I made myself a professional photographer in 1978, and I’m still standing, shooting my work, holding my camera in my eyes, studying, thinking about it, talking about it, and again, writing about it. it. Real deal: Field notes from the life of a working photographermade, and published and published.
In the opening, I wrote, “I imagined a life. And then I took a picture of it.”
That’s pretty much it, it’s the simplest. I grew up immersed in stories, legends, legends, and the charms of people from afar. That might be a bit odd, given the fact that I was a middle-class kid with no particular description or distinction. Went to five different grammar schools, got a year and got slapped by five different orders of nuns, and made it to high school, where the Irish Christian Brothers continued those assignments, with enthusiastic. Nothing remarkable happened, save in my imagination, the hideout of books, many of which have pictures.
I was asked what the book was really about. Is it a way to do it? It’s about the small flash, and where to put the light? A camera guide?
Is not.
There are many indications, told in anecdotes, in visual stories, and what happens out there in that ambiguous, colorful place is called “locating work”. It’s not a straight line for how to pose someone, or how to get good post-production. It’s like a country road, a twist, if you will, through the life of a working photographer, an honest, often fairly straightforward account, discussing rewards, failures, successes. publicity, exaggeration, mystery, magic, bullshit, and courage of it all. I want to return to the beginning of a long journey. Photos along the way, collected like fascinating pebbles on a long beach walk, range from Kodachrome to pixel and cameras from Nikon F to Z.
And it continues. At this point in my life, I see the world through a rectangle, aimlessly creating air pictures in my head of pretty much anything I see around me. A photographer’s work is highly personal and at the same time public. The need to be seen, to be told, is an emotional longing, and like a tree root seeking the firm buy of the ground, it winds around your head and heart, squeezing even more. From time to time, people have asked me if I do “personal work”. My answer is regular… .it’s all personal.
And that is this book. Deeply, deeply personal, not only in the stories, advice, wisdom (hopefully) and direction provided, but also in the relationships gained through the act of bringing up your camera into your eyes, which someone who is not experienced in the emotional magic of all this might seem to be a purely mechanical trade that involves measuring light and the focus of a lens. Smile!
I always advise that a camera is not a camera, it is a visa, allowing the person to transport it to borders in transit, both geopolitically and personally. I talk about the simple, impactful fact that so many of the people who have come before my camera have become dear friends. One of such people is Mary Karria formidable and lauded memoir who wrote down a powerful, striking recollection of her childhood, called Lying Club. Observant, funny, intelligent, and excellent company, I was sent to photograph Mary when I was a photogist at LIFE. Our meeting resulted in the first photograph she has described to me as her favorite photo ever taken, and has since become a friendship to this day. She helped guide me when I started the book, and I am forever grateful.
And! She likes it. She made me the honor of posting on Twitter.
And then my friend and editor Ted Waittand Rocky Nook, my patient publisher. I signed the contract a few years ago, and I think there’s a clause in it that says, “Dude, whenever.” The pandemic has become the window. Ted and I got along really well in terms of both humor and reverence for the story. He allowed me to write freely, even though the stories I was producing were neither linear nor logical in nature. Basically, I presented Ted with a word and picture jigsaw puzzle. He found the path to a coherent book.
Seems to be going well in different categories, https://rockynook.com/shop/photography/the-real-deal/hitherto.
I have already signed the book and will continue to sign here.
I’ve been writing this book for the past two years, and I’ve been thinking about it for the past five years and living with it for the past forty years.
A photographer’s life is mostly about climbing safety rails, and looking out, and beyond. And we continue to do it, unscrupulously, despite the fact that there is often nothing to see, or that what is seen is disappointing, irrelevant, dull, and hardly worth the effort. force, less risk to ourselves.
But we keep doing it. Many times, there is no guarantee of success, safety or remuneration. Because there might be a picture there. Impossible, but possible. And that tantalizing ability is the endless fuel that ignites the photographic spirit and makes you climb over the rails, even when logic says to stay the same.
Award-winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney, possessing profound eloquence and a profound understanding of the human condition, may have inadvertently written the best description of a photographic career. In fact, it is inscribed on his tombstone in Northern Ireland.
“Walk in the air with your better judgment.”
Love and light for all.
More tk….
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