{"id":12671,"date":"2012-07-30T23:45:02","date_gmt":"2012-07-31T03:45:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/?p=12671"},"modified":"2012-08-09T23:55:41","modified_gmt":"2012-08-10T03:55:41","slug":"dog-day-afternoons-bits-pieces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/2012\/07\/30\/dog-day-afternoons-bits-pieces\/","title":{"rendered":"Dog Day Afternoons: Bits & Pieces (1)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A.<\/a><\/p>\n

With heavy rain\u00a0off and on, the summer heat has returned. Not nearly so enervating as the mid-month hot spell, but sufficiently intense to make it preferable to stay inside after about 10 a.m. On the plus side, the nights have cooled, so it’s encouraged us to get up early, do our gardening in the cool of the morning, and shift our daily schedule and routine.<\/p>\n

We got a late start with a number of our plantings due to spending June in China<\/a>, but we’ve already eaten two squash, a Japanese eggplant, several kinds of basil, and some Thai hot peppers grown with our own hands. On the way: more of the same, plus sweet peppers in assorted colors, several varieties of heirloom tomatoes, cucumbers, string beans, snow peas, watermelons, figs, raspberries, and Polish blueberries. If we do reasonably well with those this year, we’ll expand our garden growing space and assortment of edibles next year. Who knows? With the recession showing little sign of coming to an end, we may have to start living off the land.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

\"Getty<\/a>

Getty Images logo<\/p><\/div>\n

Back in the ’70s, a paramour and I found ourselves saying “Exactly!” so frequently, when confronted with evidence that our suspicions of systemic malfeasance and incompetence were well-founded, that we took to calling that condition “the zacklies.”<\/p>\n

“The auction for a potential sale of Getty Images<\/a> Inc. has progressed to the second round, with several private-equity firms putting in initial bids of around $4 billion, people familiar with the matter said,” reads the lead in\u00a0Anupreeta Das’s July 5\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/em> report, “Getty Draws Initial Bids In Auction of $4 Billion.”<\/a>\u00a0Having any substantial chunk of our cultural heritage in corporate hands gives me a serious case of the zacklies, and hearing that private-equity firms have entered into a bidding war for\u00a0Getty Images doesn’t exactly leave me sanguine.<\/p>\n

Granted, this doesn’t look anything like a repeat of the destruction of the Polaroid Collection<\/a>, the last scraps of which are for sale<\/a> as we speak. Getty Images is apparently healthy and profitable, not crippled and flailing like the late Polaroid Corporation. And Getty Images is neither a publicly accessible, curated collection nor a repository of a unique form of creative work in photography; it’s a heap, not a whole (to use a distinction from general systems theory), albeit a constantly growing heap with an omnivorous appetite for more of itself.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Nonetheless, I can’t help feeling nervous when vast aggregates of images get treated as corporate assets, bought and sold and variously swapped around amongst “buyout firms” that treat the images as widgets and couldn’t care less about them.\u00a0As I write this, on July 30, three private equity firms<\/a>, including Carlyle Group LP, CVC Capital Partners, and TPG Capital, are weighing final bids on Getty Images, due August 6.<\/p>\n

The Polaroid Collection saga demonstrated that such traffic in culturally significant artifacts all too often sets the stage for\u00a0what people who do care about our visual history would consider serious trouble. So be very afraid. And what do we say when those fears come true? “Exactly!”<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

That same issue of the\u00a0WSJ<\/em>\u00a0included a feature story concerning a new trend: hiring a professional photographer to make your vacation photographs for you. See\u00a0Andrea Petersen’s July 5 report,\u00a0“Don’t Forget to Pack a Photographer,”<\/a>\u00a0for details of this development. (The online version includes an audio report by Petersen.) From this story:<\/p>\n

“Abercrombie & Kent, the luxury-travel outfitter, occasionally has clients who hire photographers for their entire vacations. ‘They just want to enjoy the destination without anyone [in the family] being responsible and having to worry about missing a shot or a memorable experience,’ says Rob Veden, manager of private travel at A&K. Mr. Veden says many clients hire a photographer for hours or a day.”<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Undated<\/a>

