Archive for August 2011
It’s not business, it’s personal – breaking up with Facebook
I’d like to think I’m popular but I don’t have 580 true friends. A friend is someone I can call and they either know my voice, have my number in their cell or if I say “it’s Chuck” they know who I am. A friend is someone who will help me or listen to me. A friend is someone I care about. That isn’t the case with the great majority of my “friends” on Facebook. So many of my “friends” are people I don’t have personal relationships with and their posts aren’t relevant or interesting to me. No one likes spam, yet I managed to invite and allow people into my life to fill Facebook up with SPAM.
spam
verb /spam/
spammed, past participle; spammed, past tense; spamming, present participle; spams, 3rd person singular present
- Send the same message indiscriminately to (large numbers of recipients) on the Internet
noun /spam/
- A canned meat product made mainly from ham
- Irrelevant or inappropriate messages sent on the Internet to a large number of recipients
It’s time for me to filter out the noise. Like most people, when I first signed up with Facebook I allowed FB to search through my contacts and send friend requests to people in my contact list. That included friends, co-workers, clients, potential clients I had exchanged emails with and random acquaintances. Over the years I accept friend requests from friends-of-friends and even complete strangers. Eventually I got tired of reading all the junk, seeing farmville updates and wondering why I missed so many posts from my true friends and family. My solution was to create different groups within my “friends” and then to hide the posts of about half of the people called friends on Facebook. If a group entitled “Who are you” doesn’t say enough…
This solution worked for a while but then something happened. I began to formulate or change my opinion of people based on their Facebook posts.
There are people that I’ve worked with that use Facebook to promote themselves and tell everyone how great they are. Vote for me, check out this red-carpet photo, I was at this party, I met so-and-so, blah, blah, blah. It’s OK to toot your own horn every once in a while, but bragging isn’t a feature I want to read about daily. I had one person send me a happy birthday message and within the same message asked me to vote for her in a contest. Gee thanks.
I started to think, and worry, about my posts. Am I an annoying over-poster? Are you tired of seeing pics of my kids? Does the economic or social commentary I post offend you? Did you accept my friend request just because I sent it?
I don’t want to worry about alienating people and potential clients because of my posts so it’s time I took Facebook back. I want Facebook to be a social platform where I can be free to talk about my kids and make social anecdotes and post ideas, concepts and media that I think are clever or interesting. I want to hear and read about my friend’s jobs, their kids and to read about the ideas they feel are important.
I didn’t want this to happen, but it’s time to to go our separate ways. I appreciate your friendship and in most cases I enjoyed working with and for you, but I don’t want Facebook to ruin our relationship. It’s not you, it’s me. I just need some time to think and learn to be by myself.
So if we ended up friends because of my photography, please check out my Photography page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Chuck-Espinoza-Photography/178338329601
If we worked together once or twice and I feel like you wouldn’t immediately know who I am when I called…
If you were a friend of a friend…
If you liked my photography and found my personal page and sent me a friend request…
If I fear what I post will alienate you…
If your posts are creating noise on my page…
If I just don’t care about what you have to say…
It’s time we said goodbye.
It’s not business, it’s personal. Personal in a way that I want my private life to be personal. Don’t take offense, because my goal is merely to simplify my social “network”. Maybe someday we can be friends, but for now we should go our separate ways.
Come read my blog or check out my photography Facebook page if you want to keep up with my photography and all things I find interesting related to photography. Or just hate me because I un-friended you or maybe you’ll find this useful and take your page back.
In case you were wondering, here’s how to unfriend people – http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=12066
Shooting personal work keeps me sane
It’s been a busy couple of weeks. I’ve started to scratch out a couple blog posts over the past month but each time I start a job comes up and takes precedence. This week I vowed to shoot for me. Shooting personal work keeps me sane. When I end up working on shoots for other people for weeks at a time I can feel the itch to go out and shoot a concept I have control over. Family portraits, TV commercials, architecture, Galas, receptions and pretty much every other paid job means my client is running the show. I often have creative input on my jobs but photographing people giving speeches and shaking hands doesn’t give me the satisfaction of going out and making great photographs.
This week the stars lined up and I got to shoot with three of my favorite models. I enjoy working with them because I know we’ll get great results and I’ve developed friendships with them over the years.
Eva was in town visiting from Germany. We’ve tried getting together for a shoot every time she’s in LA, but it’s only worked out once since she moved away a few years ago. I met Eva in July 2004. To put the history into perspective; I got my first DSLR in August of 2003. I looked back at my archives and she was the 17th model I worked with. Needless to say in the summer of 2004 I was green. Despite being a novice we got some great shots that still stand today. Since 2004 we’ve worked together a handful of times and I’ve always been happy with the results.
This week I wanted to shoot and I knew if we got together the concept for the shoot would work itself out. We ended up with some great fashion images and my style of a beauty portrait. If you call it a head shot and I take offense. I tend to think most head shots aren’t true representations of the person. Head shots are sales tools, portraits are personal. I want my photos to be true to the subject.
Eva - Santa Monica Pier - July 2007
Eva - boxer - April 2005
Eva Portrait shoot August 2011
Eva - Portrait August 2011
I also got to work with Tiffany Selby this week. We met in April 2009 after spending months trying to get together to shoot. When the day finally came it proved to be challenging. We were scheduled to start with swimsuits on the beach and then head to my place to work on fashion and portraits. We were blessed with beautiful blue skies but the temps had dropped down into the 50s. We figured since we were there we’d give it a shoot. I got my first shot off at 8:20 AM and by 8:44 we had shot two looks and were packing up. One of those shots ended up as a centerfold in a magazine.
This week we made the same plans. Start on the beach and then head to my studio (read my garage) for fashion and portraits. After our shoot she did makeup for a friend’s niece, an aspiring model.
Tiffany - El Segundo April 2009
Tiffany - beauty portrait - April 2009
Tiffany - fashion look August 2011
Tiffany - fashion swimsuit look - August 2011
I also managed to shoot with Neyla. She is in town visiting from London and, like Eva, we’ve tried to get together when she’s in LA. This week our schedules matched. I met Neyla in April 2007; at the time her name was Stephanie but that’s her story. In 2007 I shot a friend of hers who referred me to Neyla. We had a great shoot and vowed to do it again. A few months later she saved my ass. I had scheduled a shoot in Pasadena and enlisted the help of a makeup artist and a wardrobe stylist. The model flaked. A complete no-show. I didn’t want our efforts to go to waste so I called Neyla early that morning and asked her help me out. She rallied and the results were amazing. Like Eva and Tiffany the images from that day still stand.
Neyla’s trying to get a new portfolio together and when she showed me her concepts they were in-line with what I wanted to shoot. We had a great time and came away with a lot of amazing photos.
Stephanie Fashion & Portrait Shoot - May 2007
Stephanie Fashion & Portrait Shoot - Pasadena May 2007
Neyla - beauty portrait - August 2011
Neyla fashion look - Studio lighting - August 2011
Relationships make for great photos. It’s one thing to meet a perfect stranger and work together as professionals with the same goal of great photos. But when there’s history and a relationship between the model and the photographer the level of comfort and trust help to make the images even better. Add the fact that all three of these women are great models and I had a great week.