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A two part post.

Kinda.

The first is about the. “Junking of America” project that I’m starting almost as we speak.

Look around. Junk is everywhere. Just because a person lives in the desert doesn’t mean that they should leave the broken and abandoned cars there. Or, piles of tin cans. Or, left over farm implements . Or, or, or…

That’s about the entire project. Find the stuff. Photograph the stuff. And, turn it into something. The final form hasn’t come to me yet. It could be a combination of a show, a collection of prints for sale and a book.

I hope.

The second half is about something I read on a website I follow.

I’ll start this way. You know how I complain that Instagram is derivative at best? Some photographer posts a picture and within hours there are 789,541 similar pictures.

According the theory posited by the author the entire world is copied. Think about SUVs. They all look about the same. That’s called the wind tunnel effect. Test one and if it works then the rest of the car manufacturers follow suit.

Staying with cars, ever notice that for maybe 95% of them you get a choice of white, silver, bronze and black.

Houses too. Look at every neighborhood built in the last 20 years all over the country. They all look about the same. The color choice is worse than you get for cars. There is beige and beige.

Even cities look pretty much the same. As older, more individualized buildings are replaced with new buildings that look more or less the same. Right now tall skinny buildings are the trend.

I am studying the idea of breaking free of this trend. I think I do it to a point. I’ve always photographed according to my instincts except for clients who want the same thing that their competitors have.

I contend that’s a little different issue. I think the people who actually pay the bills, not the creative directors or editors, are scared that they’ll be missing out if their products don’t look like each other’s. It’s a sub category of FOMO.

I think that I’ll continue my own way of working and look for the differences rather than similarities.

You?