Due to some unexpected technical difficulties, I am offering, not an interview, by a short rant of where I am today in my photographic career. Once I have resolved the tech problems, I'm experiencing, I hope to be back with our normal schedule of interviews with some of the world's best photographers.Here is a link to the new website and to on-going blog.
For streaming audio click here or subscribe to the podcast for free via
Book Recommendation: Art & Fear by David Bayles & Ted Orland
18 comments:
While I really enjoying interviews of other photography professionals, I especially appreciated this weeks podcast about your next step. I am going through my own hurdles associated with comparing my work with mainstream photographers; I found myself diminishing my vision because it did not match one of the "greats". I have so much to learn, but I am left encouraged to continue exploring my current points of focus.
Thank you for sharing your time, thoughts and resources. For me, your podcast like many others, are filling the void of formal art education which I do not possess. For the time being, the shoe fits, so I will be wearing it.
Thanks.
I generally love these podcasts - this, though, is my favourite so far. Not only does it push all the right buttons but I love the work I've just seen at ibarionex.com. There's a great integrity there that I wish I could see more often and achieve in my own photos. This is the first time I've seen your photos of writers and poets as a body of work - it's so good. In particular, the natural light work is just beautiful. Your use matched colours and tones enhances the feeling that this is relaxed, slower-paced photography. Very special - great integrity.
Most of my favourite portraiture is the type that shows the subject really connecting with the photographer, allowing us to see him or her the way a friend might - there are some perfect examples of that type of work here. It also happens to tell us a lot about you, I guess, and the way you can connect with people. Wonderful. Thanks.
Thank you so very much for allowing me to realize I'm not the only one. I have listened to your podcasts for many months now and I enjoy your interviews with others in the business. This podcast was one I needed to hear though. Sometimes I get immobilized and depressed that my photography "isn't as good as everyone else's out there". Other times I'm sure it is. I had intended to mention "Art and Fear" to you until I got here and saw it as suggested reading. I have not finished it yet but so far it is truly a great book. Thanks again, your podcasts are a great resource and inspiration.
Echo, Willy and Bahi . . .
ABSOLUTELY THE BEST SHOW SO FAR!!!
Most of your interviews break in some way the barrier that the guest put between his or her soul and the rest of the world but this chapter has been just the sweetest thing I've hear in a lot of time. Keep it up, a lot of people find inspiration in your work. And I'm sure you'll be successful in your new adventure and not only in an economical level.
jv
There comes a time in a man's/woman's life when he/she says now or never. It is a time when you say "If I don't do this now, I will never know whether I could or not". You have obviously reached that moment. It happens to each of us at a different point in our lives. My moment of truth happened when I was 38 and quite a firm to start my own business (not related to photography). My older son had his moment when he was 34 and started his own business. My younger son made the jump from an 11 year stint at Oracle to a start up at age 33.
Congratulations! Give your wife a big hug for supporting you in your quest to become who you are.
Alan Morris
www.lakemercedphoto.com
Brilliant podcast. I really enjoyed the message of this podcast, and this is exactly what creative side of me needed right now.
I fully agree with you that it's critical to let your images speak for you and your thoughts reminded me of the importance of this yet again.
Thank you!! This is one episode that's for sure is worth listening to again and again.
Wow, Ibarionex. I've been a listener and reader of yours for a while and it was really inspirational to hear you dig down deep and share such personal feelings. You talk of different insecurities that pop up for you from time to time but to be able to let it rip like you did in this episode was really great to hear. I get the feeling that recording this podcast was a mini breakthrough for you. And it goes without saying that I've had the same feelings.
I think your site is great and your intention to create intimate portraits is hitting the spot. I'm a fellow Livebooks user.
Thanks again for sharing. Great work!
Anthony Sinagoga
www.anthonysinagogaphotography.com
Good stuff. I think you are coming to the right place - to your own self be true. Take your pictures, not someone else's pictures and then people will take notice.
This reminded of something I heard a while back, which I think was in regards to writing, but to paraphrase in regards to photography, someone was speaking of their reply to "what's your favorite photo?" which was "my next one". It's all about the pursuit. Being happy where you are would show a lack of desire to grow.
I think I am going to come up with some kind of New Year's resolution to visit a new location a month, or do something different each month to try to continue to grow... Lately I've been working a few nature locations and have come away frustrated when things don't go right or don't yield results better than previous trips. While I know working locations is a good thing, balancing that with searching out new places to shoot can be even more rewarding.
