feast or famine
I noticed recently that some days I think I'm the greatest thing since sliced bread and become rather insufferable, and some days I think I'm utter crap. I seem to have a hard time finding the middle ground, for some reason. Maybe I'm manic depressive or something?
Right now it's the crap part (and in case anybody's wondering why I didn't go to the Blogger Meetup tonight, it's cuz I wasn't feeling very social). Still, it doesn't really make sense, given that:
A) for the first time, a photo of mine ran on the front page of The Spartan Daily above the fold, four columns wide, and in full color.
B) someone asked permission to use material from my Comparative Advantage and Opportunity Cost blog post in an online course.
Of course, the front page deal is not really all that. It was a slow news day, so the Nutrition Fair that I was assigned to shoot was pretty much the only thing going on. Also, I was really unhappy with my work on that. I could kinda tell things weren't going well early on. I didn't get into a good rhythm at all. Something was just off. Maybe I was doubting myself due to other things that happened earlier that day. Also, it turned out another photographer was there, cuz it was accidentally double-assigned. I told him he could take the assignment, feeling that he'd do a much, much better job, but he said he had a class and took off to let me shoot it instead.
And I didn't get any great shots and hardly any good shots. Worse, the better ones were unusable because I failed to get the identifying info necessary for the captions. I really do try. It's not like I'm afraid of people or anything, cuz I always end up with a ton of names -- just not of the people in the better pictures. I just don't have the knack for finding balance (oy, isn't that a theme?) of time spent shooting, reviewing shots, and getting names. I'm always worried about missing the shot, and so spend way more time on the shooting than I really need to.
Also, I concentrated mostly on getting info from the students, figuring that the people behind the booths could wait till later. Near the end, I started focusing on getting a shot of somebody using one of the fat-measuring gadgets, but each time I got a good shot, the subject declined permission for their photos to run in the paper (I tend to shoot first and ask questions later in order to capture a more candid moment -- this is the downside of that approach).
At this point, I'd taken well over a hundred photos, very few of which I was happy with. Out of frustration, I just gave up and left... forgetting to get the caption info of many of the people I'd planned to get. And so back at the Daily, I was heartbroken and discouraged to have to delete photos left and right because of missing identifying info. What was left was utter crap.
I was feeling really discouraged (for other reasons that day, which I'll hopefully get to another time), and I really let it show, telling the editor before he looked at my photos that they were crap. And later, one of the other photographers, making conversation, was asking me about my career plans and how photojournalism played into them. I said I'd been considering it as a long-shot behind economist or policy analyst, but now doubted I'd go into photojournalism cuz I was no good at it. It boggles my mind that I can get so down on myself sometimes when other moments I think I'm absolutely hot stuff.
Well, despite the crapola of shots, some of them were at least usable. So it made the front page. The front page shot actually looked better than I was expecting (haven't uploaded it to Flickr yet, but you can see the shot that was used here -- for the layout and the other shots, you'll have to get the PDF version of the issue, which doesn't seem to be posted yet), but the other stuff was still crap. Plus, I guess my lack of good shots was costly cuz they apparently had to run a marginally-related shot from another photographer along with the same story. Erika thinks I just have too high standards for myself. I dunno.
In contrast, the blog post thing is all good news. Someone from the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich e-mailed me, asking for permission to use material from it for a non-profit online English course for Econ and Management students. Of course, I was fine with it (all my blog posts are already released under Creative Commons anyway). I don't know why I'm not more tickled by this. Maybe because I already know it's a good post, since it gets a lot of traffic. Or maybe cuz I'm not yet sure this thing is really for real.
Or maybe cuz I'm just in a bad mood. Ya know, I'm thinking maybe it has to do with a certain someone I was really looking forward to finally seeing again last Thursday, but now seems to have completely vanished from my life for the umpteenth time. If you happen to be reading this, the disappearing act has gotten really, really old.
In other news, Erika abruptly quit her job today, and doesn't have another job lined up. She loved the work, but hated the environment. I was totally supportive of her decision, as I'd been hearing what's been going on and it's just totally unacceptable for her to be treated like that.
