Jorge Quinteros

On Evaluating Time

I’ve been thinking a lot about this sought after commodity we call “time”. Time in reference to the ability to step back and really analyze how I currently spend every minute of it outside of work and determine ways I can make better use of it.

This is probably something most people have heard from friends and family before, but it bears repeating that the moment you become a parent, the one aspect of your life which you’re instantly deprived of is time.

I don’t mean losing something in a bad way. Your priorities just happen to change, so it’s natural to realize that some activities you once engaged in are no longer worthy of the time you’ve been devoting to them. For example, I don’t watch much television anymore and when I do, I enjoy having control of how long it would take me to watch a show by having recorded it. As far as sports, I only pay close attention to boxing and soccer both of which have minimal commercial interruptions in comparison to any other sport you can think of so I don’t object to watching live games.

I see my time as being comprised of a series of precious moments, namely connections with myself, with my family and friends which leaves minimal room for me to waste it on stuff that longer interest me. I can’t recall the last time I was remotely excited for the launch of a game for any of the consoles I own. Because being a parents takes a lot of your time, especially when your child is still young, you often have no choice but to dedicate your time only to activities that are truly worthy of you and starring at a TV set for countless hours is not one of them anymore. I’ve thought about selling the Xbox and the PS3 since they hardly see any use.

I’m not saying you have to completely abandon any experience you once valued but I like to think I’ve upgrade to something that ultimately improves me as a person. Once you start seeing how small daily time expenditures add up to years out of your life, you can’t help resist the impulse to trim some of the most obvious time wasters that clearly aren’t worth a big investment anymore. Everyone has their own definition for what time-wasters are but for me, it’s any activity you dedicate time to without really any specific reason to do so. Once you assign this definition to certain activities, you’ll start thinking about how you have been spending your time.

I love reading, I love writing, I love photography, I love exploring the city I live in to discover places and meet people and when I’m not on baby duty, at work, at the gym or socializing with friends, any of the referred activities encompass my spare time.

In spite of my wife’s suggestion, I don’t indulge in naps during the day and I don’t sleep late on my days off largely because I think of these 2 suggestions as time which could be allocated towards something productive. Time is one of the most valuable resources we have as individuals and it took the act of becoming a parent to realize this. Think of it this way - if you only had $100 to spend in a month, would you spend it frivolously items like gum and chips or would you spend it diligently on food that actually has and adds nutritional value to your health?

Films and books have been produced around the concept so there’s obviously a strong emphasis on the value of time. They say it’s a bitch when there’s insufficient amount of it and yet when we have an abundance at our disposal, we squandered it like quarters at a slot machine thinking there’s not much loss that’s occurred perhaps because we fail to consider that a lot of what we do in life is cumulative.

Those who are unaware of its importance waste it and spend their time doing nothing. My grandfather despised the popular saying of “killing time” because to him, wasting it was more like a suicide in that we’re not harming anyone but ourselves.

What got me thinking about all this was a film my wife and I watched the other night after finally attending to the identifiable red envelope that was laying on our coffee table long enough. The film was called In Time starring Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried.

In it, time is literally considered money. It’s a currency. You work to earn it. You pay your bills with it, you buy gifts for your family with it, you could have it stolen and you can even waste it all at a bar which would not only leave you flat broke but also dead because you weren’t careful in conserving it.

Everyone in this futuristic world has a luminous bio-timer embedded on their left forearm that counts down how long the person has to live. Everyone is born normally but once they reach the age of 25, the timer on their arm begins to countdown to zero. Everyone starts with a year. Life is bought one day, one hour, even one second at a time. It’s a scary feeling.

What I essentially took away from the film was that we shouldn’t waste the time we’ve got and we should allocated towards activities that truly matter to us. We all effectively have to work to sustain ourselves so there’s no question that dedicating time towards what we do for a living is a must but it’s what we choose to do with our time when we’re free of obligations that I’ve been evaluating in my life.

I can’t fathom the idea of both living and surviving like the characters in this film but if you knew that time spent on activities that add no value to your life are being discounted from the time you could be doing something valuable, you would probably quickly stop doing the former.

