Assignment – Possible Helmet Law

It’s bad timing, looking for parents with bike-riding kids during school hours. Only kids 3-5 years old are going to be out riding. We walked across the park and finally spotted one. No helmet, riding a trike with mom, grandma, and the family dog, Brody. Mom was willing to talk after some initial hesitation. The kid was practically posing on her bike, in pink sunglasses with Brody in the background. It was a great shot. We finished and they walked on, us going in the same direction. I thought, We should walk a different direction. But we didn’t. Sure enough, a minute later mom turned around and said she doesn’t want us to use her quotes or the photos. “I don’t want to be part of a negative story,” she said. But it wasn’t a negative story. We were just putting her opinion out there. There was no talking her back into it.

We found another mom, her daughter riding a scooter. When we started talking, her daughter yelled, “Mom! You’re wasting our time!”

Another day at the office…

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Finished Gypsy Boy: My Life in the Secret World of the Romany Gypsies. A troubling book, Mikey Walsh takes you into the Roma culture. Troubling from the abuse his father dealt out to everyone in the family.

Now I want to know more about Irish Travellers…

Link: Irish Traveller family charged with keeping grown men as slaves in England:

The Irish Times reports that the men were recruited off the street or at homeless centres, and promised $70 a day. It is alleged that they never received the money, were blocked from leaving and were forced to work from 4am to 11pm six days a week, sometimes without food, while some were beaten.

Oldham claimed that at weekends, the men went door to door to find new customers and were ‘threatened if they failed to win business or tried to flee’.

Oldham also told the court that one man, now in his 40s, had been with the family since he was 14. He refused to stay at a rescue centre after the raid by police last September, and later returned to the caravan site.

Link: Unwelcome Exposure – TIME:

The Irish Travelers of North Augusta, S.C., stopped their pickups in the middle of the road last week to commiserate over the “outing” of Madelyne Gorman Toogood. The woman caught thrashing her 4-year-old on a surveillance video in Indiana is also, as it turns out, an Irish Traveler. And though they don’t know her, they know what her arrest means: 15 minutes of grueling fame for a community that thrives on secrecy.

See what I mean?

Redesigned the site, lots more content coming, and personality. Everything but The Click.

Daybook will now be in the daytime.

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The important thing to do when you get laid off from a journalism job is to legally change your name. That way no one will be able to uncover your prior job history as a journo and blacklist you from their company. But I was having a really hard time figuring out what my new name will be (when the day comes). Until the other night…

DonkeyStar GalactiKong

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Starting to wonder about all the big-tent projects I’ve spearheaded over the past few years. Questions I heard from friends involved are stuck in my mind. After we did a juried photo exhibition that was really cool and almost successful, a lot of the group was done. We limped through the second exhibition and collapsed. Gumby said to me something like, “Why are we doing all this work for other people? Why not do it for ourselves, with our own photography?”

It was a great question. The reward I saw coming from Salt City 50 would only have come if we kept going and became something like concert promoters, having photographers come to us hoping to be part of our next showcase. But we quit.

Gumby’s probably right. It’s not like concert promoters are seen as cool (even when they are). The promoters don’t get the attention, the artists do. There were other mistakes in the project that I wish we had avoided, like when we didn’t show the work of a couple photographers who put down serious money in entry fees. We should have balanced the integrity of the project with the goodwill that it needed to grow.

Stay focused…

After the last everyone-is-invited big-tent Utah PJ event, I couldn’t get over the strains in the room, the tension between different camps. Most of it was under the surface and you wouldn’t have picked up on it. But I did. And another friend who was there acknowledged the difficulty of getting photojournalists together, telling me, “Everybody secretly hates each other.”

Us photojournalists, we’re like comedians: bitter and brilliant and broken.

So yeah. Maybe it’s time to leave the era of the big-tent invite everyone events behind and be more selective. As the photojournalism world shrinks, the sense of community is fading. Freelancers in the small Utah market are so competitive now that I’ve seen people turn their backs on other photographers (literally) and complain about anyone who isn’t there to defend themselves.

