Friday, February 11, 2011

Selling (or not)

Someone anonymous commented my talent posting from yesterday: "Salesmanship does not require talent? Nothing happens unless there's a sale. Try sales for a year and you might just find yourself singing a different tune."

Have to think about this, the matter how sales refers to photography. And I agree that selling is not easy. Take, for example, the mobile phone company Nokia which couldn't compete with the Apple iPhone, and today announced that they are going to partner with Microsoft. Someone coined the abbreviation Microsoft + Nokia = Mokia. This Finnish language word means gaffe/blunder/mistake in the plural.

Well, while starting to think about sales, I offer you four photographs taken today.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

But it isn't only salesmanship or talent... Let's not forget about being in the right place at the right time. Time and space count too. And a little luck.


Art
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Sven W said...

I'm currently reading "The Art Spirit" by Robert Henri. Amongst other things, Henri provides a description of an "artist" and "art". I've haven't got a quote to hand but my interpretation of what he says is along these lines:

An "artist" creates art to express (or resolve) their own feelings about some aspect of Life. "Art" [which is man-made] creates a feeling in the viewer; it exudes a life force.

By this description, a technical drawing, no matter how intricate or competently executed, ain't Art.

Michael Johnston (TOP) ran a series of posts (5th to 13th of February 2010) which also discussed what is/isn't art. If you include all the comments, it's a long read but it helped my thinking on the topic.

I followed the link to Plop and was struck by these two comments. The difference in approach is extraordinary; polar opposites:

Seeing for me is similar. When I
was in this forest, there was a moment where I "sensed" the aliveness "around" me - Cedric

If there is nothing you see worth taking photographs of, then take photographs of that nothing. It is is practice, and that is all there needs to be. - Juha

Sorry to take so long to get to the point, but hopefully the above sheds light on the comment by
Paul Maxim: You either experience it or you don’t.

[I've left a few thoughts dangling here; I'm not trying to be definitive.]

Juha Haataja said...

@Art: Well, I guess we have to give some credit to the laws of probability... probably.

@Sven: Thanks for the book hint. Yes, I sort of see where you are going - but this needs some further thought.