I've been busy lately, foraging for funds for a show I'm committed to in March. It's a photography exhibition with the theme (of all things) "Rock & Roll." It will merge two things that I am keenly interested in these days, images and music. I know, it's hardly original, but wait till you see
my take on it. Sadly enough, this is not the subject that I wanted to explore today. My question is, what
will I do for a buck? These current images are remotely related to the question I pose for myself this morning.
The images before you are from a recent freelance job that I did for a "big bank" in Portland. Assignment: Go out and take some photos of this property we own and make it look good so our brokers can lease it to some clients. You know, get some long shots, some close-ups, dynamic angles, and on a nice day. Simple job actually. What is not so simple is the method in which I acquired this fairly well paying task.
A few months ago I answered an ad from what I thought was a real estate agent looking for a photographer to take images of a property in Cottage Grove. I thought, Oh I can do
this. I'm not a "professional" but buildings
are my specialty. Since graduating from art school I had a lot of free time to languish over my future. Moreover, I needed the money, badly. So I jumped at the chance as any self respecting Vietnamese American boy would given half a chance--professional camera gear be damned. I sent a nice reply, painting myself as the recent college graduate hell bent on stamping my professional mark on the business world. Oh, and I took the liberty of attaching a few images from my Bachelor of Fine Arts terminal project to accompany my sweetly naive commercial prose; that will surely show them that I have what it takes to make their property shine. Well, that's what I thought at least. Needless to say I never heard back from them. That is, until just recently one morning, while I was languishing over my future as an artist/man of business. It started innocuously enough, as it usually does, with a phone call from an unknown number with a Portland area code. I answered, and so began my somewhat moral dilemma.
The voice on the other line asked for me with the quality of voice possessed by that of an astutely professional woman. I warily answered yes, not knowing if this was a friendly call or a herald of tragedy. Then, in the brightest of tones, she asked me if I remembered taking photographs of a restaurant in Cottage Grove a few months previous. It took me less than two seconds to compute in my sluggish mind that I knew what this job was that she was speaking of, and that I had not originally been hired for said job, and that some poor bloke was about to lose out on a photography gig. I answered with all the confidence of a seasoned liar that yes, I "remember" doing that job and I am glad that you thought highly enough of those images to give me a call back. She gave me the address of the new assignment and said go; and so I went, and hear I am, a photographer who just got paid. While on assignment I kept on asking myself all sorts of silly questions, foremost of which was, will my photographs look as good as the other guy's? What will happen if they realize they hired the wrong guy? Will the sun come out this week? I don't know. In the end, I tried to make the best images to my ability. I don't try to justify my decision in terms of a systemic societal flaw--that we are, generally speaking, nurtured to be competitive individuals, and to win at any cost. I think that I do have that competitive spirit combined with a loose sense ethics which lead me to employ, how should I say it, questionable methods. Believe me, it has taken me a long time to manifest this quality. At the end of the day there are still a few things that I won't do for money, like murder someone, or drive a school bus over a cliff, or pimp myself out...But wait, I did pimp myself, if only to make these pretty pictures.
I've been busy lately, foraging for funds for a show I'm committed to in March. It's a photography exhibition with the theme (of all things) "Rock & Roll." It will merge two things that I am keenly interested in these days, images and music. I know, it's hardly original, but wait till you see my take on it. Sadly enough, this is not the subject that I wanted to explore today. My question is, what will I do for a buck? These current images are remotely related to the question I pose for myself this morning.
The images before you are from a recent freelance job that I did for a "big bank" in Portland. Assignment: Go out and take some photos of this property we own and make it look good so our brokers can lease it to some clients. You know, get some long shots, some close-ups, dynamic angles, and on a nice day. Simple job actually. What is not so simple is the method in which I acquired this fairly well paying task.
A few months ago I answered an ad from what I thought was a real estate agent looking for a photographer to take images of a property in Cottage Grove. I thought, Oh I can do this. I'm not a "professional" but buildings are my specialty. Since graduating from art school I had a lot of free time to languish over my future. Moreover, I needed the money, badly. So I jumped at the chance as any self respecting Vietnamese American boy would given half a chance--professional camera gear be damned. I sent a nice reply, painting myself as the recent college graduate hell bent on stamping my professional mark on the business world. Oh, and I took the liberty of attaching a few images from my Bachelor of Fine Arts terminal project to accompany my sweetly naive commercial prose; that will surely show them that I have what it takes to make their property shine. Well, that's what I thought at least. Needless to say I never heard back from them. That is, until just recently one morning, while I was languishing over my future as an artist/man of business. It started innocuously enough, as it usually does, with a phone call from an unknown number with a Portland area code. I answered, and so began my somewhat moral dilemma.
The voice on the other line asked for me with the quality of voice possessed by that of an astutely professional woman. I warily answered yes, not knowing if this was a friendly call or a herald of tragedy. Then, in the brightest of tones, she asked me if I remembered taking photographs of a restaurant in Cottage Grove a few months previous. It took me less than two seconds to compute in my sluggish mind that I knew what this job was that she was speaking of, and that I had not originally been hired for said job, and that some poor bloke was about to lose out on a photography gig. I answered with all the confidence of a seasoned liar that yes, I "remember" doing that job and I am glad that you thought highly enough of those images to give me a call back. She gave me the address of the new assignment and said go; and so I went, and hear I am, a photographer who just got paid. While on assignment I kept on asking myself all sorts of silly questions, foremost of which was, will my photographs look as good as the other guy's? What will happen if they realize they hired the wrong guy? Will the sun come out this week? I don't know. In the end, I tried to make the best images to my ability. I don't try to justify my decision in terms of a systemic societal flaw--that we are, generally speaking, nurtured to be competitive individuals, and to win at any cost. I think that I do have that competitive spirit combined with a loose sense ethics which lead me to employ, how should I say it, questionable methods. Believe me, it has taken me a long time to manifest this quality. At the end of the day there are still a few things that I won't do for money, like murder someone, or drive a school bus over a cliff, or pimp myself out...But wait, I did pimp myself, if only to make these pretty pictures.
