Things I’m pondering

I’ve not been posting much. That doesn’t mean the musing has stopped, just the writing bit.

Things I’m pondering:

• Sometimes taking a walk with a camera enhances the experience. Sometimes taking a camera along is a detriment. There are things in life which should be experienced, and the act of photography can distance us from things. I know people who carry (or have, in the past, carried) a camera with them everywhere they go, all the time. A lot of those people seem to make photos in a more or less continuous stream. I have, for some short periods, done the same thing. At times I’ve liked this, and at other times I’ve thought it was madness. But I still keep thinking about it. My SoFoBoMo book this year may well be an exercise in quotidian photography. We’ll see.

• I used to feel regret when I ‘missed’ a photo either because I wasn’t fast enough or didn’t have a camera handy. Nowadays, I’m more of the view that there’s this infinite stream of possible photos flowing past us all the time, and we just sort of dip into the stream now and then. No matter what you do, an infinite number of good photos flow past between your exposures. I’m mindful of the street photographer (can’t remember who, sorry) who, when asked if he felt bad about the photos he missed while reloading, replied “There are no photos while I’m reloading”. No matter what you do, an infinite number of photos are NOT made by you every second. I no longer sweat this.

Busy

I won’t be able to do much blogging between now and the end of the month. Nothing wrong, thanks.

Today’s offering, via Gordon McGregor’s twitter feed, these words from Hugh MacLeod.

I was offered a quite substantial publishing deal a year or two ago. Turned it down. The company sent me a contract. I looked it over.

Hmmmm…

Called the company back. Asked for some clarifications on some points in the contract. Never heard back from them. The deal died.

This was a very respected company. You may have even heard of it.

They just assumed I must be just like all the other people they represent – hungry and desperate and willing to sign anything.

They wanted to own me, regardless of how good a job they did.

That’s the thing about some big publishers. They want 110% from you, but they don’t offer to do likewise in return. To them, the artist is just one more noodle in a big bowl of pasta.

Their business model is to basically throw the pasta against the wall, and see which one sticks. The ones that fall to the floor are just forgotten.

Publishers are just middlemen. That’s all. If artists could remember that more often, they’d save themselves a lot of aggravation.

Go read the whole thing. Think of SoFoBoMo as a way to do something just to be doing it. Think of it as a way around the middlemen.

SoFoBoMo declared the cause of world-wide crisis

Dateline: April 1, 2025 Geneva, Switzerland

The world’s economy braced for another 90 day SoFoBoMo shutdown today as photographers worldwide started their traditional one month preparation prior to the two month “fuzzy month window” for SoFoBoMo 2025. In further news, the Worldwide Summit on the Issues Surrounding Anthropogenic Global Photography issued its strongest statement so far against Solo Photo Book Month, the global photography phenomenon which has not only taken the world by storm but has caused environmental, political, and economic upheavals that threaten the fabric of human civilization.

Worldwide, energy providers are frantically finalizing their plans to support the global electric grid by more fully exploiting geothermal and solar power, and plans are already in place to tap the zero point energy of the universe to meet the projected demand in 2028. Concerns about the stability of the worldwide power grid escalated after last year’s near total collapse as photographers worldwide fired up computers and charged camera batteries the day before SoFoBoMo started. Experts are now suggesting the climate change precipitated by the massive power demand that occurs during SoFoBoMo will soon become permanent, and the risk of another ice age, a major concern in the recent decade, is now generally considered negligible.

Worldwide, SoFoBoMo has toppled several governments since its inception in 2008. In 2018, the government of one super-power attempted to ban participation by residents, but the ensuing protest strikes drove the government to retract the ban in less than 60 hours. In response, many oppressive governments have relaxed restrictions on freedom of expression and freedom of press, unwilling to take on the powerful worldwide SoFoBoMo juggernaut. August 2019 ushered in a new era of peace in the Middle East, as all parties to the centuries old conflicts there called a three month truce so that hostilities did not interfere with the two month ‘fuzzy month’ window or the usual one month preparation time. These three month ‘fuzzy peace’ periods have done much to cool hostilities and introduce political stability in the region.

For the past six years, more than 76% of the GDP of the world’s most developed countries has been dedicated entirely to producing photo equipment and software suitable for use in SoFoBoMo, making it the engine of the most dramatic period of economic growth in human history.

Each year, however, economies worldwide are thrown into turmoil as participants scale back their work hours to free up time for their solo photo book effort. Starting from a humble beginning of 170 participants in 2008, the number of participants has roughly trebled each year. There were roughly 1.2 million participants in 2016, and in 2023 the size tipped the scales over 2.4 billion. Organizers are predicting that this year, about 99.8% of the world’s population aged four years or older will participate, with roughly 8,000,000,000 participants.

Adding to the confusion, researchers at SETI, the organization that’s been patiently waiting for signs of life outside our solar system, claim that they have received the first communication from a non-human civilization; after struggling for 9 months to decode it, SETI researchers have now concluded that the message consists of 14 billion registrations to participate in SoFoBoMo 2025.