Luckily the staff photographers seem to be somewhat immune to the toxicity. After all, we’re not a threat to each other or the freelancers. As long as we’re employed, that is…

Stay focused…

Why can’t we all relax? I should draw up a chart of the various factions in the community. I’d like to think that I’m on pretty good terms with everyone. Sure, I like some more than others. There are close friends and people I only smile and say hello to… I certainly wish everyone success and enjoy the talents of every photographer in the state. I think I know their strengths and weaknesses.

Stop rambling…

The point is that I’ve spent three years trying to build a community out of compounds that don’t and won’t stick together. And to what end? What is the goal of all this? I honestly don’t know what any possible payoff would be.

And don’t take this like some kind of Utah PJ suicide note, but I’ve actually been (irrationally) thinking about shutting down the Utah PJ website. Every time the thought comes to mind people start posting again. It’s a whole different crowd and I’m left wishing that everyone would fit in the big tent. But again, why? Yugoslavia failed.

What’s funny about this rant is that my next project is another big-tent thing. But I’ve learned one thing. This time, no photojournalists.

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I’m taking a break from Google+ for a while. I don’t understand how I can have 6,000 or so followers combined with a nearly complete silence on my posts. Hardly any comments. Hopefully they’ll announce some changes to it at Google I/O at the end of June. I want it to work.

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the Clunk has been restarted after two years. Clunk posts will be in my Twitter feed as well, though not on this site.

Busy week, spent in a prison out of state on an assignment to be named later.

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Leica announced their $8,000 black and white only M Monochrom today. Of course I want it desperately.

I remember the feeling I had watching Schindler’s List back in, what, 1993? The black and white was so well done and so powerful that I walked out of the theater promising myself to never shoot color film again.

Fast forward to now, I’m looking up at my best ten photographs from 2011 and seven are color. Only three black and whites. I look to the right at my best ten so far this year. Same thing, seven color and three black and white.

Looking at the sample photographs on Leica’s M Monochrom page, I’m really feeling the desire to ditch color for good. There’s never been a better time for it.

Add the new 50mm Leica Summicron lens and I’m only out $16,000.

I love the Leica world. It’s a commitment. In the Leica world it’s not enough to max out one credit card for your dream. You need to max out three or more to get one camera and one lens. Am I saying that if I didn’t have a wife and kids, I would slaughter my financial future for a camera that only shot black and white and a 50mm lens? Hell yes I would.

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Amazing book about the war in Afghanistan… Outlaw Platoon: Heroes, Renegades, Infidels, and the Brotherhood of War in Afghanistan

This book is so good, hitting just about every important point of the Afghanistan experience through one platoon’s experiences. Highly recommended.

Also re-watched Generation Kill. No one can savage poor leadership/management better than David Simon. It all rings so very true.

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Starting to see articles detailing that apps for news outlets are lame. Anyone else sick of pulling up a news website on your ipad and getting a pop-up telling you to download their stupid app? Rather than helping me consume your product, this practice prevents me from reading the article that I’m trying to get to. Readers aren’t going to click a link for an article, hit the pop up, download the app, then search for the article in the app. It’s too much. We click links, and links don’t work in apps. Wake up! Apple has already created an app for your news website. It is well thought out, engineered for the touch screen, linkable to the web, I can zoom in and out to look at articles… it’s a web browser called Safari and it comes pre-installed on every mobile device.

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One of the big problems that the power readers of digital content have is that it’s easy for us to skip topics and stories that we don’t think we’re interested in. We don’t even see them, because we don’t even look at the places they’re posted. That’s the good thing about the old fashioned newspaper, where every story gets in front of your eyes and you might be surprised to find a great story about something you didn’t previously care about. Great sports writing for example. I’m not going to read a sports story, but a great sports story I will definitely read.

What I’m getting at is that better news sites sort their stories by quality and importance rather than subject. Stop breaking out all the news stories, sports stories, entertainment stories and give me the best stories of the day from top to bottom. You’ve already got tabs along the top for Sports, Entertainment, Money, or whatever. Check out how the Guardian does it: http://www.guardiannews.com/

Everything is just out there on the Guardian’s page, in a much looser format. I might even go looser than they do.

