3/7/09 Time Heeds None

This entry was written by Peter Earl McCollough, posted on March 7, 2009 at 8:52 pm, filed under Americans, Travels and tagged B&W, Depression, New York, Riding, Rural, Truck. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.

3/2/09 Business and Art

Tim Gruber’s second post on making money doing what you love is exactly what’s been on my mind lately:

“It’s about having different aspects of ourselves, having the artist within us but also having the entrepreneur and the businessperson within us as well. And when we can bring all those parts together we can find the people that want what we do.”
- Nick Williams

I guess it really comes down to that, finding people that want what we do. But hearing about Roger Ballen’s career in Geology and how personal and separate his photography is from everything else is still an alluring model to go about life. Some people have the knack of using the pressure of making a living off of your passion to drive themselves and their creativity. I wish I could understand how those people see it.

But relegating photographers who don’t make a business out of their photography to a category of “leisure” is something I disagree with. The idea of being a “professional” only when your income is derived from your photography is inaccurate.

Like a lot of other photographers out there, I really wish I would had spent more time studying business while I was in school. I hope it doesn’t take as long to understand business as it does to learn how to take decent photographs, ikes. But I really echo Gruber’s sentiments, particularly when it comes to setting your own personal goals of success and putting focus on becoming a better human over everything else.

This entry was written by Peter Earl McCollough, posted on March 2, 2009 at 2:59 pm, filed under Industry. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.

3/2/09 Inspiring, Beautiful Shorts

My heart buckles a little bit under the enormity of beauty in these short films. I usually keep things like this on a personal blog I have, but these are just absolutely inspiring and I need to share them. They really are the most beautiful things I’ve seen in a long time. I know they’ll be my inspiration for quite a while.

Scintillation by Xavier Chassaing, I can’t count the number of times I’ve watched this little film the past few weeks. It carries so much the essence of one of my favorite films, Blade Runner. The balls of fire, the delicate music, the color palette, the stillness. Modern but classic, calm but pulsing. It is one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen in a long time. Perfect.

SCINTILLATION from Xavier Chassaing on Vimeo.

Vincent Moon is the guy that shoots the “Take Away Shows” and he has some really beautiful shorts. This one is composed of crunchy black and whites and is an enchanting tale of love set in China.

The Escape (Chinese Requiem) from temporary areas on Vimeo.

Moon is great at capturing something that seems to lie between film, photography and even painting at times. This particular short I could really feel. It seems a fitting response to my Dear Diary post-college monologue of confusion below, Desublimination!

Tourner en rond et se laisser consumer from temporary areas on Vimeo.

This entry was written by Peter Earl McCollough, posted on at 9:17 am, filed under Multimedia. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.

3/1/09 Gray Faces

This entry was written by Peter Earl McCollough, posted on March 1, 2009 at 10:29 pm, filed under Personal, Portrait. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.

3/1/09 Dear Diary: Lost At Sea. Have Degree, But No More Photography

I’ve been trying for weeks now to re-edit my work, to go through my archives and my current edits in order to refine them. It’s become a troublesome task. Every day my pictures change a little to me, they’re constantly shifting in their skin, taking on altered meanings. I’m a bit taken aback by this because I’m usually quite decisive with these things. But trying to make sense of them has become less like photo editing and more like chasing chickens or being lost at sea. Can pictures suddenly become arbitrary or are my intentions when I shot the image the only thing that matters? I have no idea. My chief concern is that I “stay true”, but I’m beginning to think that might be the actual problem.

When I first started taking pictures it was simply a byproduct of curiosity or an emotion or interaction with someone. I came to love photography because it offered me not only an avenue for catharsis and a way to interact with people but also a way to share a beauty I otherwise couldn’t communicate. Now that I have a degree in photography and I’m trying to find a way to support myself with it, and after I have spent so much time and energy thinking and talking about it, photography has become less something I love and more like a large, heavy brick of commerce, structure, industry, expectation and duty that I carry around on my back. I no longer feel like I live my life being free, interacting and loving, letting my camera follow in its wake but like my life follows behind my camera–my camera that is no longer a tool of beauty or freedom but just another spoke in the machine. And because photography no longer feels like a byproduct of my life touching other people’s lives, but the main purpose for it, I get a sense of being disingenuous. The deep reasons for why I shoot have somehow realigned, become complicated. Hence the reason I shoot very little as of the past year.

Is this photographic post- institutionalization? I think so. I feel like what use to be part of me is now just an extension of someone else.

I guess I shouldn’t be alarmed that by the time I earned a degree in photography my perspective of photography would be topsy-turvy. It seems like I was the fool in this whole process by not realizing I should have just stuck to doing my own thing. Yes, I’ve met amazing people and learned how to take better pictures, but my curiosity… the mystery, the beauty of it all has been asphyxiated. Is a beautiful whore any less pretty than a beautiful woman? Depends on whether or not you know she’s a whore. $40,000. Not so sure it was worth it in hindsight.

(Well let’s be honest, the real reason I became a photographer is because it’s the only thing I was mildly good at. I mean, is it not fair to say that photography is the low art on the totem pole in respect to necessary skill or talent? Surely, I would give a couple of toes and maybe part of my spectrum of taste in order to exchange any photo talents I have for some talent in painting or writing. Those seem like such valid crafts in comparison to photography.)

Listening to Roger Ballen’s audio interview on Lens Culture (here) really reminded me of the different modes of photography. It takes a lot of gumption to acknowledge the real reason you take pictures, not to mention a lot of time to figure it out. I’m starting to realize the type of photographer I was taught to be and was trying to be in college is not the type of photographer that I completely am. Perhaps I just lack the consistent compassion needed to be a solid photojournalist, but there is something in me that just doesn’t feel right about freelance documentary work when it’s correlated to personal success, despite your purest intentions. I cannot reconcile capitalism with photojournalism. It just doesn’t make sense to me. Not to mention there are already plenty of amazing documentary photographers out there and the world doesn’t need me adding to the hyper-saturation. Yes, I think it’s time to get a day job, I think I need that in order to be the type of photographer I would prefer to be.

I will admit that all this moaning of philosophy and semantics and dissection of meaning can just ruin the art at times. A quote from my number one hero, David Lynch, that sums up how I feel about the issue:

“It’s better not to know so much about what things mean or how they might be interpreted or you’ll be too afraid to let things keep happening. Psychology destroys the mystery, this kind of magic quality. It can be reduced to certain neuroses or certain things, and since it is now named and defined, it’s lost its mystery and the potential for a vast, infinite experience.” -David Lynch

Part of the reason I pursued photography was so that I could avoid tangling myself up with too much specificity and to allow my emotions flow out of me with ease. I guess everything you run away from finds you in the end. I feel like photography has been dying in my eyes for the past two years, but maybe that’s not such a bad thing, maybe it will be reincarnated as something else.

I mean, after all…..

This entry was written by Peter Earl McCollough, posted on at 9:39 pm, filed under Personal. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.

3/1/09 Buff Woman Backstage

This entry was written by Peter Earl McCollough, posted on at 8:08 pm, filed under Americans, Portrait and tagged Flint, Muscle, Weightlifting, woman. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.