Here's the thing - it's not all about you

At least it shouldn't be.

I recently read a travel piece in the New York Times by a writer named Freda Moon. Whining and self-indulgent, the piece has all of the charm of a warm Chardonnay. The basic ingredient had potential, but the manner of serving is all wrong. How Ms Moon convinced the Old Gray Lady to publish this is beyond me.

The title of the piece is, "Bringing a Destination Wedding Within a Family's Reach". not a bad premise for a nuts and bolts service article in the "how to" fashion, but Ms Moon's piece gives no insight how to accomplish this and instead focuses on her own self-induced travails and they're not very interesting at that.

When Clay Felker was Editor of New York magazine he championed "New Journalism", where the writer injects themselves in to the piece they are writing and becomes a significant part of the story. Tom Wolf and Hunter S. Thompson were let loose on the world and for writers of their talent the story became better for it. Ms Moon has no such gift.

Currently, the Scottish writer Andrew O'Hagan does this brilliantly with his travel essays, as does Lawrence Osborne, the English writer. I assume that Ms moon is not from the British Isles. Nor is she Dervla Murphy, the swashbuckling Irish writer who dragged her young daughter across Madagascar and wrote it up in a book called, Muddling Through In Madagascar - a highly recommended read.

Travel writing relies upon observation and anecdote and it takes a good raconteur or skilled writer to interest us enough to care. Ms Moon's petty tribulations bored the shit out of me. Starbucks has made billions by not serving you a cup of coffee, but by giving you an experience that's all about you, and Freda Moon and her ilk lap the attention up and regurgitate this as a way of life.

The cod's wallop that was served up in this offending piece was about attending a friend's wedding in Punta Mita, Mexico, with baby and husband in tow. Punta Mita is a pricey enclave just north of Puerto Vallarta. I've worked there and know it quite well so I was interested in reading the article. Our poor scribe couldn't afford the rates at Punta Mita so they took cheap digs down the road. Thankfully I was spared stories of tarantulas in the bed and lizards in the shower, but I did get the tale of her baby soiling it's diaper as the Lyft driver arrived to take them to the airport in San Francisco.

On that omen she should have taken the hint, stayed at home and made up an excuse for the New York Times because the article became no better as I toiled through one laborious, self-indulgent sentence after another. The writer's observations of her location were few and shallow and the prose was mundane. I'd advise her to keep the day job but I fear this may be it.

Serviceable travel writing is fairly straightforward, here's where to go and what to do sort of thing. Good travel writing is hard to come by and ranks high on the literary scale for me. Actually, Lawrence Osborne claims that he has turned his back on it these days to pursue fiction because travel writing is really from another era.

I think I know what he means and if I may expand on that thought: Good travel writing is losing an audience in these times of pre-packaged trips to an all-inclusive, tweeting at every opportunity in-between taking Selfies and posting cell phone shots of everything that comes your way on Instagram.

The more travel marketers use terms like experiential and authentic, the less it becomes so.

Pity, but there are still dinosaurs like me- and O'Hagan - who can appreciate a good yarn well told and seek to inject some depth into creative endeavor.

Litbu, Punta Mita

From the mouth of flickr

"with so many people taking photographs there’s really no such thing as professional photographers anymore."

Courtesy of Marissa Mayer, Grand Poobah of Yahoo - that's a Gilbert and Sullivan term, look it up.

Well, blow me down. She's either such a visionary that this is beyond my comprehension, or she's so  arrogant that this doesn't even qualify as stupid.

If this had come from the lads at Google, I might be pissed but it would give me pause. But to come from "also ran" Yahoo, it strikes me as a bit rich.

I can only presume that as a new mother, Ms Mayer is undergoing a metamorphisis and is in the process of becoming an Oracle - nothing to do with Larry Ellison, but a Greek one.

Getty Images

For all those who think that you can make a living in Stock Photography these days. Read it and weep.



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Sign of the Times

As a frustrated, and currently inactive writer, I often lament the passing of long-form journalism and use it as my excuse for inactivity.

Then, out of the blue, the "Old Grey Lady" publishes an astonishing piece online that not only revives the form, but redefines it for modern times by including video and stills, in addition to brilliant writing. Could this be the future? I sure hope so.

The piece is about an avalanche - I won't say more because you should read and view it for yourself.

http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/#/?part=tunnel-creek

I can't say I read this piece because it is more than that, it is to be experienced. Experience it I did and felt my pulse quicken in awe and with glee.

To paraphrase Dirty Harry, " go ahead, make your day."

You're kidding, right?

Today I received a voice mail from a well known supplier of marketing services to the photo industry.