My time after work pretty much revolves around caring for my son. We’re lucky for him to have adopted the routine time we established for him to go to sleep every night. After his last bottle at 8:30pm, he’s tucked in his crib, the humidifier is running, his night rockship night-light is connected and I’m absolved from daddy duty all the way until 10:15pm which is when I typically go to bed. If my wife is not working late, I obviously spend time with her but if she is, this is the time I spend either reading or writing for the site. The thought of watching tv doesn’t cross my mind because I have a very small window of time to do anything and so I don’t care to spend it on tv shows.

Do you often think about how you spend your free time? If not, you’d be surprise to discover how often we tend to splurge it on nonsensical stuff.

Faces of Addiction Exhibit by Chris Arnade

I walked inside Brooklyn’s Urban Folk Art Gallery gradually moving from piece to piece, tentatively reading each caption underneath the photos that reinforced Chris’ Faces of Addiction work that was being exhibited. Prior to my arrival, the only affect I had felt from his photographs was derived off the consistent stream of images that feed into my Flickr stream but seeing them printed, leveled and framed in person was a different experience especially since Chris himself was gracious enough to have taken the time to meet up with me at the gallery.

The more I viewed the photos, the less I thought about photography and the inescapable technical babble that we’re often consumed with when we talk about the art. You know what I’m referring to. The typical inquiries such as what camera or lens did he use and reflecting on whether our work would have as big of an impact if we invested on a similar setup. I’d be lying if I told you these weren’t questions that cross my mind but they were uncertainties I could accept not having answered because the subject matter alone superseded anything that remotely involved talking about the tools of the trade.

I had reached out to Chris a while back, inviting him to be a part of the Photographer Spotlight Series but between his day profession as a banker in New York, raising his 3 children with his wife of 27 years and venturing out to capture stories of people living with addiction in the South Bronx during ungodly hours, it became redundant to say he had very little breathing room for anything else. To top it all off, during that exact period, the New York Times had gotten wind of his assignment and so a good portion of his leisure time had been spent collaborating and dispensing material for a brilliant piece that was eventually published on February 20th, 2012 which I highly you recommend you read for a more in-depth look at Chris in action out in the Bronx.

When I asked Chris if it was a challenge to do what he normally does out in Bronx while having had a film crew and reporter shadow his moves, he couldn’t help but nod in agreeance simply because placing himself in the environment that he does is dangerous as it is but even more so when there’s outsiders tagging along.

Not sure if Chris would refer to it as an official artist statement but on his Flickr profile page, he had this very profound quote that summed up nicely the type of work he’s dedicated his time to putting together. He said “My perfect subject is someone or something who deserves attention but is not looking for it. I tend to shy away from big events or parades.” You can’t help describe his work as having a thick layer of photojournalist touch to it but to that he say’s “I post people’s stories as they tell them to me. I am not a journalist. I don’t try to verify, just listen.”

The more I chatted with Chris as we walked the confines of the gallery, the more inspired and jealous I became with how emotionally and physically close he manages to get with his subjects. This feeling became very reminiscent of what photographer Bob Croslin once said which is that “Lots of people have talent, but it’s the hard work that sets you apart.”

Street photography is fun but what Chris does extends far beyond the typical perception we have about photographers who wander the streets searching for that “Decisive Moment.” From my experience, not everyone is as willing to engage with you and tell you their story in plain day light, let alone at 2am in the morning in one of the most dangerous streets of New York and yet that’s what Chris manages to procure from mostly prostitutes and drug addicts in the Bronx. He said it took him almost a year to gain the trust of the people whom he continuously goes out to seek. It was not an every day occurrence that residents would see a tall Caucasian guy with a camera roaming the streets. Initially they would always assume he was a cop but between constantly going back and ultimately building a relation with one of the oldest and most respected prostitutes at Hunts Point, all the other addicts began regarding him as harmless because of his association with Takeesha.

Regardless of who Chris photographed, he always made it his business to go back and gift the person a photograph of themselves. Some subject he had difficulty finding again either because they wander from place to place too much or because they had been sent to jail.

