My Best Work-Best Work? Really?

“I don’t think you’re putting forth your best effort.” The Boss says from across his big desk. “I expect more from someone with your experience.”

“I’m doing the best I can with the subjects I have to work with.” I say and look out the window. “And the equipment I have to work with.”

“We’ve got other photographers using the same equipment your using and shooting the same types of subjects and their work looks good.”

“My work looks good enough.” I say.

I’ve worked with photographers who couldn’t care less what the portraits they are shooting look like.  I’ve worked with others that obsess over details and minutia that I am not even sure will appear in the finished portrait.  I like to think that I fall somewhere in the middle.  In The Old Days this was all to my advantage-we shot hot and heavy and the fastest photographer made the most money.  Not so much any more.  But old habit die hard, or in my case, don’t die at all.

Neither does the Big Money go to the Best Photographer taking the Best Portraits.  If the people have no money, the quality of the portraits don’t matter all that much.  And I am so used to working the bottom of the barrel that I have fallen into the habit of taking pretty sloppy portraits.  I’m still better than a lot of the other photographers shooting Assembly Line Portraits, but that isn’t saying a whole hell of a lot.

Still, I think I am now shooting my best work.  Overall I am taking solid, saleable portraits.  Are they works or art?  Not really.  Is each and every shot a masterpiece?  No.  Does it really matter?  Of course not.

But the people who run the company have to have someone to blame for their ever dropping sales.  It can’t be the fact that they haven’t change their basic business style since dinosaurs walked the earth.  Or that they hire demon spawn as PreSellers.  Or that our basic products are now in a position to compete with Sears-if we had a time machine and could go back twenty years to when Sears first started doing what we are just now getting around to.  Or maybe just that everyone and their dog now has a cell phone, or a digital camera, or ten bucks to go to Wal-Mart.  No, it’s sloppy photography and Passers who can’t sell.

And really, the sales are not that much lower this year than last, Company wide, they are just substantially lower for me.  A wiser man make take the hint and leave, or he might find himself made redundant anyway.

It was a few years ago when The Boss with the big desk wanted me to improve my attitude.  I was the best photographer there.  The walls were covered with my work.  My name was on their tiny Employee of The Month plaque.   And I was being paid less than the PreSellers and The Passers.  All things being equal, and of course, nothing is ever equal-I tend to have a better attitude and take better portraits when I am being adequately compensated for my efforts.

But I am kind of like Tony Bennent walking into his agent’s office and demanding the best record deal in history-right after The Beatles landed in America.  The world of Assembly Line Portraits is not what it used to be.  Yes there are still days when Passers sell several thousand dollars worth of portraits, but not with me, and not all that often with anyone.

I find myself falling into the trap of Used To a lot more often these days.  I used to make pretty good money being an Assembly Line Portrait Photographer.  I used to get the better accounts.  I used to work with the better Passers.  The business used to be better.  So it is easy enough for me to think that I am just a victim and there is nothing I can do about it.

So I put forth my best effort from time to time.  I take portraits that are better than good enough.  It helps if I have Subjects that cooperate, that might show even a glimmer of interest in Buying Something, that smile for the portrait instead of sitting there like a lump on a log.  After weeks of taking portraits of people who are too poor, or too disinterested, or Just There For The Book, it’s easy enough to become discouraged.  The term pearls before swine comes to mind here.  It is hard not to blame the Shoot, not to blame The Boss who writes the schedules, because the Subjects there that  aren’t going to buy, don’t care what the Portraits look like.

Assembly Line Portraits are, for the most part, portraits forced upon people.  From time to time I work a Good Shoot and it is shocking, absolutely shocking, to see people excited about having their portraits taken and eager to see them and buy them.  This used to be the norm.  But now I am relegated to the Bad Shoots.  I might still shoot 5,000 sittings a year, but they are not good sittings, not sittings that are going to make me a good living.

This is just a job.  A dead end job at that.  Once it stops making me enough money, it’s time to think about some other path to follow.  Of course, I’m kind of set in my ways now, and getting rich blogging hasn’t really worked out yet.  Besides, a dead end job is better than no job at all.