-Jon
Great podcast I found it very inspirational. And I love the portraits on http://www.ibarionex.com/
Great work and thanks for doing the podcast.
Great show. I love the portraits on your new site.
I really like your portraits. And their success is obviously due to your caring and your humanity. But on a technical note, in your podcast you mentioned showing up to shoot with just one light and one light stand (and feeling somewhat inferior for not employing the elaborate set-ups that some choose to employ.)
Well, beginners like me would love to be able to work in such a simple way. Perhaps in a future podcast you could share your approach to making these portraits (both from a technical and a human point of view).
I agree with the comments that praise the quality of this podcast. I thoroughly enjoy your "traditional" podcasts that in fact are not very traditional. I appreciate hearing about photographers and what they have gone through as well as their current experiences. This podcast nailed yet another level, a level that many creative people experience. I am 67 years old and recently recommitted myself to a lifelong passion for photography. It's too easy to compare oneself when in reality there is no comparison. I recently participated in an Artist's Way course and it is responsible for re-igniting my passion and allowing me to give myself the right and privilige to pursue it. Keep up the good work and enjoy the success you are creating for yourself. BTW, have you seen this? An opportunity to share street photography.
http://www.C4FAP.org/call_for_entries.asp
Thanks again.
Thanks for many super podcasts and an especially great one. Your honesty and oneness have no doubt touch many people, including myself. I have dealt with this issue not only in photography but in other areas of my life. One of the things that has re-ignited my passion for photography was recently participating in an Artist Way course. A great experience and exercise. Keep up the great work. You are a sorely needed oasis.
Thanks.
BTW, have you seen this?
http://www.C4FAP.org/call_for_entries.asp
I haven't written this for general posting, but since there is no email address, here are my thoughts post them or not...
There’s a fine line between introspective and melancholy as your latest podcast proves that feminist do not have a lock on walking the challenge of , How-To-Have-It-All? I hate it, Ibarionex, that women seem to feel that they have monopoly on that particular life-angst.
Look when it comes to making money, photography is hard, art is harder – photographic art is beyond both. It’s a question of supply and demand. Here’s a secret of life, only doctors create demand by creating supply, um, well okay, maybe drop-dead gorgeous women can leap that gap in red teddies… but they’re the exception that prove the rule,eh?
Um, I seem to digress…
Once upon a time I made money by taking pictures. Then I stopped doing that. Because of the ways that I could make money, taking pictures was much too hard. Why? Professional photographers do a lot more than take and process pictures. They are in business. Business eats up sixty to eighty percent of their time. Plus they are in competition and for the greatest part of those who create the demand for pictures, price is an object. Product differentiation normally does not lie in the photograph but in other elements.
An artist rarely makes the decision about what is commercially valuable art: that decision is made by an establishment of people who control the transmission channels between artists and buyers. Academics, curators, gallery executives, collectors, associations… pant.. pant… pant… editors, publishers, critcs,…. pant… pant… pant…. historians, philosophers, producers,… On and on and on and on…. It’s this gang that decides what art-du-jur ewill sell for gordo bucks.
Adequately capitalized in terms of wealth and contacts, an artist can exert some leverage on the lid to this can of influential s, but few have a Paris Hilton armory of money to pay for the weaponry of celebrity.
There is something called the commodity pond. It is a place filled with every good and service which competes only upon price. A very large part of that surface is taken up by good photographers. Especially today, the barriers to entry into photography have fallen. We no longer need to be ordained in chemistry, optics, color management, or aesthetics. These are either built into our photographic machines or easily surfed in electronic cook-books. To do a “good-enough” job you need a Canon SLR with a built in flash. Oh, and lots of time.
It is a kid’s game. Kid’s who want to work long enough to buy an X-Box. Or at least work in spurts that are tied to the introduction of each new pricy toy. Mommy and Daddy provide the overhead capital and every dollar the children earn goes into irrationally exuberant consumption.
Worse, there are photographic schools that continue to perpetuate the cruel hoax of careers in photography to enough untalented students to fill the seats and pay the faculty. This isn’t entirely new, Thomas Eakins wouldn’t accept a graduate art student who did not have a journeyman’s credentials in some employable craft. His classes were filled with plumbers, carpenters, and electricians.
