In photography, trust and doubt are like yin and yang: You cannot have one without the other, you have to balance one against the other. Trust and doubt exist in a complex relationship. They don't just have to balance each other, they also have to drive each other. Trust has a lot to do with one's photographic instincts: To see the photograph, to take it, and to then know that what was there to be taken has in fact been taken. But doubt interjects, knowing that while what might have been taken has been taken, what was seen could have been seen in a different way. Trust is centered on the realization that one is a good photographer. But there is the doubt, the constant asking whether one might not become a better photographer. Find the full piece here.

(The first in what probably is going to become a new feature.) If someone asked you what photography's big deal was, all you'd have to say is that it has something to do with "the gaze," and then show this photograph. Of course, photography is not just this image. There is a lot more - or, if you're a curmudgeon (there seem to be many these days) a lot less. But there is a lot to be said for talking about the most outstanding examples of any art form to get an idea of their power - instead of focusing on the detritus. Thus, when talking about photography we'd probably want to talk about photographs of the human form, and out of all those we might want to talk about this particular photograph. Its title is "A woman sits for a final photograph with her dying mother," and it was taken by Eduard Méhomé (the photograph can be found on page 41 of Life & Afterlife in Benin). Find the full article here.

As a photographer, you won't get around bringing your desire to photography, just as a viewer you do the same thing. You have no choice. As I have argued before, photography must fail if that desire is denied. But desire does not automatically create good photography. An equally crucial factor is trust. As a photographer, you have to trust your photographs. You have to trust that they say what you want them to say. Or more accurately, you have to realize that your subconscious mind is bringing more things to photography than your conscious mind might realize. Continued here.

In fact, that's a situation everybody is used to: If you want to buy a car and the car costs $15,000 while you only have $14,000, you don't decide not to buy any car. You will probably find a car that fits your budget. If you want to go on vacation, and your planned vacation would cost $1,000 while you only have $800, most people I know would make it work with $800: Go for fewer days, or stay at a cheaper hotel or whatever option there is.

Insisting on an all-or-nothing funding model essentially is an unnecessary simplification of what crowdfunding could really be. Why not instead work with two numbers, the amount of money the photographer wants to raise and the minimum amount of money that needs to be raised for the project to be possible at all? For the above example, that could be $5,000 and $4,000, say. You figure you'd really need $5,000 for your road trip, but you could cut some expenses and do the whole thing, in a somewhat reduced form, for less. Or maybe you want to photograph 50 people, but you could also just photograph 40. Or instead of producing 300 books you'd produce 200.

This would probably increase the numbers of successful pitches quite a bit, Kickstarter would make extra money (for them it's a business, a way to make money), and it would give people more flexibility - both backers and photographers.

Of course, you could argue that if someone could do their project for $4,000 why don't then then ask for just that? But that misses the point. When you budget your project, you want to budget it properly. You want to budget the project you want to do. Once you have that number you could then think about what number you could still work with - if the full amount doesn't come through. Or you could even decide that if you raise $4,000 instead of the $5,000 you'd put the remaining $1,000 on a credit card.

Your potential backers would see the numbers, and they could base their decision on that. If someone asks for $5,000, but could also work with $4,000 (to do something a little reduced) that seems to make a lot of sense. In contrast, if someone asks for $5,000, but could also work with $2,000 - I'd probably think twice before funding that.

You'd imagine that if you give people what they give you money for that should be enough. But I actually don't think that's how this really works. Let's say you need $1,000 to produce something, so you "do a Kickstarter," and you say that if someone gives you $50 they'll get whatever it is you want to produce. Let's say you find all those people, you send out a thank-you email, spend some weeks on producing whatever it is you want to do, and then you send it out to your supporters. That's my friend's experience. It's essentially just a slightly more unusual way of shopping, isn't it? You prepay, and then you get your product. I don't think that's a good approach to crowdfunding.

