Thursday, August 30, 2007

Great Art


I shot this today as a possible location shot while scouting for a job . I like it by itself but don't know why. Wish i could shoot like this.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maybe it's so good, because you usually excercise such control over the work images, and it's not "effen perfect" you know? This one harkens Bill Owens with the freaky burb feeling.

ThomasBroening said...

I think that is exaclty right. My work tends to be super controlled and this image is a lot looser. Just went and looked at Bill Owens work and it still blows me away

Anonymous said...

Thomas, you made a conscious decision to become an advertising photographer. The last time I looked at advertising it was contrived, impersonal and was there entirely for the sole purpose of selling something. So take that money you are making, stop bitching and go make something of yourself, unless you are not really interested and are going thru pangs of artistic remorse.

Your little finger is trying to tell you something, you can either listen and doom yourself to obsessive compulsive artistic numbrilism or continue on your merry way making money. Like a photographer friend used to tell me when I quit journalism, "you can't have it both ways", I guess you're not allowed to shoot journalism while you're trying to reinvent your self as a fine artist (whatever that fucking mean). I mentally laughed at him and thought, what a smart guy like him doing saying stupid shit like this.
BTW, that's why people bitch, it's because life and the biz is so fucking narrow and restricted. When he said that to me and I started to promote my new work, he turned out to be right. The powers that be suddenly assumed that I was no longer a photojournalist, even if I advertised both for a while simultaneously. Despite what you think, you can't have it both way, not because you can't but because they won't let you, and to think otherwise is bullshit. Go out and shoot but for god's sake but don't advertise it (unless your work is so genius that the geniuses in the industry can't resist the urge to see you as anything else but that multi faceted dude). Anyway, they might think you can do more than one thing and become so terribly confused that they won't remember a thing about you.

The photographers who do best in the industry are often not the best, just the best at making compromises. They are richly rewarded and made honorary corporate citizens. Some 3 percent make it to the top of their profession and manage to do just about anything they wish, within limits of course, our patience has limits. 3% is so statistically random as not to be worth mentioning. The rest of us have to tread carefully until either random selection runneth over or continue to compromise our talents and ourselves to earn a buck. And from someone who in short order will change his name and shoot what is need, not what I want to shoot. You can either do it after you've made your money, but you run the risk of loosing yoursefl, or before you make your money, and you run the risk of loosing your mind doing it.