They have a special promotion on right now "and I'd like to tell you about it". I know of this promotion because I have received two emails about it already. Actually, it didn't sound half bad and I was actually contemplating using this service at such an affordable price. Even at full price I was thinking about them because I just hate doing this.

I know, I know, it has to be done because even the best photographer in the world needs to more than just spread the word through their work. Having someone do it for me removes the cringe factor I would feel inside when doing this "necessary" task. It's not that I look down on this activity, but it's just not me.

Hence the notion of someone doing it for me.

Then I received this voice mail. The people who want to undertake my marketing have Courtney the Valley Girl doing their marketing.

Enough said.

Appointment Notice

I'd be remiss if I didn't introduce the newest member of the team. This is Frances, First Assistant extraordinaire.

Frances is adept with many camera systems, lighting techniques and is a Photoshop wiz. Her production capabilities are not short of logistical genius.

Now, if only she could stop yawning and stay awake long enough to make coffee and answer the phone.

Westjet into the sunset

Somewhere over Fargo, ND.

Heading west and it's going to be a long night. Infant in front is screaming. Kid next to me keeps bumping into me as he keeps falling asleep and then is abruptly woken up again by the baby.

Oh mama. Are we there yet?!!

Look Ma, we're in Business Week!

This week's Lifestyle section has a travel piece by reporter, Venessa Wong, entitled "Beware: your hotel may not be a nice as you think.", for which yours truly was interviewed for and quoted in.

Overall, it's a resonably well balanced piece about retouching shots of hotels and resorts and the ethics therein. While I wasn't exactly profound, I don't think I sounded like a schlub either. It's funny to see an hour and a half interview reduced to a few sentances of quotes. While the context was a little off on a couple of them I'm reasonably satisfied enough to bask in my Warholian fifteen minutes.

I think a lot of myself. How about you?

I recently had the unfortunate experience to watch Platon being interviewed by Charlie Rose. I like Charlie Rose, not so much Platon, whose work I find to be overbearing in it's pomposity. His self deprecating manner in the interview - "if I have any talent, and I'm not sure I do" - was just too much.

He's riding high at the moment, Portraits of Power was a huge success for him and he was being interviewed about his New Yorker essay about the remaining 1960's civil rights leaders. It changed his life, he claimed, and from now on he will devote himself to honorable undertakings. Jesus, what a bunch of claptrap.

The Emperor Platon has no clothes. I find his work to be predictable and banal and his technique of producing Gothic-like imagery is a cover for his lack of vision. Anybody who has achieved the status of being known by only one name has achieved some kind of status in their given world: think of Avedon and Penn, even think of Cher and Bowie, and now Mr. Platon has designated himself to join their ranks.

Sour grapes on my part? I think not because I'm really indifferent to how much success or money he has garnered - what do I care? On one hand I think good for him if he can pull the wool over people's eyes and get away with it. On the other hand, and this is the bit that galls me, how bloody stupid are the people who fall for it and fawn all over him? I can't decide if these Photo Editors and Art Buyers are like lemmings or sheep because there's a slight difference in these two analogies, and they both seem to fit.

Of course, the world has always been as such, hence the story of the Emperor who had no clothes, but I feel it is getting worse. Society produces larger than life people so we mortals have someone and something to aspire to, which is a positive thing after all. It's the self-proclaimed ones who get my goat though.

Gear n' stuff

One of the most common questions from one photographer to another is, "what are you using?"

While there's lot of talk about creativity, gear lust is when the conversation becomes really animated. I'm not so much an equipment junkie as I am a gadget lover. Ever since I was a kid I have been a sucker for them. Show me a 7 in 1 screwdriver and turkey baster and I drool and want one. The dumber the gadget the more I like it.

It occured to me that those who read this blog - that's right, both of you - might be interested in my stuff. I've just finished reading about someone else's, so I thought I'd be a copycat.

Camera - I switched to the Sony a900 last year, with a couple of a700's for back-ups/spares. Love the 900 and the superb Zeiss glass that comes with it. Had to almost sell a kidney to buy those lenses, but they're worth it. I have to force myself to use a tripd, but when I do it's an Induro. Lights are Elinchrom fired by Pocket Wizards, as well there's a whole bunch of wireless Sony speedlights. For location scouting I use a little Canon G9, which apart from being cute is actually very good.

