And in Yet Other Blogs ...

In a blog on one of my favorite pet peeves -- wanted something for nothing, and failing to value the work that goes into making something seem effortless -- there is the British musician Whitey, who reacted unhappily to a request to use his music for free.  Frankly, I do love his reaction, even as it echoes several other similar rants -- one most notably by Harlan Ellison.

His epilog, however, is interesting:

I don’t want payment for everything. I don’t even care that much about money, I give away my music all the time. You and I live in a society where filesharing is the norm. I’m fine with that.

But i don’t give my music away to large, affluent companies who wish to use it to make themselves more money. Who can afford to pay, but who smell the filesharing buffet and want to grab themselves a free plate. That is a different scenario.

Now, I'm no absolutist about this.  I've often said that if, for example, there's a cause you're really into, and you want to contribute your work, more power to you.  I've done it and will happily do it again.  But, like Whitey and so many others, I am sick to death with people thinking that creative work -- work made up not of some tangible raw product, but years of hard training and experience -- like photography is something anyone can do and should just be given for free, especially to a commercial enterprise.

However, I do back away from the faint smell of crypto-socialism there.  I'm sure he's proud of that, and more power to him -- that's his right -- but the fact that it's a large, affluent company as opposed to a small company or even a charity is, to me, only a question of rates and usage.  As someone once told me years ago, when that charity comes to you asking you to shoot their giant fundraiser for free "for the cause," ask: Are you paying for the room, the food, the waiters?  Who printed the programs?  Did they do that on their own dime "for the cause?"  The answer usually comes that you're the only one who is not considered a professional producing something with value.

The fact that it's an affluent company is neither here nor there in the moral question (though an understandable consideration in a practical sense).  It reminds me of the priest a few years ago, who as part of his Christmas sermon said it was okay to shoplift from large stores.

Also in the moral realm comes this from PetaPixel about "White Guy Photography."  That, according to author Nick Vossbrink, "is the approach which entails traveling, or moving, someplace with the intent of documenting and photographing so as to 'explain' or 'capture' it for others. And the amount of privilege required to start such a project and make those kinds of claims is generally limited to (but not exclusively the domain of) white guys."  This I think is a variant on a long held complaint (by me as well as others) that the prizes and other accolades that drive the desire to do these projects all seem to go to stories about the same sort of tragic Third Worlders, preferably of some sort of fashionable minority.  The styles of the times may change (slightly) the specifics, but it is often the same through the years.

"I’m done with it, " Vossbrink says, and I've got to agree with him.  As he ably puts it: "I’m tired of the outsider view which treats cities as urban jungles full of diversity which have to be tamed. I’m tired of the idea that you can just drive through a culture snapping photos and claim to be presenting it to the rest of us. I’m tired of the idea that non-white or native people are exotic objects. I’m tired of the lack of context which results in the photos providing little to no information about the actual culture being depicted."

So what's the alternative?  Frankly, there are tons of interesting stories out there -- a few people have undertaken projects to prove that literally everyone has an interesting story to tell, CBS' Steve Hartman being perhaps the most visible example.  But in the end, only two things will bring about change: a public willing to pay to see certain stories, and a shift in the fickle fashion trends of the media elite.  In other words: we'll stop getting White Guy Photography when it becomes trendy and rewarding to do something else.  So basically, never.

And finally, there's this:

It is perhaps the perfect blog post: Catchy headline with an au courant technobabble term in it, an unexpected pairing of the modern with the historic, and a text that not only relates to both the picture and the hed but actually segues from old to new and back again well while actually teaching you something.  Pretty cool.

I'm jealous.