I took this photo yesterday morning, on an assignment for an advertising / design firm who represents the folks that do the engineering & maintenance on this bridge... or something like that. When my contact at the agency, somewhere in Pennsylvania, saw the shoot, his comment was "Love the shots! Pretty cool bridge!". Well, as I am always appreciative of positive feedback, and even (reluctantly) appreciative of negative feedback... I have to say that anyone who has ever traveled from SoPo (our local way cool trendier than thou acronym for South Portland) to Portland over this bridge, the Casco Bay Bridge, will have to admit: it is NOT a pretty cool bridge. It is in fact, a pleasantly designed extremely utilitarian means of conveyance from one side of the river/bay to the other. And, barring the occasional "whoops, we can't get the draw bridge part to go down", it functions quite well... quietly, unobtrusively, in a very late 20th century nondescript way. In other words: it's boring.

So why did my intelligent, art savvy client say "Pretty cool bridge!"? Because he was viewing pretty cool images of the bridge. 

Now I am not bringing this up to pat myself on the back or toot my own horn... but to illustrate a point that has been on my radar scope, in excess I might add, recently. That point is the recent prediction that commercial art as we know it is going the way of the buggy whip and the all too frequently referenced, but never seen, dinosaur. I am on many professional photo forums... where all the pros of the world submit their thoughts via binary sequences for all to see, and comment on, and comment on again... etc...In the past three weeks the demise of print media (magazine & newspapers... does anyone remember them?), the demise of specific magazines regarding our profession, the demise of our profession itself, have all been predicted like an impending tsunami. And then there is this in the LA Times that does a fairly good job of telling the story of what we all fear...

There is no doubt that my profession, as well as other creative professions, is under siege right now from the democratization of art. Anyone armed with a reasonable camera, or not, and some basic photoshop skills can turn out much better imagery than was possible ten years ago. An ad agency I know is having their art director shoot food still life set ups as the end client knows what stock photos cost and wants to use them (no concern for quality or appropriateness) but the art director knows they suck, weaken the message, so has turned to shooting them herself to save the process. How long will that process last? The problem is that now the price:expectations ratio has been lowered so that when the next client or project comes along... the ever diligent account executive will ask "How come we did such nice work for XYZ Corp and we had such a small production budget? Why do you want so much $ for photography or illustration on this one?" i learned this in my banking days way back when... Incremental Budgeting is often the standard for corporations... So if less money is being spent on commercial art this year... then guess what? When your work starts to look like crap because of poorly produced or generic art... and suddenly you want to hire a real photographer or illustrator or musician... there will be no money!!! Budget not used in year one? We base year two's budget on what you needed last year!

Anyway... enough of this rant... for now... meanwhile I continue to seek out the clients that maintain a high production standard and work for them. It is a bit harder to find them... but they ARE out there, and I AM enjoying making "pretty cool images".