Computer - PC all the way. There's no way I'm paying those inflated Mac prices. The desktop is a 64 Bit Dell Quadcore i7 with 12 Gigs of RAM and a couple of 1TB Seagates. I have a nice 4 bay, eSATA box from Sans Digital housing four 2TB Seagates. My main laptop and also my office machine is an 64 bit, dualcore,18.5" Sony that's just a beaut. It came out a little over a year ago and was specifically aimed at photographers with a rich display that shows 98% of Adobe RGB (almost unheard of in a laptop), as well as many other photo friendly features not found in many desktops even. It cost a bundle and is no longer made. Was I the only one who bought one of these things? I thought they would take the world by storm. Ah well.For on the road I have a little 12" Sony running XP that I've had for years and still runs Lightroom and CS4 just fine. I have a whole bunch of little external drives for the laptops running from 250 gig to 500 gig - Seagate Free Agents - highly recommended. There so cheap now, I'm actually not even formatting them for re-use. I leave the RAW's from a job on the initial drive as one extra step of insurance and file them away after I have copied them to my desktop.

With the exception of the portable Free Agent drives, every drive is "Mirrored" in a RAID 1 configuration. That means for every drive there is another one coupled to it and they both read and write in unison. Should the primary drive fail, the ghost drive kicks in automatically for seamless operation. That's the first backup. The second, is a networked HP Media Server, running Windows Home Server with 8 TB of storage, and it backs up daily, keeping three months of backups all of the time.

Lightroom is the backbone of my business, not just for processing, but the asset managment tools make life so much easier. Don't know how I lived without it. For the heavy lifting, beyond Lightroom's capabilities, I use CS4 with a full suite of Nik plug-Ins and Noise Ninja for noise reduction. Initial processing is with DXo which I prefer for the Sony.

In addition, I have more software from more vendors than I can count and most of it is rarely used. Smart FTP,Skype and Dropbox are really my only regulars.

It's only when you make a list like this, and there's so much I've left off, that you realize how much you have invested and wasted. Quite sobering actually.

Sunrise at the construction site

I've come to really appreciate construction cranes, especially in silhouette. I hope it's not a Freudian thing, with these phallic symbols and all, but I just like the graphic lines.

We tend to think of the sun and the moon at opposite ends of the sky in our line of sight. but not always, as this shot attests. Both the sun and the moon actually wander around the sky from north to south a lot more than many people think and sometimes, like here, they line up quite closely.

It's a beautiful morning

Apologies to the Young Rascals.

So far, this sight has been a rarity. The misers who run Toronto and the CN Tower (the place pictured) seemed to have deemed that lighting up public structures for any longer than the absolute minimum of time, is wasteful and unnecessary.

After spending millions of dollars trying to attract visitors to the city they make the night time view as boring as possible - just a bunch of black silhouettes against the sky. The clear message is, "you should be in bed by now, what the hell are you doing up at this hour?"

Glad to see that someone has had a change of heart, for the CN Tower anyway, and for the last couple of weeks it's been a full blown light show all night long. This was taken about 6 a.m. about forty minutes before dawn. I was out for my morning walk along the lakefront and was happy to see this.

Joe McNally

My favorite photographer is Andy Anderson, but I think the best photographer is Joe McNally. Is there any genre that he can't shoot better than anyone else? I'm tempted to say something very specialized like food or architecture, but I'd be wrong - he'd still shoot it better than a specalist practioner.

In these days of specialization, Joe defies even gravity, never mind normal expectations. He's a throwback to the old "camera men" of the 1940's and 1950's,who no matter what the situation, always brought home the bacon. His technical expertise is daunting, his imagination is incredibly fertile and his sense of humor is as wicked as it is legendary.

I've met him a number of times and he's impossible not to like. I met an ex-assistant of his once and thinking I'd finally get the inside skinny I asked "what's McNally really like. Is it all an act?" No way, she says, "he's an absolute sweeheart." Damn! I thought I was going to get the scoop on a McNally expose.

I have my specialites and I stick to them, not because it's good business or even expected, it's just what I like. It's nice that Joe defies that conventional wisdom and even the business advice of the need to specialize. His talent and curiosity are just too big and wide to be constrained.

I think that Joe has a problem of perception though. He's such a joker - can't stop - that it diminishes his aura. Everyone knows he is amazing, but he hasn't reached (deserved) icon status. On one hand it's too bad. On the other, McNally would be the first to say "Yeah? And who gives a shit?" That's Joe, Groucho Marx with a camera - and lights, lots of 'em.

Yoga Image

This is Alayna, a Yoga instructor and part-time model. For this resort shoot she was both.

This shoot had to be one of the funniest of my life, and hers. We were on a pier that jutted out into the water - kept the sand from the gear and all of that - and suddenly Alayna blurted out, "They're having sex!"

More than a little puzzled, I gave her a goofy look and she pointed to the beach behind me as her eyes opened wider and wider.

Sure enough. There's a middle aged couple going at it in full view of everyone on the beach. They made absolutely no attempt to hide what they were doing, as a matter of fact, I think they were showing off. A man came over to us and said, "do you see that?" I said that I was trying not to because I was trying to work, but my model couldn't get the surprised look off her face!

