DarkroomPro: So Jeremiah, perhaps you can start us off by telling us a little about Armstrong Creative, what the company markets itself as being, and what kind of clients you cater to.
Jeremiah: Armstrong Creative is basically an umbrella for my creativity — whether that be in the field of photography, design, communications and so on. Clients I cater to are mostly those involved in heavy industry, commercial clients, larger corporate clients from New York to Vancouver. Some are major forestry companies, fashion houses… I guess the real key for Armstrong Creative is regardless of what avenue I am following in my business or whatever I am doing, everything revolves around the photographic image. So I may not necessarily be taking photographs for a client, but I may be in a consultative role regarding them. For example, for my client DBF [New York Fashion], I am consulting around their use and application of photographic images in their communications collateral and how to improve their approach to their imaging budget.
DarkroomPro: I see; so how long is it that you’ve been a pro in the creative industry?
Jeremiah: I would say I’ve been in the industry for what — 15 years?…
DarkroomPro: And would you say the bulk of that experience has been photographic?
Jeremiah: Yes, the majority has.
DarkroomPro: Ok, so what would you say best characterizes your style as a photographer?
Jeremiah: Documentary. I have a strong belief that what you can imagine you can find in existence in reality; or you can create the conditions for. So even if say I was doing a fashion shoot, I would look to create the environment in which I wanted to shoot, and then step into that environment and document what was going on.
DarkroomPro: I see… so it’s a bit of structured reality?
Jeremiah: Structuring reality to get the end result that the client or I desire creatively.
DarkroomPro: So you say you’ve been working in the industry for about 15 years — I think it’s safe to say that it’s undergone significant changes over that period. What would you say the most striking differences are?
Jeremiah: Well obviously, I started my training in film, in the darkroom — like all of us did of our generation — shooting black and whites, developing and printing by hand. Digital at that point wasn’t even on most people’s radar. That is the massive difference: the switch to a digital medium. One of the sort of costly things in that transition for me was not recognizing early on that digital was a completely different medium than film, and once I finally made that transition in my mind and accepted that in actuality I was doing photography, but I really wasn’t shooting in the same medium I’d been trained in, and I started to work within the confines and possibilities afforded me by digital, my photography again blossomed.
DarkroomPro: You mentioned it was costly… how so?
Jeremiah: I would say it was costly to me because I didn’t recognize the reality of digital, so the transition was far more painful economically and creatively than it needed to be. Working in a digital world still using an analogue creative flow…
DarkroomPro: So your mindset was not ones and zeros…
Jeremiah: No, it was not 1s and 0s… it was analogue; it was silver halide; it was those types of things I’d been trained in when I was a photographer in the US Navy, when I went to school for journalism, and when I went to school for photography in Vancouver. I just wasn’t able to switch my mind over to digital quickly enough.
DarkroomPro: Well I’d say you were in the same boat as the majority of photographers of that generation. It’s a huge change — not only in the equipment you use, but how has the shift to digital affected your business?
Jeremiah: It has on so many levels: access to work for example. You know when I first started out in the business, there was a lot more money on the table; there were larger budgets. You know, the economy was doing well at the time, but I think also people in the analogue world were used to paying top dollar for quality images. One of the things the digital revolution did (and this was not necessary in my opinion) is that it devalued the photographer’s work in people’s minds. So before, there was an acceptance of the photographer as a skilled, knowledgeable professional, and being one was something that if you wanted to do even in an amateur capacity, you really could not access significant depth of craft without a lot of training and work. In the digital world, while I believe that is still the reality, people’s mindset is such that they think “well I have a digital camera, so I must be a photographer”.
DarkroomPro: Well I actually wanted to talk to you a little about that — what do you think about the state of photography as an art-form these days? I mean everyone seems to think they’re Michelangelo because they happen to own a paint brush… how does that affect the perception of the medium?
