My Last Word On A Tired Subject (feat. Gary Fogelson)

What follows is a re-formatted chat with designer Gary Fogelson of Fogelson-Lubliner and Gary Fogelson fame. Aside from being a stand-up dude who is recognized within his industry, he has many sound observations on the tired subject of free work and free-work-for-exposure experiences.

6:30 PM

Rich Gin: how often do you get asked to do free stuff

Gary Fogelson: rarely asked

Gary Fogelson: although we do some pro bono stuff for tax breaks

Gary Fogelson: "in kind" donations

Gary Fogelson: but that only works for non profits

Rich Gin: right

Rich Gin: such a curious thing, the differences between perceived value of photography and the perceived value of design and illustration

Gary Fogelson: people don't value photography because they think that if they had the right camera they could do your job

6:35 PM

Rich Gin: tough break

Gary Fogelson: too bad it's true

Rich Gin: Have you had this conversation w/ Jac?

Gary Fogelson: all the time

Rich Gin: lol

Rich Gin: life is unbearable

Gary Fogelson: it's a huge problem

Gary Fogelson: for photographers

Gary Fogelson: it sucks

Gary Fogelson: edit

Gary Fogelson: for photographers that want to make money

Rich Gin: truth bomb

Gary Fogelson: i mean, we wanted her to shoot a job for us but they couldn't afford her
so we ended up doing it ourselves

Gary Fogelson: and it was kind of wack

Gary Fogelson: i mean

Gary Fogelson: we got good stuff

Gary Fogelson: but hers would have been so much better

Gary Fogelson: but there's nothing we could do

Gary Fogelson: alo

Gary Fogelson: ha

Gary Fogelson: also

Gary Fogelson: flickr sucks for that shit too

Rich Gin: When I was first starting work in television, there was a spell where I was doing low-budget jobs, but people would still give you a token amount (which usually accounted for transportation) out of an overall respect for your time and because you are MORE LIKELY to have someone do something for you if it seems like you are making an effort.

Rich Gin: They got me through Ted.

Rich Gin: Flickr is an unfortunate situation, really.

Gary Fogelson: i mean

Gary Fogelson: people can treat flickr like a stock source

Gary Fogelson: and most flickr users are willing to do it for little compensation since they already took the photo and they're amateurs

Rich Gin: people DO treat Flickr like a stock source. You saw the shit in the NYT, right?

Gary Fogelson: digital cameras also suck

Gary Fogelson: no i didn't

Rich Gin: http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2009/06/25/nytimes-advocates-stealing-photos-from-flickr-to-decorate/

Gary Fogelson: yeah...

Gary Fogelson: i dunno bout that one though

Gary Fogelson: it's your fault for posting a high res photo

Gary Fogelson: that's why flickr is tarded

Gary Fogelson: for example

Gary Fogelson: from my POV, since i'm not a professional photographer

Gary Fogelson: if someone printed out a photo of mine and framed it, i'd be weired

Gary Fogelson: weirded

Gary Fogelson: but i wouldn't be banging down their door for some money

Gary Fogelson: because it's not my livelihood

Gary Fogelson: but that's how most of flickr is

Gary Fogelson: which causes this problem for the whole industry

Gary Fogelson: the concept of photography as open source or something

6:45 PM

Rich Gin: It's a tiring argument and discussion to have, I guess. I've had it many times myself. I just never thought to ask someone who makes visual stuff for a living

Gary Fogelson: yeah

Gary Fogelson: it's just a value issue

Rich Gin: "visual stuff" /= photography

Gary Fogelson: right

Gary Fogelson: also

Gary Fogelson: i think people also look at photography differently than design because photographers are
"just" capturing images that already exist

Gary Fogelson: (not my opinion)

Rich Gin: true

Gary Fogelson: as opposed to designers, artists, etc who are making it up from nowhere

6:50 PM

Rich Gin: semantic point: I think the use of "capturing" to describe the manufacturing process of photographs is lame. It's like you're a kid in a field hunting for butterflies or some shit.

Gary Fogelson: that's sort of my point

Gary Fogelson: although it depends on the photographer

Gary Fogelson: in the case of the photographs i take, that's all i'm doing

Gary Fogelson: but not in the case of jacqueline

Gary Fogelson: or you for that matter

Rich Gin: You honor me

7:00 PM

Gary Fogelson: ha

Rich Gin: I should just become one of those dudes that sells sunset pictures on the boardwalk

Gary Fogelson: totally

Gary Fogelson: no shortage of sunsets

Rich Gin: like Thomas Kinkade without the shifty Christianity and franchising.

7:05 PM

Gary Fogelson: true

Rich Gin: I have to go talk to some food about this.

Gary Fogelson: okay

Gary Fogelson: have fun

Rich Gin: would you mind terribly if I blogged this? I need something to fill 1's and 0's with.

