Reading This Blog Post will Change Your Life: Guaranteed.
I decided to take the long route to sitting down this morning to write the next edition of A Coffee With Jay. It would serve several purposes; allow a good thirty minute walk of exercise, have me try a new cafe, and give me time to formulate the hypothesis and the eventual denouement of this blog.
As is my normal, I followed GPS for a while. But then got caught up framing photos along the way and found myself soon off course; and the only way back to the original route was a ten minute walk in reverse to the right turn I should have taken; though hard pressed to think I did anything wrong since I snapped some photographs I thought were great along the way to getting lost.
Soon enough, but not by design, I came upon the modern Biblioteca Publica Municipal Juan Carlos Montoya (library). Enticed by its high chairs and tables (though no coffee— and even harder to swallow, no cake— I camped myself in a corner and began the ants-crossing-page-journey-to-craft-words. And substantiate my rather grand statement that this blog posts’ importance over-shadows everything I have ever written before. Let’s be totally honest; I’ve written more stuff than this odd library contains books (four cantilevered soaring stories high, and a humble collection of worn listless books which instead of holding a spell of wonder to new worlds seem to lie on the shelves lonely and never touched.
The reason this blog post demands attention may only be the click bait title; something to catch your eye, for you to make a snap decision, for you to click open the blog, to read. To find the tug-at-your-gut realization that now life makes sense because Jay hooked you with a sentence, presented a problem you didn’t even know you had, fleshed out said problem with additional prose, then wrapped it all up in a pretty little resolution bubble of ‘aha!” (Sort of similar to the entire “This is Me…Now’ debacle of J-Lo).
Catching people’s attention is nothing new. I haven’t thought of my collage days in forever. My degree was Advertising. Classes centered around creativimanipulatively getting people to see the USP (Unique Selling Point) of any item and making it a must have to temper the long unsatisfactory journey of life with hope. The USP was the doorway into selling this story.
John Ogilvy was a master at this. His book, Ogilvy On Advertising was my Bible. ‘Think Small,’ he said in a bold headline for the Volkswagen Beetle, its diminutive size amplified by its minuscule placement in the perfectly thought out golden ratio of the page. My first entry into the world of adverting was selling it. This was just before the advent of computer layout technology—I had to freehand sketch out how I wanted the ad to look like. Then handed said scribbles to the unionized art department at the newspaper. Within their guidelines they would spew out the text line by line from some sort of machine and then clip in half-tone images, following my scrawls to make the ad ‘camera-ready’ for the pasted together column in the newspaper spread. I would come and inspect the finished ad, though not allowed to touch it per union rules, and usually my advertisements were in a state of unfinished since all the designers were on break, or lunch, or attending a union meeting where it was discussed how pushy salespeople in the advertising department were constantly hounding them because an image was pasted on a little crooked (like who would notice anyway, since print ads were a waste of money).
Biblioteca Publica Municipal Juan Carlos Montoya
I can imagine right now 95% of the people reading this assuming I existed sometime back near Da Vinci painting The Last Supper with what turned out to be disappearing pigment and thinking how stupid he was; synthetic plasticized paint lasts forever. Eventually, yes, we Baby Boomers caught up to you Millennials, and ad creation from concept to digitally published can be done by any scrawny teenager who has Taylor Swift dreams. From the age of ten they now know the Golden Ratio is only part of the puzzle; first you have to construct Hook, Problem, Engage, Solve rapid fire situation. And just like that, anyone, even Andy with the overbite or Clementine with the onerous moniker hey-everything-is-groovy-high-on-methamphetamines parents burdened her with, can whip together a seemingly complex stew into a mini cinematic epic. ‘My name can be my brand!’ Clementine is thinking. All fifteen years of her.
Did I digress? Yes. Sort of. But come along. Reading this post will change your life. See, I’ve looped you in a little more; you know this payoff has to be better than the last Netflix series you bin watched where in the last episodes the actors and writers knew what was coming (their last paycheck) so they already spent whatever creative energy they possessed on maybe the next big thing.
I made a conscious decision to embrace and to live my creative life. Some of this had to do with my new status (single), my new age (older) and the prospect of selling my house in Colorado (which I live in from time to time), and becoming permanently homeless. I have dabbled in writing and photography and YouTubing the last 12 or so years— it was time to take it seriously and turn it into The Next Big Thing.
It was time to use my college degree.
I used to joke a lot with some few people who have followed me through the years: “You should be famous,” they say. “Your words are amazing!” “Your photographs are amazing!” I would reply, “I am very well comfortable with the accepting I’ll be famous when I’m dead.” Look at Van Gogh, I would add, or Vivian Maier.
This changed a bit last year when for a brief scary time the prospect of a chronic health issue sped up the prospect of that clock. Being dead was a bit uncomfortable close, like Clark Griswold having to hug Cousin Eddie. I realized in that space of time my contributions to ‘whatever’ were ‘who cares.’ And this might not be exactly what I wanted as a legacy to my creative self.
Well, I can’t stop the clock, nor rewind it back to the future or knock on Leo’s door in Milan and bring him a more permanent paint selection. All I can do is live my best life now. All I can do is remind you, your life is about to change forever. (So keep reading).
