Conversations with LUCIMA: Photography Style Reactions

Hi Charles,

Your comment about selling out hit a nerve.

It reminded me of when I first head this song back in the day: http://youtu.be/Cp0NCwBOfX4

This was Queen bemoaning the state of the music industry in the 1970's. From Miley Cyris' recent comments, nothing much has changed.

I guess my point is, how far are you willing to bend to make a living?

Queen obviously did bend. Songs such as 'Bicycle Girls' and 'Keep Yourself Alive' were paltry crap compared to their early heavy rock work laced with soaring harmonies. Blue Oyster Cult is another group that comes to mind, when thinking about how far from their core musical sensibilities they went in order to have hits on the radio.

Creatives are a dime a dozen as far as the power brokers are concerned. It does not matter what art form it is, all they want to do is figure out how to squeeze the most cash out of the creative and bend him/her to that goal.

This is awesome! I'm glad I struck a nerve. Good or bad. As long as people feel something.

But your point about the industry is spot on. Kinda like the marketing/sales people versus the engineers. Salespeople want "wow factor". Bells and whistles. All show no go. Engineers wanna design the perfect machine without compromise to cost, sales, and practicality. They are the artists. These two departments never see eye to eye. And sadly at the end of the day engineers usually lose to the sales/marketing team. Know why? The perfect machine ain't no good if you can't sell it. Money makes the world go round. That's why sales people have big sales retreats/meetings in exotic locations while making huge bonuses. Ever hear of an engineer retreat? No. Probably a bad thing. An engineer retreat sounds like a meeting designed to fire a bunch of engineers far far away so that when they go ape-shit they don't hurt anyone at the office.

Oh yeah. I understand corporate America all too well.

That said, thinking back on our conversation yesterday I was speaking from a place that still believes in ideals. A place of figuring out what we as individuals are made of. A place not governed by corporate greed. After all, most of us are in this for the fun of it. Weekend warriors. Why bend to the demands of the man when you don't have to?

And yet, from the questions I received yesterday it was painfully obvious to me that more people were concerned with what corporate America wanted from them and less concerned with they wanted of themselves. Ironically it's the same people that ask the common question of "Why won't anyone hire me for my work?"

How about, "Because your work looks like everyone else's"?

It reminds me of all the hipsters that buy gold iPhones in an effort to be unique. To whom I'd love to inform, "You realize that Apple sold like 5 million gold iPhones just in the first 3 days right???"

Too harsh? :)