Gary Fogelson: nope

Gary Fogelson: i don't know what that means though

Gary Fogelson: 1's and 0's

Gary Fogelson: not "blogged"

Gary Fogelson: i'm familiar with that

Rich Gin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_numeral_system

Gary Fogelson: oh those kinds of 1's and 0's

Gary Fogelson: i'm familiar with those

An afterthought of sorts. There is never enough work to go around -- anyone working in a creative field or freelancing knows this, but asking people to provide work for free isn't providing a job. I had mentioned my past experiences getting into production work when I was first out of school; an honorarium for the worker to show appreciation for spent time. In retrospect, it's a remarkable thing how much you can get out of someone just for showing the consideration. That's where my real beef in all this is: The lack of consideration by a publication for the providers of their content. Their unwillingness to pay or claims of poverty suggest,

1) Evidence of their broken system (this is not even a controversial point these days).

2) Their lack of respect for their providers (we need stuff to fill space, but we really don't care what it is, otherwise we would go through the effort to get full cooperation of the best-qualified sources).

3) A lack of respect for their own product (see: #2).

I hope this will be my last public conversation about this, though I am sure it won't. I already have follow-up questions for other people in other industries about this same sort of thing.

To You From Failing Hands We Throw The Torch

It's bad news when a new venue treats its lighting design as an afterthought. You can tell things are wrong when the drummer for The Orion Experience is stretching, trying to tilt the par cans over his head off of him with his drumstick. I mean, honestly; you have ten lights pointed STRAIGHT DOWN to slash the soundproofing on the back wall and no edge lights hitting the front of stage. You have one row of fixed cans at the front of house with deep amber (!!??!) gels on them dimmed to about 40% -- a dimmed tungsten light is warmer than a tungsten light at full power so the result is a warm light... with a warming gel on top of it. Net result is a color temperature somewhere around 1900K.

WHAT FUCKING GOOD DOES IT DO TO LIGHT THE BACK WALL?



And there are sidelights with no punch on stages right and left gelled BLUE. This post is incoherent and choppy and rambly. I'm furious. I mean, the building is just over a year old. Someone -- a loved one; a caring friend -- should have told the owners to hire a LD to set something reasonable up. It's not like the old Luna Lounge where you could understand a converted bar slapping up a few lights because people couldn't see shit; this was a ground-up install that should have taken into consideration EVERYTHING and they dropped the ball. What should have been a quality medium/small venue in Brooklyn becomes just another bar with a stage attached. You shouldn't have to worry about making your own separation happen when your subject is on a fucking STAGE.

A Plea For Tenderness

MARCIA IS MY FWIEND. ARE YOU MY FWIEND?

So I guess at this point I'm curious as to who's stopping by. Yeah, I've broadly invited most of ILX to visit and Ally (The Schef) is such a social bird that I'm sure some people get forwarded to me from her, but the lack of feedback is a little -- not bothersome -- disappointing. So leave a comment!

I am particularly interested in seeing who's been stopping by from Maryland (no hyperlink. If you don't know where or what Maryland is then... there is no hope for you) and locally in New York City.

Yes, I check my webstats often.

Also, I like the above picture in color moreso than black and white. Woops.

Pitchfork

This is really inexcusable. Over at ILX bagging on Pitchfork is basically a sport, but for some reason I take shit like this personally. How hard is it for the most-read* music review site on the internet to get someone to take quality pictures; or even a notch above amateur. I'm not talking about people like Todd or Kathryn Yu, both of whom are All-City type talents. It's not like this is Podunk, Arkansas we're talking about. This is Chicago.

*This might not be true. File under "Stat-free Analysis."

Awaiting The Return Of Our Beloved

Someone thought it would be a good idea if I were raised to be a good internalizer so any information I give tends to come in riddles or cyphers. In tribute to the journey, the feelings that brought me down for the last week, and in the spirit of the person I miss, I offer this,

Awaiting The Return Of Our Beloved

She stands for me
Hiding the visage with glass
Coney faces south.

Where We're From, The Birds Sing A Pretty Song

Subtitled: Emo Bird Is Emo



Today, sharing images with you brings me no joy, and I think my dead-bird friend here kind of says it all.

I'm getting audited and as much as I'd like to play it off as another life experience, it's a very lonely feeling right now, especially since they're asking for info from 2005 which I don't really have in any sort of complete form, and there's a big chunk of change that they're curious about that I have no documentation on AT ALL. I certainly won't have it by Monday (which is Opening Day, the first day of Spring). The numbers that we're talking about in terms of money are sort of nebulous to me and I have no cotton-pickin' idea why they'd want to audit me to begin with, short of 2005 being the first year I actually rose above the poverty line.

I've been asked by my friends, who are fearful of the same thing happening to them, to take good notes ... So in short terms, let this be a lesson to you, kiddies: keep EVERYTHING. One of my head-slapping moments was realizing that I had shredded 2005's phone bills literally 12 hours before the audit summons arrived in the mail. That said, they say to keep this sort of shit for 7 years. There isn't that much space in my universe.