Top reads. That’s what I want. I guess the problem is that such a system acknowledges that many posts aren’t top reads and in fact, aren’t worth reading at all.

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Film: The Cabin in the Woods. Amazing.

I Think We’re Alone Now – Link to Netflix Stream

An unforgettable film with characters that more than make up for sloppy technique.

Watch it. Your jaw will drop several times. Here’s the trailer:

Finally caught the film, Shut Up Little Man!, based on a set of audio verite recordings I first heard almost twenty years ago. Interesting film, but the tapes are the gold. I’m also intrigued with the idea that these guys somehow copyrighted the surreptitious recordings of a couple drunks. That never would have held up anywhere. And despite sentiments from the film, the recordings were exploitive of the subjects. That was the whole idea. We were laughing at them. We were all laughing at them.

Sadly, the subjects of the tapes are dead. Winnebago Man was a great film because you got to meet the guy. This one you’ve only got the tapers and Tony, the extra. It was like trying to watch all of the extras from the Heavy Metal Parking Lot DVD. Why? The original is it.

Still, I liked the film and it’s streaming on Netflix here: http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Shut_Up_Little_Man_An_Audio_Misadventure/70170055

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I forgot to list some of the amazing credits from the film, The Raid: Redemption…

You start with the main characters,

Rama, Jaka, Andi, Mad Dog, Wahyu, Tama, Bowo, Gofar, Dagu, Budi

Then it gets amazing…

Machete Gang #1
Machete Gang #2
Machete Gang #3
Machete Gang #4
Machete Gang #5

then…

Special Force #12
Special Force #13
Special Force #14
Special Force #15
Special Force #16
Special Force #17
Special Force #18

then…

Mad Dog’s Man #2
Mad Dog’s Man #3
Spotter Boy #1
Spotter Boy #2
Drug’s Lab Guard #1
Drug’s Lab Guard #2
Drug’s Lab Guard #3
Drug’s Lab Guard #4
Drug’s Lab Guard #5
Drug’s Lab Guard #6
Drug’s Lab Guard #7
Drug’s Lab Guard #8
Drug’s Lab Guard #9
Drug’s Lab Guard #10
Drug’s Lab Guard #11
Drug’s Lab Guard #12
Drug’s Lab Guard #13
Drug’s Lab Guard #14
Drug’s Lab Guard #15
Drug’s Lab Guard #16
Drug’s Lab Guard #17
Drug’s Lab Guard #18
Drug’s Lab Guard #19
Drug’s Lab Guard #20
Drug’s Lab Guard #21
Carrying Bowo Fighter #1
Carrying Bowo Fighter #2
Carrying Bowo Fighter #3
Carrying Bowo Fighter #4
Carrying Bowo Fighter #5
Carrying Bowo Fighter #6
Carrying Bowo Fighter #7
Carrying Bowo Fighter #8
Carrying Bowo Fighter #9
Carrying Bowo Fighter #10
Carrying Bowo Fighter #11
Carrying Bowo Fighter #12
Carrying Bowo Fighter #13
Carrying Bowo Fighter #14
Carrying Bowo Fighter #15
Carrying Bowo Fighter #16
Carrying Bowo Fighter #17
Carrying Bowo Fighter #18
Hole Drop Attacker #1
Hole Drop Attacker #2
Hole Drop Attacker #3
Hole Drop Attacker #4
Hole Drop Attacker #5
Hole Drop Attacker #6
Hole Drop Attacker #7
Hole Drop Attacker #8
AK-47 Attacker #1
AK-47 Attacker #2
AK-47 Attacker #3
AK-47 Attacker #4
AK-47 Attacker #5
Sniper #1
Sniper #2
15th Floor Attacker #1
15th Floor Attacker #2
15th Floor Attacker #3
15th Floor Attacker #4
15th Floor Attacker #5
Riot Van Shooter #1
Riot Van Shooter #2
Riot Van Shooter #3
Riot Van Attacker #1
Riot Van Attacker #2
Riot Van Attacker #3
Tama’s Victim #1
Tama’s Victim #2
Tama’s Victim #3
Tama’s Victim #4
Tama’s Victim #5
Falling Guard
Spy Hole Man
Apartment Night Guard
Junkie Girl
Junkie Guy #1
Junkie Guy #2
Sleeping Man
Panic Man
Tortured Man

Best film credits of all time, bar none.