At the very least, approaching crowdfunding that way is a lost opportunity. After all, if people are interested enough to give you money don't you want to make sure that those same people might give you money again in the future? Wouldn't that be nice? In other words, wouldn't you want to give them the feeling that your project is not just some shopping experience?

Isn't this problem essentially the same problem you face as a photographer with your images? There are thousands and thousands of other photographers out there - how do you differentiate yourself? Let's be realistic, unless (until) you're famous your photographs are probably not going to be enough. You have to do some PR. But you need to do the PR smartly so that you won't be yet another person sending out an email that's little more than "Hey, look at my website!"

Crowdfunding is more complex than that: When you have a funded project, people are already - literally and emotionally - invested in you. As with any investment, you want to make sure your supporter's return-on-investment is maximized. Giving them what they paid for is good. But you want to give them more. Treat the people who supported your work not as customers, but as patrons - patrons in the old sense of the work. Think of them not as current supporters but as potential future supporters.

Thus, make sure to communicate with them about whatever it is you do. Send them updates, and make sure the updates are meaningful and don't feel like a chore. The more engaged you are with your supporters, the more you give them the feeling they're not just convenient cash cows for you.

In a nutshell, I see crowdfunding as bringing the idea of patronage to the web. There is an element of commerce involved, but the crucial aspect is not the commerce. Instead, it's the relationships artists can establish with their supporters. Artists need those relationships. In the past, these kinds of relationships were usually established with wealthy collectors only. Now, crowdfunding offers the chance to establish them with a much larger, much more diverse, much more democratic group of people. Artists ignore this aspect of crowdfunding at their own peril!

There is a very moving piece entitled Lost and Alone Under Tokyo's Red Rain by Hiroyuki Ito over at Lens that you want to don't want to miss.

At the core of all photography lies desire, our longing to connect, not to forget, to express love, to reach out to someone else (even if it is just our future selves) and say "Here, look at this! I want you to see this!" Full article here

You've probably seen this image, since it was discussed a little while ago in major media outlets. It's a manipulated photograph of the burial of the North Korean leader. So we're talking about manipulation again. I've written about this extensively (you can find lots of posts in the archives), and I don't know how much I want to add to that. (more)

Note than when I say "manipulate" I'm being incredibly generous with the meaning. In the first case, you manipulate an image even by changing the contrast slightly (some manipulation is allowed, too much is not - big problem, as I discussed in the past). In the second case, you shape people's opinions or you educate them; and even though we usually don't think of that as manipulation (at least not when it's done by our media), it essentially is. This might become most obvious in cases where awareness of an issue needs to be created: Often, you want to manipulate people so they change their behaviour (start buying recycled goods, say).

This second type of manipulation is not the same as the first kind - that's pretty obvious. Often, the manipulation of the second kind if even more tricky, because it might have to do with an absence of photographs (think of the Bush administration prohibiting photography of caskets of US soldiers coming home - a blatant attempt to manipulate the public's perception of a war).

But in almost all cases, to judge what damage is being done by manipulation in photography I think we need to look at both types of manipulation, and not just at one. Which means that for the most part we need to talk more about the use of photographs in the media, and to what extent the media are open about it. If the media were perceived as open and honest (which I'm happy to argue is not the case), we would be much less worried about manipulation (regardless of which type we're talking about).

So what damage is done by using a doctored photograph of that funeral? Well, we should reject manipulated images for reasons of journalistic credibility. But we could easily also just disclose that the image is doctored and use it anyway. After all, the most important facets of the image, the facts, are unchanged: It's a creepy very Communist funeral, a perfect view into the mindset of a very messed up state ideology. In fact, the manipulation actually makes things even creepier. And we could connect that to the long history of photo manipulation by Communist countries.

Hans Gremmen took a ride down Route 66 - The Mother Road ("66 is the mother road, the road of flight." John Steinbeck, in The Grapes of Wrath,1939), using 151,000 screenshots, with the final trip now lasting "only" 5hrs 11min 49 sec. If you're interested in seeing the whole piece, you can now buy the book plus 2 DVD set.