November 01, 2009

Emily and I went down to Toronto on Friday to learn how to inject some glamour into our photography. Apparently, not making people look like fucking monsters is key.

The ride to Toronto is endless, so we had a chance to talk shop. Emily’s been working for a bunch of wedding photographers already — the kind that ask $5000 for a wedding, charge for everything else on top of it, and then run off without paying their assistants. Jerks.

I’ve always envisioned running my photo business with a different set of principles, which go something like this:

1. Don’t suck.

2. Images should be free. I take photos to share experiences, stories, excitement. The moments captured don’t belong to me — they belong to us. Thus, most of the stuff I shoot I release under Creative Commons. Take it, use it, modify it, do awesome things with it: that’s how culture evolves.

3. Treat your clients awesome. The people I photograph are my friends. They share with me some of the most important moments of their lives. The least I can do is give them the freedom to share their stories with friends, lovers, strangers on the internet. My goal is to make sharing easier, not to charge through the nose for prints, DVD’s, etc. Charging for prints is so 1800’s.

4. Wide angles are key. Yes they can make people look like monsters, but look at the excitement on their faces! I’m OK with sacrificing a bit of aesthetic perfection to capture a bit of awesome.

5. Fuck fashion shoots. A wedding is not America’s next top model. Most things in life aren’t. Let’s see people happy and laughing and making out on the streets.

6. Let’s see each other in new ways. We already have a thousand cliched ways of seeing the stuff around us. Repetition is deadly. Let’s find all sorts of crazy new ways to be and take off our clothes and dance.

7. Watermarks and borders can die a slow, awful death.

I told Emily these things and I joked that my goal is to make absolutely no money from my photography. We laughed, but then I went home and punched some numbers into a spreadsheet and as it turns out it’s all true. All revenue I made this year has been eaten up by equipment depreciation and other losses — I haven’t even begun to cover the cost of the cameras and lenses I own.

So let’s find out how long I can hold on to my principles. The moment I start watermarking my images you can come over and punch me in the face.