Here are 5 things I thought were worth sharing this week:
If you send John Warner aka the Biblioracle the last 5 books you’ve read, he’ll give you a recommendation. I got in on it this week, and when I told a neighbor and fellow book nerd about the book he chose for me, she said, I have that book and loved it, let me get it for you right now. Looking forward to starting it soon. You should definitely subscribe to his Substack if you like to read or read about books.
Looking for some inspiration? Here’s a nice chat about death, deadlines, and doing your art no matter what between Austin Kleon and Beth Pickens.
And a fun random one: If Werner Herzog had a line of childrün’s clothing it’d be säd beige clothes for säd beige childrün.
I like these: 100 tiny changes to transform your life. Esp. the reminder to breathe.
Lastly, it’s hard not to say something about this (and it’s purely inside baseball, so if you’re not in the photo industry, stop reading now), but these new rule changes to NPPA’s Best of Photojournalism competition are something. I don’t understand where they’re coming from, and why… and I say this as a former NPPA President. As a freelancer, I have ZERO agency over what, how, or where something gets published. So I find the initial language elitest and noninclusive. What I do is still photojournalism though, whether it gets published or not. So it looks like the BOP committee walked back some inflammatory language stating how “disseminating a finished product is an integral part of the act of journalism. Reporting is the act of gathering news. Journalism, by almost every definition, requires reporting and distributing the news.” And it looks like they’ve decided to allow self-published work and work published on social media (itself a slippery slope — READ THE TOS, FOLKS!) but still nothing unpublished. As the great Mary Calvert pointed out: “NPPA's statement that unpublished photos are not photojournalism is a darker and dangerous tenet.” And as 4-time Pulitzer Prize winner Carol Guzy said, so well… (actually, I’ll just give her the final say here):
Greatly appreciate you weighing in on the photography debate. Everything said there is spot on.