Jeremiah: I think it degrades and devalues the work. I think people, one because of the volume of images people make, people don’t pause to actually view images. I mean the amount of time you actually take to view a single image is significantly diminished because your brain has to go through that process many many times a day. If you think about sitting down… well, let’s take an example of pre-digital, how many of your friend’s photos did you go through every day?
DarkroomPro: Probably zero.
Jeremiah: That’s right — probably none. You might, once in a while, be at a friend’s house and they’d get out their family albums and show you the bad pictures of their kid, right? Well in the digital world, that’s in your face constantly. You sit down in the morning to check your Facebook, and you’re looking at pictures of your friend’s kids. And the volume, the background noise, the back-scatter of digital images is so incredibly intense that people don’t take time to look at them and to view them for their quality, or nuance, or the style… you know, it’s a glance and then move on, because they have a thousand other crappy images to look at.
DarkroomPro: So you think the old economic formula about scarcity leading to an enhanced perception of value figures into that equation? I mean just because we’re dealing with so much volume of content, that there’s a perception of less value in the medium?
Jeremiah: Well yeah, exactly! There is less value inherent in an image today; and they’re flying by you at such high speed, your brain is not trained to stop and appreciate each one with something more than a quick glance. So I think definitely the volume devalues the art-form.
DarkroomPro: I see; and I suppose that also translates into the economics of the situation for the professional photographer.
Jeremiah: Definitely. As I said to you previously, 10 or 15 years ago there were budgets to be had… budgets for annual reports, budgets for photo shoots, communication projects and so on. I really don’t see those budgets existing to a large extent anymore for a number of reasons. One, the volume of really cheaply priced, decent quality stock imagery on one end. On the lower end, is the fact that everybody is their own photographer; and added to that are all the people that masquerade as professionals. You know, they get their thousand dollar DSLR from Nikon or Canon, they get a couple of mediocre lenses and a flash unit, and they think they are now a professional photographer and will advertise themselves as such.
So basically you have a bunch of small fish picking off the small-budget jobs that, you know, may have filled in for you previously between the larger contracts. Those $1000 or $500 jobs are not there anymore because somebody else is willing to do it for $150. Now, they’re not going to put the time or the effort, or the knowledge, or the skill that you as a professional photographer would, but they’re going to produce something of reasonable quality and again, the skill level that is required is diminished as the client base is willing to accept lower quality product because that has just become the norm.
DarkroomPro: So you think that the ubiquity of digital imagery has bred a culture of “good enough”?
Jeremiah: Yep, “That’s good enough”. If you think about — let’s use video as an example — everyone has a video camera now and they’re posting to Youtube. Look at the quality of 95% of the stuff posted there; it’s crap… but people watch it. They get used to consuming low-quality, low-value product; so that becomes the norm. There’s not the same demand for the refined, creative talent, and the creative palette of the trained, professional photographer.
DarkroomPro: Well I think you see that same kind of attitude with the acceptance of sub-standard product straddling different areas of employment — even journalism for example. You see people on CNN reporting on cellphone videos all the time, and that’s just fine apparently.
Jeremiah: Yes, so I mean it does have some communication value. For example in the Arab Spring, you can see the power of the cellphone image — but as far as dumbing down the quality goes, I believe it definitely has that impact.
DarkroomPro: Well, would you not think that it is also incumbent upon the journalists in this example — people that are there to accurately document the situation, be it a photographer or someone who’s working in the printed form — to produce the best work that they possibly can in order to preserve a correct historical record?
Jeremiah: Well I believe it’s incumbent on them to do that; but, you know we all need to make a living. Right? So if your pay for that job that’s done well is not equivalent to the time you invest, that’s a bad economic model for you. You’re not going to make a living. So people aren’t willing to pay you for the $1000 dollars or the $10,000 worth of work, and they’re only willing to pay you for $500 worth of work… well you definitely aren’t going to be doing the $10,000 job for $500 bucks. You know, so you get that out of the way and you go on to the next one. So with that speed of production… must produce, must produce, must produce… the time for creative thought and reflection is removed from the process.