For those in the commodity pond, directions come entirely from buyers. Demand not only creates supply, it molds it, shapes it, defines it. Deviate from the whims of a 21 year old bride and well, you sink. Endless hours are spent snapping high school portraits, groups of graduating dancers, middle-of-the-night car accidents (or celebrity accidents), weddings, 100th birthday parties, cute children, cuter pets, screen passes, catalogue models, catalogue gee-gaws, forensics, painted women, painted men, commercial construction, anything racing, and edgy-in-their-mind entertainers.
Or photographers can get jobs with firms that specialize in any of that with sufficient capitalization that they can make money out of vast volume. Those various assistants become replaceable cogs unless.. unless… they bring a people service to the table that makes what they do particularly attractive to the firm’s clients. At that point the photographers have combined photographic skills with human rapport in a way that tilts their emphasis away from the product of their cameras and to the product of their marketing powers.
Can I go on? Ad-nauseum.
Does this all sound defeatist? Well, duh. But .. but.. but… There are those who do stuff that is so unique that it is: (1) difficult to copy, and (2) resonates with a market niche that has sufficient resources to support it.
If Maddona proved anything it is that niche marketing is the only ladder out of the commodity pond.
Your portraits are niche-y. Okay, let me coin the word… nichy. Okay? You do have an eye and the technical support for it that seems to create an accessibility for both the subject and the viewer to do telepathy. I feel that your subjects are telling my mind what they want to tell me about themselves- that two subjective interests are combining in your images. Mine as a viewer and theirs as subjects. Your images convey a sense of decency which everyone wants to convey, and to appreciate in others. In fact, it is a universal quality which informs your digital portfolio.
It is not an easily accomplished thing. Which makes it a talent. Nor is it easily imitated, which makes it rise above commodity pricing, leaving you with the potential to control, within reason, your margins. You are nichy.
What you need is a red teddy. You need marketing. But your other talent I think will be the key there. You have a distinguished, intelligent radio voice and a probing mind to support it. Your podcasts have something to say because you do. You have “been-there” with respect to your striving to understand what drives a photographic artist. So your technical and aesthetic probing coupled with some business curiosity are producing an audio product that is accessible (there’s that word again) to the market. It will ring true with… an establishment of people who control the transmission channels between artists and buyers. Academics, curators, gallery executives, collectors, associations… pant.. pant… pant… editors, publishers, critcs,…. pant… pant… pant…. historians, philosophers, producers,… On and on and on and on….
There is no one else doing what you are doing for that niche market which controls access to who-is-commercial. But you have to step up your marketing component. More of your pictures have to appear on your blogsite, preferably in illustration of some point which you or your guest has made. You have already created a library of interviews with important photographic artist/celebrities such that I suspect it will (if it isn’t already) become important for the very best to be immortalized by the interview-which-never-goes-away in your archives. I know that I listen to them as adventures… multiple times as I sit here doing my own digital-darkroom work. You could broaden your subject list to curators, gallery executives, critics, some academics… Etc. They too will be as interesting to your audience and allow you to better penetrate that decision-making cadre with your associated marketing.
It is your multi talent which will have you taking off. If I were you I might add some interviews at gallery openings from time to time… then interviewing the photographic artist and sending the URL to both gallery owners and artists. And curators… and… and … and… Get it?
I can understand your melancholy. It is why I left commercial photography some thirty five years ago. But also the reason why I have never lost solace in picture taking. Dying is easy, making a living in photography… that’s hard. Giving away nuanced podcasts with celebrity and striving photographic artists is genius if you use it adequately to showcase your day job. And people will tolerate, even appreciate that. I am willing to pay for your podcasts by looking at your excellent work. It hardly seems like pay. Nor will it to… an establishment of people who control the transmission channels between artists and buyers. Particularly if among the interviewed are the academics, curators, gallery executives, collectors, associations… pant.. pant… pant… editors, publishers, critcs,…. pant… pant… pant…. historians, philosophers, producers,… On and on and on and on….
You, Ibarionex, can do what you love, get paid for it and have it all… You lucky devil….
Thanks for sharing
Ted
My Images Explained
My Images Stored
It was interesting to listen to your 'rant'. I too feel that it is important to retain integrity in one's own work.
While I like to look at the work of other photographers, I don't view them with awe. Surely of all art forms, ours is a great leveller. I'm pleased that you don't feel the need to compromise your style just to conform to someone else's ideal.
Well said!
Excellent! Excellent! Excellent!
You voice what many of us feel and go through. It's encouraging to know that we are not alone in similar struggles. This is one of your best podcasts to date!
Keep it up Ibarionex!
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