Part of the strategy for my, hmm, intervention? (Re-invention) is admitting that finding a broader audience is an element I want to explore. This became more telling where just in a matter of months we have lost some great photographers spanning many different genres (Elliott Erwitt, John Fielder, John Free). They were much more successful than myself, but they worked on their craft to go behind their personal union-dues craft and, pun-intended-you-will-understand-shortly, reel in an audience that participated with eyeballs watching and wallet opening to buy books, prints, courses.
Sadly, it is not enough to just be a photographer now. It worked for Vivian Maier because she became famous after she died. But could you imagine if she still lived, realized she had closets full of negatives and had this little aha moment, this rapid fire thought bubble bursting out of her… “Geez these are good pics. Now what; post them on Instagram. Now what; how do I get followers, everyone’s work is shit-fantastic and they are babies. Now what; I don’t like how I look on camera, but I have to produce something that stings like a bee so eventually I can float like a butterfly right into you good graces, buy my book or prints or courses.”
I think knowing what we know of her personality she would rather find a new gaggle of unruly kids to nanny.
But I want something different. I want to live my creative life and be conscious of it, not six feet under. I want to think that others see and read my passion and it opens ideas or appreciation of the craft. I want just enough money to put on my Colombia sneakers and go to Colombia (okay, done that). What about Birkenstocks and go to Babenhausen or Air Jordans and go to Jordan (Probably skip that for now). Though possibly I could go to Aerie in Erie—if such a place exists—and depend on my Jordans to continue this schtick.
I’ve come to the realization that I have to Ogilvy if I want to Desind. And this means finding my audience by tricking them they need me. The work (the writing and the photography) have to be solid. But really the way forward is the reel.
Eight years ago I produced a dozen or so videos for YouTube under the name, See You in the World. It was all me. From the filming to planning to the stills to the editing to the producing and even creating most of the music on Garage Band. It was six months frenetic assembling, figuring it out, uploading the videos, promoting them. My efforts produced views in the, um, hundreds (combined) and 62 subscribers.
I watched those videos, and you know what, for someone that had no resources or idea what he was doing, they are good. They show my personality and my take-no-prisoners fearlessness to create. I loved doing them, but they exhausted me. I became a blogger. Not a writer/photographer, which is who I want to be. I will never be a skillful movie maker; on your own it just takes too much time. Remember, I want to put on shoes and move.
But the coin of the day is how to be swifty. How to catch attention in a world now that never sleeps. How to compete against legions of people who have in their pockets high quality cameras and the instant gratification of posting pics of their desserts or catching exes in compromising situations and giving them what they deserve. And Jesus, their shit looks good!
I am just a guy who is holding on to saying ‘guy’ before people refer to me as that ‘older man’ and thinking my photos would look more contemporary if they were Easter egg colors. (I tried that but come on, I like grit in my sandbox of tools). Add to that the constant ever changing and expanding barrage of apps that promise to up your game in a ever increasing highly demanding graphic arts environment that expects everyone from a thirteen-year-old on their own to highly educated creatives produce stunning top grade jaw dropping mini videos of time that just twenty of so years ago were not possible on a laptop. And let’s not talk about photography, where if your pictures don’t look cinematic and artistically clean and perfectly cropped to a teeth-jarring perfection, well then they are just amateurish attempts to freeze time.
Yet.
I have to be relevant, right? To have gravitas under the wild assertion that this blog could fundamentally change you. Something you are still hoping for if you have read this far.
The thing is, I want to live my creative life. I want you, Kind Reader, to see the babies I progenate with passionate abandon. I must succumb to accept to have the tantrums of my babies heard, part of the mix of my endeavors must include embracing Stories and Reels of social media, which seem to grease the wheels of this new age of being noticed. These social platforms have moved away from solitary stills (photographs and text that only moves when your eyeballs skim them) to mini movies that promise bacon and eggs at the end. Yet to reach the savor of the enticing stomach fix, you have to watch and listen how the ingredients were mixed, the final version plated up sixty second later. This structure repeated over and over: State the mission as a hook, explain the problem in a mini story book, arrive with perfect timing to the solution, then make the outcome pop. Basic Ogilvy stuff, but now with 21st century pizazz.
We come now to the end. Well, to my beginning. Since now when I choose an image to share, I must think how to make it living-motion-grabbing so you see it in the flickering as your thumb scrolls through. In my last post I talked about how a camera now captures a second with a burst of images, that second expanded in near infinite representations. Think now of the task at hand. I share an image yet I must shake out of it every single essence and make it catch you— your heart, but more than that. The image must TikTok dance before your eyes as if it isn’t still, yet it’s what I really want; one capture after I kiss it with my style that will never now move.
I hooked you to read this saying this post would change your life. It has as it has mine, a splinter of the time you took to read it and for me to write and edit it. We can never go back now to before; we embrace how time grabs some of the things in the past and slaps it to the present future now-what-well-be-to-the-next-time-you-see a post from me and think.
There is more here than what meets the eye.
