Commercial Fear

Commercial photography runs a wide gamut.  Portrait photographers, for instance, or the people who set up a backdrop and some lights to take pictures of your kid's soccer league.  "Picture Day."  Or those cats who take the family portraits.  There are people in every town who make "professional headshots."  There are wedding photographers.  Some of them have lucrative businesses.  There are those who do real estate photography.  Lighting interiors can be difficult.  Food photography is its own specialized endeavor.  

The great practitioners of what became known as "vernacular photography" began as professional photographers shooting mostly fashion: Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Diane Arbus, Garry Winogrand.  And of course there was Saul Leiter.  

They all left their "pro" careers to make photos of "life."  

There are great fashion photographers who are artists in their own right.  They succeeded so well that they could do whatever they wanted.  Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, William Klein, Helmut Newton, Paolo Roversi, Sarah Moon. . . . .  And of course, Annie Leibovitz whose photo shoots are like movie sets.  

Yea. . . the gamut. . . .

Q did a pro shoot once for a yoga company if I recall.  Just him and his camera.  

Sky, of course, worked in the big leagues where there are a dozen people on location, sometimes for days.  You don't do catalog work alone.  

There was a woman in NYC who reached out to me back in my studio days who worked as a set designer for photographers who did "the glossies."  She did some very big shoots.  She liked my work but would have criticisms, too, mostly about accoutrements.  

"What the fuck," I told her, "ain't nobody but me doing everything." 

Sets, hair, makeup, clothes, lighting. . . .  For anything serious, you'd want a team.  

So. . . my buddy has been asked to submit some work for a clothing company's IG page.  It comes with a stipend, and if they like it enough, they fly him to Cali for the big money shoot for the catalog.  He wants me to take the pics.  

"Bahahahah," as Red says.  We did a shoot once oh so long ago for a new leather company in Italy.  They sent her a huge box of their bags.  Coincidentally, one of my close buddies was great friends with the Italians who were the owners.  Strange set of circumstances.  Red wanted me to do the shoot, but there was no planning.  We made no vision/mood boards.  I was working with nothing.  Red brought some outfits, did her own makeup and hair.  Totally amateur hour.  We shot and probably went to dinner, and the next day I edited the photos in my very non-commercial way.  In the big leagues, the photographer takes the photos and gives them to a digital retoucher who cooks them up for the client.  I kind of learned my lesson on that shoot.  The pictures turned out o.k. but I don't think they were anything a company would choose to use in a catalog.  

I felt that the clothes were getting in the way, so I asked her to ditch them and just let the bags do the talking.  They were Italians, I said.  It would be fine.  

I'll never know.  The company didn't get off the ground.  But we made some fun pictures that night.  

Red did any number of commercial shoots, and the photos looked nothing like mine.  They were crisp and clean and looked like what you would expect a commercial photo to look like.  She made money.  I have never made a dime.  I've sold some pictures, but I'll never recoup the cost.  

So. . . I want to do my buddy a favor, but there are people in town who do that sort of photography and have a commercial sensibility.  For this shoot, the clothes are what must show which is o.k. 'cause I wasn't looking to get him naked.  But this is Sky's thing, and I think of how disappointing my attempts would look to her.  If I could get that out of my head. . . and a lot of other things, too.  

The photo at top is the one I sent to my Miami friend.  That was my idea of a pub shoot.  I took this outside in the parking lot.  Edited crisp and clean.  

I'll fuck up the clothing shoot for sure, and I will disappoint my friend.  Sally Mann confesses the same sort of fears in her new biography.  She couldn't shoot for hire.  She turned down big money.  She was too afraid of failure.  It was a surprise to learn in order to make ends meet early on, she had done some wedding photography.  But when big clients came calling after she was famous, she couldn't do it.  The expectations were too much.  The fear of disappointing was too great.  

I'm glad I read that.  Her work was organic.  It came from inside.  Frank, Friedlander, Arbus, Winogrand, et. al., were not great commercial photographers and they gave it up to pursue the thing they felt inside.  I think Penn, Avedon, and Newton all loved the commercial work.  It was organic to them.  You don't see anything "personal" so much from them that doesn't look commercial. 

I taught students who wanted to be commercial photographers.  That was their dream, and they put all their energy into it.  They couldn't understand the works that I admire so much.  Commerce was organic to them.  It was in their blood.  

I am fascinated by people's old snapshot albums.  I used to buy them in flea markets when I saw them.  Strangers I could only know from those pictures.  Such things are organic to me. 

But I can take the pictures.  I'm looking at the clothing company's IG page now.  Clean and crisp and odd, I think.  I'll feel real funny doing it.  

I told my buddy we'd have to rent a studio in Gotham.  He needs to download some photos and make a mood board.  If he wants to do location stuff, we need to do some scouting.  

So there you have it.  I've made my case for failure.  I've covered my ass.  "I told you," I will say.  "It is not my thing."  

There is nothing like a challenge to make you face your weaknesses.  I've got plenty.  Sometimes failure is the only option.