Elevator Thinking

The Idol audi­tions for sea­son 11 came through Port­land this past week­end and I found myself out at the Rose Gar­den sur­rounded by 7000-odd hope­fuls and their sup­port­ers at 5 o’clock in the morn­ing. The assign­ment was to doc­u­ment the event while look­ing for inter­est­ing char­ac­ters but in so doing I was once again made to mar­vel at how pol­ished the AI machine really is up close.

It reminded me of a shoot at the same venue exactly two years ago when I was invited behind the scenes to pho­to­graph the prepa­ra­tions and dress rehearsals for the first stop of the Idols’ live tour. Put them together and I’ve effec­tively been given a book­ended glimpse of the process by which celebrity is created.

There is some­thing con­tra­dic­tory in pop cul­ture cov­er­age. It is at once over-exposed and under-analyzed. While celebri­ties are unde­ni­ably a rich com­mod­ity in the medi­a­s­phere, celebrity is less so.  For a num­ber of rea­sons (not least of which the need to sep­a­rate them­selves from their evil twins, the paparazzi) seri­ous pho­to­jour­nal­ists can be for­given for pre­fer­ring other sub­ject mat­ter. Indeed, celebri­ties can’t help but look bub­blegum beside mat­ters of life and death.

At the same time, the per­va­sive­ness of celebrity inti­mates a cer­tain sub­stance or con­se­quence that gets ignored because of this. In a happy coin­ci­dence, I hap­pened to watch Adrian Grenier’s doc­u­men­tary “Teenage Paparazzo” this same week­end. I did not expect the many thought­ful approaches he makes on the sub­ject of fame. My favourite of these had to do with a con­cept called para-social rela­tions. I gather it’s com­pli­cated but in a nut­shell describes the uni­di­rec­tional rela­tion­ship between some­one on screen and an audi­ence mem­ber. It explains that sense of famil­iar­ity we feel toward these peo­ple we have never actu­ally met and why some of us are so per­son­ally con­cerned with their lives.

Another illu­mi­nat­ing idea from the movie is the sug­ges­tion that we use celebri­ties as a way to dis­cuss our val­ues. Like arche­types, they become rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the issues we are col­lec­tively wrestling with. Their sto­ries, real or fic­tional, are worked into our soci­etal nar­ra­tive and the mean­ing is fur­ther ham­mered out dur­ing our debates of them.

Idol, per­haps more suc­cess­fully than any­one, seems to have har­nessed these prin­ci­ples of para-social inter­ac­tion and arche­type. Watch­ing from the side­line the other day before audi­tions, you’d see pro­duc­ers already cir­cu­lat­ing, look­ing for inter­est­ing sto­ries amidst the throng. Hav­ing also been back­stage at the other end of the process, I was struck there by how the nar­ra­tives of the per­form­ers had been finessed such that they became rep­re­sen­ta­tions of some larger group of peo­ple. Really, it could be seen as a new sort of pan­the­ism; by boil­ing a contestant’s story down to ele­men­tal parts, they effec­tively cre­ate a patron idol of, say, the work­ing class or of sin­gle moth­ers or of the dis­abled or of Chris­tians. Keep­ing these sto­ries vague allows a vast audi­ence to see itself reflected on the screen, fill­ing in the gaps with traits the indi­vid­u­als therein iden­tify with. The real work then is keep­ing the par­tic­u­lars under wraps and accen­tu­at­ing the broad strokes. This would cer­tainly jus­tify the army of publicists.

I’ve been read­ing a lot lately about moti­va­tion – what makes us do what we do, what keeps us from doing what we ought to do. That sort of thing. Being self-centered, it’s been an exer­cise in ana­lyz­ing my own actions with respect to this.

I’ve known pho­togs who take a cam­era every­where with them and I’ve known oth­ers who don’t shoot a frame unless it stands a chance of being pub­lished.  As a stu­dent years ago, there always seemed to be some­thing tragic about the lat­ter camp. After all, the whole rea­son I was train­ing to become a pro shooter was to make money off of what I did all the time any­way. If you only took pic­tures for work, doesn’t that mean you don’t really enjoy doing it for its own sake? Well, over the years I’ve real­ized that it’s more com­pli­cated than a sim­ple mat­ter of enjoy­ment and my read­ing of moti­va­tion seems to back this up.

First of all, it would appear that our brains are rarely as good as we think they are at fig­ur­ing out why we’re doing things. We often attribute cau­sa­tion after-the-fact. So, while there is no deny­ing that some­one who takes pic­tures for the sheer joy of it (the ama­teur, if you will) is moti­vated by some­thing intrin­sic, things get cloudy when money, noto­ri­ety and com­pe­ti­tion come into it. Those three things are extrin­sic moti­va­tions for doing some­thing and psy­chol­o­gists have noticed in exper­i­ments that extrin­sic moti­va­tors some­times over­shadow intrin­sic ones in our after-the-fact attri­bu­tions of why we do what we do. Take this exper­i­ment, for exam­ple: kids who liked to draw were ran­domly sep­a­rated into three groups. One group was left alone to do their thing. The next one was rewarded with prizes every time they did a draw­ing. The third group was praised from time to time but oth­er­wise given noth­ing. The result? Kids who were reg­u­larly rewarded with prizes stopped draw­ing when the researchers stopped giv­ing them out and the other two just kept on drawing.

