including the arts, into commodities, or you can just GFY. In her day (and many of us older folks) nearly everybody read books like crazy, one right after the other.

The times have changed to one dominated by people who appear from their writing to be barely literate, with a reading attention span of about 140 characters.

no wut i mene?
 
I think her point might be construed to include the idea that we'd be better off if artists in particular and people in general opted out of the 'let's turn everything in to cash as fast as possible' lifestyle.

I agree with her. I don't really see the path forward for society, but I'm working on it on a personal scale.
 
The problem is unless your rich you have to earn money to survive - and if you want to dedicate yourself to a hobby or interest that takes a LOT of time. Throw in family and kids and a recession and you can quickly see that a lot of people want to turn a hobby into a profession because they might not have much else - or the job they have is quite dead-end (we have a lot of jobs today that directly go no-where - you can't work you way up).

It's a sign of the times that people are rather desperate when they are looking to turn hobbies into money.



On the lfipside never before has anywhere near the wealth of artistic freedom been possible in history. We can create what we want - we can find resources to help us create those creations and we can even publish and market our creations.

I suspect part of her angle is trying to dissuade people from jumping into the "lets make money" pit too soon. Publish a halfdozen really bad first time novels and that's it you name is ruined for years - if not decades.
 
She sounds like a GDC to me.
 
I somewhat agree, but also think there is an apples/oranges aspect to this. I can write a book with a pen. I need thousands of dollars worth of gear to produce fine photographs.

You apply no logic to what you wrote. In fact what you wrote left out intentionally, or unintentionally the wee little fact that te cost of even the finest photography setup is a tiny fraction of the cost to publish a book, add market it. Your photographs cast you less than the ink necessary to write a page!

But you are correct in one aspect by calling this an apples-oranges issue...just as graphic arts for billboards has the sole purpose of selling omething, so do photographs taken for the same purpose. Cutting rock for tombstones, or table tops is not the work of a Rodin. Can commercial work be 'Art', of course it can, especially in photography...think Avedon, Steichen, and others, but the forum does not create the art...that is the sole realm of genius.

Thoughout history art, quality art, has always been in demand, and despite the mythos few talented artists starved from lack of opportunity. If they starved it was generally because of political/societal pressures which made their offensive to the powerful. But that is a digression from the issue of this thread.

A others have said already, you must produce that which is demand in order to acheve the freedom to produce that which you want. Money buys you the time, and time is what eventually provides the recognition of your art. But I repeat, it is not the cost to produce that determines the art...it is the talent of the artist.

Someone took some offense to LeGuin's saying that art could change society, she is correct. If that were not so then despots, dictators and fascists of all sorts would not pay good money to produce propaganda!
 
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If you already have a computer that can generate documents in Microsoft Word format, you can write and publish a book through amazon for $0. Zip. Nada.

It takes only your time.
 
She sounds like a Game Developer's Conference?
 
The problem is unless your rich you have to earn money to survive - and if you want to dedicate yourself to a hobby or interest that takes a LOT of time. Throw in family and kids and a recession and you can quickly see that a lot of people want to turn a hobby into a profession because they might not have much else - or the job they have is quite dead-end (we have a lot of jobs today that directly go no-where - you can't work you way up).

It's a sign of the times that people are rather desperate when they are looking to turn hobbies into money.



On the lfipside never before has anywhere near the wealth of artistic freedom been possible in history. We can create what we want - we can find resources to help us create those creations and we can even publish and market our creations.

I suspect part of her angle is trying to dissuade people from jumping into the "lets make money" pit too soon. Publish a halfdozen really bad first time novels and that's it you name is ruined for years - if not decades.

I think a lot of it comes my generations even further romanticization of the whimsical, starving, artist. However, being an artist is not easy, so people begin doing $50 mini-sessions because no one wants their photos of flowers and chit.

But they still want to claim the title of artist, because they don't want to feel like just another cog in the capitalist machine. In my eyes, they're trying to have their cake and eat it too.

There are a ton of photographers who truly are artists, but their images have...something extra...a soul, I guess is the best way I can describe it.

The people who focus almost solely on seasonal sessions with props and crap are nothing more than glorified Olan Mills photo factories.

I just feel like "real" art adds to the human experience instead of just existing to re-affirm that, yes, you can compose a photo well enough and you know your way around Photoshop. Great job, here's a cookie.
 
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As usual, the people who have the money make the rules, and if they don't know or don't care about the finer points of art, then they're not going to pay extra for it.

I place the lion's share of the blame for crappy "art" on the people who are perfectly willing to buy crappy art.
 

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