Hi Bob,
Good luck in your self-analysis.
Glad to hear that Ben is on the mend.
Cheer up. The weather will soon improve, and we will all feel better!
Jim Nichols
Tullahoma, TN USA
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bob Whitmire" <bwhitmire@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Olympus Camera Discussion" <olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2012 11:20 AM
Subject: [OM] (OT) Ramblings & Rumblings
> Warning: AG-style stream-of-consciousness post ahead:
>
> So the last couple of years I’ve known something wasn’t working, I just
> couldn’t put my finger on it. Logic and deductive reasoning failed me.
> (Either that, of it was my self-editing mechanism, which also is known as
> my ability to argue with myself to the point of distraction—and sometimes
> self-destruction.)
>
> As most of you know, the past several months have been something of a
> strain. Mostly personal, but professional as well. At one point I told
> Esteemed Wife that I knew the experience was going to hit me hard in some
> yet-to-be-determined way. I knew everything was going to change, I just
> didn’t know how. Since leaving the hospital, and now that Ben is doing
> very well and on his way to what appears to be full recovery, I find that
> comet is closer than I thought.
>
> With some degree of crisis-induced clarity, I’ve determined that the 2012
> season here in Maine is not going to be business as usual. First and
> foremost, the mass-production mentality is kaput. This business of making
> many different sizes of prints for many different venues is putting a
> strain on my mental health and not producing the desired result, i.e.,
> profit and artistic satisfaction.
>
> So, I’m dropping a couple of venues, most notably the gallery at Southwest
> Harbor, on Mt. Desert. It just isn’t doing what it should for me, and I’ve
> got a lot of time and money tied up in inventory and effort. Wave of the
> wand. Gone. (Actually, a letter and a trip to pick up inventory, but you
> know what I mean.)
>
> Secondly, I reckon this will be my last year at the Pemaquid Craft Co-op
> in New Harbor. That’s where I do the bulk of my business. It’s also where
> my business is bulk. Same image, different sizes, and lots of phone calls
> to see if they can get a big image smaller. (Every now and then it goes
> the other way, about 1 in 1,000.) There’s also a gracious plenty of hack
> work: I shoot a lot of sense-of-place pictures, and a lot of them I print
> and market not because I like them but rather because I know I’ll sell a
> few.
>
> That’s not good enough anymore. I want to produce the work I want to
> produce, the work that moves me and shakes me and at the same time maybe
> moves others. So this will be something of a sell-down year at Pemaquid.
> Inventory reduction, as it were. Then more sizes will disappear as I begin
> to concentrate entirely on the gallery and the web. As His Mooseness noted
> a while back, some images just look better at some sizes, and that’s where
> I’m headed.
>
> Which goes hand-in-hand with something else: my kit is out of control. I
> haven’t been making much profit lately because I’ve been dumping it all
> into acquiring a kit that now totals a good thirty pounds. That’s too
> much. Well, maybe it’s not too much for some people, but it’s too much for
> me. It’s not fun anymore. There have been times when I thought about
> grabbing the bag and heading out the door and have resisted the urge
> because I didn’t want to mess with the kit. More kit, fewer pictures.
>
> It ain’t supposed to work that way.
>
> I guess what I’m saying is this: I’ve wandered off the path and need to
> find my way back to what it is I really enjoy. The old business model of
> pretty pictures for tourists just isn’t cutting it anymore. I don’t have
> any artistic pretensions, but I do presume to redirect my efforts more
> toward an excess of quality rather than quantity. Perhaps even in a less
> commercial way than before. God knows how many pictures I haven’t taken
> because they didn’t conform to the business model.
>
> That ain’t right, either.
>
> Maybe I’ll buy a motorcycle (those new Triumphs are SWEET) and a Fuji
> x-100 and call it good. Or a Nikon D800, and two lenses (two and only TWO)
> and call it good.
>
> Stay tuned, or be prepared to hit you delete button.
>
> --Bob
> --
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>
>
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