After having seen Chris’ work, this is what Chase Jarvis had to say about his material, “If you’ve been using the excuse that you’re not making powerful shiznit because you’re not a full-time photographer, take a lesson from this guy.” Lessen taken from my end and hopefully anyone else can even if the photographs themselves don’t necessarily resonate with you, I strongly believe there’s still insight to be taken from this Faces of Addiction assignment.

I teased Chris a bit for not having an actual website to showcase his work since he shares 100% of it solely through Flickr and communicating through Twitter but then I thought to myself “I don’t think he needs it.” This is a prime example of that old saying that “content is king.” He could have been publishing his photographs on the most unsophisticated and plain web site ever and I still think he would’ve received the same amount of well-deserved attention he’s gleaned because it’s what he’s accomplished that holds weight.

The gallery exhibit is still up and running until April 4th, 2012 and all profits generated from the selling of prints goes towards Hunts Point Alliance for Children.

Photography is very much like travel in that they both have this deep-rooted capacity to humble you. They make you aware that in spite of wars, division or any other social problem you can think of, we all as people go through life not knowing every joy or trial that others have had to endure. Whether you travel a lot or photograph a lot, it’s likely that your outlook in life changes at some point because you become so much aware of things and people that others would never give a second thought to acknowledge their existence.

I spent perhaps a total of 1 hour with Chris picking his brain with anything that came to mind since I failed to officially jot down any questions to ask and yet he was accommodating in answering them all. As we eventually went our own way, one piece of advice Chris gave me as he walked out of the gallery was to “find a project you care about and explore the heck out of it” which is exactly what I’ve had in mind all along.

Not that it matters much but for all you camera geeks that are still curious as to what camera he uses out on the field, it’s a Nikon D700 with a 50mm f/1.4

The Curse of Idle Thoughts

One of the difficult parts about being a photographer is that you can’t fake what you do. One can fabricate all these ideas of what they hope to photograph or how far they wish to travel to create the work they feel best illustrates their talent but if all we do is talk and write about it without having photographs to coexist with our statements, then people will surely see through that.

Unlike a writer, there’s only so much we can do as photographers with our laptops sitting pleasantly behind a desk or at the far end table of a local coffee shop. We spend this enormous amount of money on our camera equipment for a reason and it sure as heck shouldn’t be for the purpose of bragging that we own it. There’s no way around the fact that a photographer is identified by the work they produce out in the field and not what they daydream about in the comfort of their mind or their office.

I’ve been victim of falling into this trap in the past and even now with believing that the value of an idea is having purely conceptualized it but there’s more to it. The face value of it lies in the ability to execute it and quite frankly I’m mentally exhausted with having project ideas and thinking I’ve made progress with any of them on the basis of how well written out they may seem on my Moleskine.

Beginning anything is grueling. Saying that you haven’t because you’re absolutely busy is the complete opposite. Writing this makes me realized that it probably represents the complete contrast to what I’ve said so far and so I’ve made the decision to stop writing about what I hope to accomplish as a photographer, to quit grumbling about the lack of time I may have and start adopting the mentality that in order to be considered creative, I have to go through the process of creating something first to subsequently share it.

This is not to say I’m not pleased with anything I’ve photograph thus far but I’ve noticed that the more I read, the more inquisitive I become and the more I discover the type of work I’m drawn to, the more pressure I feel to dedicate time to produce content that’s a direct result of my inspiration as oppose to not doing much of anything.

The Past 5 Days

Moving is not like a 1-day holiday that you can easily mark off your calendar with a pen as if it’s something you no longer have to deal with once you’ve settled at your destination.

We were told by close friend that depending on the size of the house, we’re unlikely to see and enjoy our new home for what it is for at least 2 weeks after because the unpacking is just as brutal as seeing stacks of labeled boxes dispersed around empty rooms that you wish would magically occupied themselves with everything you brought along.

Symbolic photograph of randomness around the new home as we settle.

Buying a home is not like turning a page onto a new chapter. It’s more akin to picking up an entirely different book that may seem esoteric at first but which you’ll eventually grasp the language and feel proud that you’ve chosen to learn it.

These past 5 days after work been spent straightening around the controlled disarray that we have in the new house. The whole concept of being a home owner hasn’t fully sunk in yet and on days that I find myself second guessing our decision, the feeling completely erases when seeing my wife cuddling with our 7-month old baby either in his own room or our bed. If being a parent hasn’t change you in a positive way, then I hate to say that you’re probably doing it wrong.

