The Sphere of the Blog
Yeah, well, I never liked the word Blog. It’s clumsy. I think of Blah and Ugh and other reflections of ugly. And having heard “just read my blog” a few thousand times makes my eyes bleed at the thought of another rambling about a topic surely mundane.
Enter the writer and journalist, they have at least taken some of the stings away from language butchery. And there is the occasional Ordinary Citizen With Talent. They make me hate the word blog just a bit less. So where do all of the visual people fit in? I mean, in the old days, and with the only-speaking-for-me-opinion (how’s that for butchery?), I’ll say photographers shouldn’t have written captions for their photos. They were that bad.
Hello, 2014. We are no longer mere image creators. Really. We are expected to be literate in many aspects and being professional requires it. And I know it’s been spouted lots of times, that we are communicators and storytellers and we need to live that way – it’s all true. So can photographers compete with the masses who fight for a slice of your ever-decreasing attention span?
Yes, they can. How? Read good writing. Read what energizes you. Shoot what’s important to you, then read what’s important to you. Become all hipster-like, shoot some artsy beer can photos…then write a brilliant artist statement for your exhibit. Then the hard work begins. Promote it, talk about it, get it out there. Just write. And enjoy it when you suffer paralysis of the mind at 6 am after an all-night video editing session (just like I’m suffering now, as I attempt to scratch this post out). Work hard. And then keep doing this, for years. Somewhere along the way, I bet you’ll learn some things and prove The Opinionated wrong. We are more than people with cameras. Good night.
Previously published on ASMP’s Strictly Business Blog.
John Welsh is the current ASMP chapter president in Philadelphia and now that he’s halfway done filming All Things Coal, he’s busy wracking the brain, juggling many things, and wearing many hats in an attempt to hopefully tell a really good story.