The assump­tion under­ly­ing all of this is that the kids who got prizes began to think that they were draw­ing for the prizes rather than the intrin­sic enjoy­ment that seemed to have moti­vated them up until that point.

So the other day I picked up my cam­era dur­ing some down time and went for a walk with the express pur­pose of shoot­ing some­thing I would never pub­lish. I met these guys who were dri­ving a restored steam engine back and forth in a machine shop’s back lot and stuck around for a while. It was fun. I shall have to start doing this again, if only to remind myself that I like to take pic­tures for the sake of tak­ing pictures.

‘Tis unde­ni­ably bet­ter to over­shoot a sub­ject than to do the oppo­site. The most dreaded phone call from an edi­tor for me is one where they won­der if you’ve “got any­thing more of….” At the same time, when the real estate on the page is lim­ited to one image, it leaves all those other ones you ago­nized over and included in the final edit on the cut­ting room floor. In fact, that’s one rea­son I started this blog in the first place; to let those way­ward images see a bit of time in front of the pub­lic. Thank you, internets.

In the lat­est issue of Reed Mag­a­zine, they gave me a half-page spot for a story on this stu­dent group called Uncom­mons at Reed Col­lege here in Port­land. They’ve got this recur­rent event wherein they serve a multi-course meal in a res­i­dence apart­ment to din­ers who’ve been cho­sen by lot­tery from an online sign-up list. The food looked tasty and all but the real excite­ment was hap­pen­ing in the lit­tle kitchen, sep­a­rated from the cus­tomers by a hang­ing sheet. Clearly, the meal, although care­fully pre­pared, was inci­den­tal to the amuse­ment these guys have when they get together. The writer was there to take in the din­ing expe­ri­ence but I was left to roam. As a result, I’ve got hun­dreds of what turned out to be super­flu­ous images of Uncom­mons in action that don’t nec­es­sar­ily fit the story – or should I say, they aug­ment it – and cer­tainly wouldn’t fit on half a page. So I’ll post them here.

I like going behind the scenes. No mat­ter the set­ting, I frankly feel spe­cial while pass­ing the “staff only” signs to tread where, cam­era­less, my pres­ence would not be per­mit­ted. On top of this VIP thrill, I almost always find the atmos­phere and action back­stage more inter­est­ing than the sub­se­quent show. There’s less con­trol back there and peo­ple are a lit­tle “unfin­ished.” Makeup or cos­tumes are half on. They’re in the process of trans­form­ing from their selves into char­ac­ters and that is inher­ently fas­ci­nat­ing. A recent exam­ple comes from Fright Town here in Port­land, an (obvi­ously) Hallowe’en themed annual event.

The set­ting itself also lends itself to pic­tures. Weird stuff is piled here and there and the light­ing is often irreg­u­lar. Again, every­thing is tem­po­rary, very lit­tle has been delib­er­ately positioned.

Then there’s the ner­vous­ness, the antic­i­pa­tion. Every­one deals with it dif­fer­ently but whether they’re the knuckle-down-and-focus type or the jittery-bounce-off-the-wall sort, they are unde­ni­ably photogenic.

These next ones were shot for The Ore­gon­ian some time ago at a Body Vox rehearsal. In this case I was able to show up an hour early and grab some shots of the dancers get­ting ready. They then allowed me to wan­der around on-stage while while they prac­ticed. A very cool place to be.

I’m some­times reminded how mis­cel­la­neous my career is by nature. This past Fri­day for instance; a day ear­lier and I hadn’t any inkling that I’d be spend­ing the morn­ing at a boot man­u­fac­turer on behalf of The Wall Street Jour­nal or that the evening would find me at a high school foot­ball game for The Oregonian.

Hey, speak­ing of high school foot­ball, if you’ll per­mit the tan­gent, I am for­ever astounded at the atten­tion it mer­its down here in the USA.  My own high school didn’t even have a team so you must imag­ine my won­der at the resources that go into ath­let­ics at Amer­i­can schools. Ded­i­cated coach­ing staffs, train­ing facil­i­ties, STADIUMS!  Spec­ta­cle! I’m never sure exactly what to make of it. Way off topic now (and prob­a­bly weird) but the cheer­lead­ing – where else are teenage girls meant to be thrown high into the air in order to flash their under­wear at a crowd of sports fans?

Any­way, boots and foot­ball one day, the next it was a din­ner party. Free­lanc­ing – at its best – is like pulling the han­dle on a slot machine every time you answer the phone. At its worst, it’s star­ing at that phone won­der­ing when it’s going to ring again. Either way, it’s addic­tive and spoils me for most other jobs.

Bit of a fluffy dis­patch today. I’ve just got­ten home from being back home for a visit and am try­ing to get back into my usual habits – the ones that don’t involve drink­ing before sun­down. Trav­el­ling in this mod­ern age involves a great deal of star­ing out of win­dows and so, in the spirit of get­ting there being half the fun, I present pic­tures of exactly that, shot with my trusty phone.