When you’re growing up, things like living on your own, holding a job, having kids and buying a home are characteristics that represented an adult life. I celebrated my 30th birthday on Superbowl Sunday and as every year goes by and things in my life change for the better, I’m trying to recall when was the last time I actually felt my age.

With the exception of my iPhone, the D90 hasn’t seen the light in a couple days. I’m eager to get back to wondering aimlessly with the camera on the streets, to work on photography projects, to continue my normal routine of writing and most importantly, to enjoy this new place I call home with my family.

On Self-Promotion & Being Uncomfortable as a Photographer

A New York photographer by the name of James Maher once wrote a guest post on the popular Digital Photography School website where he shared a few pointers on how to be a successful freelance photographer. The tip that stuck out to me the most was when he said that “The jobs that scare you s***less are the most important ones” and I’ve held on to this true statement.

After reading the article, I was left with the idea that if you want to be different and successful, you have to learn to be uncomfortable. Think about it for a minute. What’s comfortable about marching into your bosses office requesting for a raise or reaching out to a potential client selling your services or asking a person out on a date? Nothing comes easy and the moment you feel comfortable with where you are, that’s when one should look at what the next challenge should be.

I can’t speak for every photographer but I think the majority who are starting off like me, they don’t want to be a sales person selling photography per say. We just wanna own the best gear that we can afford, have an idea and go create some compelling photographs and not have to deliberate with practices on what we must do to promote it. The reality is that thriving in this industry is not solely based on one’s talent and ambition but also in knowing how to conduct yourself as a business which has been my biggest test mostly because I don’t see myself as anyone other than a person who loves his camera.

Friend Erin Gazzo posing with her Nikon D90 at The Metropolitan Museum in Manhattan.

The challenge in photography comes when you start considering it as a job - something to get done rather than something to do. I already have a day job that pays my bills, feeds my family and enables us to live comfortably. At the moment, any opportunity I get to extend what I do as a photographer such as selling prints or writing guest articles on other sites is a window for me to stand out and create avenues for something else.

I’m not the best at self-promotion because I don’t generally like calling attention to myself but I do value developing relationship with people, whether it’s online or in person. That’s been a vital element in attracting the type of exposure I probably wouldn’t have sought out for myself. Instead, the act of being “known” has been the by-product of networking with people who may not be photographers themselves but have an appreciation for the craft and whom I share similar interest with.

Having photographed mostly for myself the last couple of years, at no point did I think that taking photos would lead to a few people potentially wanting to buy them. Whether it’s on Flickr or Twitter, I occasionally receive flattering comments complimenting my work and I often joke by responding that the reason they may think it’s nice or interesting it’s because I never publish the bad ones. Any way to get your name out there is good. The goal for me wasn’t to find the best platform to sell my prints. The real goal was to get traffic and get people to see what I was photographing and read what I was writing in the very busy media space that is the web.

Who Should You Photograph For?

Photographing for a market is a always good discipline but I always suggest photographing for yourself first, that way your photos will have a genuine passion without trying to work out how to sell it. The question I often ask myself before venturing out to shoot is “how can I begin to justify the time and effort I am going to put into this and feel that I’m bringing something new into the world with it?” Bearing in mind that almost every place I can think of has already been photographed, there’s a need to focus on how one can cover familiar places in fresh ways. Photography is about freshness and going out to explore the unknown and make it notable.

Don’t just have ideas about places or people you want to photograph because that simply wastes energy you could be putting into doing it. I’m not generally sitting back in pensive mood analyzing on how else I can make money but more on what else I can photograph. Photography is often classified as a lonely profession and it’s your passion that will very often sustain and reward you. I have friends who’ve asked for advice on how to get started with this whole photoblogging and selling prints gig and I always tell them not to worry about camera, blogging platforms or how much to charge for anything, until they have truly made their work as good as possible. The enjoyment and adventure will all come through in the photographs.

I always found the process of self-promotion and networking to be uncomfortable and ironically enough, doing it is what has contributed to my growth as a photographer.