Well, like many other things I've mentioned in passing, this is a story for another time. Things'll be a bit tight for a while (guess the birthday celebration will probably have to wait), but it shouldn't be too bad. Hmmm, is that me being optimistic again?
Right now it's the crap part (and in case anybody's wondering why I didn't go to the Blogger Meetup tonight, it's cuz I wasn't feeling very social). Still, it doesn't really make sense, given that:
A) for the first time, a photo of mine ran on the front page of The Spartan Daily above the fold, four columns wide, and in full color.
B) someone asked permission to use material from my Comparative Advantage and Opportunity Cost blog post in an online course.
Of course, the front page deal is not really all that. It was a slow news day, so the Nutrition Fair that I was assigned to shoot was pretty much the only thing going on. Also, I was really unhappy with my work on that. I could kinda tell things weren't going well early on. I didn't get into a good rhythm at all. Something was just off. Maybe I was doubting myself due to other things that happened earlier that day. Also, it turned out another photographer was there, cuz it was accidentally double-assigned. I told him he could take the assignment, feeling that he'd do a much, much better job, but he said he had a class and took off to let me shoot it instead.
And I didn't get any great shots and hardly any good shots. Worse, the better ones were unusable because I failed to get the identifying info necessary for the captions. I really do try. It's not like I'm afraid of people or anything, cuz I always end up with a ton of names -- just not of the people in the better pictures. I just don't have the knack for finding balance (oy, isn't that a theme?) of time spent shooting, reviewing shots, and getting names. I'm always worried about missing the shot, and so spend way more time on the shooting than I really need to.
Also, I concentrated mostly on getting info from the students, figuring that the people behind the booths could wait till later. Near the end, I started focusing on getting a shot of somebody using one of the fat-measuring gadgets, but each time I got a good shot, the subject declined permission for their photos to run in the paper (I tend to shoot first and ask questions later in order to capture a more candid moment -- this is the downside of that approach).
At this point, I'd taken well over a hundred photos, very few of which I was happy with. Out of frustration, I just gave up and left... forgetting to get the caption info of many of the people I'd planned to get. And so back at the Daily, I was heartbroken and discouraged to have to delete photos left and right because of missing identifying info. What was left was utter crap.
I was feeling really discouraged (for other reasons that day, which I'll hopefully get to another time), and I really let it show, telling the editor before he looked at my photos that they were crap. And later, one of the other photographers, making conversation, was asking me about my career plans and how photojournalism played into them. I said I'd been considering it as a long-shot behind economist or policy analyst, but now doubted I'd go into photojournalism cuz I was no good at it. It boggles my mind that I can get so down on myself sometimes when other moments I think I'm absolutely hot stuff.
Well, despite the crapola of shots, some of them were at least usable. So it made the front page. The front page shot actually looked better than I was expecting (haven't uploaded it to Flickr yet, but you can see the shot that was used here -- for the layout and the other shots, you'll have to get the PDF version of the issue, which doesn't seem to be posted yet), but the other stuff was still crap. Plus, I guess my lack of good shots was costly cuz they apparently had to run a marginally-related shot from another photographer along with the same story. Erika thinks I just have too high standards for myself. I dunno.
In contrast, the blog post thing is all good news. Someone from the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich e-mailed me, asking for permission to use material from it for a non-profit online English course for Econ and Management students. Of course, I was fine with it (all my blog posts are already released under Creative Commons anyway). I don't know why I'm not more tickled by this. Maybe because I already know it's a good post, since it gets a lot of traffic. Or maybe cuz I'm not yet sure this thing is really for real.
Or maybe cuz I'm just in a bad mood. Ya know, I'm thinking maybe it has to do with a certain someone I was really looking forward to finally seeing again last Thursday, but now seems to have completely vanished from my life for the umpteenth time. If you happen to be reading this, the disappearing act has gotten really, really old.
In other news, Erika abruptly quit her job today, and doesn't have another job lined up. She loved the work, but hated the environment. I was totally supportive of her decision, as I'd been hearing what's been going on and it's just totally unacceptable for her to be treated like that.
Well, like many other things I've mentioned in passing, this is a story for another time. Things'll be a bit tight for a while (guess the birthday celebration will probably have to wait), but it shouldn't be too bad. Hmmm, is that me being optimistic again?