2024 11 30
One of the many bridges of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. August, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
Nothing is forever. Entire industries change. Cities change. Countries change. Things go through cycles and once-prosperous places turn to ghost towns.
Pittsburgh had a population of nearly 700,000 people in the 1950’s. Today it is around 300,000. Back in 1950, my industry of commercial photography, had (guesstimate) 3,000 members nationwide. Today, that number is (guesstimate) 250,000,000. It’s hard to stand out in a crowd of two-hundred and fifty million people!
Frustrated with some of what’s happening in my biz, I jotted down the following, while venting to myself. I try to keep things mostly positive around here, but it’s also nice to pay attention to why things are no longer working like they once had.
Here’s our director, he’s on the computer figuring out motion graphics. (scene in youtube promo for a production company that I watched)
Here’s our director of photography, we’re making him edit the spots we just shot, which he hates but what can you do? (scene in youtube promo for a production company that I watched)
I recently mentioned to a DP candidate on a doc project we are doing that we need a good colorist and his immediate response was, “I’m a colorist, bro!”
“I’m a messenger without a message,” the creative director of a company told us today in reply to his company not being happy with the work done by the creative agency and production company that hired me to shoot photos.
It’s a free-for-all SHIT SHOW out there. Everyone is doing everything themselves and billing whatever-the-fuck some guy on social media told them makes sense. Meanwhile, our clients are asking to sign contracts with $5 million in errors and omissions coverage on a job they don’t quite have enough of a budget to actually produce. People sign these contracts without actually reading them, desperate for work.
We shot some test videos a few days back and I joked that we should’ve instead hired a kid to capture some behind-the-scenes videos on their cellphone to post to tiktok if we really wanted to find some new clients.
-Clayton