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Finished reading Breakers this morning. E-book is three bucks, or free to Amazon Prime members. Loved it. Here’s the description:

When Vanessa dies of the flu, Walt is devastated. But she isn’t the last. The virus quickly kills billions, reducing New York to an open grave and LA to a chaotic wilderness of violence and fires. As Raymond and Mia hole up in an abandoned mansion, where they learn to function without electricity, running water, or neighbors, Walt begins an existential walk to LA, where Vanessa had planned to move when she left him. He expects to die along the way.

Months later, a massive vessel appears above Santa Monica Bay. Walt is attacked by a crablike monstrosity in a mountain stream. The virus that ended humanity wasn’t created by humans. It was inflicted from outside. The colonists who sent it are ready to finish the job–and Earth’s survivors may be too few and too weak to resist.

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Tonight the winners of Top of the Rockies will be announced. As of 9pm I can’t find any results online. Someone texted me that I won something, but you have to wait for the results to be posted. It’s mainstream journalism, after all. You have to wait.

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Spent all day yesterday putting together a video. Spending time today polishing it up. With video you need a deadline because otherwise you’ll just keep polishing it forever. Regardless, the end for this one is in sight.

The video out of the Mark IV is great. But I need a new computer. Thing is barely chugging along.

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Last night I got an e-mail from LinkedIn. Like always it’s someone requesting me to connect with them, or else it’s a reminder that someone has requested me to connect with them. I never go on that site and I figure no one else does. What’s the point? Please tell me.

So I logged on last night with the intention of closing my account. I got to the first “Are You Sure?” and saw that I’d been a member since 2009 had 90 connections. That was enough to change my mind. Before logging off I bulk-approved all the friend requests that had been collecting dust in my in box.

This morning, I get this message:

???

Here’s what I did next:

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The film The Raid: Redemption. Crazy good. For guys.

What a new camera really meant today: Eight hours of video editing.

I’ll share when it’s done.

New episode of the One Star Loser podcast:

http://onestarloser.com/2012/04/11/episode-seven-screw-up-of-the-year/

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Just sitting here looking at the stats for this site. Stuff I posted years ago is still attracting people from all over. Thinking I’m too spread out, and thinking about bringing all my content into one site…

It sounds so good right now. Tomorrow morning? Maybe not. Still, I’m too spread out. Routing everything into one place might be just what I need.

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Another plug for my Tumblr blog of epic book covers: http://dustyjackets.tumblr.com/

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And then there’s this…

Catching up…

Don’t know how I made it through the past two weeks.

One session left in the Smartphone photo class I’m teaching. Great group of students. G is teaching it this summer and I highly recommend it.

I’m teaching Documentary Photography starting April 23rd. Info here: http://continue.utah.edu/lifelong/class/llart_152_documentary_photography

Stopped posting links to The Click’s facebook page. No traction, no conversation. Still posting links to Google+.

Every day I get notifications from Google saying that more people are following me on Google+, but the number of followers climbs slowly so I must be shedding people with my links to great photojournalism. Not enough HDR photographs of beautiful sunsets, I guess.

The funny thing about Google+ followers is not every follower is equal. What I need is a list of the circles people have me in, at least the titles. Wouldn’t you like to know how many circles you’re in that are titled, “Uninterested” or “Losers” or “Dead to Me”?

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Reading Breakers, which is only $2.99 at Amazon, or free to Prime members. I’m two-thirds through and it’s a good read.

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Is it possible to honestly denigrate a photo contest that you won? I’d like to think so. What a joke that thing is. (I type this as the plaque is propped up prominently on my desk.)

Here’s hoping I win something in one of the contests whose results I value…

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Later, 43.