The Insult

I don't take offense when someone doesn't like a given print of mine. People generally don't tell you that they think this or that print is kind of lame- especially if they are strangers. It wouldn't be polite. But people I know well will sometimes. Of course all art is subjective and I've found there to be a wide variance in which of my prints will appeal to a given person. So far I haven't had anyone come to me and say "Your work across the board completely sucks." Maybe once I've been at this long enough that will happen. But even then I don't think I'd get too upset about it if it did.

But at Mayfair a woman said something to me that made me want to- I don't know- give her a kind of dressing down. A couple had wondered into my booth and were examining my work. They were both Penn State alumni and very much like you'd think Penn State alumni would be. For those not familiar with PSU or the character of its student body let's just say football and beer are two of the most important things in their lives. They were very friendly- and no doubt lived in a suburban development somewhere with at least one SUV. So we chatted a bit and they offered some compliments about my work. Then as they were leaving my booth the woman said "Maybe if you make enough money at this you can travel someplace exotic and photograph it."

Yes. If only I could travel someplace exotic I'd be an awesome photographer. Because travel makes photography awesome. I've said this before and I'll say it again: travel does not impart artistic merit to photography (or any other art.) Traveling to every exotic place and photographing every exotic scene there isn't art. It's tourism. Capturing scenes everyone already knows is beautiful is a photographic cliche and in my humble opinion such work has very little- if any- artistic significance. It might serve as eye-candy for some suburban housewife (like the one mentioned above) to throw on her wall but otherwise means little.

I said earlier there were some good things about Mayfair and indeed there were. One of those good things was another couple coming through my booth on a later day after the PSU alumni. This couple was a bit older- maybe in their fifties. The man was an amateur photographer and was quite complimentary of my work. We talked shop for a bit. He had taken some digital photography courses and had used some of the same equipment I was using. He made a very interesting comment to me and then repeated it to his wife. He was looking at my foliage pictures and said something to the effect of "It's really hard to take pictures like these around here (meaning within PA woodlands.) I'm not able to take pictures like these." And I said "Yes!" inside. This was the antidote to the alumni poisoning. Someone who has tried to do what I'm doing and knows instantly that the kinds of pictures I have are something beyond what your typical or even more advanced person walking into the woods in this area can take. It is pretty damn hard to remain in one's local environment and take beautiful and interesting pictures of a nature that people haven't seen before. And this is why 99% (excepting still lifes/macros of flowers or whatever) of art festival photography is a product of travel. If you aren't truly talented you can always travel. So am I implying that 99% of all art festival photographers aren't truly talented? Of course I am. But it will take me a few posts to prove that point (though it's easier to do than you might think.)

I can on any day of the year and under any weather condition walk out into my local environment and take beautiful and interesting pictures. And I have the pictures to prove it (and no they aren't all on the website yet. So far I have around 700 pictures I've deemed worth making prints of so it's going to be a bit till I can fully express what I'm doing on the website.) I don't think too many people can do that.

I'll talk about some other exciting things that came out of Mayfair in subsequent posts.

Quick Update

Sorry for my lack of posts this week. It's been a very full one but I now have a day job. I haven't done any festivals so far in June and don't plan any until July. I take notes for the blog at festivals and from those have about 30 posts to do so this will let me get caught up. I may do some day excursions to some nearby festivals in the coming weeks (not as an exhibitor) to talk to the artists and see how things are going. By the end of June a lot of festivals will have occurred around the country and most all full time artists will know what sort of season it's shaping up to be. I'll try and get some intel from some of the old-timers I've encountered along the way to see what's happening with other festivals.

Currently Experiencing Technical Difficulties

Last Friday I woke up to find that my electricity had been turned off. I found the latest bill from the power company- I had received it just before leaving for Mayfair. It said I was past due with a balance of 50.00 and said my service was going to be turned off if I didn't pay that amount by June 1. Well, I would have been happy to have payed it if I had checked the bill in time. A week's notice seems kind of short to be turning someone's power off. The only other bill I could find from them was from December.

So I called them up to find out what the hell was going on. The woman said my service had been shut off because I hadn't paid my bill since December. I said I hadn't received any bills in 2007. She said I was being billed electronically. So I asked how that worked exactly (the bills come to my email address.) I said that wasn't happening either so she gave me a number to call for the company that handles their electronic billing. I called them and they had no record of me- I hadn't signed up for electronic billing according to them. The power company hadn't been sending me paper bills and the electronic billing people hadn't been sending me electronic bills. So who was supposed to be sending me bills and why weren't they? I love mysteries. The electronic billing people transfered me back to Allegheney Power.

So I got the same woman back on the line there and told her what the electronic billing people had said. She insisted that I had electronic billing and that I needed to straighten out any billing difficulties with the electronic billing people. And it was going to cost me a couple hundred dollars to get my service restored because they required a deposit plus connection fees (since it had been so long since I had made a payment) plus the original bill. At this point I was completely pissed. I asked why it was that my electric bill was only $50.00 if I hadn't paid anything since December (it should have been several hundred dollars.) She said that was because I had paid too much on my December bill so I had a credit that spilled over into 2007. So the reason I wasn't being billed was because I had over paid my December balance. But that was also the reason my electricity was turned off. Or something.

So because I'm stubborn ass ( I'm not paying them a bunch of extra money just because they are incompetent) I didn't have power all weekend and I've been out chasing jobs today. I'll pick up the battle in the morning. It's not really hurting much of anything except the stuff I had in the fridge. And that doesn't amount to much either with it being a typical bachelor's fridge.

The worst thing is not being able to operate my desktop computer and not having Internet access at home. I have some more posts on Mayfair to do which I'll try to get to tomorrow.