Photo by Teun Voeten I’ve not taken very many photos this year.  Some of this is down to the crazy startup lifestyle — our team has grown from 5 to >20 and it’s taken some effort to keep them all fed with design work that I’m happy with. But a much larger contributing factor of my photographer’s block is the disaffection that has grown in my soul.   There are too many photographers.  Every subject is covered.   Every bit of graffiti in every part of London dutifully covered by iPhones and Samsungs and 5DmkIIs and it’s all so very boring.   I thought about setting up a camera when we lived on Brick Lane to take photos of all the the kids snapping or capturing or photographing or creating images for their walls and portfolios and tumblrs and instagrams.  I thought it’d make a nice montage.  Then I realised I’d stolen the idea from that guy in New York, so threw it away. The aesthetics of photography have been decimated by the one-touch filters and lomo-fying of every photo everywhere.  Interesting subjects carry with them a touch of exploitation which I don’t have the energy to come to terms with.   So — sell the equipment and get on with my life? Or try to dig my way out of this hole?

Photo by Teun Voeten

I’ve not taken very many photos this year.  Some of this is down to the crazy startup lifestyle — our team has grown from 5 to >20 and it’s taken some effort to keep them all fed with design work that I’m happy with.

But a much larger contributing factor of my photographer’s block is the disaffection that has grown in my soul.  

There are too many photographers.  Every subject is covered.   Every bit of graffiti in every part of London dutifully covered by iPhones and Samsungs and 5DmkIIs and it’s all so very boring.  

I thought about setting up a camera when we lived on Brick Lane to take photos of all the the kids snapping or capturing or photographing or creating images for their walls and portfolios and tumblrs and instagrams.  I thought it’d make a nice montage.  Then I realised I’d stolen the idea from that guy in New York, so threw it away.

The aesthetics of photography have been decimated by the one-touch filters and lomo-fying of every photo everywhere.  Interesting subjects carry with them a touch of exploitation which I don’t have the energy to come to terms with.  

So — sell the equipment and get on with my life? Or try to dig my way out of this hole?

  1. allonewordnospaces said: Sell your stuff to me!
  2. pukomuko answered: shoot your family for yourself with no aspirations.
  3. hanstoney answered: Keep your cameras and take photos for the love of it and for yourself.
  4. johnwildgoose said: I had six years at the Observer, the dailies often had a story for days before we printed on Sunday, so you had to be original. This shot mocks a once noble craft, but it’s nothing new, it’s the pack of old: and if you had any pride you walked away.
  5. johnwildgoose answered: this can’t be stopped: we have to see the good it will induce. When cheap WP software scared graphic designers but then proved their worth.
  6. dbg posted this
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