Undated public-domain photo by by April Sommers.<\/p><\/div>\n

Heaven forfend that you should risk “missing a shot or a memorable experience” by failing to keep a photographer handy during your holiday. Why, you’d actually have to commit that memorable experience to memory \u2014 what a burden!\u00a0In short, while Justin Bieber is risking life and limb to get away from paparazzi, and Alec Baldwin is punching them out, people with a bit of discretionary income to squander who want to feel like celebrities are hiring photographers to follow them around, surrendering their privacy in order to have a total stranger make pictures of their “special moments” for them. Romantic.<\/p>\n

As F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “The very rich are different from you and me.” (To which\u00a0Ernest Hemingway replied “Yes, they have more money.”) But, sliding down the food chain, this new practice makes itself available at daily or hourly rates, so just about anyone who can afford a vacation anywhere can spring a few more bucks to outsource the making of their vacation pix. (Of course, if the photo-ed BFAs and MFAs cranked out by the thousands annually can’t crack the gallery\/museum\/festival circuit they can now enter this burgeoning field. Indeed, the trope under discussion in recent posts<\/a> suits perfectly the purposes of such images.)<\/p>\n

\"Undated<\/a>

Undated public-domain photo by Piotr Wojcicki.<\/p><\/div>\n

I hope I don’t find myself alone in considering this tendency strange . . . and not in a good way. Weird, in fact, even creepy, by my lights, to take a stretch of personal time intended for rest and relaxation and turn it into a planned photo shoot with yourself and your significant others as not just unpaid but paying models. Personally, I would much rather see whatever pictures you and your companions took among yourselves, or had the half-crocked guy on the beach chair next to you take, however inept or hackneyed, than view the inevitably clich\u00e9d images that you and your hired hand cook up.<\/p>\n

By coincidence, I read this WSJ<\/em> article during the course of an afternoon ride from the southern tip of Manhattan to the northern edge of Staten Island aboard the legendary Staten Island Ferry. The day was baking hot, the boat jam-packed with New Yorkers cooling off with a free ocean voyage and tourists from everywhere seeing the harbor. At a conservative estimate, about 300 cameras were in action throughout the trip, with people managing to photograph the sights \u2014 and themselves, in various configurations \u2014 without feeling the need to hire a professional for that purpose, so far as I could tell.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

\"No<\/a>

No Trolls Allowed<\/p><\/div>\n

Apparently my policy here at Photocritic International<\/em> of requiring commenters to give real names and verifiable email addresses has influenced YouTube, which has begun to move in the same direction. See Keith Wagstaff’s CNN report,\u00a0“YouTube wants commenters to use real names,”<\/a> datelined July 24, 2012. It’s good to see a major site like YouTube follow my lead, even if only partway (they request but don’t require identification), and to know that there’s a wick-up effect possible in cyberspace. Always nice to see someone else making life a little more difficult for the trolls; leaves me feel less alone.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Hotshoe International<\/a>, the\u00a0magazine from the UK for which I provide a regular column, has for some time made its content available to subscribers online at its website. Now they’ve initiated an app edition, delivering the same content (my column included) to cellphones, tablets, and other such devices. This marks the debut of my writing in app format.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\"Hotshoe<\/a><\/div>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

This post\u00a0supported by a donation from\u00a0the Estate of Lyle Bong\u00e9<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to the Wall Street Journal, while Justin Bieber is risking life and limb to get away from paparazzi, and Alec Baldwin is punching them out, people with a bit of discretionary income to squander who want to feel like celebrities are hiring photographers to follow them around, surrendering their privacy in order to have a total stranger make pictures of their “special moments” for them. Romantic. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15,18],"tags":[616,430,431],"class_list":["post-12671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-commentary","category-photo-education","tag-getty-images","tag-polaroid-collection","tag-polaroid-corporation","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12671\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}