DarkroomPro: Well I think that’s fairly evident looking at the content people are consuming on a daily basis; and I think as a culture we’re poorer for it. But, getting back to the business end of things, how have you adapted to succeed in this new environment?
Jeremiah: Well, you know I have always, throughout my career, I have always done things other than photography. You know, I see people that you would consider successful commercial photographers, and I see them advertising things like workshops, and 101 lessons, and basically going after the prosumer wannabe market. What that tells me is that they’re not getting the jobs through the door anymore that were driving their commercial business in the preceding years; because if they were, they wouldn’t be doing that. They wouldn’t be hustling, you know, wedding seminars and stuff like that…
DarkroomPro: And essentially generating competitors by doing so.
Jeremiah: Yeah! So as I said, my business revolves around the still image. There’s no doubt that it informs all of the work I do. With the web design I do for example, you’ll see that my designs are a frame for great photography. If you see the print stuff that I’ve done — same thing. So basically it’s becoming less and less a photography job, and more and more about the fact that it’s a part of the package that I offer to clients.
DarkroomPro: Now did you envision yourself getting into all these other avenues when you first embarked on your creative venture?
Jeremiah: No, I did not. My career in photography really sort of moves with the decline of photography as a profession. You know, I don’t think photography has ever been a really easy profession to be involved in — especially the creative end. It’s always been highly competitive, and something you have to work hard at to succeed. Also for me, being involved in other creative ventures while using my photography tools to support and integrate into those ventures, allows me to protect the creativity of my photography.
DarkroomPro: How so?
Jeremiah: Well, imagine I’m doing a communications package for a client right?
DarkroomPro: Ok…
Jeremiah: So, branding, web, and so on, and they need some photography to go along with that right? Typically if you’re a photographer, you would be hired by the art director or the designer who’s doing that job and then you’d be responsive to that designer or creative director’s vision. So you’d essentially be pushing the creative button for them. So the photography you created for them would then be informed by their creative ideas and desires.
DarkroomPro: Ok, so in essence, what you’re saying is that you’re able to maintain the integrity of what it is your initial vision was, because you’re conducting the whole process from inception through delivery.
Jeremiah: Exactly. So the photography becomes part of the creative vision for the overall deliverable, and it allows me then to — obviously with input from the client — work with and provide the style and the type of photography that I like to shoot.
DarkroomPro: Ok. So, we’ve talked about the changes digital has had on the photographic profession; what do you think of the overall health of the industry? What advice would you give young aspiring photographers who are thinking of going pro?
Jeremiah: Ah… the health of the profession… on life support? [laughing] To be honest with you, I mean, as a professional photographer, my advice to a young person studying photography would be to find some other way to make a living! I’d pursue your photography as your art. However, if this is your chosen profession… “I’m going to be a photographer” and you’re sure on that, then I strongly suggest that you focus on developing your own personal style — something that sets you apart from the pack, and be prepared to work really hard for not very much reward.
DarkroomPro: Well, ok… what’s the good news? — what excites you about being a photographer these days? We’ve heard the gloom and doom, what’s the opposite side of the coin? Surely there’s something that keeps you doing it day after day…
Jeremiah: Love and a passion for creating images… and for the power that those images can communicate. So, articulating my vision through the photographic medium.
DarkroomPro: So essentially the thing that got you into photography in the first place sustains you in your pursuit of it as a profession.
Jeremiah: Definitely. You know if you’re looking to do photography as a business, for the sake of doing business, it’s a really poor choice. If you want to do photography because you’re passionate about it and you love making images, study it, love it, and understand it. Immerse yourself in the knowledge and the creative processes and the vision of the people that came long before you.
DarkroomPro: So, to take cues from the greats, and in so doing, over time, create your own style are your two major points?
Jeremiah: Well I would say it’s important to inform yourself about photography from the analogue age. To understand the iconic images of great photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson, like Ansel Adams — any of the notables from that era — because their composition, their style, and the way they approach their art informs everything you’ve seen up until today. So look at the past masters; don’t just concentrate on this fluff-filled digital world.