They were very, very quick. The guy zipped up, the woman pulled the hem of her dress down and they just walked away without a care in the world. When Alayna and I had finished she helped me schlepp the gear back to my room and guess who we saw on the way? "He's paying her for chrissakes", I said. Sure enough, an over- the- hill working girl and her old fart John. Wonder if management knew about this, I thought?

Weird shoot. Turned out well though considering the distraction and all.

Hyatt hotel and Sony

Whew! You have to love the combination of Sony and Zeiss glass. This is too small and the color space too limited to really appreciate just how snappy and bold this really looks - no PS tweaks.

The Sony a900 is an absolute joy to use and the Zeiss lenses are so crisp and strong they can give you a headache. What's not to love?

The role of photography in Hospitality marketing

No photos this time. While I'm not exactly impartial regarding this subject, it doesn't mean that I can't have a valid point of view. So, here goes.


We've all heard of the common guest complaint that the photos represented a distorted view of a property - basically, they made it seem better than it was. Yet, I'm sure that the converse of this must be far more prominent . . . . . but who is going to tell their host that the place looked like a dump on Expedia and they only booked the location as a last resort, but were pleasantly surprised as to how nice it was?


The lost business because of poor photography is probably more than anyone can imagine. But it's a hidden reason and therefore, incalculable. It seems that paying for decent photography is considered a last resort, or an evil necessity, by some. The number of Resort Condo sales efforts that I have seen where the shots were taken by someone in the Real Estate Sales office, are staggering. I've seen numerous million dollar plus Condos featuring nothing more than underexposed snapshots from (presumably) the Agent's "Point and Shoot" camera. Ouch!


Decent photography should pay for itself many times over and the cost of such should be considered to be an investment, not a liability. Howard J. Wolff, a Senior VP at WATG (big deal Architects) recently Blogged about "Design as a Differentiator - What are the Drivers?", and his observations are as true of Photography as they are of Architecture and Design. I'm going to steal some of his points here and quote him.


"Today's travellers are looking for four things: a connection with people and places; physical and psychological comfort; a greater choice of guestrooms and amenities; and convenience. And they want to feel that they are getting these things at great value. Owners, operators and developers who understand the public's changing demands stand the best chance of capturing the lion's share of business in today's competitive environment. Successful destinations mirror the co-existing desires of their guests."


Well said Howard, and it is photography's job to provide tangible illustration to entice and satisfy a potential guest's desires from a location, as you have outlined. This is not to diminish the role of good copy. I think that photography is just a learned talent, while writing is a real gift. The ability to use words that allow us to conjure up mental images is an amazing ability and the perfect companion for good photography. They're like ham and cheese. Either one is good by itself, but put them both in a sandwich and they're even better.


Given the current financial debacle, new projects are being cancelled left and right, while some of the larger, long term ones like Cap Cana in the DR, are laying off and slowing to a crawl, and even swanky Destination Clubs like Lusso are going into Chapter 11. As one of the (near) bottom feeders in this food chain, Resort Photography takes a big hit too. It is only natural and prudent that companies start to cut back as they try to weather the storm. However, this situation is also a savvy marketer's dream. If my competition is going into hiding, and I continue my marketing efforts, unabated, I should really stand out from the crowd. Of course, that presumes that I believe that advertising and marketing leads to sales and if I don't, I shouldn't have been doing either in the first place.


While I wouldn't go as far as to say you can spend your way out of trouble, I do know that you can rein in so far that further trouble is almost inevitable. As for me, I'm long enough in the tooth that it really doesn't matter. It is nice to have a reason to get up in the morning though. I think it's called, going to work - for those of us who are fortunate enough to love what we do for a living. In the meantime, there's a new guy in the White House tomorrow, guess we'll find out what he's made of soon enough.

First Post

Because this is my first post I'm sure I'll make a number of mistakes and wish that I had learned more before I started. Ah well.

I've hesitated in starting because, quite frankly, I don't know who'll bother to read this or why. There are a number of Photo related blogs that seem to have achieved stardom - Strobist, Chase Jarvis, A Photo Editor, Joe McNally and everything Scott Kelby related. It's interesting to see the "attaboys" that they give each other as if they're a closed circle of cognoscenti, all of whom, not uncoincidentally are in the workshop business too. Andrew Hetherington's Blog is the one that confuses me the most, mainly picture after picture of himself and someone else at an artsy function in New York. Does this man ever work, or does he just hang out with a drink in his hand and wait for someone who'll pose with him for a snapshot? Hmmm.

To be frank, the only reason that I started this is to increase my visibility and get more work. There, I said it - no meaningful highbrow - just plain old commerce. I'll try to be interesting along the way, hopefully more interesting than this post has been. But you have to start somewhere right?