Made it out to the high desert a week ago to do some camp­ing. It was the kind of quiet that’s uncanny. You turn off the car to find that it was the only sound for miles and then find your­self speak­ing in whis­pers for fear that you’ll ruin it. I’m not a nature guy but this place is some­thing special.

When­ever I meet some­one who is actively employ­ing an object for a pur­pose vastly other than that for which it was intended, I see The Kids in the Hall’s “Office? Sub­ma­rine!” sketch replay­ing in my mind. When the scene I am encoun­ter­ing bears a nau­ti­cal theme, all the more evocative.

I was sent out last week to shoot a por­trait of Caitlin and Lewis, two of the four founders of an artist stu­dio called 12128 that they have con­structed on a fish­ing boat. This was one of those shoots when every­thing was ideal; great visu­als, open-minded sub­jects with lots of time, per­fect time of day. On top of that, the ves­sel itself turned out to be a bit of a play­ground with lad­ders, cranes, stairs, nooks, cran­nies and machin­ery every­where. It was an embar­rass­ment of oppor­tu­ni­ties and I have to say, like the prover­bial kid in the candy store, one of the hard­est things about a sit­u­a­tion like this is, per­versely, the poten­tial for vari­ety itself. It’s hard to pick where to start and once you do, it’s hard to stay focused enough to prop­erly work through – there’s already five other angles and set-ups nag­ging at you’re periph­eral vision. Para­me­ters can some­times be of tremen­dous assistance.

A lit­tle while ago I wan­dered into Radio­Cab head­quar­ters a few blocks from my place here in Port­land and asked if they might be will­ing to let me hang out and take pic­tures. Usu­ally this is only the first step in a steady ascent of the local chain of com­mand where I will repeat my request at every sta­tion until I reach some­one who every­one else thinks can make the call. Half the time that per­son feels like they ought to slap some arbi­trary con­di­tions or restric­tions on me in order to jus­tify their own posi­tion – that’s if they go along at all.  I was pleas­antly sur­prised, there­fore, when the first per­son I talked to said “yeah, prob­a­bly” and then called over to his boss who okayed me on the spot. No restric­tions, no big deal; just “when do you want to start?”

I came back a cou­ple morn­ings later (Fri­days were said to be one of the busiest) with my cam­era and audio recorder and set about hang­ing out. The idea was to pro­duce a mul­ti­me­dia piece encap­su­lat­ing 24 hours at the Radio­cab shop. There’s some­thing time­less about this place – in more than one sense of the word as I was to learn at around 3 o’clock in the morn­ing – and so many lit­tle sto­ries and rou­tines to observe. There’s also some­thing about it that makes you feel like you’re in every cab shop, every­where: char­ac­ters com­ing in off of long shifts, gas jock­eys putting down lit cig­a­rettes to pump fuel, the sub­dued mur­mur of the dis­patch room.

It got me to think­ing how I ought to start a whole series on work….

Any­way, I’m still edit­ing the inter­views but here’s a peek at some of the imagery I pulled together.

God­dammit, I wish I could start this thing off with some fire­works instead of sidling in edge­wise like this. It’s time though. Past time. I’ve had a notion to start a blog for years but var­i­ous forces (ambiva­lence, iner­tia, dis­trac­tion, pro­cras­ti­na­tion) have had to be con­tended with.

Speak­ing of ambiva­lence, I hap­pened to read an arti­cle the other day – think it was in Wired – about the way the Inter­net has become a bas­tion for unabashed self-promotion. It pointed out how deco­rum in other set­tings pre­vents us from openly boast­ing while a URL is all the license one needs to trum­pet recent accom­plish­ments. Even though I do not intend to use Ele­va­tor Think­ing to do this, I couldn’t help feel­ing that there would be some­thing pre­sump­tu­ous about my post­ing things that I’ve been doing or think­ing. Then again, I’m so con­sis­tently remark­able a spec­i­men, soooo….

Today it struck me, though; I’ve got a lot of pic­tures that never get to see the light of day, either because they wind up on the cut­ting room floor after edi­tors take their pick or because they were shot beyond the periph­ery of a given assign­ment. Even more inter­est­ing to me is the poten­tial this blog may have as a moti­vat­ing appa­ra­tus. I take pic­tures for pub­li­ca­tion. While I usu­ally have a side-project on the go with the vague notion of get­ting it pub­lished down the road, I will now have a more mate­r­ial (if vir­tual) place to put them to work, thus (hope­fully) spurring me on to shoot more and bet­ter. If I pick up some valu­able input from my peers along the way, all the better.

Worse comes to worse, this thing will get me think­ing more explic­itly about what I’m doing. For you, the hypo­thet­i­cal reader, I shall endeavor to engage your fancy with com­pelling imagery and a bit of opin­ion. I shall also endeavor to be less winc­ingly self-conscious. Let’s see how it goes. To ease me into this project, here are some sum­mer­time images loosely related by the fact that peo­ple are framed in the center.

Thanks for stop­ping by.