Work(ing Title)

has been brewing in my world for some time now, and with this most recent batch of photos staring back at me, I believe it’s time to describe the problem ‘out loud’ in hopes that some clarity will develop.

Speaking in extremely rough estimates, each time I pick up my camera I come back with around 100 RAW images (sometimes I don’t feel so inspired and I end up with 20-50, while other times I’m in the zone and I end up with 200 or more). Each of these events creates a multi-stage processing commitment of 1-2 hours: an initial review to delete failed images, anywhere between one and three rounds of curating in order to ‘tell the story’ of that event effectively, the Photoshop work to make them all beautiful, renaming and tagging of the finished collection, and finally determining which photos are suitable for publication (not everything I shoot gets out to Flickr).

Given how inordinately easy it is to capture an event, when compared with the time and attention necessary to produce a finished product that satisfies me, I find myself with a perpetual backlog of photos. Paraphrased below are the great many conversations I have which speak to this backlog:

Them: Hey, when the fuck am I going to see the photos you shot?!

Us: It’s slightly more complicated than that dickweed.

Then, once I finally get through my process:

Them: Wow thank you! You made me look like a god-damned supermodel.

Us: You’re welcome cunt.

I’m thrilled and flattered to get the sort of response I do from my friends and family, whether it comes in the form of emails, comments in my photostream, or noticing my work in new social profile portraits; I just wish there was a way to minimize the frequency of those first conversations. However, a significant motivation for me to photograph anything in the first place is the selfish desire to document my own life. There are few things I find as enjoyable than looking back at old photos–they’re a fantastic memory accelerator.

One of the difficult philosophical issues here is how do I view photos as a medium? They occupy space both in art and journalism. I’ve always recommended to the less-nerdy of my friends that big cameras are worth lugging around if your goal is to create beautiful imagery, while tiny (read: phone) cameras are perfect for recording moments in time. However the fact is that these two goals are rarely disconnected; the most exquisite photograph often has a story to tell, and the frozen piece of a story can also be art. Journalism should be prompt, whereas art is (relatively speaking) timeless.

Fundamentally I think the only solution here is to make processing my photos a higher priority when I sit down at my desk, but that’s just a fancy way of saying I should procrastinate less (and we all know how easy that is to resolve).

Postscript - Still feel relatively fucked in how to deal with this, but somewhat more motivated.

Yesterday Rory thought it was high time he did some work, and so naturally, he chose to sit with me in our EvNet Lounge and conduct the strangest interview I’ve ever been a part of. His title bears repeating, “Jesse Lewin on knowing Steve Jobs, working at Apple, and posing with Bono,” as they are all things of which I am guilty.

Note the Helio and Twitter references during the interview, and otherwise just enjoy Rory talking a mile-a-minute. If you can’t watch the video in your browser, that’s probably because you aren’t using Internet Explorer with Windows Media Video. You can download the interview and watch it with VLC, or drop by your friendly software retailer and explain your problem. They’ll set you up with a little app called Parallels and sort you out ;)

Anyone who knows me knows me knows that I would never read anything by Kevin Smith. That said, some of you probably know that I have some televised wrestling heritage, and that fact was apparently not lost on Eric when he sent me this clip:

As it is obviously hilarious, I responded to his email, sarcastically suggesting that his friends and I could raise some money to buy an Ultimate Warrior impersonation from our man Eric. Well what began as friendly ball-busting has taken a turn into weirdville. Eric has challenged Jocko and I to a Ultimate Warrior imitation video deathmatch.

There’s a suggestion on the table to cast the net a bit wider, in some absurd effort to increase the volume of political-aspiration-crushing content. I’m happy to welcome anyone who wants to make a fool of themselves–join the club motherfucker. All I can say, is that I will do my family proud, and that if I ever rise into the rarified air of my chosen industry, that this will most certainly be known as my Ballmer Developers video.

And so we arrive at the finals of this little fiasco. The votes were tallied and the top five were Versace 1, Versace 2, Ray-Ban 2, Ray-Ban 3, and Modo 2, in order of popularity. However this afternoon upon returning to my friendly neighborhood LensCrafters, two of the top five had vanished.

First, in place of Pappy’s favorite Ray-Ban 2, I present its English sibling Burberry 1. Second, I have grandfathered Modo 1 into the finals, on account of it being my personal favorite. Exercise your opportunity to affect the face you’ll no doubt see a lot of, as I’m becoming far too accustomed to these blasted self portraits.

It started snowing about forty minutes ago, just as I arrived to work. So here I sit with my warm cuppa and battle the evil that abounds. I put on socks for the first time this week, which hopefully will help counteract the serious discomfort from yesterday. I must have eaten something that didn’t play well, because I went home in the middle of the day and just about fell asleep.

The rest of the week is looking up though. I’ll be in the gym for the first time in weeks, so I should continue to shrink out of my clothes. Also this weekend will be one of the few where all I have before me is cleaning my apartment and organizing my life, which is fun in a slightly spikey sort of way.