date: 1096292757
mood: pensive
listening to:crystal method – bad stone (live)
“Photographers start as ‘assistants’, who do anything that needs doing, carrying gear, painting walls, sweeping floors, making tea, chasing up deliveries, fetching sandwiches – and they may occasionally touch a camera, if only to load or unload film. As they gain experience they can expect to do more of the actual lighting and photography.
As well as making everything run smoothly, assistants are also learning in a practical manner how the job is done. Permanent assistants are often allowed (if not expected) to make use of the facilities to develop their own skills and build their own portfolios when not working on a job, and eventually may be able to take on small jobs themselves using the studio facilities before they branch out as photographers in their own right.
Assistants are usually poorly paid, the hours are long and unpredictable, and work is generally hard to find. Most hirings are on a short term basis and if you don’t fit in and pull your weight you will not get work again. Until you have experience it is hard to get work at all – you may have to start with unpaid ‘work experience’. A good ‘book’ (portfolio of work), a good interview manner and tons of persistence are needed.”
all the showing of my photographs to people who i’ve never met before (and who therefore have no preconceptions of who i am and what i do) made me think of photography and my future.
i’ve gotten the question of “you study this, right?” from each person.
i’ve gotten the question of “so why don’t you work in this” from at least 2 people.
i don’t know.
obviously i want and will finish my higher degree first.
but i also want to do masters.
and i also really, really, REALLY like photography, as much as i am disappointed by what i’m doing lately. is it good to not like what you do and push yourself further? or perhaps i’ve exauhsted what i can do and now i’m running over the same track – and that’s why i don’t like what i do, as i’m not doing anything creative and new?
blah.
i selected images for an updated portfolio. i have around 160 images + what i already have up online. the selection doesn’t include many photographs that i’d like to have there but can’t find originals on harddrive and too lazy to dig through cds (i don’t think i even have the cds with me). regardless, 168 is too much, but the photographs that are there i feel well represent the diversity of what i have done (and where i have been) over the past 2 years.
its beside the fact i only REALLY like, like, 4 photos. i can’t have just 4 photos online. i want my portfolio to promote me well.
the hard part is organizing these images into categories.
which brings me back to the original paragraph, taken from How to become a photographer. do i really want to seperate my photographs into art and commercial? because according to that link it wouldn’t be even art and commercial, but like art and advertising, since all my “commercial” work is for advertising (humane society, soil products, dance teams).
and if i don’t (or even if i do) make that seperation, what do i do next? should i stick with my “themes” of visuality (reflections, structure), or switch to dates (like seasons?) or … what? subject matter ala deviantart?
most photographs can be stuffed into folders like “denver”, “cuba”, “toronto”, “london”, “paris”, “amsterdam”. does that mean that’s what i should go with? but it doesn’t accurately reflect the purpose of each photograph.
what does then?
i don’t know.
if you want to see the (roughly, plus minus 10 images) selection please click view this folder. damn,i just realized paris, denver, and amsterdam aren’t there. well, add another 100 images to that (denver has like 70 photographs that i like!)
and packing my 
so, yeah.
its hard to believe 2 weeks since reading week have passed. i finished drinking the antibiotics that the doctor prescribed, so now i’m officially healthy. 
