The yin and yang of it
American Photo magazine’s State of the Art blog had a post last night about photographers’ blogs that’s well worth checking out. (Click here to read it.) It mentions Alec Soth’s blog and Web site. If you haven’t seen his work, you should—especially NIAGARA (winner of the Golden Light Book of the Year Award for 2006). Soth is one of my favorite photographers working today.
I hadn’t heard of Amy Elkins before, but State of the Art mentions her as well, and I can see why. Her blog is a great example of the power of photography—and of the Internet to get your work out there.
I’ve been seeing my blog as a way to share what I’m thinking about and working on now (i.e., today), a place to put up some stuff that I might not otherwise post to my Web site. I hadn’t even considered blogs as marketing tools, but the State of the Art post makes a strong case for their usefulness in that way.
I’m not far enough into blogging to know for sure what I think of that, but my instinct is that a blog will be much more interesting to read (and write) if the blogger is doing it more as an experiment, a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants way of communicating. If the photographer goes into it thinking of it as a piece of advertising . . . I don’t know—I wonder if that might make it too precious, take all the spontaneity and randomness out of it. Part of what I love about reading blogs—and writing this one so far—is the yin and yang of it, the up and down, the way that, some days, the blogger comes up with something really brilliant, and other days, she has almost nothing. You get to see the process in action.
When you read a novel, you know that the author didn’t just sit down on a Monday at 9 a.m., power up his computer, and start typing flawlessly. You know there were fits and starts, starts and stops, days when the words flowed and days when he was banging his head against the keyboard or hitting the liquor cabinet before noon. But when you read the book, you don’t see any evidence of that—all you see is the (sometimes) beautiful finished product.
The blog is like looking at the crossed-out manuscript of an author, or the marked-up contact sheet of a photographer. You see what works and what doesn’t, and you get to watch as the blogger finds her way.
P.S. I took this photo this afternoon at Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Montecito.
I hadn’t heard of Amy Elkins before, but State of the Art mentions her as well, and I can see why. Her blog is a great example of the power of photography—and of the Internet to get your work out there.
I’ve been seeing my blog as a way to share what I’m thinking about and working on now (i.e., today), a place to put up some stuff that I might not otherwise post to my Web site. I hadn’t even considered blogs as marketing tools, but the State of the Art post makes a strong case for their usefulness in that way.
I’m not far enough into blogging to know for sure what I think of that, but my instinct is that a blog will be much more interesting to read (and write) if the blogger is doing it more as an experiment, a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants way of communicating. If the photographer goes into it thinking of it as a piece of advertising . . . I don’t know—I wonder if that might make it too precious, take all the spontaneity and randomness out of it. Part of what I love about reading blogs—and writing this one so far—is the yin and yang of it, the up and down, the way that, some days, the blogger comes up with something really brilliant, and other days, she has almost nothing. You get to see the process in action.
When you read a novel, you know that the author didn’t just sit down on a Monday at 9 a.m., power up his computer, and start typing flawlessly. You know there were fits and starts, starts and stops, days when the words flowed and days when he was banging his head against the keyboard or hitting the liquor cabinet before noon. But when you read the book, you don’t see any evidence of that—all you see is the (sometimes) beautiful finished product.
The blog is like looking at the crossed-out manuscript of an author, or the marked-up contact sheet of a photographer. You see what works and what doesn’t, and you get to watch as the blogger finds her way.
P.S. I took this photo this afternoon at Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Montecito.
Copyright © 2007 Liz Kuball
Labels: Alec Soth, Amy Elkins, blogs, books, photographers, State of the Art
posted by Liz at 9:40 PM
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