A friend asks you to take baby photos then says they like the style of Anne Geddes!

[Gumby]

She is probably one of the most financially successful photographers ever. Even if one doesn't like her work artistically, she has clearly made her case for raw commercialism and personal profit from behind the viewfinder.

It is easy for people to dislike successful people. In the painting world just mention Thomas Kinkade... another financially successful artist that everyone loves to hate. One mention of his name and fist-fights break out... yet his pictures are over most people's couches!

 

[dreilly]

Geddes! Fight or flight, I'd choose flight. And very fast.

I'd have to say no. Not because I couldn't or even wouldn't do it, it's just that there's no way I couldn't turn it into a huge satire, and I'd be afraid my sarcasm would show through. Baby sitting in a can of used motor oil. Baby sleeping in a box of discarded grocery store bananas, Baby dressed up as a knight jousting from the back of a Weimeraner. Baby surprising her parents by smiling at them from the dishwasher when they go to put the dry dishes away.

Then I'd think, I'm not sure I can make a satire of Geddes work, it sort of does that itself. I mean, I don't see cuteness in it, but some sort of sick fetishization. Same with the Dog guy. Really, 10 dogs dressed up like firefighters? I don't get it.

I like babies, enough to not want to humiliate the little Bodhisattvas by putting them in ridiculous settings....

 

[dreilly]

I don't think it's that people dislike Geddes and Kincaid because they are successful, but because their success means their images are ubiquitous and we're faced with them all over the place. There's a certain part of art that's built on originality and uniqueness, and when this dovetails with modern marketing and mass production, well, it gets harder to tease it out. But again, it's not the success, it's the presence on mugs, t-shirts, Gund stuffed...babies...

I'll say this: Geddes technically does nice work, it's the content that bugs me. Kincaid's stuff is a real aesthetic turn-off (to say the least), not to mention the "painter of light" conceit. Again, not his success but the arrogance of the brand.

 

[daveleo]

Doing favors for friends

Doing favors for friends

Anne Geddes aside (I don't appreciate her style, but I heard also that she doesn't like mine either ( 🙄 )

I've had to "compromise" my style a few times for friends . . . always to shoot someone's wedding. I beg and plead and show them my work and how it is galaxies away from wedding photography, but I sometimes loose, usually to my wife slipping me the info that "these kids are broke, Dave, do them a big favor and take the pictures".

I chalk it up as a service to the community, I guess.

 

[squirrel$$$bandit]

You should combine this thread with the "ruin porn" one, and do a kind of "Detroit Disassembled" featuring the baby. Just insist on taking the child out alone for a few hours, then prop it up in rusted-out propane tanks or crumbling cement building foundations, or depict it sitting alone and crying in an abandoned lot. Or hire some punk-looking kids to pretend to sell it drugs.

 

[Thardy]

Just tell them you don't have the chops to pull it off.

 

[jsrockit]

Or hire some punk-looking kids to pretend to sell it drugs.

I've been looking for a fresh idea... thanks! 😱😀

 

[MCTuomey]

Geddes is fine. People like her stuff and it sells better than most. Well lighted, well photographed, painstakingly set. If nothing else, I admire the workmanship. Re comparisons to Avedon et al, well, there's a reason he didn't do babies or weddings or events ...

Keith, your friend and new dad asked sincerely, you have a fine photographic sense, so why not give it a go?

 

[jsrockit]

Are people's friends so sensitive that they will get upset if you tell them you don't work in that style? I doubt it. I mean, they could always go hire her to do the photos for them... 😉 I'm sure they won't like the price tag though.

 

[Gumby]

Are people's friends so sensitive that they will get upset if you tell them you don't work in that style? I doubt it.

Probably not. If they are then perhaps they aren't as good of a friend as one thinks they are.

 

[thegman]

I'd suggest that friends help friends out. Maybe some people here take their work too seriously to do it, but that can very easily become taking oneself too seriously.

I think a lot of this reeks of "How dare someone make money out of a style of photography I don't like!"

 

[jsrockit]

I'd suggest that friends help friends out. Maybe some people here take their work too seriously to do it, but that can very easily become taking oneself too seriously.

Or perhaps they don't feel like ripping off someone else's style?

 

[thegman]

Or perhaps they don't feel like ripping off someone else's style?

Perhaps, but I think if someone wanted family photos shot like HCB, then I doubt many people here would have a problem with it.

 

[Jack Conrad]

Just an idea. 🙂

 

[jsrockit]

Perhaps, but I think if someone wanted family photos shot like HCB, then I doubt many people here would have a problem with it.

But could many deliver? 😀

 

[j j]

Haha jsrockit!

Keith. They just want some nice pictures of their darling, the most wonderful child ever to have been born. Take a photo of the child in your style. Show the pic to the parents. Parents will melt/weep, tell you that you must have a good camera and ask for more pics like that. If that doesn't work head for the fridge!

 

[anjoca76]

I think the point here is less to do with Geddes' work, which most of us find varying degrees of bad, than it is about the notion of compromising one's artistic integrity. I guess that is for each of us to determine for ourselves, as far as what our limitations are, what line we won't cross, etc.

Very few artists never, ever compromise, and the ones that don't generally spend their lives in bitter anonymity.

 

[MCTuomey]

Let's free-associate styles:
1. Bundle-of-joy and pumpkin
2. Dovima and the elephants
3. Bundle-of-joy and pachyderms

Keith, you'll need a handler (several, since pachyderms are frisky), a good MUA (several, a new mom and day-hire pachyderms can be demanding), some large-ish modifiers for your monolights (pachyderms' epiderms do best in soft light), and a few other bits and bobs. I'll be glad to assist, my people will be calling your people tomorrow.

 

[charjohncarter]

Pretty corny stuff, maybe you could get a female Kangaroo and stick the baby in the pouch.

 

[bgb]

I just had a quick look at Anne's images inline and they are not all about pumpkins there are a few B&W images that are ok.
If he is important to you you need to do you best.